The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • 60

Sunday, Aug. 141955 Page 10 Orlanbo FLORIDA MAGAZINE Hi i ru" i r'S I 1 DAVY CROCKETT Fess Parker, complete with coonskin cap can be seen hanging around the blockhouse entrance to Frontierland. Disneyland has parking area for 12,175 cars. AIR CASTLE The spires of the castle soar above everything at Walt Disney's fabulous one man world's fair. Disnev- I I I I i iL A L.r i .1 I I A I iana wnicn openea iasi monm ai rvnaneim, jusr sou in or LOS Angeies.

if 1 1 fv, it RIVERBOAT This 1905 replica of romantic stern-wheeler takes goggle-eyed tourists on leisurely cruise of Disney- made river for four bits a head. it 1 it M. crecutea ai me wnue House j. expect to see the Mickey Mouse newsreel filming the president. "We have all kinds of ideas.

If a boys tells us he wants to be an airlines pilot, we'll put him on a plane and let him fly all over the country. We'll see what he sees, just like Cinerama. Or if a girl wants to be a nurse, we'll enroll her at a hospital and let her go through the routine." Though in TV up to his neck, Walt is not neglecting his movie work. His Lady and the Tramp is on theater screens now and Sleeping Beauty is upcoming, along with a wide-screen release of Fantasia, which flopped the first time out a good many years ago. In the works are a number of nature pictures on the order of his enormously successful The Vanishing Prairie.

He has photographers everywhere: Africa, Japan, the Arctic, Australia and Sardinia. You'll soon be seeing The African Lion and, shortly thereafter, The Little Outlaw, filmed in Mexico 11 A I By FLORABEL MUIR LOS ANGELES The most spectacular idea that Walt Disney has come up with in 30 years of profitable daydreaming became a reality when his one-man world's fair, Disneyland, opened at Anaheim, Calif. I've just taken a tour of this unique, $17 million wonderland that Disney beamingly refers to as "160 acres of happiness." My guide was the boss himself. Like a kid who's got the toy he always wanted, 53-year-old Walt bubbled with boyish pride and excitement as he ushered me into his brand-new world of make believe. 'Just what is Disneyland?" I asked him.

"It's a fabulous playground," he answered. "Something of a fair, a pity from the Arabian Nights, a metropolis of the future, a showpiece of tnagic and living facts, but above all, a place for people to find happiness and knowledge. It's something I dreamed lip years ago." We entered the grounds through an old-time railroad station and climbed Into a scaled-down replica of the locomotives that puffed their way west three-quarters of a century ago. The Shiny little engine will pull six coaches tarrying 300 passengers around the mile and a half perimeter of Disneyland. OWES IT ALL TO "CASEY JONES" i Sharing the engineer's seat with Disney was a grinning Mickey Mouse, the first product of Disney's boundless imagination and founder of his fortunes.

During our ride Walt directed part of his conversation to me and part to Mickey, calling him "Casey Jones." Back at the station, he called my attention to a reproduction of a small town Main Street of the last century. "Complete even to horse-drawn streetcars that the visitors can ride," Walt said proudly. i The buildings are not false fronts such as are to be seen on every studio lot in Hollywood. Each has four walls and a roof and is scaled down to 80 pet. of full size, though the one-fifth reduction in dimensions is not noticeable until your attention is called to it Walking down Main Street, I saw a photographer's shop, ice cream parlor, penny arcade, bakery, drug store, music store, grocery and a butcher shop.

These stores are operated as concessions by well known U. S. firms. Swift for instance, runs the butcher shop, though Instead of real pork, beef and lamb they sell candy imitations of their products. Disney, a pretty big firm in himself, has a store, too.

Yep, sells official, authentic, almost worn-at-the-Alamo Davy Crockett coonskin caps. The plaza at the end of Main Street Is the hub from which the visitors reach the four divisions of Disneyland To-morrowland, Fantasyland, Frontierland and Adventureland. Tomorrowland is Identified by a towering, pylon-like space rocket. "Why the rocket?" I asked Walt. "That symbolizes the scientific achievements that will be as familiar to the young people of tomorrow as Main Street is to you and me," he replied.

