Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough

6 Comments Posted by on October 25, 2011

One attraction that many, MANY people don’t know exists is the Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough. We all know what Sleeping Beauty’s castle is, but did you know that you can actually walk through the whole thing? And that it’s a big diorama of the Sleeping Beauty story?

Well you can, and it is.

You've probably walked right past this

The entrance is right next to the secret passage to Frontierland. You can see in the bottom left of the picture that there’s a lovely open book. I should have taken a picture of this, but I didn’t realized its significance, and by the time I was done I didn’t realize I hadn’t taken a picture of it.

My life is very hard.

Anyway, the walkthrough alternates between book pages and diorama scenes. The book pages tell the story

The first page was downstairs and I forgot to take a picture of it

The dioramas were very cool and illustrated key points of the story

OMG FIRE!!!

Now to back up a sec, King and Queen have this daughter and she’s all born and everything and then fairies come to give her gifts and one party crasher, Maleficent, who incidentally is the worst kind of party crasher, and I’m not talking about the one who eats all your Doritos and falls asleep on your couch. She’s the kind who puts an evil curse on things. And she curses Aurora (the baby) so that she will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and therefore die. Happy birthday! So anyway…

That’s where all of the spinning wheels were burned.

Post-burning, the three good fairies fly around, which makes it easy to get pictures like this:

I AM AN AWESOME PHOTOGRAPHER!

As the story continues, Aurora is drawn to the tower by a mysterious green light

That kind of looks like a Glow Worm

She pricks her finger, blah blah blah, and then hits the ground!

I hate it when this happens

Good news for Aurora! She’s not dead, just sleeping!

Quick thinking, fairy!

Then the fairies naturally do the next obvious thing, which is to put everyone to sleep.

How exactly does that work, anyway?

While everyone else is sleeping on the floor, and that can’t be good for your back, Aurora gets a bed.

That's hardly fair

Oh, there’s also this part about the true love’s kiss and Prince Phillip and he’s going to wake her up and everything.

In a lovely silhouette

But life is hardly that simple, right? Because then Maleficent gets All Pissed Off and summons up the flying monkeys or whatever to intercept Phillip.

I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!

This is what demon-summoning looks like

And then, never one to outsource, Maleficent turns herself into a dragon.

Before...

Seriously, the camera ALWAYS adds 50 pounds

But there’s our plucky Prince Phillip, who takes on the dragon!

The book kind of sums it up here

And then Phillip climbs over the overgrown rose bush to deliver said kiss

"Right after this, we're getting a gardener"

And they lived (let’s all say it together) Happily Ever After!

Ahhhhh

So next time you’re at Disneyland, take a walk through the castle and feel Sleeping Beauty’s story!

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Main Street Vehicles: Omnibus

2 Comments Posted by on October 23, 2011

When I think about the word Omnibus, I think about Charles Dickens. No joke. I took this class in college called “Dickens and London” and it was an entire class about Charles Dickens and once we started to read fascinating classics like “Bleak House” I knew I was in the wrong class but it was too late to transfer to something more exciting. Which would have been pretty much anything. The only thing “Bleak House” has going for it is that one character dies of spontaneous human combustion, which is actually kind of cool. What’s there not to love about spontaneous human combustion?

And what does that have to do with Disneyland? I’m getting there. In Charles Dickens  the characters would often ride in omnibuses. They were new-fangled double-decker vehicles that in Dickens’ time were pulled by horses. You can read about characters who take an Omnibus to work or sometimes someone will get run over by an omnibus and that’s a hint to the reader that the character is totally toast, because while someone might survive getting run over by a carriage, nobody survives an omnibus. It’s like shorthand for “too bad we don’t have 911.”

Well Main Street, U.S.A. represents the turn of the century and by that time, omnibuses were no longer pulled by horses and–AND–you can ride one. Yes! That’s right! You can hearken back to the days of Dickens riding an omnibus minus the horse!

This has absolutely nothing to do with Charles Dickens AT ALL

The Disneyland Omnibus is one of the Main Street Vehicles that I have never ridden before. That’s right–a first time here on MYWTM! The omnibus offers a one way trip from Town Square to Central Plaza, or strangely enough, from Central Plaza to Town Square.

And did you know that all of the Main Street Vehicles are sponsored by National Car Rental? I didn’t know that until just right now! Go figure!

Anyway, the omnibus has two levels so obviously I rode on top.

A spiral-type staircase

According to Disneyland.com:

Get a vintage vantage point from this Omnibus as it tools gently on a one-way trip down Main Street, U.S.A. Modeled after a 1920 New York City double-decker, this 45-passenger bus stops in Town Square and near Sleeping Beauty Castle in Central Plaza.

This is only slightly problematic because Main Street, U.S.A. is supposed to be the early 1900’s, so if the omnibus is modeled after an 1920 bus, shouldn’t it belong in Tomorrowland?

Looking out the front

Another thing with the omnibus is that the foot space is very odd. I’m going to post a picture here that will seem like some kind of bizarre angle and be completely meaningless:

Weird angle. Meaningless?

But the black rubber is the ground and the wood is a panel right beneath the seat. My heel, which is clearly seen is being blocked by the wood panel, shown in the bottom of the picture. And hey, nice shoes!

Which is a very long and bizarre way of saying that when you sit down, your heel has nowhere to go since the panel blocks under the seat.

Let’s just move along, shall we?

