50,000 Terms

I marked a milestone last Tuesday, July 14, as I entered the 50,000th term into the Disneyland Resort Thesaurus at 11:06 PM EDT. At roughly 50,000 terms a year, I expect I'll reach 100,000 terms in the summer of 2011 and 1,000,000 terms in 2047. Of course, the number of terms isn't the sole criterion on which to judge the thesaurus--the number of relationships also count, as does the amount of information recorded for each. There are more than 131,000 relationships contained in the thesaurus and in the past week I have edited 2,224 terms (or 4.4% of the total thesaurus). So, when I'm not posting here, I am still busy working behind the scenes on gathering sources and working through them. I've been meaning to undertake a broad look at the state of the thesaurus and its possibilities, but I feel, here, now, I can at least share a little about the sources with which I'm working.

Probably the greatest source in numbers is the Disneyland Line. I estimate there are somewhere over 2,000 of these (52 issues a year [fewer in recent years with a biweekly publication schedule] x 40 years). As of this writing, I have very thoroughly and methodically pulled apart 314 of those, or around 15%. (I have immediate access, either in hard copy or scans, to almost 1,500.) From the earlier monthly Disneylander of the 1950s and early 1960s, I have thesaurused 9 issues out of an unknown total which probably numbers between 50 and 60. For Backstage Disneyland, the quirky publication started by Wally Boag that was published on an erratic basis between 1962 and the 1980s, I have gone through but two issues out of an unknown total that I estimate at somewhere less than 80.

From materials produced for the public, I have input information from 8 of 159 Disney News/Disney Magazine issues. Of Disneyland Holiday/Vacationland, I have thesaurused 13 of about 84 issues. From The "E" Ticket, a mere 5 of the 46 issues. A mere 8 guidebooks from Disneyland's 54-year history. I've only started recording information from 3 of the roughly 26 souvenir wallmaps. I've only gone through a measly ONE copy of The Disneyland News (but it did yield information for 278 terms). I have made it through several books (including Disneyland: The Nickel Tour and Disney A-Z, two of the first sources I worked with), but have yet to start working with other treasure troves such as Disneyland: Then, Now, and Forever and Van France's Window on Main Street.

I have used a few hundred newspaper articles out of about 7,500 saved so far. Other sources will include miscellaneous Cast Member publications (such as land/departmental newsletters and phone directories), interviews, press releases, blog posts, and anything else that contributes substantive information about the history of the Disneyland Resort. (Note that I didn't specify it has to be accurate information; it's just as important to document the origins of misconceptions!) I'm meticulously documenting where all the information comes from and what sources have been used or should be used, so if I drop dead tomorrow somebody would know exactly what I had done.

If anybody has bibliographic information for the Disneylander or Backstage Disneyland, I'd appreciate it, as I would a staff to help me out!

Snow White's Adventures Demolition

More? Of course there are more! Here's one of Snow White's Adventures, from right around the very day I was born:

Peter Pan Flight Demolition

As a companion to the post showing the exterior of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (1955-1982) shortly after its closure, here is an equivalent photo for Peter Pan Flight:


To the far right of the picture, you can see some of the medieval shields amidst the other debris. The ride vehicle track is still present, as is a very small portion of the Claude Coats/Ken Anderson mural, but otherwise the entire attraction was gone within a few weeks of closing.

Thesaurusing Area Music Loops

I'm still doing the whole thesaurus bit. On Monday I added the 3,000th Imagineer. I'm closing in on 50,000 terms total. (You can always check the sidebar for a reasonably up-to-date view of thesaurus statistics.) There are some aspects of Disneyland that I have procrastinated on thoroughly investigating, because they require the creation of so many new terms and linkages. If you recall my post Thesaurusing Live Entertainment, you'll know that I strongly desire new terms to be well-linked. Tonight I spent a little time adding terms in a similar vein: area music loops.

The area music loops themselves aren't too knotty a problem; conceptually, they're narrower terms of media -> media by types -> audio material -> audio material by contexts -> Resort audio material -> background music. But, I wanted each individual song to be linked to the area music term (e.g., Space Mountain Concourse area music). I settled on first creating an umbrella term for each song (e.g., Tomorrowland 2055 Fanfare (song), Miracles from Molecules (song), Monorail Song (song), etc.).

When known, I have linked the song creators to these broader terms. I then created a new term for each of these songs, linked to the music loop. I did this because these songs are just manifestations of the broader song concept. For example, there could be sheet music released for a song; it could have been recorded for a film soundtrack and rerecorded for the Park; or a song could have several Park versions. It seemed useful to me to make these distinctions, to record information about these separate instances. It also leaves open the possibility of future indexing of these individual audio tracks.

