Is Elvis in the Building?

What We Know

As the song says, it's Christmas time in the city, as it is at Disneyland as well. Glittering in gilded 50^th Anniversary splendor, Disneyland's traditional live tree has received, what Disneyland calls, the "Midas Touch," with a golden theme to continue the commemoration of Disneyland's half-century milestone.

The 60-foot White (or Shasta) Fir, decorated with 5,000 golden ornaments, and just as many clear and amber holiday lights, was placed on Christmas Tree Point in Disneyland's town square on November 11 where it will stay until January 2, 2006. High atop the tree is a symbolic pair of golden Mickey Mouse ears with the numeral "50" in the center.

Since 1955, Disneyland has celebrated the holiday season with Yule-time parades, an abundance of festive décor, and special entertainment, including the annual holiday parade, carolers, holiday foods, a traditional Candlelight Ceremony and Processional, and, let's not forget, seasonal merchandise and souvenirs.

New this year was the addition of The Happiest Turkey on Earth as the grand marshal of Disneyland's Thanksgiving Day parade. Earlier in the week, Marshmallow, as the 37-pound Tom turkey is called, received the traditional Presidential pardon in a White House Rose Garden ceremony that took place on Tuesday, November 22, thus escaping being served up as the official White House Thanksgiving Day main course.

Following his reprieve, Marshmallow, along with National Turkey Federation Chairman Pete Rothfork, boarded United Airlines Flight 197 from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles. Marshmallow flew first-class, nonstop to the West Coast where, after a brief pause to unruffle a few feathers, he led Disneyland's Thanksgiving Day parade before taking up residence in Santa's Reindeer Round-up in Frontierland, where he will greet his many fans.

Marshmallow, The Happiest Turkey on Earth, in his new home Santa's Reindeer Round-up at Disneyland.
Image © and courtesy of Disney.

All of the preceding is known to be factual because the good folks in the Disneyland Resort's media relations department have been working overtime to make sure word gets out about all these "really big doins" at the resort.

Do You See What I See?

The Disneyland Media Relations department aren't the only ones working overtime to make sure the world knows what's going on, or may be about to take place, at the Happiest Place on Earth. In addition to an abundance of holiday cheer and greater than expected crowds passing through the turnstiles, Disneyland is also experiencing a surge in tall tales and rumors.

There are almost always stories floating around the Internet about one attraction or another about to receive a major overhaul and/or significant upgrade. Lately, however, the volume and specificity of these stories has been increasing.

Last week, for example, following a pre-Thanksgiving Day visit to Disneyland, a group of park regulars—they dislike being called annual passholders or APs—contacted o-meon.com with an interesting story involving It's a Small World Holiday and Elvis Presley.

While floating past Small World's version of England, this group of friends, which included three Southern Californians and two others from Salt Lake City and London, England, were admiring "the English" Christmas decorations. Thinking it was an English tradition, one of the guys from California asked if there was a pickle hidden in the British Christmas tree. What he was actually referring to was the myth of the German Christmas Tree pickle ornament, but that's another story.

[There's a link to the story of this myth at the end of this article.— Editor]

The end result, however, was that all five of these friends began to closely scrutinize the British Christmas tree in It's a Small World Holiday. They didn't find a pickle, but what they did find was just as unexpected. There, about a third of the way up from the bottom and slightly off-center of the artificial tree, was a large "gapping opening" among the neat and tidy rows of festive decorations. Recessed inside the opening, as if peering out from deep within the tree, was a face.

According to one member of the group, "It startled me at first, because I couldn't make out what it was—then I saw a face, which seemed spooky—then I realized it was Elvis, which was just weird."

Cindy Crawford and family outside It's a Small World Holiday. No word as to whether or not they saw Elvis.
Image © and courtesy of Disney.

Elvis has been seen in It's a Small World Holiday before, usually in the Hawaiian section of the ride. Actually, it's a small Stitch doll from Disney's Lilo and Stitch. Stitch is dressed in his Elvis costume from the movie and he's riding on the front of a young Hawaiian boy's surfboard. A quick Google search failed to yield any information about the King appearing anywhere else within Small World or Disneyland.

