Friday, April 25, 2008

Travelport Destruction

I never did spend too much time at the Disneyland Hotel. I lived in Southern California and if I was going to Disneyland, I was going to Disneyland (Park)! One of my few Disneyland Hotel memories was going there on a Saturday afternoon to buy Mighty Ducks merchandise on the first day it was available. (I still have the hat.) I only dined at the Monorail Cafe once, about a month before it closed. I did take a number of photos of destruction of the Travelport, though; here are a "select few" of that. The first batch is from September 7, 1999.

September 19:

September 30:

October 11:

Hey, a photo of the parking structure! And the Pinocchio lot! I hope it's OK to post...

3 comments:

The Viewliner Limited said...

Awesome pics. I ate at the Monorail Cafe many, many times.

outsidetheberm said...

Great documentation! Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting these pics... I've always lived in So. Cal. but seldom got to the park in the 90's so there's a 10 year gap in my personal history of the park. In fact, when I went back for the first time in 2000, Indiana Jones was a brand new ride to me.

I do remember taking a day and walking thru the D'land Hotel in the early 80s. I was working on the Queen Mary which Wrather Corp had just bought and I wanted to see their flagship property to get a feel of what might be in store for the ship. I was shocked.

This was my first time in the hotel, and I was dismayed at how rundown and shabby the place looked. It was a mish-mash of styles and furniture from 1955 to 1975. On top of that, I got the feeling they were skimping on the janitorial budget because nothing was really clean.

When I mentioned this to a friend, he clued me in that there was constant friction between Disney Corp and Wrather because of the latter's foot dragging on maintenance and improvements. It got to the point that (he says) Disney was actually looking into revoking the "Disneyland Hotel" licensing fee and pulling the monorail out, with a new stop at the Grand Hotel over on Harbor Blvd.

-Katella Gate