"Kids and grown-ups too can take a trip to the moon from here. Well, at I i wiin an au-mexican cast. In the live-action category he li scheduling King Arthur, The Great Locomotive Chase and Colorado Expedition. "When do you rest?" I asked Walt as he listed his projects. "I used to rest on Sundays, but it became a terrible bore to loaf around all day," he said.

"I can skip that now because Disneyland gives me a fine excuse not to rest. Time sure flies." Back in 1946 Walt was in pretty low spirits. He was in the red, for one 1 4 i that the city's boundaries have been expanded four times in the past five years. Right now there are 5,000 more acres in various stages of annexation. "They're saying around here," Perry said, "that people out-number oranges two to one in Anaheim.

Since the advent of Disneyland we're now calling ourselves the new center of Southern California." A number of money-minded men, among them Jack Wrather, the oil millionaire and movie producer who married Bonita Granville, grabbed opportunities to ride on the Disneyland gravy train. Noting that the immediate area was short on first-class hotels, Wrather leased a 30-acre orange grove across the street from Disneyland and is building a $10 million, 650-room motel on the property. He figures it will take at least a week for a family to see all there is to see at Disneyland. To clinch the trade he will offer day and night nursery service and staff sitters to stay with the kids when mama and papa tire of Disneyland and want to step out for a night in the gin mills. With Disneyland going full blast, there are about 500 people on Walt's payroll and another 600 working for the concessionaires.

The total payroll runs to better than $125,000 a week. Disney paid $300,000 for the park's 210 acres the present layout of 160 acres apparently is just the start, which were a part of an old Spanish land grant. It is possible to handle 60,000 people a day with space to park 12,175 cars. Admission is $1 for adults and 50 cts. for children.

The rides vary in price from 15 to 25 cts. with the exception of the Mark Twain river steamer, which will cost adults 50 cts. Disneyland's opening found Walt at the pinnacle of a career that has had its ups and downs but has always kept him the busiest man In Hollywood. His Disneyland program, particularly Davy Crockett, hit television with an impact that even shook Arthur Godfrey off his lofty perch. His ABC network show is pulling in some 15,000 letters a week to the Disney Studios.

This fall Walt is starting a new series of 26 shows, carrying on his historical adventure theme in two features: Johnny Tremaine, the story of a boy who lived during the Revolution and witnessed Paul Revere's Ride, the Boston Tea Party and the Eattle of Lexington, and Children of the Covered Wagon, in which Fess Parker will discard his b'ar rifle for a prairie surgeon's scalpel MICKEY AT THE WHITE HOUSE? Also scheduled for the autumn is The Mickey Mouse Club, an hour-long, five-a-week children's newsreel in which Mickey will be master of ceremonies. "Our photographers all over the world will send in film showing what children in other lands are doing," Walt said. "As soon as we are ac- hopes and dreams," Walt told me dreamily as we stood across the moat from a soaring, pastel-tinted fairy castle right off the Disney drawing boards. DUNGEON BUT NO OGRE The drawbridge clanked into place and we crossed the moat into a courtyard where a King. Arthur carousel whirled.

Up a set of stone steps we found Sleeping Beauty sacked up in medieval splendor in a vaulted bedchamber. Below was a dungeon not yet staffed with a resident ogre equipped with kiddie-size implements of torture. Fantasyland offers alluring rides, though nothing like those found in a conventional amusement park. There's the Peter Pan that takes you flying over a moonlit London in a pirate galleon to a Never Never Land of mermaids, buccaneers, Indians and lost little boys. There's the Snow White that carries you into the den of the wicked witch, and the Mr.

Toad Drive-Thru a trip in a 1903 automobile that goes careening into a barn and delivers you beyond the pearly gates to the accompaniment of heavenly music. Each amusement in Fantasyland relates to a character created by Disney and his cartoonists. On hand are Dumbo the elephant, the Three Little Pigs, the Seven Dwarfs, Pinnochio and all the rest. The section of the park that I fell for hardest is Adventureland. It is a Ta-hitian settlement with a rich display of tropical birds, fish, shells and flowers.