[If you're planning a trip to Disneyland in the next few days and can safely take a picture inside It's a Small World Holiday of the Christmas tree showing the face of Elvis in the England section of the ride, we'd love to show it to the world! Just attach a high-quality JPG version of your picture to an e-mail and send it to us at this link.— Editor]

Opening Up Frontier Land?

Dixon Ticonderoga, an o-meon.com advisor and occasional contributor, recently asked if I'd heard about the big, new plans for Frontierland at Disneyland. According to Dixon, who hasn't been to the park for several months, a few of his industry contacts have been talking about plans for the far side of Frontierland, "back behind Big Thunder Mountain."

I asked if he meant the area known as the Festival Arena, which is currently used for private party events.

"All I know," said Dixon, "is that it's in the part of the park behind Big Thunder where they serve food."

He went on to say that his contacts were convinced that sometime in the near future, Disneyland would announce a new addition for this area of the park. "They want to put it there (Frontierland)," Dixon continued, "because it would be too much trouble to drain the motorboat lagoon, the only other open area in the park. Besides, that would also mean shutting down the monorail again for an extended period of time, and the Disneyland hotel hates that."

When asked what was being planned for this new addition to the park, Dixon said, "I don't really know. That's why I asked you. I've been talking with money people who say this is in the works. They don't have any specifics. They just know it's going into Frontierland."

When asked if he'd ever heard the name "Discovery Bay" bandied about during these conversations, Dixon said no. Checking with other sources, I learned that Dixon might be on to something.

Theme park mavens and Pixar watchers speculate that the strip of land that now houses Santa's Reindeer Round-up, Festival Arena, and the Big Thunder Barbecue will become a "bridge land" between Fantasyland and Frontierland. Themed after the fictional Woody's Round-up children's television show, from the movie Toy Story II, this new mini-land, like the Pixar themed Bugs Land kiddie-ride section of Disney's California Adventure (DCA), would feature off-the-shelf carnival rides, suitable for children under 40 inches, with a Toy Story overlay.

Among the ride ideas being tossed about are a merry-go-round called Woody's Round-up and a spinning cup ride, similar to the one in Bug's Land, with some type of Jessie the cowgirl overlay. If this proves to be correct, these two new rides will be just a few steps away from Fantasyland's King Arthur's Carousel and the famous Tea Cup ride.

No word yet on what would become of Marshmallow and the other regular denizens of the current Round-up petting zoo attraction.

If this new addition to Disneyland comes about, the Disneyland Resort probably won't lose the revenue stream from private party events held in the Festival Arena, as it is also heavily rumored that the former Hollywood and Dine food court in DCA, along with a small portion of the Hollywood Pictures backlot, will be converted to private party use.

A Sparrow by Any Other Name

One of the worst kept secrets at Disneyland is that the newly reopened Space Mountain received, among other things during its recent reconstruction, a second ride program. This second ride program, called Rock It Mountain, will feature a musical soundtrack and lighting effects different from those used when the ride operates under the Space Mountain name.

Space Mountain will become Rock It Mountain when the sun goes down. Rock It Mountain is expected to debut sometime after the first of the year, or perhaps just before the Spring/Easter Break season.

What isn't nearly as well known is that the idea of having one attraction with two separate ride themes didn't originate with Space Mountain. According to sources familiar with Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) and Disneyland management, Pirates of the Caribbean was the first attraction proposed for the dual ride story treatment.

Following the phenomenal success of Walt Disney Pictures Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, everyone from fans of Johnny Depp to fans of the ride have been clamoring to have Depp's balmy Captain Jack Sparrow somehow inserted into both the Anaheim and Florida versions of the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction…and WDI has been clamoring to accommodate them.

Early on, Imagineers came up with the idea of adding a second track and additional story elements to the original Pirates ride in Disneyland. The Disney World version of Pirates is in a smaller building and would not be able to accommodate a second track.

The new track, as the story goes, would be located behind the Port Royal, set on the left-hand side of the current track, in an area currently used for storing boats. Here, as evening fell upon New Orleans Square, not only would you see Captain Jack but also Barbossa and the cutthroat crew of the Black Pearl, and, just as in the movie, as the sun went down you'd see these villains morph from human form into unearthly walking skeletal form.

