Bob Gurr on the original Alice attractions,

Bob Gurr on the original Alice attractions
Page 2 of 2

On the Mad Tea Party...
In DT 9 for January 10, 2001, you can find the following:

"One redesign experience was when Disneyland became weary of welding up the Tea Cup ride. Roger Broggie gave me the redesign task. I spent hours laying on my back underneath the ride when it was running, just watching all the parts in motion until I had an idea of what the cure should be. I drew up the plans for a new Tea Cup structure and wheel support system, it was built and reinstalled in early 1956. No more welding. But It¹s still the only Disneyland Ride I¹ve never been on, but been under a lot".

The Tea Cup re-design started in the fall of 1955 and was the first full re-design rather than a patchwork fix to troublesome rides. Since opening day, the Tea Cups had the welding crew repairing the almost continuously cracking metal in the main deck structure as well as in the three smaller decks. All the time this kind of temporary repair was going on, the ride was almost always available for the guests, usually after about 10:00 am in the morning when the welders left to fix other rides.

Not long after Disneyland opened, a girl broke her wrist as she was struck by the tea cup handle when she exited the still spinning cup as the ride came to a stop. I was asked to design a quick fix to make the spinning cups stop when the ride stopped. Folks loved to see how fast they could get the cups to spin, and the handles could give you a mighty whack if you weren't careful.

I used an automotive axle assembly complete with outer wheel bearing and seals, brake drum. and wheel lug bolts. This gave us a real strong vertical tea cup mounting post and a great bolting detail to the ride decks. I modified the axle spline end (top of the post on the cup) to add a top bearing and the stationery wheel which you grabbed to spin the cup.

I used a Wagner 12 volt DC trailer axle brake assembly inside the brake drum. Electrical power was supplied to all the tea cup brakes when the ride stopped. We had to adjust the braking power carefully to avoid dumping all the guests out the tea cup entrance openings when they were spinning madly as the ride stopped.

After school was back in session in the fall of 1955, Disneyland was able to take a breather and catch up with all the rides that needed fixing. So I began to study the action of the ride very closely to see why it was cracking so badly. I did this by laying on my back on an auto repair creeper so I could scootch myself anywhere in the pit below the ride. Sometimes I would have someone run the ride for a long time with me underneath without getting mashed up in the machinery until I yelled "stop".

I well remember the design education that I was getting by watching the ride in motion. All the engineering considerations of metal fatigue from welded parts getting flexed by the rigid support wheels was becoming clear to me. I did a lot of study about welded steel structures, and all the wrong ways to design and build them. We had some great welders up at the Burbank Studio Machine Shop who showed me all the good ways to weld metal parts together and told me many welders stories. One of the guys, Fred Hilst, always wore striped coveralls and was also an Oklahoma minister. He loved to teach me all the welding secrets he had learned in his lifetime.

Soon I had enough facts about why the original tea cup decks were failing. I proposed that we build an entire new big deck complete with three new little decks, all mounted on support wheels with a spring suspension system. After I completed all the construction drawings, the fabrication job was given to a company in nearby Paramount, California. These folks had previously built the Tomorrowland Rocket and Disneyland could trust their work. They asked for and got a "turnkey cost plus" contract from Disneyland.....a business rarity in later years.

All the new parts were delivered to Disneyland in the spring of 1956, assembled and tested to everyone's satisfaction. I never heard a squawk from the Tea Cups ever again as I was assigned to an ever increasing amount of re-designs and brand new attractions to design from scratch. The Mad Tea Party was my official launching pad to ever more complex designs in the future.

Sorry I never got around to riding it!

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-- Posted July 30, 2001
-- Story by Bob Gurr

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