Archive for March, 2011

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Disneyland Tour: Jewelry Shop

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

Disneyland Tour: Jewelry Shop

The Disneyland Jewelry Shop is a small business specializing in fine jewelry, with a particular emphasis on pieces made famous in Disney films. Here, at one time or another, you might find Disney High School Musical class rings, the Happiest Millionaire’s cufflinks, a ring that can turn a district attorney into an English sheepdog, Mary Poppins’ hat pin, Condorman’s tiara, Muppet treasure from Muppet Treasure Island, various cursed black pearls, a diamond that still smells like Herbie’s gas tank, the Little Mermaid’s fork, and the ring that the Seven Dwarfs disposed of in Mount Doom.

Coming up next: Fortuosity Shop

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Disneyland Tour: Ethnic door

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

Disneyland Tour: Ethnic door

One door on Main Street marks the home of Dr. Benjamin Silverstein, a general practitioner whose mother — according to Silverstein’s official Disney back story — is very proud of him (not that he ever remembers to call her, but that’s alright because she’s sure a doctor has much more important things to do than call the poor woman who gave him life). Next to the door is hung a mezuzah, indicating that Dr. Silverstein is a practicing Jew. The mezuzah was not always next to the door. In fact, it was only added in the late 1990s when the fictional Silverstein decided to more publicly embrace the religion of his ancestors. He also is imagined to have fictionally threatened to pretend to sue Disney if a menorah was not placed in “his” window during the holidays. All of this took Disney rather by surprise, forcing them to take quick action, which is why the mezuzah hangs at an angle — in their haste to put it up, the maintenance crew forgot to ensure that it was straight.

Observant guests might notice that the welcome mat that originally stood outside this door is now gone, having been worn away to dust by the tens of thousands of guests who step up to the door each day to take a closer look. The wearing out of the welcome mat in such a short time became a bit of a legend around Disneyland, and it is where we get the phrase “to wear out one’s welcome.”

Coming up next: Jewelry Shop

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Disneyland Tour: Crystal Arcade

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

Disneyland Tour: Crystal Arcade

The Crystal Arcade (named for Walt Disney’s young friend Crystal Arcade; twin sister of Penny, for whom another building on Main Street is named) was once a small area in which children could bring their pennies to play popular arcade games replicated in crystal. The idea was novel and the sight magical, but the crystal pinball machines often wouldn’t make it through an afternoon intact and an innocent “tilt” might lead to a spray of razor-sharp shards,so the whole business had to be scrapped. Today, the Arcade is used to sell stuffed animals and other less breakable wares.

Coming up next: Ethnic door

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Disneyland Tour: Disney window

Monday, March 28th, 2011

Disneyland Tour: Disney window

If Disneyland is set up to be like a movie, then outdoor vending carts are concession stands, the entrance newsstand is the newsreel, Main Street Cinema is the cartoon, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln is a short subject, the other lands are the main features, shows and attractions are scenes, music played throughout the park is the soundtrack, what cast members say is dialogue, what they wear is costumes, how they walk is choreography, buildings are sets, weather is special effects, lights are lighting, someone changing a light bulb after hours is a grip, the guy emptying a trash can is a gofer, and noisy teenagers who are ruining everyone’s good time are noisy teenagers who are ruining everyone’s good time, which leaves the names written on the windows on Main Street as the movie’s credits.

Putting the names of contributors to Disneyland on park windows (such as this one for an Elias Disney, who we are apparently supposed to believe was some kind of mob boss who put “contracts” out on people) seemed like a neat idea to Walt Disney. It was a way for him to honor his employees, inspirations, partners, and dentists without distracting from the park’s show. One problem that arose early in the park’s history was that guests were preconditioned by movies to react to a list of credits by getting up and leaving. To counteract this reflex, Disney had large gates constructed across the front of the park, which forced guests to stop and think about what they were doing before they got back to their car. Another problem was that females honored on the windows kept getting married and changing their names, necessitating expensive window updates. This is why, as a cost-saving measure, windows on Main Street are almost always named after men.

Coming up next: Crystal Arcade

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Disneyland Tour: Souvenirs and Novelties

Friday, March 25th, 2011

Disneyland Tour: Souvenirs and Novelties

The Souvenirs and Novelties store on Main Street is a tricky bit of Disneyland marketing magic. Guests who visit the Emporium and then stop in the Souvenirs and Novelties shop for additional browsing may notice, if they are paying attention, that this shop and the Emporium are very, very similar. In fact, they are so similar that they are — according to Kant’s theory of naturally defined identity — considered to be identical by professional metaphysicians! Few guests are trained in the finer points of philosophy, so they generally don’t notice this subtle trick and end up spending twice as much time shopping in the Emporium as they originally intended!

Coming up next: Disney window

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Disneyland Tour: Autograph book

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

Disneyland Tour: Autograph book

In recent years, some guests have begun collecting autographs from the characters found in the parks. These are unique souvenirs of the guest’s stay, and are quite popular with young children, obsessive adults, and licensed Disneyphile forensic graphologists.

The popularity of autographs offered Disneyland both opportunities and difficulties. Disney quickly took the opportunity to offer guests themed autograph books, such as the one pictured here for sale in the Emporium. Many of autograph books have expiration dates (this one expires in 2011), giving guests impetus to fill the book as quickly as they can. (By the way, Disneyland is no stranger to fads, having happily catered to the whims of public desire by creating merchandise to leverage the popularity of princesses, pin trading, postcards, floater pens, mouse ears, stickers, pressed pennies, hula hoops, and frontier-style fur hats, and is poised with a whole host of offerings for 2012’s highly anticipated “churro mania.”)

