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Victim Blaming Endometriosis Immigration George Osborne Greece Michael Gove Arts + Ents >Films >Features Disneyland's famous 'It's a Small World' ride turns 50 As Disneylands classic ride ґIts a Small WorldҒ, which is about to be adapted into a film, turns 50, Tim Walker straps himself in for a trip through the eyes of the theme parks famous creator
Tim Walker Tim Walker Tim Walker is The IndependentҒs Los Angeles correspondent, covering entertainment and other concerns from the West Coast of the US. He was previously a features writer and the editor of the papers diary column. His first novel, Completion, is being published in January 2014.
More articles from this journalist Follow Tim Walker Monday 18 August 2014
Print Your friend's email address Your email address Note: We do not store your email address(es) but your IP address will be logged to prevent abuse of this feature. Please read our Legal Terms & Policies A A A Email In 1964, Walt Disney was approached by the organisers of the WorldҒs Fair in New York to contribute an exhibit for the events Unicef Pavilion.
The attraction he delivered, which he named ғIts a Small WorldҔ, took visitors to the fair on a sedate, 15-minute river ride through Walts childlike vision of the world, populated by Irish leprechauns, Indian snake charmers, Arabs piloting flying carpets, and Italians punting gondolas. The ride was accompanied with a ditty by the Sherman Brothers, the composers of Disney musicals including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mary Poppins.
ItҒs a Small World was such a success that it was rebuilt at Disneyland in California, where it remains to this day, a time capsule of the era and its attitudes. Almost 300 million people have visited the attraction, which celebrated its 50th birthday this month. There are facsimile Small Worlds at Disney parks in Florida, Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong. The Shermans earworm plays on a loop about 1,200 times per day; I took the ride a fortnight ago and can still hear it knocking at the door of my brain, like a relentlessly cheerful room-mate IҒve been trying to get evicted.
The rides at Disneyland endure like those at no other theme park. This summer also marks the 55th anniversary of the Matterhorn Bobsleds, an Alpine-themed attraction that, when it opened in 1959, was the worlds only tube steel-track rollercoaster. It is the 45th anniversary of the Haunted Mansion, DisneylandҒs seminal dark rideӔ. The Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, one of very few rollercoasters Ive ever enjoyed, turns 35 next month. None of them shows any sign of trundling off to the great theme park in the sky.
At Universal Studios Hollywood, by contrast, a 15-year-old attraction based on Terminator 2 was replaced in April by ғDespicable Me: Minion Mayhem. (A Transformers ride opened in 2012, a rollercoaster based on the Mummy franchise opened in 2004. Who knows how long theyԒll last?) At Disneyland, the rides become movies: Pirates of the Caribbean was based on the beloved Disneyland attraction. Next year sees the release of Tomorrowland, a sci-fi blockbuster starring George Clooney which shares its name with Disneylands sci-fi-themed land and was partly shot at the California park. The director Jon Turteltaub is reportedly developing a movie based on Small World.
Drawing in the crowds: It's a Small World was a popular attraction at the World's Fair in 1964
Designer and former Disneyland worker Mitch Thomas, who also writes the blog Imagineering Disney, grew up in southern California and visited the park regularly as a boy. Later he worked in one of its gift shops, before spending several years as a Disney ғImagineer, responsible for maintaining the magic of the parkԒs classic rides. Thomas believes that what sets Disneys rides apart is the richness of their realisation.
ғThe environments are completely immersive, he says. ԓOther theme parks can be great, but you can always see the exit sign, the back door, or something else that doesnt quite fit. Very few rides live up to the standards of Small World or Haunted Mansion, their artistry, charm and attention to detail. Disney created an identity for each attraction thatҒs difficult to compare to anything else.
You can still ride the 88-year-old carousel in Griffith Park, close to DisneyԒs Burbank studios, where Walt used to take his daughters, Diane and Sharon, and where he is thought to have dreamt up the idea of a Disney theme park during the 1940s. He first envisaged a modest Mickey Mouse ParkӔ modelled on the likes of the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, to be built on land beside the studio, where Disney Animation and ABC Studios now have their headquarters.
However, as Walts dream expanded, so did the necessary plot, and he eventually purchased 160 acres 37 miles away in Orange County, where Disneyland opened in July 1955. It is arguably the only major theme park in the world which is also an exhibit: a museum devoted to itself, and to the lasting vision of one man, whose ambition was to build ғthe happiest place on earth. To do so, he enlisted an elite group of artists, architects, engineers and experts in other disciplines whom he dubbed Imagineers, and who between them created the varied lands of Disneyland, among them Tomorrowland, Adventureland, Frontierland and Fantasyland.
It is testament to the inclusive appeal of Disney parks that a third of the visitors to Disneyland in California and Walt Disney World in Florida are so-called ԓnon-family guests: adults without their offspring. In the sweltering SoCal heat of early August, my friend Tom and I arrived for our first-ever visit, clutching our $96 (ԣ57) tickets and a copy of The Imagineering Field Guide to Disneyland, two grown men fearing a park packed with vacationing schoolchildren. Which it was - but it was also packed with adults.
