Sunday, October 22, 2006

Fantasyland, 1950's


I hereby present a lovely Kodachrome image of Fantasyland for your viewing pleasure! The "medieval faire" facades are there in all of their Eyvind Earle graphic glory. I don't think I ever really paid attention to the variety of patterns used...everything from polka dots and stripes to diamond patterns, checkerboards, and so on. Walt may not have really wanted his Fantasyland to look like this, but in hindsight it worked well enough. By the way, is that one of the original orange trees in the foreground?

The imagineers did a wonderful job of revamping Fantasyland in 1983, it really is spectacular. If only they could have saved or re-positioned the Pirate Ship and Skull Rock, it would be near-perfect!

I'm not sure where this photo was taken from...who will be the first to make me feel dumb for not figuring it out?! ;-) At first I thought it was from the Pirate Ship, but I believe that the ship is to the left.

4 comments:

Tinker Bell said...

The colors are amazing! There's so much going on. Very cool picture.

William Kelley said...

I'm going to say that's taken from the stairway leading up to the Skyway. At first, I thought the Skyway was too far away for that to be possible, but I believe it angles away enough. But also, looking at an old aerial photo of that area, you can see how the Dumbo ride, the corner of the west wing of the castle, the Carousel and what I believe is the awning of Welch's Grape Juice Stand all line up perfectly and that leads right back to the Skyway stairs.

Compare that show with this one (same photographer??): http://www.flickr.com/photos/cindyr/125748698/

Matterhorn1959 said...

I agree with Mojave33 the steps up to the Skyway Chalet. The early shots of the Chalet show not much vegetation which would have allowed the photographer this view. By the way, do you guys ever sleep?

Major Pepperidge said...

I had thought about the Chalet, but MAN, the skyway buckets sure do seem to be heading waaaay to the left. However, I can't imagine where else this could have been taken. I have one other slide from a different batch that is almost identical.