A "Thank You" to a Few of Mike's Favorite Friends, Blogs and Sites

Please allow me to send heartfelt greetings to "MainStreetMom" over at the Daily Earful for her continued patronage and readership. Frankly, I am stunned by any repeat visitor.

If reading this drivel once does not dissuade you, then you're my kind of guest!

"MSM" has a youngster and a wealth of tips and experiences to share with families and Disneyphiles concerning her frequent trips to that "other" park in the Far East (Florida, that is). She also keeps tabs on all things Disney, even broken down Jungle skippers who remain trapped in the 1980s. If you haven't stopped by, I recommend you get out of my boat this minute, scroll over to the column on the right and click on the Daily Earful. I don't list all those things over there just for "filler!"

Thanks, too, to Kevin Kidney for his recent visits. If you do not have any of Kevin's art pieces relating to Disneyland, or haven't paid a visit to his blog, then don't blame me if I stop speaking to you altogether. Really! And you call yourself a Disney fan with 80s sensibilities! Sheesh.

Jason at Eightiesology is another visitor who has a blog worth mentioning to all those with any affinity for the 1980s. Say hello for me if you decide to check in with him!

Vintage Disneyland Tickets consistently posts quality Disneyland goodies. If you're the kind of person who saved every souvenir guide, ticket stub and flier from every trip you ever took to Disneyland (let's say that I have a few of these items myself), why haven't you stopped and checked out this blog?! Fabulous! One of the privileged few who really "get it" when it comes to the Park.

I am but a tropical knucklehead, feverishly moaning in a camp besieged by gorillas, compared to the likes of Vintage, Outside the Berm, 2719 Hyperion, Daveland, Disneyland Nomenclature, Viewliner Ltd., Yesterland and other authors and sitekeepers. They're all over on the right, so hyperlink to them already, won'tcha?!

Last, but not least, thanks to Mom, who signs in 3,000 times a day just to keep my Sitemeter reading high and help me to live the fantasy that this stuff I post gets read by more than 3 people. Moms are great.

If I've left you off this post, it's because I have a very poor memory and worse social skills. Don't worry, your credit will come some day, I'm sure. I apologize in advance.

As for you devoted readers, the four of us have got to get together someday for a Dole Pineapple Whip.

--Mike

Disneyland Jungle Cruise - Would You Trust These Men To Take You Into The Heart Of Darkness?

In the "a-picture-says-a-thousand-words" category, I offer you, dear readers, the above (with heartfelt thanks to Phil Seymour). This scene of the wildlife on the African Veldt comes beaming back to us from the late 1970s.

No, this is not the cast from "M*A*S*H" on sabbatical at Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom.

Nor is it a National Geographic photograph of the No-undi people of the Congo (lovely tribe, the No-Undies).

Nope. This is just photographic proof that we jungle skippers are a breed apart.

Far apart.

Just-barely-in-the-same-species apart.

To think, these men were trusted with the lives of boatfuls of guests on a daily basis.

"Now turn around and wave goodbye to the folks on the dock (make it look like you're having fun)---you'll never see them again!"

Disneyland - Matterhon - Special Guest Star: Harold

If you were there in the late 1970s, you recall that something had gotten into the Matterhorn.

It turned out to be a hairy creature with a bluish face and angry red eyes. Cast members affectionately called him, "Harold."

Over time, Harold made quite an impression and ultimately was welcomed as part of the family. Today, thanks to the magic (and cameras) of Disneyland cast members, we take a look at some photos from Harold's family album.
Thanks to Lorraine Osborn for originally sharing this photograph, reposted here for your edification and enjoyment. This demonstrates cast members' affection for our noisy friend from the icy caverns of the Matterhorn.

John Sieker is to be thanked for contributing this photograph, where Harold sports a nifty cap. Kinda cuts down on the angry Yeti vibe, though.Jeff Mackey is thanked for this contribution, in which a non-Matterhorn cast member popped by for a visit from It's A Small World.George Herold (no relation) originally supplied these next two wonderful pictures (the one immediately below is from the late 1970s). In the first, Harold looks happy surrounded by such dear friends. However, in the second, during a rehab, he appears robbed of a bit of dignity, not to mention his hirsute grandeur.He was also was present for a special moment in which one of his human friends appears to have popped some sort of question to the female of the species (our thanks to Paula Kirchner for the photograph). Sometimes, even despite the cast member's affection, Harold would get a bit testy, as this moment (supplied by Joshua Sudock) captured by camera clearly demonstrates.For all of us who still jump (just a bit) when we hear his mighty roar from the darkness, Harold, we salute you! Many happy returns! Though you aren't a Matterhorn "original," you have definitely become part of the family!

