ThrillMountain Software Team
Welcome to our November 2011 Newsletter.

Welcome to our November Newsletter.  This will be our last newsletter until February! We are transitioning to the 2k11 version of the site and a brand new look for the newsletter. First off we are going to join the retail market and have a Black Friday SALE! This is our second year for this promotion. For 12 hours only ALL of our Accounts will be discounted 40%! Click Here For More Info-- Anaheim November temps are normally in the mid 70's in the day time and low 50's at night. This would be a great month to visit the park!
Hugh Allison is back comparing Railroads: California vs. Paris: The Railroads 
Steven Orsinelli is back he shows us Disneyland through the eyes of a first time visitor with his article: A Walk In Jenna's Shoes.
MickeyOne has joined DLDHistory.com.. MickeyOne will be doing articles exclusively for our newsletter. The articles will not appear on the main site. MickeyOne's first article will compare Disney parks to the 1939 New York World's Fair. Walt and The Walt Disney Company did not participate in the fair. But there seems to be a lot of attractions that were based on the fair. Find out more in MickeyOne's First Article: The World Of Tomorrow Land Part 3. Future articles from MickeyOne will deal with the internal operations of The Walt Disney Company that the company does not want you to see.. 
We are working hard to meet the deadline of January 1, 2012 for the release of our all new look! Please start using the 2K11 version of DLDHistory. Find out more about DLDHistory.com 2K11 HERE
Disneyland History DVD is coming. We are also getting closer and closer to the release of our Disneyland History DVD. We are half way through on our 3rd pass. The 4th pass will be to add voice over. Our final pass (fifth) will be to convert to high definition and start selling the first few DVD's as they are complete. The First DVD (Chapter 1: Before Disneyland) should go on sale about early January 2012 and the box set by February 2012. Keep your fingers crossed. More Info HERE
The site is growing and we are looking at new features to continue to make DLDHistory.com The Most Unique Disneyland History Site! 

Not sure which DLDHistory.com account fits your needs? Try our   Account Selection Wizard

Halloween Screams Fireworks presented during Mickey's Halloween Party at Disneyland. There is a separate charge to see these fireworks at Disneyland. But for you our loyal DLDHistory members you can enjoy them. Video was taken in 2011 and is 12 minutes long.  Top Story Video.

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Hugh Allison is back comparing The Railroads:  Hugh Allison Column

Steven Orsinelli is back he shows us Disneyland through the eyes of a first time visitor with his article A Walk In Jenna's Shoes  Steven Orsinelli Column

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MickeyOne presents: World Of Tomorrow Land Part 3 MickeyOne Column

In October we added 19 new articles.  We now have over 1,313 Disneyland Articles!  Disneyland In The News

We are working on a complete re-write of the site. We do this every 2 years. With all the changes and features we have added to the site over the last 2 years, this re-write will allow us to blend everything together better.   Watch Our Progress Here

Spotlight on DLDHistory.com is a column that will point out a little known area of DLDHistory that may interest you. We have a loyal member that donated a video of the complete Christmas Fantasy Parade. Sit in your comfortable chair at home and enjoy Christmas Fantasy Parade going down Main Street USA! This video was taken in 2010 and is 16 and half minutes long. Spotlight On DLDHistory

We are working on creating a full length Disneyland History DVD. The DVD will be a video covering the full history of Disneyland. Including all attraction openings, parades, deaths, injuries, backstage photos and lots more. We are now offering previews as we put together the DVD.  Disneyland History DVD

Have you missed one of our Newsletters? In this newsletter we have included links to our  Previous Newsletters.

You can now follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Myspace. This gives you more ways to find out the exciting things happening at DLDHistory.com.  Find Us On The Web

Thank you everyone for helping us make DLDHistory.com The Most Unique Disneyland History Site.

I hope you enjoy our latest newsletter and I want to say a big THANK YOU to all that have made a donation, you are the ones that allow DLDHistory to continue growing

--Richard
See ya next month...

