Behind the Magic: 50 Years of Disneyland exhibit review About This Page:

[Politzania]

We attended the Behind the Magic: 50 Years of Disneyland exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum in metro Detroit on Sunday, Oct 23. This exhibit is ticketed separately from admission to the museum and is also a timed ticket – you choose when you plan on arriving at the exhibit. However, once you are in the exhibit, you may stay as long as you like. We spent almost 2 hours in the exhibit and felt as if we got a good look at everything and thanks to the timed tickets, we never felt crowded or rushed.

In honor of this exhibit, the main entrance to the museum is topped with a large pair of Mickey ears. A Jolly Trolley out front of the exhibit is easy to see from the main entryway into the museum area.

The exhibit is primarily source material for the park and the attractions - concept drawings, color schemes, maquettes and artist renditions. There are some interactive displays, but many of the younger children we saw (10 and under) seemed a little bored. The show starts with the planning of the park itself, including some sketches of the original plans for the Burbank studio area. The Herb Ryman bird’s-eye sketch of Disneyland has a wall of its own, as well as a short video clip of Marty Sklar talking about how it was created over a weekend, with Walt pouring out his ideas to Ryman. A copy of the sales pitch that Roy gave to the TV stations is nearby – unfortunately, you only see the front cover.

From there, you move through short hallway with Main street drawings (including a postcard of Marceline MO) to a large area with material and exhibits for each of the 4 original lands: Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. There was also an interactive kiosk for each land; you maneuvered a trackball around the screen to point and click on photos, drawings and film clips associated with each land, including themed commercials for the time period (Cheerios, Ipana and Maypo, for example). The Adventureland kiosk seemed to have the most ride-specific video clips.

The next room had information about the different castles in each Disney park; including a color/paint guide for the Hong Kong Disneyland castle, which most closely resembles the original Anaheim one. A very futuristic-looking concept drawing was presented as a possibility for Disneyland Paris; however, the decision to “make the castle look like a castle” ruled out that design.

The next section dealt with some of non-attraction details of the parks – menus and artwork for some of the restaurants was presented, and a couple of themed trash cans were on display. The original ticketing system was also discussed with samples of the ticket books and ticket booths. The Disneyland Hotel was also represented in a display, with room rates between $16 and $23 a night! They also had a color scheme for the “green room” – with bright green shag carpet and a loud floral bedspread pattern….. definitely from the late 1960’s!

The next section was titled “Dreams Never Die” and included sketches and designs for attractions and lands that were either never used (yet) or modified for another Disney property. Edison Square, originally planned for Disneyland behind Main Street and next to Tomorrowland, later had some of its ideas used in the Carousel of Progress. Liberty Square was another concept that became a part of Walt Disney World. Make sure to look for the attraction list and drawings for Disney’s America – the theme park originally planned near Washington DC in the late 1980’s. Another shelved concept had Casey Jr. running through Big Candy Mountain during part of its trip; however, the mockup used real candy, and in the hot summer weather, it started to melt and attracted birds to the open windows!

A small section was devoted to cast members, with pages from the dress guidelines booklets reproduced on thick plastic pages. A mirror with a measuring stick demonstrated the height requirements for cast members as well. However, there was no mention of the “special friends” of the characters… but I’m not sure how that could have been presented without spoiling some of the magic.

The remainder of the exhibit focused on ride-specific materials. Vehicles included a Peter Pan boat and Toad’s Wild Ride car, as well as the Jolly Trolley out front of the exhibit. You could get in the vehicles, but since no photography was allowed in the exhibit, we’d have to make do with memories. I suppose they could have had a museum staff member taking Polaroid or digital pictures of families; and then sold those pictures for a few dollars in the Gallery Store.

As mentioned in most promo materials for the exhibit, the original 1964 World’s Fair audio-animatronic figure of Abraham Lincoln was on display, undressed so as to show off the mechanism. Drawings and models of Lincoln were included in this section as well, including the lid of the crate he was shipped “back home” in.

Other attractions highlighted included it’s a small world, Alice in Wonderland, Mickey’s Toontown, and Indiana Jones and the Forbidden Eye. Part of the storyboard for Splash Mountain hung on one wall, while a large model of Adventureland and the Jungle Cruise boat dock was across the hallway.

Of special interest to us were the large sections on Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion. The Pirates section included a discussion of audio-animatronics with the programming panel and other equipment used to set up a character. An interactive kiosk next to the original equipment allowed you to “program” a pirate stick figure with up to 20 simple moves in order to dance a pirate jig. A diagram of the original walk-through version of Pirates was on display; but we were surprised that the same concept for Haunted Mansion was not presented. The exhibit did have life-size reproductions of the stretching room pictures, as well as the Medusa portrait, where simulated lightning and thunder showed off her “other side”. A maquette of one of the hitchhiking ghosts and the audio-animatronic “skeleton” of one of the ravens was also on display.

We were surprised and disappointed that the music and sound effects of the attractions were barely discussed. We also missed hearing or seeing anything about Jack Wagner, the original “voice” of Disneyland. We also couldn’t quite figure out how they decided which attractions to spotlight; a couple of the original rides had little to no representation (the Carousel and Autopia), while a modern attraction like Indy got quite a bit of space devoted to it – including a 10-foot snake statue. Even popular rides like Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain had nary a mention outside of an overview of the land they were in. I imagine availability of source material & the condition it was in had a lot to do with what was selected.

There was also no wrap-up of the exhibit that tied everything together; something that would spark the visitors’ interest in actually going to the resort. Maybe that wasn’t the intention of the exhibit, but considering Disney’s skill in self-promotion, it seemed as if something were missing. On the way home, we had a couple of ideas for additional kiosks – perhaps a map of the park that you could morph from one decade to the next, with hotspots highlighting the attractions that had been added during that time period.

Despite the above comments, we really did enjoy the exhibit and would recommend it to anyone interested in the history of Disneyland and the effort and design that goes into bringing the magic to life. It’s definitely worth a day trip (and maybe even an overnighter) if it comes to a museum near you. According to the official site for the exhibit (http://www.behindthemagic.org/site/) its next stop is San Francisco in early 2006.