Columbia, The Gem of the Ocean

My Disneyland history is not, and I admit it freely, what I wish it was and so I generally stay to East Coast topics that I can more easily discuss. This week, however, 5 Kingdoms had such an intriguing article on Disneyland’s Sailing Ship Columbia, that I had to go out and further my own education. My interest was originally piqued in the ship last year while on my honeymoon, when Columbia was not sailing, and the 5 Kingdoms’ article only furthered my fascination. In honor of the article, and to satisfy my own inquisitiveness, this week’s Back Issue comes to us from the Summer 1980 issue of Disney News and fills the sails with the Sailing Ship Columbia’s need to know, and interesting to know, record.

On September 30, 1787 an armed merchant vessel commissioned Columbia sailed from Boston Harbor to become the first ship to carry the American flag in oceans around the world. According to her log, she sailed to the Pacific Northwest and on to the Orient where she traded furs for chinaware, tea, spices and silks. When she returned to her home port in August of 1790, she had been at sea for 34 months and had logged a distance of 41,899 miles.

During the last months of 1790, the Columbia began her second expedition, again under the command of Captain Robert Gray. During this voyage, Gray discovered the river which today bears the name of the historical vessel. Several more expeditions were made by the Columbia during her proud lifetime. It is believed she finally disappeared without a trace somewhere in the Orient; although one legend has it that she was taken by a crew member and used as a privateer, while still another claims she was wrecked off the rocky shores of Nantucket.

The historical significance of the original Columbia was in its establishment of international trade routes and good relations with the West Coast Indian tribes. Its magnificent counterpart, located in the Disneyland Magic Kingdom, establishes a living history of the ship that helped create a Pacific Coast empire for the United States.

The fully-rigged, three-masted replica is berthed at Fowler’s Harbor across from Tom Sawyer’s Island in the Theme Park during the winter season. She was dedicated there on June 14, 1958. Research in the Library of Congress and a single steel engraving from the book, “Voyages of the Columbia,” provided the background for the design of the vessel. Her hull was constructed at Todd Shipyards and then completed at the Park by workmen using similar tools to those used on the original ship.

“Below Decks” on the Columbia was opened February 22, 1964. It is an authentic replica of living conditions on the Berth Deck of the original ship… a veritable maritime museum. Visitors see the mess table surrounded by officers’ cabins. The Captain’s Great Cabin astern is furnished with a dining table, two bunks, chart table, and navigational equipment. Along the port side is an exhibit of tackle, blocks, sail, and rope-making gear. There is a forge for tool making and an open-hearth galley on the opposite side for the cook. In the foc’sle are eight (not too roomy) bunks which were for the able and sometimes not too able seamen.

Top side, the sturdy Douglas fir planking of the Columbia stretches for an overall deck length of over 83 feet. Her mainmast reaches 84 feet above the weather deck.

Carrying passengers along the Rivers of America during the summer, the gallant Columbia joins a Disneyland fleet that includes the sternwheeler Mark Twain, keelboats, Tom Sawyer Island rafts and Indian war canoes. But although she is confined to the waters of a river, the Columbia has the proud bearing of her counterpart that once knew the freedom of much vaster expanses… when she was truly an original “gem” of the ocean.

Reshape and Revamp - Part II

Hollywood is under repair, or at least Disney’s Hollywood Studios. From the shops on Sunset to the Lights, Motors, Action Extreme Stunt Show, walls and darkened windows could be found all over the lot, oh, and the occasional paint job happening along Commissary Lane. I must admit that most of what I caught were signs at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, the unique flavor of each of the signs intrigued me.

Sunset Blvd. Shops and Restroom




The American Idol Experience

Commissary Lane

Streets of America (The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights)

Circle of Life

Melody Malmberg, in The Making of Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park, says of Conservation Station, “Here is where the many threads of the park come together: animals and humans meeting face to face, to encounter the challenges ahead.”The embodiment of this idea can be seen by attuned guests as they make their way up the path from the Wildlife Express Train Station to main building of Conservation Station. Beneath each shelter along the trail are a series of images embedded in the walkway. Under the first canopy these etchings of trees, humans, fish, and other animals appear to have to relation to one another. Under consecutive shelters the pieces begin to notice one another before beginning to gravitate towards one another. This poetry in action culminates at the end of the path when all of the elements have entwined into a single piece where each element is dependent upon all of the other elements, just as the collection of elements are dependent upon the single element. A true Circle of Life and a sublime message of the bond and hope.