Halloween Screams Fireworks 2011

 
Halloween Screams Fireworks

Halloween Screams Fireworks presented during Mickey's Halloween Party at Disneyland. There is a separate charge to see these fireworks at Disneyland. But for you our loyal DLDHistory members you can enjoy them at no extra charge. Video was taken in 2011 and is 12 minutes long. 
  Halloween Screams Fireworks Video

*Video Clips are available to our Silver, Bronze and Gold Members.*

This month, I shall be comparing the Railroads which circle the two Disneylands closest to my heart (California and Paris).

Both versions were opening day attractions, although in Anaheim it was called the Santa Fe and Disneyland Railroad until 1974; in Paris, the attraction was known as Eurodisneyland Railroad up to 1994.  The name change for the former was due to the end of the ride’s sponsorship by The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, whereas the latter was amended due to a change of the name of the resort as a whole.  They are now both called Disneyland Railroad, although the initials EDRR still appear on the iron railings of the station for Paris’s Main Street, U.S.A.

The locomotives which currently operate in the Anaheim park are: C. K. Holliday, E. P. Ripley, Fred Gurley, Ernest S. Marsh and Ward Kimball.

The stations these stop at (in order) are Main Street, U.S.A, New Orleans Square, Mickey’s Toontown and Tomorrowland.  Those currently in operation in Disneyland Paris (DLP) are George Washington, C.K. Holliday, W.F. Cody and Eureka; the stations are in Main Street, U.S.A., Frontierland, Fantasyland and Discoveryland.

In Paris, all stations are wheelchair accessible; in California, this is the case for all except Main Street, U.S.A.

Both Railroads travel solely in a clockwise direction and have 3ft narrow gauge tracks.  The length of the onstage portion of the tracks is 6335.3ft in California and 7217.8ft in Paris.  Due to the difference in distance travelled, “The Grand Circle Tour” (i.e. getting on at any station, then riding the Railroad past all other stops, then getting off where one boarded) lasts approximately twenty minutes in California and thirty in France.

Whilst the carriages in DLP are individually named (and themed to their engine) none of the ones in California are, which would make them easier to interchange.  This means that, whilst all trains on the DLP Railroad seat a maximum of 250 Guests, this amount varies considerably in Anaheim.  

  Click Here To Read Complete Article

Hugh is a former Cast Member, who now lives in London where he works as a director. He is in the process of writing a "Mouse Tales" style book about Disneyland Resort Paris, for Bonaventure Press.

 Hugh can be contacted at :

 As pass holders to Disneyland I know there are times when we get a bit tired of the park when we have experienced the same rides and attractions for the millionth time around. If you have been reading any of past articles, you know how I feel about the subject. When I get these feelings I usually stay away from the park until I have to go back, and when I say “have to go back” I mean I literally “Have to go back” to escape reality for a short while to regain my sanity.  

I have been a film instructor for the past 14 years or so teaching High School children in all aspects of basic filmmaking with an eye on the creation of short films. One of my lessons is the history of Walt Disney, including his Family, Animation, Television, Live action film, Parks, Music and more. After a week of the students learning the facts on the subject, I usually follow the lesson with a coveted trip to Disneyland Anaheim where the kids can experience the facts come to life.  

My students as you can imagine get very excited about the idea of attending this trip, first off they get a day off of school, second they get to spend the day with close friends from class in the greatest place on earth. After the trip they are put into small production groups of 5 or 6 with a goal to write and produce a short Disney themed fairytale. They have about 5 weeks to write, produce edit and show the final film to kids in the film department, then the best go to our film festival held at the local digital theatre at the end of the year.

This year I have one student that had never been to Disneyland since she was baby. Her name is Jenna and she is 15 years old. Jenna was so excited about learning about Disney, that I think it made planning the trip really fun for the rest of us in class. Even those of us that have been to the park a thousand times started to get excited seeing the experience thought her eyes.     

