[image]IN DISNEYLAND: Top picture shows castle which is entrance to Fantasyland. At lower left is Tomorrowland's giant "space rocket" on which you "ride" to moon. At right is Congo River boat which takes you across Adventureland.[/image]
I SPENT four hours “out of this world.”
No, I wasn’t riding the man-made moon that you read about on page 8. I was in a magic kingdom known as “Disneyland.”
The nearest thing you can compare it to is an amusement park. But that’s like calling the Mississippi River a “creek.” It doesn’t tell half the story!
Walt Disney, who created Mickey Mouse and the Disneyland TV show, planned the Disneyland park. It’s 22 miles southeast of Los Angeles, at Anaheim, Calif. A year ago, an orange grove grew on the 160-acre site. Disney spent $17,000,000 to build Disneyland.
A SHOWPLACE FOR ALL
He calls it “a playground—something of a fair, a city from the Arabian Nights, a showplace of magic and living facts. But above all it is a place for people to find happiness and knowledge.”
Thousands of people flock into Disneyland every day. I was lucky enough to be one of the very first visitors. In fact, I toured the park three weeks before it opened to the public on July 18. It was like watching a dream come to life.
Inside the entrance gate, I found myself on “Main Street U.S.A.” It was like going into a “time machine” and coming out in a small U.S. town of the 1890’s.
There was the gas-lighted street, the “ice cream parlor,” the fire house with horse-drawn engine. A horse-drawn street car was clanging up and down the street.
Every detail was exact. But, like everything in Disneyland, “Main Street U.S.A.” is built to four-fifths of real size.
At the end of the street is “The Plaza.” Walkways lead in four directions to the four enchanted kingdoms of Disneyland.
THE "FOUR KINGDOMS"
You enter Fantasyland through the gates of a castle whose towers jut 70 feet into the air. Inside are unusual rides of all kinds. You can sail the sea with Peter Pan on a pirate ship. You can go underground on a mining cart to the Seven Dwarfs’ diamond mines. You can zoom through the air on Dumbo, the flying elephant.
Frontierland is the U. S. West of pioneer times. Through the gates of a stockade, you enter an old log fort. Inside is a frontier town. Its people are Indians and leather-clad frontiersmen. The town has a wooden sidewalk, blacksmith shop, and a station where you can buy a ticket to ride a real stage coach.
High point of Adventureland is a boat trip on the Congo River of Africa. At every bend in the river, lifelike wild animals snort and bellow and growl. They’re rubber and quite harmless. But they make loud noises.
Finally, in Tomorrowland, you find a giant “space rocket.” Inside, you “blast off” on a make-believe flight to the moon. The “portholes” are huge picture screens. Looking into them, you see the Earth growing smaller, the Moon getting bigger.
Who knows? Some of the young rocket passengers at Tomorrowland may live to make a real flight to the moon!
Perhaps you live too far away to visit Disneyland. Another new show-place, in the eastern part of the U. S., is “Storyland.” It’s at Neptune, New Jersey.
Storyland is a 50-acre park. You’ll meet such old familiar story-friends as King Arthur, Jonah (with his whale), Aladdin and his wonderful lamp, and Cinderella.