But autograph hunting has a Disney downside as well. The demand for autographs made life difficult for the characters who once wandered the park seemingly at random. Instead of chasing each other about, pantomiming for guests, and performing impromptu feats of hilarious slapstick and vandalism, they were mobbed by autograph hounds like frozen-faced, fur-covered Beatles. This necessitated the creation of special character meeting spots so that autograph seekers could be corralled and controlled. The desire to keep the character experience pure was also challenged by the fact that young guests were comparing autographs, and their parents were complaining loudly at City Hall if siblings “comparing their Poohs” found significant differences. This lead to the “one cast member; one character” policy, under which only one cast member is allowed to play each character, leading to massively long work weeks for some of the most popular characters (Mickey, Alice in Wonderland, Abraham Lincoln, etc.), but ensuring consistency of autographs for the length of a guests’ stay.

Coming up next: Souvenirs and Novelties

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Disneyland Tour: Emporium dental scene

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

Disneyland Tour: Emporium dental scene

Originally, the Emporium was going to be a two-story building with a large shopping area downstairs and a suite of rooms for Walt Disney’s family upstairs. Other projects kept getting in the way of completing the second story, and after Walt Disney passed away the upstairs apartments were abandoned and the second story’s floor removed to increase the Emporium’s air circulation. Several of the rooms had been nearly completed by this point, and portions of them were left intact during the remodeling. They can be seen overhead by Emporium visitors, each decorated as a different scene from typical turn-of-the-century America.

One of the most striking scenes — the dental or “Sweeney Todd” scene — depicts a nicely dressed dentist in his “modern” office approaching a fear-stricken youth with some kind of medieval-torture-device-looking dental implement. This was not an uncommon sight back in those days because pain killers and anesthesia were rare and dentists who wanted to numb their patients generally had to resort to bludgeoning.

At one time Disneyland guests could actually reserve this area for real dental appointments, but the practice was discontinued because the ladder used to reach the “dentist office” was not ADA compliant, and the dentist — although using authentic techniques and operating with historical accuracy — was found to be working under an assumed name with a forged medical degree and a propensity for giggling at the sight of blood.

An interesting bit of trivia: the scenes in the Emporium generate no revenue and are significantly expensive to keep in repair. The maintenance cost came to be known in the industry as “overhead” because the scenes were, in fact, “over everyone’s head.” In addition, although the items in the scenes are not new, they are all for sale. When a guest purchases one of them, a cast member must climb a latter, retrieve the item, and hand it down to another cast member on the sales floor. This is why used items given to someone are often called “hand me downs.”

Coming up next: Autograph book

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Disneyland Tour: Emporium windows

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Disneyland Tour: Emporium windows

For many years, every time Disney produced a new feature film, the windows of the Emporium would be redecorated with animated dioramas depicting notable scenes from the film. The practice ended when Disney began to branch out, making a wider variety of films, and the Emporium window dioramas for Pretty Woman caused a bit of an uproar.

Today, the Emporium’s windows contain a mixture of scenes from classic films with displays of current products. For example, pictured here are characters from Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast along with some kind of themed ribbons, or decorations, or jewelry, or overstock items (or something like that).

Coming up next: Emporium dental scene

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Disneyland Tour: Emporium

Monday, March 21st, 2011

Disneyland Tour: Emporium

According to the dictionary, the word emporium is “Latin, from Greek emporomos, from emporimonos meaning traveler/trader/bum, from em- en- + poros pour/dump + um huh.” But if you ask Wikipedia, the term “emporia” refers to “trading, exchange, and commerce settlements which unilaterally emerged in north-western parts of central Europe in the sixth, seventh, and part of the fifteenth centuries, and persisted into the fourth century. Also known to the English as ‘boots’, the emporia were stereotypically characterized by their antecedent locations, usually on the shore at the edge of the border of a feature near a kingdom, their lack of internal architectural infrastructure (typically they contained no supporting apparati) and their short-lived nature, since by the year 1000, the emporia had been bodily replaced by the reticular revival of European semi-independent collectivist self-governing towns. Examples of emporia include Qoresvad, Guentowic, Hipesmic, Lamnic, and Dundentic (the role of which in Anglo-Saxon London’s economic viability as part of western Europe remains debated). They have been featured on an episode of Scrubs.”

In other words, the Emporium’s a big store.

Coming up next: Emporium windows

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Disneyland Tour: Vehicle entrance

Friday, March 18th, 2011

Disneyland Tour: Vehicle entrance

Between the Fire Department and Emporium are large, modern gates cleverly disguised as large, old-fashioned gates. Occasionally, Main Street vehicles can be seen passing off stage through these gates, but observant guests who have both a map and a lick of common sense will notice that the gates appear to lead to the back of the Jungle Cruise in Adventureland. This is because all Main Street vehicles (including the trains — as indicated by the obvious tracks leading to the gate) are stored in the Jungle Cruise at night or while being serviced. Guests riding the Jungle Cruise don’t notice the vehicles because they’re mostly only there when it’s dark, and even when they’re stored there during the day, they’re hidden behind trees and such. The horses used to draw some of the vehicles are painted with black-and-white stripes to help them better blend in with their Animatronic brethren.

This may seem like a silly arrangement, but Disneyland is really not that large a place, so many such compromises had to be made. This is why Abe Lincoln can sometimes be faintly heard by those riding Space Mountain, the Frontierland Shooting Exposition stopped using real bullets after several Plaza Gardens Stage performers were accidentally shot, the Hungry Bear Restaurant and Toontown food stands share a kitchen, and Splash Mountain drains into the Haunted Mansion’s basement.

Coming up next: Emporium

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