After talking and teaching her the historical facts, I soon realized that Jenna did not have a clue about what was in store for her. As a girl that has many talents in the way of performing and imagination, I knew that her visit there would be one she would never forget.

5:30 AM was the meet time at the school to load up the bus and head down the freeway. Most of the kids were tired, but a thread of excitement still ran though the crowd as the bus revved it’s motor to get up to speed on the freeway. Next stop was Disneyland. As we entered the Mickey and Friends parking structure all the kids were out of their seats and ready to seize the day....

Click Here To Read Complete Article

Steven grew up in Orange County. He worked as an entertainer at Disneyland and in Los Angeles on Disney films.

 Steven can be contacted at :

I am MickeyOne that is NOT my photo above but it does show how picky The Walt Disney Company (TWDC) is about reveling secrets. I cannot really revel my relationship to TWDC for fear of giving myself away to the "powers that be." I hope you understand.  I am ready to let you behind closed doors and pull the Mickey shaped curtain aside and show you what REALLY goes on. My articles will ONLY appear in the DLDHistory.com Newsletters. Although there is the possibility of MickeyOne.com coming along.  We are going to start slowly...the juicy stuff will come later...enjoy!!!

~~00--MickeyOne

This month I will continue with part 3 of the similarities with the 1939 New York World’s Fair (World Of Tomorrow) and The Walt Disney Company attractions. Not to be confused with the 1964 New York World’s Fair (“Peace Through Understanding” dedicated to “Man's Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe”) , in which Walt and The Walt Disney Company contributed many, many attractions. Remember that the 1939 World's Fair occurred 15 years BEFORE Disneyland opened!

World Of Tomorrow Land (Part 3)

As you have seen in part 1 and 2 there were similarities between at least one Disney attraction and an attraction from the World Of Tomorrow. But there are many more:

FUTURAMA /PROGRESS CITY:

FUTURAMA:

Futurama was presented by General Motors. A 36 thousand-square foot model of an American landscape as imagined to look in 1960. It was based on aerial photographs of actual cities and towns. The 18 minute ride simulated a flight of several hundred miles over mountains, countryside, industrial centers, farms and half a dozen towns and cities.

Visitors, walking two by two, descended into  a sixty-foot-high chamber, dimly lit as if in “an eerie blue twilight.” The lighting had been designed to hypnotize the audience into hushed reverence after the long, probably overheated wait in line. Slowly, a sixty-by-one hundred-and-ten foot map floated into view. The room was virtually silent; extra thick carpeting had been laid to hush even the sound of footsteps. Then a soft, intimate voice explained the current problem with traffic congestion as shown on the map, followed by the imposition of superhighways designed to relive the pressure.

Continuing in the half gloom, the guests, always in pairs, stepped onto a platform moving at the same speed as a row of winged, double-seated chairs like love seats or opera boxes, opposite them. They sank into the deep plush blue velour upholstery, and then the real show began.

Through changes in the models scale and lighting (and by periodic rises and dips of the ride itself), the chairs seem to fly at various altitudes, swooping low over details of an agrarian community and the climbing high above jagged mountain peaks, where artificial frosting on the observation window completed the illusion of altitude.

From tiny speakers embedded in the upholstery, began the narration “Now we have arrived in this wonder world of 1960. Sunshine, trees, farms, hills and valleys, flowers and flowing streams – this world of tomorrow is a world of beauty… But man has forged ahead since 1939. New and better things have sprung from his industry and genius … Here we see one of our 1960 express motorways.”

GM’s interpretation of the future was a fourteen-lane superhighway (seven in each direction) featuring streamlined teardrop-shaped cars. On the four outermost lanes, bordered by three-foot-tall partitions, speed was limited to 55 miles per hour; in the next two lanes, you could push it to seventy-five; and on the inner lane, you could zoom along at one hundred miles per hour – safely, since distance between cars was monitored by “radio-activated beams” sent from the lead car’s bumper to the instrument panel of the car following behind it.