You can buy souvenirs at the Trading Post just as if you were actually in the South Seas. An explorer's boat takes you down a tropical river where an electrical impulse starts lifelike plastic crocodiles swimming toward the boat. On the lush banks of the river are rhinos, hippos, elephants and lions that grunt, trumpet and roar and move about. They're the creations of Bob Matte, who built the giant squid for Disney's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." Next year Walt plans to build International Street, an exhibit depicting a portion of each of the world's major cities except those behind the Iron Curtain. He'll never finish the project, nor does he want to.

That's why Disneyland is so vital to him. He'll never run out of new toys. Walt is a very practical dreamer. Disneyland was thought out to the last profit potential In effect, he's built himself a dream world which will be paid for by the millions who are expected to flock in, and by the concessionaires who'll cater to them. A committee selected Anaheim as the site because it is the fastest-growing community in the U.

S. The town, about 22 miles southeast of Los Angeles, has a population of 30,000 exactly twice the figure listed in the 1950 census. With Disneyland operating, Anaheim's businessmen confidently predict a population of 100,000 by 1960. CofC President Herbert Perry told me CASEY JONES Walt Disney and his partner Mickey Mouse wave happily from the cab of the train that takes visitors over a mile and a half of uniig, aim uieie uiuu i seem iu ue much future in the cartoons that had made him famous. Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry had edged out Mickey Mouse in popular favor.

So, Walt had to start dreaming again. "Would you say that you're a success now?" I asked him. "I must be," he said with a laugh. "I owe the banks $8 million." His obligations don't worry him. He lets his brother, Roy, grapple with the financiers.

"I just tell him how much I need," he said, "and he always comes up with it." BUILT FOR HIS GRANDSON Everybody connected with Disney, land expects to make a pile of money. The businessmen of Anaheim can't help but profit, and they look on Disney as a sort of empire builder. Walt himself foresees a long, long success for Disneyland. "I'm looking forward to showing the place to my grandson," he said. Walt's daughter Diane's son is only a few months old.

By the time he's big enough to appreciate the wonders of his granddad's playground, Disneyland will have been rebuilt a couple of times. I could tell by the gleam in Walt's eyes that he'll be busy for years creating new attractions for his favorite plaything. It's a cinch it will keep him from growing old. least they can board a passenger rocket and have all the thrills of such a trip and in accord with the latest scientific theories on interplanetary travel." Timid souls who don't care to risk outer space can peer at the U. S.

from an innerspace, manmade satellite orbiting 500 Disney miles above the earth. Those who like to dwell in the past can explore the wild frontier where Davy Crockett was king. ACCEPT WAMPUM To go back into history you pass through the gates of an old log blockhouse guarding Frontierland, where Indians decked out in skins, beads and feathers grunt "How!" at visiting palefaces who have obtained a safe-conduct by paying $1 at the main gate. Disney's captive Crockett, Fess Parker is around a part of the time to swap lies with the small fry. Western-type stores and buildings the marshal's office, the jail, the general store and every other enterprise you've ever seen in a horse opera line the boardwalks of the towni You can board a buckboard.

a covered wagon or a stagecoach for a ride through the Tainted Desert, which is infested with Disney creatures that look even better than the real thing and happily don't bite or sting. With a couple of exceptions, every diversion a hairy plainsman could find in a frontier outpost is available to Frontierland visitors. One exception is liquor. Disney has even banned beer, though the sudsmakers made him some mighty tempting offers. "I could have got most of my costs back with beer concessions alone," Walt told me.

"A lot of adults will cpme here, but Disneyland- is primarily for children, and I don't think kids and liquor mix." Thirsty visitors are directed to the Golden Horseshoe, the "longest little bar with the tallest glassful of pop," which faces on a river dock in Frontier-land. There you can board a 105-foot stern-wheel steamboat, the Mark Twain, for a cruise on the rivers of America. The waterways are linked together by a pumping system that keeps the water flowing crystal clear. The section of the playground called Fantasyland is what the younger kids will go for. "This is the world of imagination,.