As for me, I met him several times during closing shifts in Fantasyland. The "Disney Explorers Club," I understand, made Harold one of their many destinations. A certain basketball court deep within the mountain was also rumored to be a place where the DEC would visit (after everyone had gotten their flowerbeds finished!). At least, that's what I heard...

Jungle Cruise Spiel - A Few More Pages

We continue today with more pages from the 1984
"official" Jungle Cruise spiel, leaving the dock, heading into the rain forest and coming upon the ruins of the ancient Cambodian shrine.

As we left the dock, I introduced myself as everyone from "Mango Mike" to "Les Capable," but generally used my own name (since it was right there on the old Mickey Mouse nametag---Not like I could hide it!).

Though not part of the "official" spiel, or even an "approved alternative," I and most of my Jungle brethren would often start our trip by having the guests recite the Jungle Cruise Oath: (repeat after me...)I hope...

(I hope)

That I...

(That I)

Return...

(Return)

Alive...

(Alive).

Perhaps you swore this solemn oath once or twice if you ever rode the attraction in the 1970s or 1980s. Very serious business.

Also missing from the official spiel for the toucan/hornbill section of the river (where the Indy line is today) is the following (again, used by countless skippers):

"Over there are three toucans...

...otherwise known as...

...a sixpack."

That one spoke right to the soul of my beer loving jungle cruiser guests.

Like most Jungle jokes: time honored; timeworn.

Disneyland - 1984 - Official Jungle Cruise Spiel - Page 1

At long last I am breaking out my old, yellowed "official" Jungle Cruise spiel and sharing it with you. Sure, other sites have summarized Jungle jokes and spiels, but how many bring you an actual copy of the living, breathing document!

It is not the Constitution or the Magna Carta, but it is still a thing of historical and pop cultural significance.

You can tell the spiel I share is dated because, for one thing, it has jokes about "keeping the cushions clean" by having the guests slide forward and covering up "all of the blue seat cushions" (or whatever color cushions were on your particular boat).

There haven't been seat cushions on the Jungle since they did away with the striped canopies. Sigh.

I had my favorites that I used during "Load" (and a few non-S.O.P. lines that were popular among us skippers). Paragraphs 1, 3, 8, 10, 11 and, of course, 12 were classics and almost always included in one form or another.

I would also use on of the following, depending on my mood:

"Watch your head. Watch your step. Watch your head. Watch your step. If you miss your step---and step on your head, Please! Watch your language. This is Disneyland after all and there are small children present."

"Hurry up! Get in! We haven't got all day! Are you guys on vacation or something? Let's go, this isn't Knott's Berry Farm!"

"As you enter the boat, keep an eye on your boat loaders. These guys have a strange affinity for touching your elbows. Just let them do it and go ahead and keep on moving into the boat to find your seat. If you make eye contact, they'll just follow us into the Jungle. Took me a week to get rid of the last one we got in here."

"Hey! Where have you guys been all day! I've been keeping the engine warmed up for you. Come on in! Squeeze together and don't be afraid to come all the way up front by me---I'm almost completely over the Irrawaddy Fever and that necrotizing skin rash is clearing up nicely."

"Let's go! Pack it in folks! Don't worry if it seems crowded now---there's usually plenty of room after we get over that first waterfall."

"The Jungle Cruise is a thrilling, high-speed, turbulent, roller coaster-type ride through space. For your safety persons with heart conditions, motion sickness or back problems and expectant mothers should not attempt to ride this attraction. Now, please pull down on your safety bars, keep your hands and arms inside the boat, and be sure to hang onto your hats and glasses "cause this here's the wildest ride----in, um, Adventureland."

"As you enter our glass bottomed boat, please gaze down at the school of piranha beneath us, but don't tap on the glass. Drives 'em crazy. (Made you look)."

"Okay, as you take your seats, grab those 3-D glasses and put them on. Captain Eo will begin momentarily. Sorry---wrong attraction. I guess you'll just have to sit down and look out the windows or something. We're a low-budget ride here at the Jungle Cruise."