“Directly ahead is a modern experimental farm and dairy,” the narration continued. “Note the terraced fields and strip planting. The fruit trees bear abundantly under individual glass housings. Strange? Fantastic? Unbelievable? Remember, this is the world in 1960!”

The ride flew on, past an aeration plant and a university, usually accompanied by some unique development in adjacent roadways. After a few minutes, the scene dimmed as the sun began setting and lights went on in isolated farmhouses and a small town off in the distance.

“Night falls on the countryside and wives are serving supper to hungry families and farm hands.” The narration continued. “The highway surface is automatically lighted by continuous tubing in the safety curbing, which evenly illuminates the road surface. But what’s this just ahead? An amusement park in full swing! A merry-go-round, a Ferris wheel, boys and girls shrieking with glee on a pretzel-like sky ride. Here’s fun and merriment in this world of tomorrow!”

They passed a monastery, a steel town, and an enormous dirigible hanger suspended in oil so that it could be turned to meet the wind direction. You are not at fifteen thousand feet,” the narration continued. Beneath dawn broke over snowcapped mountains. The “flight” descended to show detail of a winter lodge complete with ski run. As night faded, the ghostly spires of a white city gleamed in the distance. “Look far – far across the valley! The city is forty miles away … This is the metropolis of 1960.”

For a brief moment, the scene disappeared in a thick cover of clouds, and then as if by magic, the city of the future came into close-up view. People moved on sidewalks elevated fifteen –feet above street level so that cars could move freely without pedestrian interference. An elaborate system of ramps and escalators carried passengers from vehicle to walkways and building entrances. The skyscrapers were also domed in glass, and most of them had landing space for “autogyros” and other flying commuter craft.

In the attraction’s most brilliant feature the end of the ride floated just above a four-cornered intersection featuring an auditorium, a department store, an apartment house, and, of course, a GM dealership. Suddenly, the moving cars burst out of the building into the open air, where visitors stepped out of their chairs and found themselves in a life-size replica of the scene they had just “flown over” – a cross section of the city of the future featuring the exact same buildings in the exact same locations. Only now they were free to walk along it.

Some who experienced it for the first time were spellbound, believing they had somehow been miniaturized and placed in the giant diorama themselves.

Even the mechanism was startling in its ingenuity. The “carry-go-round” was a third of a mile long and contained five hundred and fifty-two chair. It was essentially a moving conveyor belt. But what made it unique was the sound system required to deliver narration in synch with passing scenes. Each sequence had to be coordinated so that the first car passing a particular view got one loop of narration, while the next group of cars heard a description of their point of view. And so on across the entire oval track.

Designed by James Dunlop and built in part by Westinghouse, “the Polyrhetor,” as it was called, was a twenty-ton contraption that pulled sound from twenty-one individual strips of movie film revolving around an eight-foot steel drum. Seven photoelectric beams dived the strips intone hundred and forty-seven units of sound, and each was picked up and transmitted to two cars at a time via seven corresponding trolley tracks that ran beneath the cars.

In other words, one-hundred and forty-seven separate bits of narration were delivered simultaneously though out the ride, on a continuous loop since the cars themselves never stopped revolving around the circuit. Each segment was calculated to the exact second and the precise amount of time two cars took to pass a certain point. Incredibly, despite the fact the conveyor occasionally slowed down to accommodate large crowds, the system never fell out of sync.

Futurama was also presented in the 1964 World's Fair

PROGRESS CITY:

Progress City was located on the second floor of the Carousel of Progress. On the upper level, a 4-minute post show, narrated by Mother and Father, with a few barks and growls from their dog, coincided with guests gazing at an enormous model of Progress City. Progress City was based on Walt Disney's original concept for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) and the Walt Disney World property. The model was 115 feet wide and 60 feet deep. It had 1,00 street lights, 2,500 moving vehicles, 20,000 trees and 4,500 structures.

