Hello and welcome back to my beloved long(ish)-running series, Thoughts While Watching! Beloved by whom? Beloved by me! I dig up old Disneyland and WDW parks media – the older the better – and react to it with modern eyes. Needless to say, results vary… but nostalgic fun is all but guaranteed.
In this installment, we cast our minds back to a nascent Disneyland in a “Wonderful World of Disney” episode entitled “Gala Day at Disneyland.” It’s a 1959 special newsreel, kids! This is separate from the Disneyland ’59* episode we covered last August; while it does tread some of the same ground, the angle is different. Think of it as, oh, I don’t know, the Beauty & The Beast singalong that currently runs in the France pavilion Epcot.** It will reframe and fill in some things the first one didn’t detail, only in this case it is neither illogical nor wholly terrible. It is also one-third the length and therefore infinitely more suitable for your lunch break. How can you resist?
* Sponsored by Kodak!!!!!!
** Thus replacing the Impressions de France film, rendering me FURIOUS.
And so, with that tantalizing teaser providing the amuse bouche to something I can only hope you find amusing, I invite you to click play and follow along:
13 Thoughts I Had While Watching Gala Day At Disneyland (1959)
1 Disneyland was built in one year?! Good lord. Tron could never.
2 I wonder if Disneyland – or Walt Disney World for that matter – has still been visited by one in every ten Americans. More, maybe?
3 Boy, Mickey lost some weight for a bit there.
4 RICHARD NIXON AGAIN! Has there ever been a more ubiquitous Disney mainstay?
5 I hate how there are so many potential World Showcase parade blueprints in the annals of their own history, and yet Disney refuses to run any of them.
6 Wally Boag, slightly questionable Renaissance man.
7 I want to be a 20,000 Leagues lagoon mermaid SO BAD. I would make it into a runDisney costume except everyone would just assume I was Ariel.
8 They should bring back the old school retro-futuristic monorail trains. So sleek!
9 The motorboats look, uh… rocky.
10 Oh, I didn’t realize they got so hardcore about the Matterhorn’s shape. I wonder if the Himalayas in Disney’s Animal Kingdom are similarly true to life? I’m sure I could google this but for now I will simply speculate.
11 Ten bucks says none of these people are actually Swiss.
12 Wait, wait, wait. Did they just show individual people running up to the fireworks, setting them off, and sprinting away??? I love a good OSHA violation!
13 Even in cruddy old video, that last nighttime shot of Main Street USA makes me desperately wish I were there. That’s the Disney magic for ya, I suppose.
There you have it! The concise, pocket-size Disneyland of 1959 for the enthusiast on the go. If you’d prefer to drop 90 minutes on another version of the same – featuring longer dance sequences, Art Linkletter’s feelings on the full parade, and somehow EVEN MORE Tricky Dick Nixon – give my Disneyland ’59 entry a try.
See you in the next installment! Let me think… should we visit Ray Bradbury or Epcot next…?
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