Despite the crowds, the lines for rides were quick and efficient, the distances between them short and navigable. Adventureland abuts Frontierland, Tomorrowland abuts Fantasyland, but thanks to the scenic trickery of the Imagineers, one never encroaches on the other, so the spell is rarely broken. Every attraction tells a story: theres narrative even in rollercoaster rides such as Thunder Mountain, and none of the shabbiness that clings to elderly attractions at lesser theme parks.
DisneylandҒs attention to detail is famously unsurpassed, from the brass bat gargoyles atop the queue-control stanchions outside the Haunted Mansion, to the Mickey-shaped beignets sold at the ersatz New Orleans bakery. And theres heritage everywhere: as we scoffed andouille sausage in New Orleans Square, our lunchtime entertainment was provided by the Royal Street Bachelors, a jazz trio who have been performing at Disneyland since 1966.
From our table, we could see the pleasure boats passing back and forth on the man-made Rivers of America: the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes, the Mark Twain Riverboat, and the Sailing Ship Columbia - a replica of the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. All three vessels fit DisneyҒs idealised rendering of US history. Frontierland is a decidedly tame version of the Wild West. New Orleans has never been as squeaky clean as New Orleans Square.
Main Street, USA, along which every visitor strolls upon entering Disneyland, is a rose-tinted reimagining of Walts home town of Marceline, Missouri. The buildings are designed to be slightly smaller, and therefore quainter, than the real-world ones they resemble. This is not America, it is Americana. The Imagineering Field Guide calls it ғheightened reality, a design technique used to invoke feelings of nostalgia while taking some licence with history.
The guide explains: ԓHeightened reality is a staple of the Imagineering toolbox, giving us the artistic licence to play more directly to our guests emotional attachments to certain memories and design details, rather than maintaining a strict adherence to absolute authenticity in those details.Ҕ
Small World wasnt the only attraction Walt created for the 1964 WorldҒs Fair. He revered Abraham Lincoln, and in New York that year he also unveiled Great Moments with Mr LincolnӔ, an audio-visual exhibit based around the biggest themes of the 16th Presidents life, which now appears at the Main Street Opera House. During the 15-minute show, ғMr Lincoln mentions the word ԓslavery just once, an example of reality not so much heightened as softened: ԓDisneyfied, if you will. The show climaxes with a speech delivered by an animatronic Lincoln which occupies an imaginative space somewhere between Daniel Day-Lewis and the Thunderbirds.
The park contains disappointments, and plenty of unabashed commercialism. We found the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage closed for renovations, and an hour-long line for the Indiana Jones Adventure. The famously weird 3D movie Captain EO, featuring Bad-era Michael Jackson, had been temporarily replaced by a promotional programme for Guardians of the Galaxy.
Walt Disney died in 1966, and while most Imagineers still adhere to his values and vision for the parks, Thomas suggests there are others - perhaps in the management echelons - ԓwho didnt know Walt Disney, and who donҒt care about the history. Its irrelevant to them, and they think itҒs not in the interests of the company to cling on to those values.
Walt Disney
Unlike the attractions created in WaltԒs lifetime, a lot of the more modern Disneyland rides are tied to commercial movie properties, and thus subject to the shifting tides of taste and fashion. Part of the greatness of, say, the Haunted Mansion, is that it borrows the spooky atmosphere of Disney classics such as Sleeping Beauty, but retains its own timeless identity.
In The Unauthorised Story of Walt Disneys Haunted Mansion, Disney aficionado Jeff Baham writes: ғThe Haunted Mansion, an attraction that Walt had planned to build in the early 1950s, is now nearly five decades old - but whats 40 or 50 years? Consider 250 years, which is the age of some of the most confounding magic inside the Haunted Mansion҅
The ӑmagic lantern was used to project illusions on walls as early as the late 1700s. ґPeppers ghostҒ, a stage trick involving reflections, was used to create living, transparent ghosts in the 1800s. Disneys own space-age robotic technology came to life in the middle of the 20th century, and digital projection and computer-controlled effects have just entered prime time this century. [The ride] utilises the best special-effects techniques from the broad history of modern live entertainment.Ҕ
If theres one timeless aspect of the Disneyland experience that I did find jarring, itҒs the unquestioning worship of Mickey Mouse. The periodic parades that wind through the park are invariably led by an employee in the costume of Walts most famous character. Mickey is a 20th-century creation, who exists in the 21st not as a fully rounded character such as Captain Jack Sparrow or Buzz Lightyear, but as a brand identity and a set of gift-shop ears.
Only within the small world of Disneyland, where the fantasy persists, is Mickey still the main attraction. Those noisy, packed parades wend around a statue at the top of Main Street, USA, of Walt and Mickey holding hands and looking on benevolently - still the ruler and prince of their magic kingdom.
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