The current scuttlebutt on Captain Jack and company is that the second ride track idea has been thrown overboard for budgetary reasons. Current plans call for Jack, along with several other pirates, to be installed along the current ride track where they will transform under the simulated moonlight to their cursed form.

Rumor has it these changes will take place during Pirates regularly scheduled refurbishment scheduled for early 2006. There is also informed speculation that contrary to promises to never again close Disneyland early during the summer season, the park will play host to the world premiere of the second Pirates film, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. To accommodate the world premiere, Disneyland's guests will once again be forced to walk the plank, so to speak, and exit the Magic Kingdom late one June afternoon.

The last time Disneyland played host to a movie premiere guests traversed New Orleans Square around and beneath bleachers for more than a week while regularly scheduled performances of Fantasmic were also canceled.
Image © obe-mediaone.

How did Disneyland become so twice blessed? Disney studio press and publicity people argued that it would be easier, and cheaper, to get celebrities to travel down I-5 to Anaheim than it would be to fly them out to Orlando. With the new film scheduled to open in early July while the Happiest Home Coming on Earth celebration, which is drawing huge crowds, is still in progress, the question becomes will things run as smoothly at Disneyland for the premiere of Dead Man's Chest as they did for the Curse of the Black Pearl event?

Fun Fact: The last time Pirates of the Caribbean had a major overhaul, the media became obsessed with the idea that Disney had altered the ride's storyline to make it more politically correct. This rumor came about when Imagineers from WDI were showing the changes in the show elements to Disneyland's publicity staff.

Pirates' amended storyline was intended to illustrate the Seven Deadly Sins. To accomplish this, a female figure hiding from a drunken pirate was removed and replaced by a cat, and the pirate, now meant to represent gluttony, was surrounded by food. The scene of two pirates chasing a woman was reversed, and the woman now chases the pirates with a rolling pin as they attempt to flee carrying plates of stolen food.

"The publicity people took one look at the ride with these women's roles changed or removed," said a production designer familiar with the history of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, "and decided that what Imagineering had done was to make the ride more PC."

"How could anyone look at a ride that shows women tied together, being sold off at auction, and call it Politically Correct?" asked Imagineer Tony Baxter. "How much more un-PC can you get than that?"

Tomorrowland Up In the Air

Probably no attraction at Disneyland has generated more rumor and speculation about its future than Tomorrowland's former Rocket Rods/People Mover. From conversations around Coke Corner among park regulars to various Internet discussion boards, virtually every Disneyland fan seems to believe they know what park management have planned for, or should do with, the once futuristic People Mover's unused boarding platform and track.

The leading contender among these theories is that the original People Mover will be put back into service, perhaps as soon as 2007. Following that is the theory that now that the Disney Company has new leadership, it will see its way clear to pony up the estimated $10 million required to properly bank the tracks so that the Rocket Rods' cars would operate as intended and not break down as often.

There are even those Disneyland fans so fed up with looking at the empty track and useless boarding platform that they say Disneyland should be encouraged to "tear the thing down if they aren't going to do anything with it."

According to sources familiar with the situation, all of these folks will probably have a good long time to wait before anything significant happens to the old People Mover.

"Bringing the People Mover back isn't as easy as it sounds," said one park insider. "The cars are scattered all over the country, and if they were all in working order they're very out of date. WDI would want to do a complete makeover and that would be very costly."

The same fate seems to befall any attempt to bring back the Rocket Rods. New management or not, there just does not seem to be the will to spend millions at this time just to restore something that wasn't all that well received in the first place. In addition, Rocket Rods lost its queue when Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters went into the old CircleVision theatre.

Right now, any speculation as to what's to become of the old People Mover boarding platform and track is just that, speculation.

Fine Print

There's a saying among old time Disneyland cast members, "A ride ain't real till the doors open."

Keep in mind that everything you've read here, no matter how well informed, is just someone's opinion of what they think might happen at Disneyland in the future. None of these stories, including the Elvis sighting, originated from Disneyland or Disney Company officials.

That having been said, however, the Disney Company has been known to change its mind even after a new project or initiative has been announced. Anybody remember the Disney Decade or Westcot?

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