My maternal grandmother lived in Anaheim, so a trip to Disneyland was always the highlight of our visits. (Well, the highlight of my and my sister’s visits!) We’d drive up from San Diego and my sister or I would yell, ‘I see the Matterhorn! I saw it first!’ This was back not too long after Walt Disney died, and the park still maintained his ‘vision’. ISTM that the ‘Lands’ had more of a connection to films of the era than they do today. Of course, there are still many film-related attractions, but it ‘felt’ like the different lands resonated more with the Westerns and Adventure films of the day. And then there was Tomorrowland. Disney was a futurist, and wanted to demonstrate how living in The Future would be. More on that in a minute.
Some of the rides in the linked article closed before I was born. A couple existed after I stopped visiting the park. Some existed when I was a child, but I don’t remember them. I remember the Rocket Jets, but I don’t remember there being a lever to control the height. Two rides I fondly remember are Journey Through Inner Space and Rocket To The Moon. When I was little, I really thought they were shrinking people on the former ride. After all, you could see the people going in one end of the giant ‘microscope’ and coming out the other end much reduced. I loved that ride, which was Brought to You by Monsanto. I liked Star Tours, but it would be fun to have both. I only have dim memories of Rocket To The Moon, but as a child obsessed with the Apollo program it was one attraction I had to see every time.
Tomorrowland. (See? I said I’d come back to it.) Disney envisioned the Future of 1986, and imagined it would have rapid transit in the form of monorails. No more railroad crossings and rattly trains! Smoothly glide over the city in speed and comfort! Decades later The Simpsons lampooned the idea. But how cool would it be to coomute by monorail? Another idea Disney had was the Peoplemover. As a ride, it wasn’t exciting. Great views, though. Even as a child I liked it. I imagined a future where city dwellers could move about without having to walk or get into their cars. (As a child living in San Diego, there was little utility for such a conveyance; but I watched enough TV to know that there were more densely-populated cities.) Unlike a train or a subway or a monorail, you didn’t have to wait in a station for a single train. The circular boarding platform was always moving, and you just walked into one of the endless stream of moving cars. I still think it would be a nice thing in Seattle or Portland or Las Vegas, where there are a lot of things to see and do. And then there was the Skyway To Tomorrowland/Skyway To Fantasyland. Not really futuristic, and not of any use in the real world. But it was a great way to get from one side of the park to the other during Disneyland’s interminable parades.
The last time I visited it, the undersea ride was a huge abandoned ruin, still in the dismantling stage before being turned into the Nemo ride. It was sad to look at; I remember being thrilled/scared by the ride at 5 or 6.
I remember Rocket to the Moon, too, but even then I thought it a trifle hokey.
I lived, (and live) about 45 minutes from Disneyland, so I’ve been going there since it opened. Seconding the Journey Through Inner Space and Skyway. Those were fun. I am old enough to remember all the stuff in Frontierland that they would never do today, like BB gun shooting galleries and free-range romping on the island.
I remember when a physical piece of metal emerged from the barrel of the guns at the shooting gallery to hit (or miss) the targets, instead of beams of light. I recall ¼" steel balls. But I also remember .22 shorts. Maybe I’m conflating them with ones I shot at carnivals when I was a kid?
I remember romping around on the island in the mid-'80s, crawling through tunnels in a rock structure and such. Are they no longer doing that?
There was also a giant skull across from the pirate ship. I have a picture of me standing in front of it when I was 12. Seems to have gone missing a very long time ago. (The skull, not the photo.)
I think the undersea ride was called 20,000 leagues under the sea ride. I wonder if Disney just needed the space, or if they were just done with anything tied to their old live-action movies. In any case the area was just kind of held as Ariel’s grotto for a while and now is part of the new FantasyLand.
I think some of the dark rides may be closing soon.
.22 Shorts! those were the days! I remember both Shorts and air-powered BBs. And that uber-cheesy Wild West Burlesque show at the theater across the street from the shooting gallery.
When I was a kid in the seventies, I liked a ride at Disney World called If You Had Wings. (I found a mention of it at running coach’s link which says it was sponsored by Eastern Airlines, I had thought it was Delta). It was a simple ride that moved very slowly, but it passed through rooms which were giant screens with film playing on them which made you feel like you were part of the action. The scene I remember best had you surrounded and apparently flying with a flock of birds over a field of grain and nearly colliding with a tractor as you passed into the next room. It was righteous.
I remember when I was very young, in the mid-sixties, waiting to be tall enough to ride the real, live donkeys on a Grand Canyon adventure but the closed before I was old enough.
General Electric’s Carousel of Progress was great (it’s a great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day…), as was the Monsanto-sponsored Journey Through Inner Space. Not the sort of things that would fly these days. Hey kids, remember when Disney had to find corporate sponsorship to build the rides? Somebody with more time should put together a “match the sponsor with the attraction” game.
The original Carousel of Progress at the New York World’s fair. It got its name because the audience was on a carousel and the stage was stationary (you could see the building move as you waited on line).
When I went to in in Orlando, it was the stage that revolved. Far less impressive.
I hadn’t been on it since I was a small child, and it’s been gone for many years. I recall that the one at Disneyland had the audience orbiting the stage. I believe one park worker was crushed to death when she(?) leaned against the rotating wall outside.
EDIT: Here it is. 1974, just after Carousel of Progress was reopened as America Sings.
Just thought of a couple other EPCOT attractions - not rides, but attractions - that at least I miss sorely: the original, non-Kodak overrun Image Works, located on the second floor of the Journey into Imagination pavilion; and CommuniCore East and West. Innoventions is but a pale imitation of the nerdtopia that CommuniCore once was.
I’m old. The first time I went to Disneyland, the Matterhorn was under construction- mostly mountain-shaped framework. I was a San Diego kid whose Mother had some family in LA, not far from Anaheim.