"Welcome aboard! I'd like to take this time to remind you to put your seat backs and tray tables in their fully upright and locked position. Be sure that your seatbelts are buckled. To do so, simply slide the metal connector into the buckle and then adjust the strap, keeping it low and tight across your lap. Our cabin has been pressurized for your comfort and safety, if however, we should experience a devastating loss of pressure during our trip, oxygen masks will drop down from the compartments above your heads. At that time, take the mask and place it over you nose and mouth and begin breathing normally. If we should experience a water landing, your seat cushion, or the guest seated next to you, may be used as a flotation device. Now, sit back, relax and enjoy your cruise."

There's plenty more, but you get the drift. The spiel itself consists of 12 full pages, so we'll post some more as time goes on.

For now, have a safe and happy September 2, 2008!

Disneyland - Parade Duty - Knowing The Ropes (And Bones)

Ever come across one of these as you strolled through the Park?

They are ubiquitous on Main Street, especially all around the Hub. This is a plughole for a parade post/pole. The rubber plug in the middle of the hole is extracted and a pole is inserted into the hole.

In 1987, Adventure/Frontier Attractions hosts and hostesses would join their counterparts on Main Street for a parade shift. This shift meant that you wouldn't be spieling through the Jungle or waking up Jose over at the Tiki Room.

No, you were assigned a flashlight with a colored cone and sent over to a section of the parade route on Main Street, usually around two hours before the parade's scheduled start time.

You were going to be herding guests at the Main Street Electrical Parade.

If you'd been around a while and "knew the ropes," you would be sent to a locker to retrieve ropes, bones, a pole cart and poles. You would then haul these items over to Main Street long before the parade was scheduled to commence. You and your crew would then start to lay out your ropes and poles. You would use the them to create traffic walkways or block off certain areas so that guests could be seated in advance of the parade.

Upon arriving at Main Street, you would open up your cart and throw your rope "bones" into a planter.You would bring along with you certain lighted directional signs, too, that helped tell guests where the roped traffic areas were leading them. You can see a couple of the directional signs in the photograph below (taken of the planter on Matterhorn Way near the east side of Sleeping Beauty's Castle). The photograph also shows the carefully wrapped (and labeled) rope "bones." If you put the wrong rope on the wrong bone, the next parade crew will be faced with a magnificent jigsaw puzzle when they try and lay out their roped-off areas. It happened to me plenty of times.

Above is a close up of one of the bones from a recent pre-parade set up in August 2008.

And here is one of the posts (again, this is on Matterhorn Way, on the southeastern side, nearest to the fountain with King Triton). All the parade ropes are pre-cut and pre-measured so that they fit tightly between the two (proper) poles to which they are supposed to be attached. Get the wrong rope and the wrong pole and you'll end up too short or too long!Parade crews usually get this process down fairly quickly, and by the end of the summer you literally "know the ropes."

After the ropes and poles are set up, the parade crew spreads out to several stations along the traffic areas. They then begin waving their arms (and coned flashlights as dusk turns to night) and verbally telling guests the proper route to take. You've seen this done a hundred times, I'm sure. Quite an orchestrated event.

I used to enjoy getting all the guests to sit down (especially those with the seats in front, closest to the parade route). In the 1980s, Disneyland had strollers with handles that collapsed downward. I would help collapse strollers (so their canopies would not block the view of the guests seated further back) and would make sure that the one guy from "out of the country"---who insisted on standing up at the curbline (while 500 angry guests glared laser beams into the back of his head because he was blocking their view)---was able to understand my nonverbal cues telling him to SIT DOWN!

It always amazed me that 750 to 1000 people could be seated in an area waiting for a parade and ONE guy (invariably in the front row) would insist on standing. What planet do these people come from? Is it o.k. in other cultures to block the view of your neighbors since you "got the front row???!" I made damn sure it wasn't o.k. at Disneyland (and I'm convinced that I saved many people from being stoned by angry mobs in the process!).

After the parade was over, while the guests were stampeding for exits or other parts of the Park, the parade crew would quickly break down the ropes and poles that they had put up earlier. It is vital to put the right rope back on the right "bone" and then back onto the right "cart" during this process, as noted above.

The Day Custodial crew would then follow with a team of sweepers (and often motorized vacuum cleaners) and clean up the post-parade mix.

All in a day's work at the Magic Kingdom (the original Magic Kingdom, that is).