The omnibus gives you a bird’s-eye view of Main Street, if you were a very low-flying bird.

Ah-ooo-ga! Ah-ooo-ga!

You’re roughly on the same level as the top of the Emporium, which includes jack o’lanterns in almost every window.

How cute!

As you drive along your driver gives you a little history lesson about Main Street and omnibuses, although glosses over the little part about how the omnibus is modeled after a 1920 vehicle (they do tell you that) and Main Street itself is turn of the century. Oh, it’s the little things that trip you up.

However, you do get an awesome view of the castle as you travel down Main Street.

It's very cool to see it from a height

I actually really enjoyed my omnibus ride! And I recommend the Town Square to Central Plaza route because of the castle.

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Happy 100th Birthday, Mary Blair!

11 Comments Posted by on October 21, 2011

Mary Blair did not live to see her 100th birthday, but her unbelievable art certainly has. Mary Blair was, quite simply, one of the best Disney artists of all times, IMO.

I had intended this post to be about the Disney Gallery, which used to be above Pirates of the Caribbean but is now attached to the former bank building, but then got caught up with the amazing Mary Blair exhibit.

The entrance

The exhibitions at the Disney Gallery change, so I was thrilled to see Mary Blair included.

If you know know who she is, she’s the one who designed Small World. Which is pretty darned amazing.

Concept art for Small World

The display calls for a brief introduction to Blair’s work:

All about Mary Blair in one rather small sign

Small World was a huge acheivement

Check this out!

Is this gorgeous or what?

But many people don’t know she did art for other subjects

Like this one

Most notably, Alice in Wonderland.

Simply beautiful

You can buy Mary Blair swag at the Gallery store

Awesome

And here’s a picture of Blair with Walt Disney himself.

A strip of pictures, actually

Seriously folks, Mary Blair’s brilliant art and inspiration can be found in the park and in the spirit of Disneyland.

Happy birthday, Mary! Thank you for all you’ve given us!

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Snow White’s Seriously Scary Adventure

10 Comments Posted by on October 20, 2011

I’ve been avoiding Snow White for a while because I had remembered it being scary and after the scary Pinocchio disaster with poor Theo, I knew I’d have to do Snow White alone.

Which turned out to be a good call because it WAS scary.

The entrance kinda looks like Pinocchio, actually

And again, much like Pinocchio, I had basically very fuzzy memories of the story. My memory went like this:

An evil witch hates Snow White and there’s a magic mirror in there. Snow White ends up in the woods. There are bird. Also dwarves–seven of them to be exact. She goes to live with them and they mine diamonds and tend to whistle while they work. Then the witch has this apple she wants to give Snow White which will kill her (remember, this is my memory here) and the witch turns herself into a hag, Snow White eats the apple, somehow the hag dies, then Snow White is out in the woods again until Prince Whoever comes along. Also there’s some sort of glass coffin. The end.

All things considered, I think I remembered the story better than Pinocchio, albeit with a few gaps there. Anyway, the exterior of Snow White has a little fun thing–

If you watch this window closely, the evil witch appears

Couldn’t really get a good picture of it.

Anyway, the line is generally pretty short, much like (wait for it, wait for it) Pinocchio.

A couple of switchbacks but otherwise pretty straightforward

Oh, another thing you should know is that Snow White is one of the original Disneyland attractions, there on opening day in 1955. How about that?

In the line there’s the first page of the story, but it’s all in brass or whatever so you can’t really read it.

Or at least you can't read past the first two pages

Before you get on the ride there are some more cute details, like the Dwarves’ cabin, or at least what I assume to be the Dwarves’ cabin.

Whistle while you guess what this is

And then another story explanation.

Which does not in the least bit prepare you for the scary part except for the skull on the table

Then you hope on your ride vehicle, which is like a log kind of thing named after the dwarves.

So basically a DwarfMobile

You pull down your safety bar, which basically is your signal that all of your pictures will turn out like this:

I AM AN AWESOME PHOTOGRAPHER!

So I gotta say, I put away the camera at that point because taking more pictures would have been fruitless.

Anyway, you’re supposed to BE Snow White in the ride which is why Snow White herself never appears. Some of the scenes are scary, but there’s this one where the evil witch who looks all witchy but pretty and human is looking at herself in the mirror, and then she turns and she’s this old hag with the apple all of a sudden and I’ll admit it, I screamed a bit.

The old hag, who manages to be pretty scary in all of her scenes, comes up in most scenes, which makes it scary. And then the ride ends. Which is like, whaaaa? Because it’s totally truncated. And they left off the most important part which is Prince Whoever’s kiss. And really, since you’re supposed to BE Snow White, I mean how would they simulate that. Whatever it would be, it would most likely be scary.

I know I’m harping on the scary. Why is that? You don’t have a whale eating you like Pinocchio (god, what is UP with my obsession with that ride?) but I think it’s more of the psychological scary. Yeah, the hag looks scary and menacing for sure, but the fairy tales like Snow White touch on a deeper fear–abandonment, eating a poisoned apple, death threats from a stepparent, twisted sense of beauty and what we’ll do to attain it, coming close to death (calling Bruno Betelheim!), and the ride taps into that as well. Plus there’s no happy ending. It just…ends. It’s weird.

And here’s my question and maybe one of my sharp-eyed readers can tell me the answer: why haven’t they ever finished off this ride? Is it because of space? Is it because they don’t want to tamper with a true original? Who know. It’s weird.

And scary.

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