Beauty and riches

The gardens of tomorrow offer a great challenge, namely what would a garden of the future look like? With the global population increasing every year (according to Worldometer, which monitors population figures based off of data received from the U.S. Census Bureau and the United Nations, the world’s population hit 6.7 billion today, though other sources claim we reached that figure back in September of 2008), land is going to eventually become a hot commodity.In Walt Disney World’s Tomorrowland, whose message is the tomorrow that never was, and where unpaved and structure-free space is limited, the patches of plant life are as bold as Tomorrowland’s vision. Japanese yews are trimed into space-age pod like structures, modern architecture is framed by hard-lined and pointed palms and agaves, and vivid life affirming palates are chosen for the futuristic flowerbeds. In some cases, the rich soil used to grow plants today has been replace with martianesque sandy soil.

Disneyland’s Tomorrowland, while offering the same visual flavors, also proposes a more functional use for their futuristic foliage, as every piece of vegetation is edible. So, not only does the tomorrow look bright, it also tastes bright.





In Kevin Markey’s Secrets of Disney’s Glorious Gardens, there are several tips to assist today’s gardeners who wish to construct a garden of tomorrow:

Embrace hot, vibrant color – for example, oranges, reds, and yellows.
Create patterns with big, bold-leafed plants.
Emphasize texture by juxtaposing different leaf forms, such as broad, spiky, or round.
Enhance contrasting colors by planting annuals in solid bands, such as racing stripes of red begonias and purple pentas.
Walt Disney World’s favorite futuristic plants: Large-leafed Traveler’s palm, Zamia, cycads, Yuccas, and Dracaena.

Now approaching Mickey's Star Traders

Today the real world, or at least the world outside of Disney, and Walt Disney World collide. Growing up, my favorite comic strip was always Calvin and Hobbes. For years before owned any of the collections, of which I own all of them now, I would sit and cut each comic strip out of the newspaper and plaster it into a photo album. Some of my favorite stories always seemed to revolved around his scientific ingenuity or his alter-ego, Spaceman Spiff.
That is all to say that I was immediately struck upon walking into Mickey’s Star Traders in Tomorrowland a few weeks ago. I hadn’t been in the store in the past several visits, and only remember the city mural above the store. This trip I took a chance and looked around the entire store and found these Mickey’s plaster along the ends of the shelves.
Like a classic comic strip, as much story and energy is packed into each frame as Mickey sets on about his adventure. This is truly the Mickey of the future that never was, but to me, it is simply Spaceman Spiff’s long lost cousin and co-pilot, Spaceman Mickey.

The most sophisticated information system ever devised

If you have been to Disney’s Hollywood Studios in the past few months, and have ventured through Pixar Place, you have seen some of the not-so-covert activities of the Green Army Men. However, do you know what their mission is? Turns out, they are on a communications operation.

Posted on the back door of the gatehouse looking building to the right of the Pixar Studios archway, as seen above, is the Green Army Men’s plan. The gatehouse itself has been labeled, by said plan, as the Command Post. And not only are the Green Army Men smart enough to create and post their plan, they also have a back-up plan in case their technology begins to glitch.






Plan A entails a Recon Position atop the Story Dept. building. From this post, the troop can lower the Signal Corps Communicator into position.

The back-up plan, or Plan B, requires a bit more manpower, as seven Green Army Men descend a large Top Secret Message Decoder from the roof of the Camera Dept.

EPCOT CENTER FILMS: They’re Eye-Catching Experiences

Walt Disney World turned thirty-seven and Epcot turned twenty-six this week. As I talked about last year, EPCOT Center opened ten months after I was born, so I feel this kinship, almost as if we have grown up, sharing the same growing-pains, together. In honor of Epcot’s birthday, today’s Back Issues is from the spring of 1983 and is written by Karen Cure, who takes a look at the films of EPCOT Center during the park’s opening year.

