Return From Disneyland

Just got back from a trip to Disneyland. One of the longest trips I've taken in a long time (5 days, 4 nights).

Souvenir hunting was poor - well, at least for this collector. The above card is the only new postcard I purchased. (I did pick up a few older cards to fill-in some gaps in my collection). I didn't return with any new books. Disneyland hasn't published a new Guide Book since 2005.

I did find a brand new watch in the store on Main St. (I've forgotten the name of the store) that took over the old watch store. I'm really picky about my watch requirements (silver, black strap, pie-eyed Mickey AND his hands have to move).

Several new things happening at the resort:

-Magical Fireworks. I really liked this show and the addition of the Flying Dumbo is very cool. But, I'll probably be comparing every new fireworks show to the 50th anniversary show: Remember Dreams Come True. That show, was absolutely brilliant.

-Fantasmic! A couple of new enhancements: A new Croc in the Peter Pan scene who is much more articulated. Flotsam and Jetsam have also been added to the Ursula scene. Alas, still no much-advertised, brand-new Dragon in the finale.

-Electrical Parade. Tink now leads off the Parade and all the floats have never looked better.

40th Anniversary of First Disneyland Trip

Today marks the 40th anniversary of my first trip to Disneyland - June 13, 1969.

I don't remember a lot of details about that trip, but here's what I've been able to piece together.

We left the Monterey Peninsula bright and early. It was about a 350+ mile drive down Hiway 101. I think it was on this trip that my Dad, or brother, taught me how to read a map. I had a beat-up copy of a California map and I'd follow our progress by coloring our path in pencil. I remember hitting L.A. and just being floored by how hot it was. (The temp. on the Monterey Peninsula rarely gets above 75). We checked into our hotel (most likely it was a motel - one of those tacky places on the outskirts of the resort). I remember seeing the Matterhorn clear as day as we approached. It felt like you could see it from miles away. I also enjoyed another first - a dip in the motel pool.

The next morning we had breakfast at one of the local eateries - probably Denny's or Sambos. Then, it was off to Disneyland. We parked our car in the massive parking lot; took the Disneyland Tram to the front entrance and made our way thru the turn-styles. And, there it was, just like I'd seen it on TV - all those Sunday nights of watching Wonderful World of Color.

This is what we probably rode:

-Disneyland Railroad (which became a tradition in many future trips that we would ride the train first)

-Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln

-America The Beautiful

-Adventures Thru Inner Space (which scared the crap out of me. I never rode it again)

-People Mover

-Rocket Jets (Might have been this trip, or the next trip in 71/72)

-Carousel of Progress

-Fight to the Moon

-Submarine Voyage

-Matterhorn (my first roller coaster experience was either the Matterhorn or the Giant Dipper in Santa Cruz, CA)

-Small World

-Tiki Room

-Mark Twain

-Mine Train

-Pirates of the Caribbean

-I have a foggy memory of a Big Band performing at Carnation Plaza (It might have been Buddy Rich). But, what did I know? I was nine years old. I had no interest in jazz.

-I think we were all impressed with the cleanliness and line management having spent most of the summers of our youth attending local county fairs where efficiency is hardly the norm.

Things we didn't ride/do. Keep in mind this was during the era of A-E tickets. You quite often had to make decisions about what to ride/not ride.

-Main St. transportation

-Monorail

-Skyway

-Autopia

-Motor Boat Cruise

-Fantasyland dark rides

-River transportation other than Mark Twain

-Tom Sawyer Island

-Pack Mules

-Jungle Cruise

-Swiss Family Robinson Tree House

-Haunted Mansion (we missed the opening of Haunted Mansion by two months!)

-Pirate Ship Restaurant (in all the times that I went to Disneyland between the late 60's and early 80's, I never set foot on the tuna boat).

-Take enough pictures. I think my dad took about 8-10 black/white pictures.

We're off to Disneyland in a couple of weeks. Too bad we couldn't have been there on the exact anniversary.

Concept card makes 1100

A couple of milestones reached in today's post. The above card makes the last concept card I've been searching for. I now have all 23 concept cards. For those of you who didn't know, the first series of postcards produced for Disneyland all used artwork from the development process rather than actual photographs.

The above card also makes the 1,100 postcard in my collection.

whew.

Update: Back to Bloggin'

In my last post, about a month ago, I blogged that I would be taking down my web site. Who knew that something as simple as that could turn into a month of headache.

Step 1) Cancel my web hosting service (Hello, Yahoo?) and start removing all the content from the site. In less than 24 hours my site was completely gone.

Step 2) Move all the content to a photo hosting service. I had already backed-up all the images from my site to my hard drive, so having deleted them via the web hosting dashboard was no big deal. I decided to go with Picasa since there was already a direct link with Blogger. (You can find all of my collection here.)

Step 3) Move all my family photos off Picasa. I wanted these two parts of my life hosted in different places. This process took much longer than I thought.

Step 4) Start blogging again. I fired up Blogger and boy, was I in for a big shock. All the images and links that I had used all pointed to my old web site. So, for the past week I've been repairing broken images.

Hopefully, I've got everything in working order now.