Disneyland - The Disneyland Line - 1984 - Classifieds

Let's close out August 2008 with a look at things at Disneyland in the summer of 1984. The Disneyland Line was the cast member newsletter published by the Park. It was a small magazine and always had neat little articles about people and events at Disneyland.

I enjoyed looking at the classifieds in the page posted above and seeing a slice of life in 1984.
You could pick up an Atari 2600 video game (with joysticks!) for $125. Not quite an "X-Box 360," but it would do in a pinch. There were quite a few VW bugs (or as my daughter calls them: "Herbie Cars!") for sale. Seemed to be the official car of Disney employees. Most of the vehicles were 1970s vintage. I should've picked up a couple back then and held onto them!

As for real estate, you could have moved yourself into a 4-bedroom home in Chino for $93,000 back in 1984.

Come to think of it, I think that's pretty close to the asking price for a home in Chino TODAY!

The more things change...

Disneyland Guest Relations - Plaid On Parade; The Mark Twain And The Drained River; Sinking Raft

Special thanks to Paula Asinas, who originally posted this photograph. I repost it here because of its unique assemblage of Disneyland's famous tour guides, in full red-vested, plaid-skirted, red-stockinged regalia on Main Street before Park opening. The street and sidewalks are still wet from Custodial's high-pressure hosedown in the early morning hours.


And further thanks to Sandi Miller, who first posted this shot of the Mark Twain and the recently-drained Rivers of America during the 1984 rehab. There was a bit of a stink in Frontierland/New Orleans Square when the mucky waters receded, literally and figuratively.

Oh, and yes, Virginia, the Mark Twain is on a track. Somehow Walt and Company weren't willing to trust a ride operator to navigate the Rivers of America on their own from the wheelhouse.

And no, Viriginia, you do NOT want to dive headfirst off the bow into the River. It's a tad shallow. That's why we dye the heck out of it. Love that murky, Jungle green!

To close out today's post, I offer you another slighltly sinking Raft to Tom Sawyer's Island photograph, courtesy of George Herold---this is from 1975. The ride operator and helmsman, Bill Jacobson, seems to be all smiles, as his guests try to keep their feet dry. Dig those 70s tube socks!

1980s Disneyland Buttons

Today offers a sampling of the myriad of buttons (and a Pirates Arcade stamped "Pieces o' eight") that could be found at Disneyland throughout the 1980s.

It is true, I was there when the Park turned 25 and again when it turned 30, but the Grad Nite button is not my own.

The "I'm A Winner" button came from the "Gift Giver Extraordinaire" and was accompanied by a large Mickey Mouse plush toy. One of my family members won it during a visit to the park in 1985. You may have a few buttons of your own floating around the house.

As for me, I have a small number of Disney pins but am NOT a pin trader.
Those folks drink a special kind of Kool Aid.
Talk about an addiction.
Sheesh.
(Editor's Note: The above comments come from a grown man with a blog devoted to a slice of time over 20 years ago at Disneyland, who has a known affinity for coffee and Martinis---not exactly the type who should be casting "addiction" aspersions).

Have a Happy and Safe Labor Day Weekend all!

--Mike

Disneyland - Swiss Family Treehouse - 1980s

We shall say hello to an old friend, Jackie Lacey, at the main entrance turnstile to the Swiss Family Treehouse in the mid-1980s. Jackie provided this autographed picture on a former cast member website and I'm reposting it here.

I spent many shifts at the old Treehouse and it contained my favorite water feature in the Park: the stream running beneath the tree and through "volcanic rock" toward the old Jungle Cruise queue. The water was always peacefully moving in the background as the guests rolled through the turnstile and gazed up at the big water wheel, which, in turn, carried the water up to the top of the tree (and back down through a "bamboo" plumbing system).

Jackie Lacey worked in Adventure/Frontier Attractions and was dating (and later married) my old foreman on Main Street, Dave "Ranger Dave" Fraser. They are both great people and I understand they are still doing quite well. I expect that some of you folks from "Club 951" will remember Jackie from her days on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Tiki Room, etc.

I love the photograph because it captures the location as I fondly recall it. It also shows Jackie is "taking the count," (see the clipboard), so she must have just rotated to the position and is making note of the turnstile count (shown on an old odometer-type meter on the turnstile). We would do this periodically through the day, keeping a log of the number of guests who toured the attraction. I suppose this is all done by computer nowadays.

Well, move along now and enjoy your trip through the old Treehouse!

--Mike