10 More Things You Never Knew About Disneyland

A few months ago I wrote an article 10 Things You Never Knew About Disneyland (you can read it here, http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2355970/10_things_you_never_knew_about_disneyland.html). A few readers of that article sent me some more secrets that I didn't know, so I thought I'd share those secrets about Disneyland with a second article, 10 More Things You Never Knew About Disneyland.

The Jungle Cruise is no laughing matter (or at least until Walt Disney changed that).

The classic Disneyland attraction the Jungle Cruise is best known for its wise cracking skippers who tell jokes about the head hunter's two for one special or plastic animals, but it wasn't always that way. When Disneyland opened, the Jungle Cruise was supposed to be a serious attraction, taking riders on an African adventure. And while the "animals" kind of looked real, in reality they weren't and it was the kind of attraction that you would ride once and not have to do a second time. In fact, Walt Disney overheard visitors saying exactly that, "We can skip this ride, we've already done it once." So to make the ride more exciting, Walt Disney had the skippers start making jokes. This tradition now carries over to the other Jungle Cruise attractions at all Disney parks.

Still jumping after all of these years

Before Big Thunder Mountain was built, a much more tame train ride, Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland, occupied the space. Along the path from Big Thunder Mountains' exit, there's a pond with a fish jumping out of the water every few seconds. The pond and the fish are left over from the Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland attraction. There used to be Audio Animatronic bears swooping at the fish.

One mans junk...

Building Disneyland was a huge financial undertaking for Walt Disney. He didn't want to cut corners, but he definitely looked for cost savings. And thanks to one driver who crashed into a streetlight on Los Angeles' Wilshire Boulevard, Walt found a flag pole for Main Street USA. The damaged light pole was bought cheap and found a new life as the flag pole at Disneyland.

The Darling's Nursery and its toy blocks

Before flying high above the streets of London, rides on Peter Pan's Flight fly into the Darling children's nursery. Next time you're flying with Peter Pan, look closely at the toy blocks. The blocks spell out "DI5NEY" and "PPan."

Star Tours is just like Star Wars, sorta

Disney worked hard to make the queue area and Star Tours ride accurate to the Star Wars movies. Disney did an excellent job except for C3PO's legs. The Audio Animatronic C3PO in the attraction's queue area used to have both legs painted gold, but in the Star Wars films, one leg is silver. Don't bother looking for this flub next time you're at Disneyland, however, as the C3PO used in Star Tours now has one silver leg, too.

America Sings critters get a new lease on life

The round Innoventions building in Tomorrowland used to house a musical attraction, America Sings. The attraction featured Audio Animatronic animals singing classic American songs (hence the name). When the attraction closed in the late 80's, you would think that the America Sings animals would be out of a job, right? Well, as luck would have it Splash Mountain opened at Disneyland in 1989 and needed lots of Audio Animatronic animals. Many of America Sings critters now sing songs from the Disney film Song of the South as riders on Splash Mountain pass by.

Construction test bricks

In 1954, the year Disneyland construction began, designers wanted to test different brick patterns that were being considered for use in the park. Workers built a wall of bricks, each with a different shape and texture to see how they would look in a wall. That wall was never destroyed or covered over and can be seen in the locker rental area under the train station on Main Street USA.

Hailey's Comet and Disneyland

Walt Disney designed Main Street to represent American in 1910 and Tomorrowland as life in the distant year 1986. He picked these years as they are the years Hailey's Comet passed earth.

It's still It's A Small World just now on the West coast

The Pepsi-Cola pavilion at the 1964 New York World's fair featured a ride from Walt Disney. Riders boarded boats to hear dolls of the world sing in unison "it's a small world after all" over and over again. The ride, It's a Small World, proved so popular, when the World's Fair closed Walt Disney packed-up the ride and dolls and had them all shipped to Disneyland.

Ho hum, ho hum it's a walk through life for me

Walt Disney originally planned for It's a Small World and Pirate's of the Caribbean to be walk through attractions. It's a Small World opened first and was changed to a boat ride attraction at the last minute because Walt Disney's staff said nobody wanted to walk through a signing doll attraction. Seeing what a hit the boats were in It's a Small World, Walt Disney decided to use boats for Pirates of the Caribbean, too. That's why both rides use the same boats.