To demonstrate what I mean, below is the term record for Space Mountain Concourse area music, the mixture of music from the EPCOT Center entrance loop and new recordings of Tomorrowland's greatest hits, produced by Bruce Gordon for the never-was Tomorrowland 2055:

DLRERA: 1990s 1990s
DLRERA: 2000s 2000s
ETY: AME Area Music
LOC: DL-TL Tomorrowland
OPSTA: CUR Current

DFJHS: 0:00 - "Tomorrowland 2055 Fanfare" (0:48)
0:49 - "Tomorrowland 2055 Theme & Fanfare" (1:38)
2:27 - "Energy" (3:23)
5:50 - "Timekeeper" (2:07)
7:57 - "Golden Dream" (3:45)
11:42 - "Miracles from Molecules" (1:43)
13:25 - "It's Fun to Be Free" (3:29)
16:54 - "Monorail Song" (2:58)
19:52 - "Let's Listen to the Land" (4:30)
24:22 - "Tomorrowland 2055 Theme #1" (0:19)
24:41 - "Tomorrowland 2055 Theme #2" (1:44)
26:25 - "One Little Spark" (3:24)
29:49 - "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (2:24)
32:13 - "Nemo's Theme" (0:40)
32:53 - "Go Go Goodyear" (1:46)
34:39 - "Magic Journeys" (5:35)
40:14 - "Pop Goes the Weasel" (0:08)
40:22 - "We Are Here to Change the World" (3:13)
43:35 - "Universe of Energy" (3:54)
47:29 - "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" (2:25)

BT: background music
BTP: Space Mountain Concourse
BTP: Space Mountain Guest rest rooms [editor's note: yes, it plays here, too!]
CTBF: Gordon, Bruce
NTP {01}: Tomorrowland 2055 Fanfare (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {02}: Tomorrowland 2055 Theme & Fanfare (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {03}: Energy (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {04}: Timekeeper (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {05}: Golden Dream (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {06}: Miracles from Molecules (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {07}: It's Fun to Be Free (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {08}: Monorail Song (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {09}: Let's Listen to the Land (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {10}: Tomorrowland 2055 Theme #1 (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {11}: Tomorrowland 2055 Theme #2 (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {12}: One Little Spark (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {13}: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {14}: Nemo's Theme (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {15}: Go Go Goodyear (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {16}: Magic Journeys (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {17}: Pop Goes the Weasel (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {18}: We Are Here to Change the World (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {19}: Universe of Energy (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {20}: There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)

The information at the top (DLRERA/Disneyland Resort Era, ETY/Entity, LOC/Location, OPSTA/Operational Status) are various classifications that I apply to most of the terms in the thesaurus. I have various definitional note fields, preceded by DF. DFJHS is one I use when I have come up with the information myself or if I just want to make notes about a term. BT/BTP are ways of linking to broader terms, NTP narrower terms. CTBF stands for "contribution from." The numbers in the curly brackets are node labels, so the songs are ordered as they play in the loop. Now let's take a look at one of the Space Mountain Concourse songs, Miracles from Molecues (Space Mountain Concourse) (song):

DLRERA: 1990s 1990s
DLRERA: 2000s 2000s

BT: media by names
BTI: Miracles from Molecules (song)
BTP: Space Mountain Concourse area music

And this is what the main term for the song (Miracles from Molecules (song)) currently looks like:

SRC: Disneyland: The Nickel Tour (2000)
The Disneyland Encyclopedia (2008)
Walt Disney's Imagineering Legends (2008)

BT: media by names
BTI: songs
NTI: Miracles from Molecules (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
CTBF: Sherman Brothers
RT: Adventure Thru Inner Space

SRC is used to show where this exact term came from. In this case, I have not yet come across any variant names for the songs. The Sherman Brothers are shown as contributing to the writing of the song (obviously, they wrote it, but I do not currently have a finer grained relationship to use). Right now, Adventure Thru Inner Space is shown as a related term for the song. In the future, when I've created terms for each instance of Miracles from Molecules in the attraction's soundtrack, I may delete this more explicit reference. (The song would be related through the song instance which would be related to Adventure Thru Inner Space.)

At any rate, you can see why I have put this off for so long! So far, I have only added the Space Mountain Concourse area music and Main Street area music (1992- ), but more will follow.

More Old Fantasyland Demolition

It's been a long time since I last posted a destruction shot of the old Fantasyland from the 1982-1983 timeframe. Here's Mr. Toad going to pieces: