The Circle of Genuine Maseca Corn Flour

In the late 1990s, Disneyland seemed to be closing long-term establishments left and right. Carnation Ice Cream Parlor, Carnation Plaza Gardens, Captain EO, Rocket Jets, Circle-Vision, Submarine Voyage, Swiss Family Treehouse, Tomorrowland Autopia... I was there for the last day of many of those. I had an evening meal at the Ice Cream Parlor with others from the alt.disney.disneyland newsgroup. I was there Captain EO's final night. I saw the final public showing of "America the Beautiful." I went on the Submarine Voyage and Tomorrowland Autopia multiple times on their final days of operation. I believe this is a photo of the Tomorrowland Autopia Cast Members shutting down the line on September 6, 1999:

All of the above mentions were really Disneyland classics. While I helped to open Disney's California Adventure, it wasn't, let's say, my favorite. There were some attractions I never got on or still haven't been on. Two of these are the Mission Tortilla Factory and The Boudin Bakery. On Memorial Day, as you know, I took the Welcome to Disneyland tour. While walking along the Performance Corridor nearby my friend told me that it was the Tortilla Factory's final day. Given my recent obsession with Disneyland signs, I felt I needed to visit this attraction to document all signs and artwork.

Anyway, I learned this bit of information fairly early in the tour and we also walked around Disneyland. At the end of the tour I was given several FASTPASSes, one of which was for the recently reopened Splash Mountain. By the time I got off that attraction I had totally forgotten about the Tortilla Factory and was ready to walk back home. I was home for about forty-five minutes when I realized what I had forgotten. I weighed driving back to the Park, but I was pretty tired from the walking. I considered walking back, but that was even less appealing.

Then another friend, who had been promising to get an annual pass since April 2009 and who finally came through by getting one with her husband the day before, sent me a text asking where I was. There were several things going through my mind at this point and a plan began to form. I ended up committing to walk back to the Park so the three of us could go through the Tortilla Factory and then head to Trader Sam's (my first visit!); they would drive me home. The lure of Sam's was too much, so I raced back to the Park (my fastest time ever, door-to-door).

I got to the Tortilla Factory and found out they were next in line for California Screamin'. Perfect. I could document the exterior and be ready to head inside when they were finished. When I arrived there was a small line outside. As I don't frequent the area, I didn't know if this was normal or not, but thought it possible that a few people may have found out about the attraction's closing and came to experience it one last time:

The Cast Member at the entrance periodically checked to see if inside they were ready for the next group:

I snapped a photo of these Guests waiting in line (more for the exterior than for the Guests themselves):

Of course, I took photos of exterior signage, including the "TOUR ENTRANCE" with the open door visible in the background:

And the proclamation of genuine Maseca Corn Flour:

And then I grew a tad disturbed... As Guests now came up to the exterior Cast Member, they were informed that the attraction was closed:

It turned out that the Mission Tortilla Factory had a hard closing time of 4:30 p.m. and I missed my date with destiny. Those Guests in line four photos above were the last ones in the attraction. My friends showed up about two minutes after it closed. No tortillas for me; I left only with the story of how I had walked to Disneyland a second time in one day to miss the attraction's closing by a couple of minutes.

I came back the next day (with Vintage Disneyland Tickets) just to confirm that the attraction had closed. We were greeted with a rather generic Tortilla Factory sign indicating it was closed (but not that it was actually closed forever):

And this is how the exit doors looked:

Mildly tempting, but if I'm ever arrested for trespass at Disneyland it will not be at Disney California Adventure! (For the record, I have never trespassed at Disneyland and have no intentions of doing so.) A few days later the interiors of the doors and windows were covered in black, the final curtain on the tortilla story.

Why Do I Have This? (Part 3)

OK, obviously I hung around Redd Rockett's Pizza Port a lot when it opened. But I had forgotten all about these wings until I found them in a box last week. I have absolutely no memory of why they were produced. I don't think they were worn by Cast Members. I know they weren't generally handed out to Guests. Were they maybe handed out to select Guests to create "magical moments"? Does anybody else have these? (Mine are so scuffed up, I'm sure, because I always brought them to the Park.)

UPDATE 6/2/2011: Tonight while attending the media party at the Disneyland Hotel for Soundsational Summer I had occasion to tour the new suites. Who did I see there but Rona Kay, the first manager of Redd Rockett's Pizza Port and with whom I am pictured as the first dollar. She was able to tell me that they were created to hand to children as airline wings had been. They made one batch and then Safety got wind of it and prevented the production of any more. So, that explains why I only have the one. I am amazed that I ran into the one person I know who could answer that question (and whom I have not seen in years) on the very day I posed the question, but I've been amazed by a lot recently.

After Action

Today, for the first time since 2002 or before, and definitely the first time as a Guest, I took the Welcome to Disneyland Tour. I had no idea what the tour was like now, but they were in need of (free) Guests to do the Performance Assessment for the Guide, and I really stumbled into it, so I figured, "What the heck?" (I also got several Disney's FASTPASSES, one of which allowed me to go on Splash Mountain, so I have no complaints.) On Saturday in a box newly released from storage I found a couple of After Action Reports from some of my last "Walk in Walt's Footsteps" t0urs. I hadn't seen these in many years and had forgotten they even existed. They display my trademark irreverence; I hope they give you a a little sense of the Tour program!

August 9, 2002:

September 2, 2002 (I indicate it's my last tour, because I had dropped to CT and was not sure I'd be coming back):

Imagineer at Work

Or is this Imagineer at play? Regardless, the topic of this post is not Bob Gurr making his Gurrtinis (aww...). This is about how Bob created a camera mount for my car so I could document my road trips.

In January 2005 I got a Canon G6, with the intent to use it to take in-motion photos on my solo road trips. I described my requirements to Bob ("I need to take pictures while I'm driving!") and he told me to come on up and he'd take a look. I took him up on this offer on January 14, 2005.

I put the convertible top down so Bob could take a look and work his magic:

He didn't need to look for too long before deciding that he could create a mount for a camera bracket that would screw into where the passenger sun visor had been. It's been in my trunk these past six years; occasionally a passenger will comment on its absence, but you never know when you're going to need to get away on a road trip. He also gave me a black duvatine cloth to place on the dashboard to minimize reflection on the passenger side of the windshield. Here's Bob doing the honors of removing the visor:

And then he went to work in his garage:

Here is how it appears in the car. The camera hangs upside down, with the infrared sensor pointed to the driver, so I can use a wireless remote to snap the photographs. A thin metal rod (not pictured) wedges between the bottom of the camera and the forward roof for additional stability:

And here is Bob posing with it yesterday (his own camera is standing in for my G6):

Since that January day I have driven across the country six times and have taken well over 100,000 road photos with it. (I should make Bob see them all!) Here are just a few from the collection:

January 2, 2006, Nevada, US-50 E, east of Austin

January 4, 2006, Colorado, CO-14 N, just north of US-40

January 22, 2009, California, US-101 N, Golden Gate Bridge

January 26, 2009, California, CA-190 E, approaching Death Valley National Park

May 20, 2010, Montana, US-89 S, south of Livingston

Oh, and after I had been driving around with this mount and bracket for a year, Bob casually tells me that the duvatine cloth was left over from his work on King Kong for Universal Studios and the camera bracket had been at the Walt Disney Studios and came from Ub Iwerks.

You Can't Go Home Again

No, I'm not feeling nostalgic for the Golden Gateway or Disney's California Adventure. On Saturday I brought back several boxes from storage and this photo happened to be in one of them. I understand that tonight Guest Relations Cast Members are taking their Cast photo in front of The Little Mermaid, so it seemed appropriate to post.

But a different event this afternoon left me a little dumbstruck. I recently (Monday) posted this photo on Facebook:

I took this photo of my broken D Pin on August 2, 2002 and like to caption it, "The day the magic died." These new D Pins were not as well-made as the previous Guide/Host pins and this seemed to be a frequent occurrence (but was the first time it had ever happened to me). I have been informed that broken Tink arms are not an uncommon occurrence at the present time. Anyway, I posted this on Monday. Today as I left work and had my day perk up a bit (for reasons beyond the end of the workday), I prepared to put the convertible top down. I looked in the back seat to be sure that I had no loose paper...and spied that very Tinker Bell arm. I was a bit speechless. I feel like I had seen it a few days ago and not known what it was; after all, it's just a lightweight gold cylinder. Until I found it this afternoon I was sure I had given it back with my broken pin. Although I haven't come to grips with the physical reality that would cause this to happen, it must have fallen out of one of the Saturday boxes. The alternative is that it has been rolling around in my car for the past nine years.

Even if it just found its way into my car on Saturday, I'm still flummoxed that I would feel compelled to post the vest photo only two days before I again found the wand. The last two weeks have been pretty amazing for me, so I feel as if it's a sign of some sort. I hope one of you can tell me what it means!

Yeah, I've Been to Disneyland a Few Times

For example, during September 1997-June 1998 I went 130 times. In going through storage yesterday, I recovered my high school agenda for that time, which helpfully recorded each visit. (I trust you can figure out my system.)

September 4 was the first day of school. I recall going to see the final performance of The Spirit of Pocahontas (I still have a bag of confetti from it--maybe I'll shoot it out of a cannon when The Disneyland Compendium is finished); that night we had a power outage and I had to finish my algebra homework by candlelight. The first full week of September the Astro Orbitor started to appear at the Tomorrowland entrance. September 28 marked the first of 26 consecutive Sundays that I visited Disneyland (during which I frequently attended the alt.disney.disneyland meetups at the Goofy statue in the Hub). October 2 was the first day I regularly started taking a video camera to Disneyland. On one of those October Thursdays Dave Smith came down to the Park to talk to Guest Relations and Walt Disney Story Cast Members about Walt's offices and I recall walking around the Park with him.

November 25 I attended (as a regular Guest) the "it's a small world" holiday lighting ceremony; November 27 my sister and I made a quick trip to Disneyland on Thanksgiving morning to ride the attraction for the first time. This was probably the first Christmas Day I visited Disneyland. Note my excitement on December 30 in having driven to Disneyland for the first time.

January 18 I went to Club 33; in my driver license photo taken on January 20 I wore a Club 33 pin on the neck line of my t-shirt (a photo just replaced this year, where I am now sporting a Kevin and Jody Adventureland shirt). Immediately following my passing my driving test, Disneyland closed the Parking Lot.

March 12 was the day I met Bruce Gordon. I made good use of Spring Break in April to document New Tomorrowland construction. The minimum day on April 30 allowed me to get to Disneyland earlier than usual, where I ran into Tony Baxter (leading to a chain of events that got me into the Moonliner media event).

Some of those May days I skipped school(!). The absence of school on May 1 was fortuitous. My dad was on the Orange County Business Council with Paul Pressler; the Council had a meeting at the Disneyland Pacific Hotel, so I was able to get my New Tomorrowland press kit signed by Paul and then head over to watch the Moonliner be placed upright for the first time (I have a ton of photos of this event). May 4 was the Moonliner media event. May 18 I was home studying for my AP US History test when I learned that all the construction walls were down, so I had to head to the Park. May 21 was the New Tomorrowland media day (see yesterday's post). May 22 was the opening of the New Tomorrowland. I assume I visited on both May 24 and 31 (possibly realizing, after coloring it in for the 24th that I would also need to visit on the 31st!).

I also apparently, for the first month or two, kept track of what I got with each visit to Redd Rockett's Pizza Port. (I have many, so many, receipts from Pizza Port.) You can see that my first time eating there was March 15 (during Cast previews, through helpful friends at the Walt Disney Story). March 21 I was the first paying customer at the restaurant with a Celestial Caesar Salad and a Coke. Most times I got pizza, though, until one of my Cast Member friends there turned me on to the Chicken Fusili, which I have been getting almost exclusively since the summer of 1998.

I hope you've enjoyed your trip back through my sophomore year of high school. You're now morally obligated to post your own high school planners!

Disneyland's Information Board

When I started visiting Disneyland with exceptional frequency, on the order of three or more times a week in the summer of 1997, the first Cast Members I befriended were the Guest Relations folks at the Information Board in Disneyland's Central Plaza. Many of them loved Disneyland as much as I did and were happy to share information on upcoming events and projects--especially Jorge, who worked there five days a week and understood my fascination with Disneyland. They tolerated me far more than they needed to, as I would recognize when I was a few years older.

For me, the Disneyland Information Board is the perfect place to work at the Park. It's outdoors in the center of the Park, so it offers the best immersion experience of any stationary position. Because of its location and function, you're likely to run into friends who are visiting the Park. You get to wear a radio and call many attractions every hour, so you know what's going on--every CFA [Central First Aid] run, every attraction breakdown, and every liaison between Cast Members with radios. You'd get to see the parade pass by. Most importantly, it's purely an information position. Guests would occasionally come to us with problems, but there was very little we could do for them at the Information Board. I would direct them to City Hall and go back to humming along with the Main Street music loop. The biggest problem is that it's one of the first places Guest Relations Cast Members are trained; as soon as you get enough seniority to really request shifts, your skills are more valuable in other locations, like City Hall.

Ten years ago today, on Tuesday, December 19, 2000, I worked my first On Stage shift, at the Information Board. I wasn't scheduled this day, but got a call in the morning asking if I would like to come in. They might as well have asked me if I'd like to meet Walt Disney. Of course, I jumped at the chance and asked my parents to come document it. (They very graciously did; as you've likely guessed, the above photo is the three of us.) I honestly don't remember that much about my first shift, so I'm very glad to have the photos!

Here my mom plays the part of a Guest. I may have been explaining that sometimes strollers are stolen from Guests, but that the child can even so grow up to be a Disneyland Cast Member.

Note that the sign reads "Disneyland" "Park Hours:" and not "Disneyland Park" "Hours:".

Looking at the board now, I see a number of nomenclature issues. The definite article "the" is used incorrectly to preface "Country Bear Christmas Special" and "Golden Horseshoe Variety Show." "Fantasmic" is missing its characteristic exclamation point(!). The wait times don't look too bad for a late December day, and based on the Splash Mountain wait time and Guest attire, it looks like it was a warm day. (Oh, wait, I have that information: the high was 79 and the low was 47.)

My strongest memory from this day comes from when it was time to close up. Note that the fireworks were set for 9:30 PM. My shift also ended at that time. With the 15 minutes of "walk time," I would probably have been aiming to have the Board closed up by 9 PM. To close it, we had to get the wait time and show signs ready for the next day, the podium covered, and the cabinets and shutters locked. This was the first year of special holiday fireworks including snow, so a considerable number of Guests wanted to know the best place to experience the snow. My explanation included some pointing further into the Central Plaza and on to Main Street. This didn't cause much of a problem with changing the signs or covering the podium, but interfered with the locking up. The keyring for the Information Board should have included only a couple of keys, at most (if the cabinets and shutters really needed different locks). However, the keyring had about thirty keys--the correct ones being a complete mystery to me. I was not able to overcome the combination of the need to point to the snow and the need to keep track of which keys I had tried in the darkness, and ended up calling for another Cast Member to come assist. The next time I worked the Information Board, most of those keys had vanished.

Because of the seniority issue, I didn't get to work the Information Board very much--only about a dozen times between December 2000 and July 2002. I'm still a bit envious of Cast Members who get to work the Board. It was integral to my wanting to become a Disneyland Cast Member and finally getting to work was everything I hoped it would be.

What Guests Want in the Guest Relations Lobby, February 2, 2002

On February 2, 2002, I kept a tally of why Guests were coming into the Guest Relations Lobby at Disney's California Adventure, much like I had tallied Lost & Found Guests on April 8, 2001. They are listed below in the order that I recorded the Guest need.

• Birthday: 19
• Special Assistance Passes: 38
• Dining Reservations: 3
• General Information: 11
• Foreign Language Guidemaps: 10
• English Guidemaps: 5
• Blast! Tickets: 8
• Disney's Electrical Parade Reservations: 2
• Purchase Tickets: 6
• Concerns: 5
• Entered Wrong Park: 5
• Assistance with Lockers: 4
  

9/11 at Disneyland

September 11, 2001 was the only day that week which I wasn't scheduled to work. September 9 I worked a closing GCS City Hall shift. GCS stands for Guest Comment System, or what's used (was used?) to track compliments and concerns from Guests. I was always pretty quick with the data entry, and so I was able to finagle some extra time to go over and tape the final Country Bear show. Well, one of the two final shows--they split up the crowd into two theaters and started the shows simultaneously.

I was more than happy to pick up a sixth day closing the Information Board on Main Street for September 10. Get paid overtime to work my favorite location? Sold! I was happy for the money, too, after a brief but expensive trip to the Tokyo Disney Resort the previous week for the opening of Tokyo DisneySea. Actually, September 11 was my first day free from work or travel and I was looking forward to sleeping in. I was a little disturbed, then, when my sister called me around 6:50 AM, and more disturbed when I was awake enough to comprehend what was going on. (My family was on a California road trip and were that day traveling from Monterey to San Francisco.) I first turned on CNN just after the South Tower collapsed, and the anchors said they didn't know if it was still standing. I remember thinking, "How could you not know if the tower is there?"

But this is about September 11 at Disneyland. My roommate, who also worked in Guest Relations, was scheduled either on a VIP Tour or in the Disney Special Activities office, helping to coordinate tours for the day. Although the vast majority of Park Cast Members were paid to stay home that day, he was requested to come in to help with possible chaos at the Resort Hotels. As I watched the news all day, I heard a few times from my friend and co-worker David, who showed up at work before management decided on the closure, and worked there all day. A skeleton Guest Relations crew staffed the Phone Room. Mid-afternoon he called me up and said they desperately needed something to eat, and asked if I wanted to accompany him to get some food and then return to Disneyland.

I jumped at the chance. I had been watching news coverage alone in my apartment for probably eight hours, and I could use the break. The possibility of seeing an empty Disneyland also intrigued me. Based on David's advice about the day's security, I dressed up. He picked me up and we went to Sav-on to pick up some snacks, and then went to the Park. We didn't have much of a problem getting past Security to the Main Entry Plaza, but we did have to call one of our Leads to open up a gate for us to get into the Park. There weren't too many Guest Relations people working--perhaps between ten and twelve. The most memorable part of the visit was when our manager said she had borrowed a golf cart and needed me and David to drop it off somewhere--anywhere--else in the Park. We took this opportunity to drive completely around the Park On Stage.

I apologize for the quality of the photos. We only had a disposable camera to work with. David had already taken a couple photos earlier in the day, including the somber image above. I look at it and wonder if that day there were fewer people at the Park than at any other time since before its opening. On the regular winter closure days, there would have been a whole slew of maintenance and craftspeople on the clock; on September 11, there were very few people to be found anywhere.

This is another photograph shot earlier in the day... I'll never get used to seeing Disneyland so empty.

We only had a limited number of photos available with the disposable camera, but I just had to get this really sad-looking closure announcement. (Sad because of how non-Disney it looks!) It reads:

SORRY FOLKS!

The Country Bear Playhouse has closed permanently, and our Bears have gone into permanent hibernation.

We invite you to visit Splash Mountain or the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes! Thank you.

COUNTRY BEAR PLAYHOUSE
MARCH 24, 1972 - SEPTEMBER 9, 2001

Did I mention how few people there were around anywhere? I don't remember seeing a single person on our golf cart jaunt until we got to Fantasyland.

These four shots are impossible to get empty under any normal circumstances.

David and I thought the Anaheim PD vehicle to be very interesting; neither of us had seen it before. The officers were doing the same thing we were doing--out taking pictures of an empty Park!

As much as I love photos of Disneyland without Guests, it's impossible to look at these photos and not think about how important Guests are to the Park. This is literally all I remember of September 11. I don't remember what happened after I left the Park. I had closing GCS shifts Wednesday through Saturday, and I remember how moving it was to go out to the Flag Retreat Ceremony each evening with other Guest Relations Cast Members. On Friday, a large contingent of Cast Members gathered, as can be seen in the following photo I downloaded from disneygeek.com at the time:

I'll certainly never forget my time at Disneyland on or following September 11.