Visitors to the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World and Disneyland have come to learn that film can be used to create many effects – from rear screen projections that form unusual backgrounds to the total immersion of 360° CircleVision. This spectrum of possibilities often has been used to great effect. Still, cinema hardly plays a dominant role in the making the magic of the Magic Kingdoms, so it may come as something of a surprise to visitors to Epcot Center to discover the remarkable variety of film presentations and techniques that are so much a part of the fulfillment of Walt Disney’s greatest dream.
Whether and Epcot Center visitor is a student of cinematic technique or just a guest eager to have a terrific time, each is likely to be dazzled by the films of Epcot Center. Disney’s Imagineers have taken a medium that merely entertains guests in the Magic Kingdoms – in such CircleVision 360° shows as Magic Carpet ‘Round the World in Florida and America the Beautiful in California – and created movie shows for Epcot Center that literally stun the senses, by making quantum leaps forward in both film technique and content.

Film Journey
Kodak’s Journey Into Imagination pavilion, for example, is home to the world’s first three-dimensional motion picture in a 70mm format, and Exxon’s Energy show boasts the largest example of motion picture animation ever produced. Enormous screens that wrap around huge theaters and dwarf the audience are the order all around Epcot Center, and the images seem almost surrealistically lifelike because most were shot and projected at the speed of 30 frames per second. This is 25 percent faster than the 24 frames per second used in most other theatrical productions and which create a strobe or “flicker” effect not possible at 30.

All of the movie sound tracks were recorded with computerized digital equipment especially designed for the film projects; about five times more costly than traditional recording methods, this equipment also delivers proportionately more realistic results. And each auditorium’s sound system represents a comparable state of the art – so that when you hear a cricket chirp or a buzz saw whine in The Land’s film, Symbiosis, you know precisely where that sound originated. According to Don Henderson, a 30-year veteran of Hollywood studios who acted as manager of Epcot Center film production, he’s “never seen anything that even comes close to the magnitude of the project.”

“This has got to represent the ultimate in filmmaking,” he continued. “We’re giving the best people the world’s best equipment and are literally stretching the medium as far as it will go.”

Randy Bright, executive producer of Epcot Center films, observed, “We don’t reject show ideas because they may appear ‘technically impossible’ or because ‘it hasn’t been done before’.” And so if the technology didn’t exist, Disney Imagineers developed it, not only constructing entirely new camera systems from scratch, but also creating a customized, computerized editing room, not to mention entire theaters that are unique in the world.

In all, some 1.5 million feet of film were originally shot by 16 production crews working for more than two years in 30-odd countries and nearly every state in the United States. Epcot Center’s four full hours of motion pictures includes on 73,000 of the very best of this location footage.
Here’s what to look for:
The Land: Symbiosis takes an academic notion – “the delicate balance between technological progress and environmental integrity” as exhibited through agricultural history – and offers 18 minutes of visual poetry. Using 70mm film shot at that rich, bight-looking 30 frames per second, filmmaker Paul Gerber shows farming, fishing, and forestry practices in about 30 nations during every season. The scenery is purely spectacular – rice paddies, endless wheat fields, brutal storms, frightening droughts, and more. The theater’s 13 speakers, playing a baker’s dozen different sound tracks, allow for the kind of realistic aural effects that you simply don’t get in conventional movie theaters.

Journey Into Imagination: For the unusual Magic Journeys, Disney Imagineers started from scratch, designing their own three-dimensional photography system with the capability of delivering some of the biggest, clearest, and sharpest images ever produced in 3-D, in both slow motion and high speed. But even as startling as the resultant you-are-there effects, what really makes the show is the imaginative story line that puts each member of the audience inside a child’s imagination. Beginning with a handful of children racing across a meadow and gazing at clouds, it also brings a frothy pink-and-white cluster of spring blossoms right to the tip of your nose. The sense of proximity is so realistic that more than one visitor reaches out to touch them. Dandelion spores float through the air, turn into stars, and are then transformed into a sun whose rays become water right before your eyes. In another scene, a child’s kite changes from bird to fish to a whole school of fish, to a flock of birds, bird wings, the flying horse Pegasus, a real horse, and then a spirited steed on a merry-go-round. The brass harness ring of the carousel horse floats out to the audience, tempting all to try and catch it. Then the ring itself turns into a moon, then bats, then frightening witches and their masks and finally the Sphinx.

The moving music is by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman, composers of “It’s A Small World,” among other Disney classic melodies. The film’s director was Murray Lerner, awarded as Oscar for his documentary of Isaac Stern’s concert tour of China, From Mao to Mozart.