When the Carousel of Progress was shipped to Walt Disney World for a 1975 opening, a section of the model came to Florida as well. It was installed as a part of the WEDway Peoplemover and can still be seen today by guests riding the attraction (now known as the Tomorrowland Transit Authority).

Full Article Available At MickeyOne.com

We are on our third pass (of five passes) we are improving the quality of the attraction videos, improving pacing, making some cuts, and adding Deaths and Injuries on this pass. Pass four will be adding voice-over and expanding The Future section. Pass 5 will be adding extras, converting to High Def. and producing the DVD's.

Click Here for up to the minute information available on our DVD Blog Page

NOTE: Dates are last date that chapter/section was updated.

The table of contents of the DVD's will be:

*-Not available on Family Edition

One very unique feature that will be available on our DVD is a quick way to access additional information on DLDHistory.com about an attraction. The final DVD will be a high definition video. We are predicting that the DVD should be complete by early 2012.

DVD Previews Can Be Seen HERE

*DVD Previews are available to our Bronze and GOLD Members.*

We are completely re-writing the site. We do this every 2 years. With all the changes and features we have added to the site over the last 2 years, this re-write will allow us to blend everything together better. Each page we re-think the layout and presentation of the information to see if there is a better or more unique way to present the information. After the project is complete DLDHistory should be easier to use and more robust. 

We are also working on Disneyland Forums which will completed early next year.

The pages that we are still working on are: FAQ's, My Page Photos and Search Results... Click Here to watch the progress! 

We are also changing our Accounts. This will be the new account levels:

 

Account Level:	Account Length	Total Cost
Guest	Lifetime	Free
Deluxe	1 Month	$5.00
Premium	6 Months	$10.00
Bronze	12 Months	$20.00
Silver	24 Months	$30.00
Diamond	36 Months	$40.00
GOLD	Lifetime	$70.00

Extras	Total Cost
Character Email Name	$8.00
DLDHistory.com On CD	Discontinued
I Love You Baby Book	Discontinued
History DVD	To Be Decided

Account prices above will be effective Jan. 1, 2012. The changes in price and account lengths will be effective for new and account upgrades made after 01/01/2012 and will not affect existing members accounts.

We are currently 90% done.

Please begin using 2k11DLDHistory.com now. We will transition over to the new design over the next 2 months.

This project will be completed on January 1,2012

 If you have any ideas or features you would like to see feel free to:

Click Here To Contact Us 

Stay tuned to see the future of DLDHistory.com

We are having a Black Friday Sale! Black Friday refers to the day after Thanksgiving here in the states and dates back to 1966:

JANUARY 1966 -- "Black Friday" is the name which the Philadelphia Police Department has given to the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. It is not a term of endearment to them. "Black Friday" officially opens the Christmas shopping season in center city, and it usually brings massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are mobbed from opening to closing

But you do not need to live in the states to take advantage of our sale. For 12 hours only: 8:00AM PDT until 8:00PM PDT 11/25/2011 you can enter the promo code of blackfriday and you will save 40% on all account upgrades.

 That's right you can upgrade from a Guest Account to a coveted GOLD Account for only $36 . Upgrade to a Deluxe Account for a ridiculous low cost of only $3!

DLDHistory offices will be closed for Thanksgiving. But Black Friday morning we will be in the office activating accounts as quickly as possible.

Christmas Fantasy Parade

We have a loyal member that donated a video of the complete Christmas Fantasy Parade. Sit in your comfortable chair at home and enjoy Christmas Fantasy Parade going down Main Street USA! This video was taken in 2010 and is 16 and half minutes long.  Christmas Fantasy Parade Video

 Enjoy!


Click on the image below to take you directly to video clip.

Christmas Fantasy Parade