Universe of Energy: Perhaps the most innovative of the four cinematic experiences to be enjoyed in this pavilion presented by Exxon is the first – a sort of animated montage (some call it a “kinetic mosaic”) of basic energy sources such as fire, the seas, and the sun. Czechoslovakian artist Emil Radok has made it seem to ripple in textured layers and patterns across a screen. This unique screen is comprised of a hundred triangular, three-dimensional solids that periodically rotate on signals from microprocessors to reveal either a black side, a reflective side, or a projection surface, depending on the aesthetic requirements of the section of the film that the theater’s five projectors are showing at the time.

Energy, the theme of this show, is also the subject of the spectacular animated film previously mentioned, shown in the pavilion’s main theater portion on a 32-foot-high screen that measures 155 feet in length – over half the length of a football field. Its 4 ½ brief minutes, which cost about $2 million to produce, are full of volcanoes, rain, lightning, plants, enormous beasts, and tiny insects in such abundance that it’s impossible to take it all in in a single viewing.

Then there’s the film in the Energy Information Center, into which the pavilion’s extraordinary vehicles travel at the conclusion of the trip through the Disney recreation of the prehistoric times when fossil fuels were formed. Shown on a semicircular screen that stretches 210 feet from end to end, it takes viewers along the Alaska pipeline and to the North Sea, where the film crews worked under conditions so frigid that cameras actually froze and had to be heated before work could resume.

Some of the most eye-catching footage takes in a range of glacial mountains and the center of a 20-foot surfer’s wave in Hawaii; the shot of the Space Shuttle launch, so unusual that even NASA wanted a copy, makes viewers feel that they’re actually inside the flaming, sometimes pearly colored exhaust as the vehicle blasts off. In the final film of the pavilion, audiences are transported into a wedge-shaped theater with mirrored walls that create the illusion that they’re completely surrounded by the weirdly glowing, laser-like images on the projection screen.

World of Motion: The zany scenes conjured up by longtime Disney art director Ward Kimball, who also shares the credit for creating the character of Jiminy Cricket, steal the show in this pavilion presented by General Motors. But for excitement, you can’t beat Disney-developed “speedrooms” in which 70mm films are projected onto the walls of the tunnels through which ride vehicles pass, to give the effect of racing along on a speeding train, hurtling downhill on a bobsled, charging through a swamp in the Everglades, floating high above the clouds – and finally plummeting into what seems to be a black hole in outer space.
The America Adventure: In this pavilion the films provide a backdrop to the technically sophisticated show hosted by Audio-Animatronics figures representing Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain and presented by American Express and Coca Cola. But it’s worth noting that the film was made using the special A.C.E.S. camera that produced the outer space effects in the recent Disney film The Black Hole and which itself is a descendant of the multiplane camera that was first used to give such a feeling of depth to animated classics like Snow White and Pinocchio.

Canada: This pavilion’s film, O Canada!, was produced in CircleVision 360, which visitors to both the California and Florida parks may already have experienced. But the advances in the film and sound technique that have taken place since Magic Carpet ‘Round the World and America the Beautiful were first produced are such that those old favorites compare to O Canada! in much the same way that a Model T compares to a Maserati. When the images filmed with nine cameras mounted on a fixed pole, are shown in the round CircleVision theater, which features nine screens that completely surround viewers – and with sound from a comparable number of speakers – the motion picture takes on such immediacy that some viewers have been known to get queasy.

“In the old days,” observes producer Randy Bright, “we’d shoot our CircleVision shows with a locked-down camera and let the action take place around it. But now we’re using more mobile camera techniques and we’ve been able to create even more powerful sensations.” Depending on an observer’s predilections, the high point of the film may come during a scene in a cavernous Montreal cathedral, or riding a ride across the Arctic on a dogsled, or while speeding above a train chugging down the track along a diamond-bright river. Narration is in both French and English.

China: “Going to china is like going back in time,” noted producer Jeff Blyth, who spent seven months in this Far Eastern nation in the course of work on the 20-minute Wonders of China: Land of Beauty, Land of Time – 2 1.2 months scouting locations and another 4 ½ months shooting. “In some ways, it’s still 1952 there. And despite the research I did before I left, I was surprised. Nothing can set you up for what you’ll find there.” The totally exotic nature of the nation that Blyth experienced comes across so in this unusual CircleVision travelogue that many visitors to Epcot Center call it their favorite adventure. Narrated by an actor portraying eighth-century poet Li Po, the T’ang dynasty’s equivalent of Shakespeare, the film takes viewers from Tibet and Manchuria to the Forbidden City, the Potala Palace, the Temple of heaven, and the Square of the Gate of Heavenly Peace. It travels to the Gobi Desert, to Shanghai, to Guilin, and to the Yangtze River gorge; it shows off Mongol horsemen and their sinewy mounts; and it stops at the Great Wall in three different places, only one of them the Peking section of the 6,000-mile-long wonder that is seen by most China travelers.

Some of these locations had never before been filmed by Western crews. In fact, in some instances, where the Chinese government would not permit the Disney camera men to short the aerial footage they wanted, Chinese film crews were sent out to record scenes first on videotape and then, after Disney directors gave their approval, on film. Some filming sites were so remote that supplies and equipment had to be transported on camel back; in the Annui province, the crew hand-carried the 300-pound camera up the 16,700 steps that climb the steep flanks of Haungshon Mountain.

“Communication posed the single biggest problem,” Blyth noted later. “It’s difficult enough to make a movie when everyone speaks the same language. Occasionally, we’d film a scene in a place where the local people spoke a dialect that was unintelligible to our translators. Then I’d have to say something to the translator, who would pass it on to the people we were trying to direct. It was frustrating, especially when you’re working against the clock, trying to get a difficult shot.”

France: Lush and lyrical, set to French classical music recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the 18-minute-long Impressions de France takes viewers to a bustling village and a country wedding, through the vineyards at harvest time and into the French Alps, from fishing villages and cathedrals to stately chateaux, and from the Riviera to Paris herself. Each scene is shown on an immense five-part screen that seems almost to surround you, and the panoramas – like those of so many of the dazzling Epcot Center films – are enough to send visitors scurrying off to American express’ Travelport to arrange passage to Paris.

I thought it was the perfect story

Storytelling, no matter the context it partakes in, is at its most effective without a gimmick. Classic stories, films, and attractions all bear this out to be true. Gimmicks are great to draw in an audience once or twice, but their staying power begins to falter quickly. The device I see used more often in Walt Disney World than I would like, or have seen in the past, is celebrity.

We live in a world where the news cycle is twenty-four hours a day seven days a week, and no one captures the lion’s share of public interest more than actors, actresses, and musicians. What Patrick Dempsey had for dinner or who Joe Jonas is dating this week are, whether we like it or not, a part of our everyday lives. Yet, when it comes to Walt Disney World, Walt Disney himself said, “Here in Florida, we have something special we never enjoyed at Disneyland… the blessing of size. There’s enough room here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.” And that size has been a blessing for Florida as Walt Disney World has never had the real world to encroach upon its fantasies, unlike Disneyland.

Yet, step into the Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, or Disney’s Animal Kingdom and you can add celebrity sightings to your vacation To-Do list. From Ellen DeGeneres, Alex Trebek, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Bill Nye the Science Guy in Ellen’s Energy Adventure you can find your way over to Gary Sinise and Mission: SPACE, or Martin Short promoting celebrities and tourism for Canada in O, Canada. Aerosmith have a Rock ‘n’ RollerCoaster and Wallace Langham, Phylicia Rashad, and Bill Nye again brings science to the masses in Dinosaur, and all of these attractions could tell their stories without having special guests co-star in them. Pre-shows, or even main attractions for that matter, lose their effectiveness when you are more interested in who is on the screen rather than what it is they are saying.

All of this is aside from the fact that placing celebrities, who popularity changes almost as quickly as their hair styles, also date attractions. Bill Nye, while a brilliant way to pull in the Under 10 crowd initially, has lost some of his status, and I would venture a guess that he is not as recognizable to his target crowd these days, Ellen’s hair and clothes are clearly the result of the late 1990s, who can see Phylicia Rashad and not think The Cosby Show, and Martin Short seems out of character, and out of his decade, playing the Dean Martin to his own Jerry Lewis. It isn’t that I have anything against any of these actresses and actors, I love to watch them on television and in films when I am at home, but that is just the point, I am in Walt Disney World and do not wish to be abruptly pulled from the story I am becoming immersed in by an outside force.

Some of these celebrities came in as part of a refurbishment of attractions, and I am not going to argue that these attractions did not need some TLC, but an idea can be modernized without paying tribute to the gimmick. The Magic Kingdom’s Haunted Mansion was upgraded a little over a year ago with effects that stunned old-timers like myself and first time guests alike. The story was enhanced without the addition of Eva Longoria Parker as Constance.

If you suppose this means I am against Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, Rod Serling in the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, or R2-D2 in Star Tours, you’d be wrong. Captain Jack Sparrow was brought to life in a brilliant story that took place within the structure of Pirates of the Caribbean, the addition of Captains Jack and Barbosa to the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction is simply the meshing of the original story with a secondary plot that is in perfect rhythm to the original, over-arching, narrative. As for Rod Serling and R2-D2, these are both themes, or rather established stories, that are being expanded upon. We are truly visiting the Twilight Zone and the moon of Endor, and it would seem like some small detail was just out of view if these celebrities were left on the curb.

Author, speaker, and poet Jim Harrison said that, “The answer is in the entire story, not a piece of it.” If that is true, than distracting an audience with a ‘do you know who that is?’ moment detracts from the most wonderfully crafted story. Walt Disney and his band of storytellers have always strived to find the next way to immerse patrons in their stories. When it comes to Walt Disney World, one sure fire way to involve guests more would be to involve celebrities less.

Shape tomorrow's mobility

I’ve been working on my car this afternoon. Actually, I still have a little ways to go, but, I thought I’d take a break from my project to show you some of the projects found in Mickey’s garage in Mickey’s Toontown Fair.

Workin' on a T. rex

There are no bones about it, the Brachiosaurus that composes the Oldengate Bridge and the Tyrannosaurus rex that guards the entrance to Dinosaur are imposing figures. However, after a little digging, guests are surprised to find out that these two fossils were actually cast straight from the original bones of these magnificent creatures.

Both the Brachiosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus rex cast come from the Field Museum in Chicago. The Brachiosaurus comes to us from the late Jurassic period (156 – 145 million years ago) and was discovered in the year 1900 in Colorado. The T. rex, on the other hand, can be found in the late Cretaceous period (85 – 65 million years ago, though this specimen is specifically from 67 – 65 million years ago) or right about the time your Time Rover lands and the asteroid’s impact is imminent. It survived almost entirely intact for millions of years only to be discovered by Sue Hendrickson in the Hell Creek Formation, South Dakota on August 12, 1990.

If the name Sue and Tyrannosaurus rex in the same sentence seems familiar, there’s a reason for that; the model for the Dinoland replica is named Sue. That’s right, this daunting dino is one of the most scientifically significant specimens ever collected. Sue has set new records for length and estimated weight of the T. rex species, at ninety-percent intact Sue is the most complete example ever unearthed, and Sue was so well-preserved that fine surface details are still visible. As for whether or not Sue is, in fact, a girl will have to wait. Since only twenty-two Tyrannosaurus rexes of appropriate completeness have been found, none have been able to be positively identified as male or female, as a much larger sample size would be needed to conclude what makes a T. rex male or female. However, if the day should come that we find out Sue is a male, well, I guess the Field Museum will have to become quick fans of Johnny Cash.

Oh, and one more tie that binds the Field Museum and Dinoland U.S.A., the Sue exhibit at the Field Museum is sponsored by both Walt Disney World and McDonald’s, the current sponsor of Dinoland U.S.A.

Reshape and revamp - Part I

One of my favorite things to marvel at while in Walt Disney World is what has changed, or rather, what is currently changing. The more minor the change, the more likely I am to be amazed at the fact that someone noticed and took the time to put the show back in proper order. While visiting Walt Disney World last week I noticed a veritable cornucopia of refurbishments. We’ll be looking at the various parks and their refurbishments over the next couple of weeks, but today we’ll start with the first park, since it is its thirty-seventh birthday.

Throughout the many faceted lands of the Magic Kingdom, walls and tarps could be found from the wilds of Adventureland to the untamed wilderness of Frontierland and along the streets of Fantasyland to the entrance of Mickey’s Toontown Fair. Sometimes I was able to catch a glimpse beyond the walls, via holes in the walls or a well-placed bench, and sometimes I was lucky to find the sign to document the area’s closure. All Magic Kingdom refurbishments are equal in my eye, and are presented below.

Swiss Family Treehouse


Between Frontierland and Adventureland (near the designated smoking area)
Country Bear Jamboree
Pinocchio Village Haus
Tinker Bell’s Treasures
Entrance to Mickey’s Toontown Fair (side nearest to Tomorrowland)