Welcome to Extinct Attractions. With Disneyland’s opening anniversary fast approaching, this week, I looked back at an attraction that dove into the park’s history.
Via Designing Disney
Next Wednesday, Disneyland will be celebrating its 69th anniversary, with a likely lowkey affair. Generally, Disneyland will do a little cavalcade to celebrate with a bunch of lesser known characters appearing to help the day feel more special. Disneyland’s last big celebration for an anniversary was for the 60th anniversary in 2015, the park’s Diamond Celebration. We’ll see if anything is announced at D23 in terms of a 70th anniversary event, but my guess would be that Disneyland’s next big anniversary celebration will be in 2030 for the 75th, especially with Walt Disney’s World 50th still relatively recent.
Disneyland on Opening Day looked a lot different than it does today, but one facet of the park that doesn’t look too different today is the Main Street Opera House (at least in appearance). After about a decade, the Opera House became home to Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, with the 16th President amazing guests for a few years before a film about the life of Walt Disney took over for a couple of years, with the two experiences ultimately being combined until 2005, which is where today’s featured attraction comes into play.
Via Pinterest
We are coming up on the 20th anniversary of Disneyland’s 50th anniversary, which many (including myself) consider the best anniversary celebration in theme park history. The 50th anniversary included a lot of additional experiences across Disney Parks around the entire world, but today’s attraction was added to Disneyland itself at the start of the celebration on May 5, 2005. Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years took over the Opera House with the lobby area featuring models, photos, and concept art from across the history of Disneyland. But the most exciting addition was a scale model of the park as it was created in 1955.
While the exhibit was cool in and of itself, Disney decided to take it one step further and add a new show in lieu of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, with Steve Martin enlisted to host the show, though Donald Duck himself had a bit to say about that. Steve opened the show with a little magic trick to amaze some families around him, though Donald was not quite as impressed. Steve shrugged it off and went on to explain that he had started his career working at the Magic Shop on Main Street in 1960, making him the perfect person to host this film, well, at least according to him.
With the film diving into the history of Disneyland, Steve then let Walt take the wheel for a little while as Walt told the story of his time at Griffith Park that inspired Disneyland, a place where families could experience attractions together. The movie went on to a deep dive (for a theme park) into the construction of Disneyland, with a very cool timelapse of it being built and a fun story of a colorblind bulldozer who took out only the trees that Walt wanted to keep up. I also appreciated that the film wasn’t afraid to dive into the craziness of the park’s Opening Day and acknowledge the mess that that day was.
Via Wikipedia
With some of the history out of the way, it was time for a little more fun as Steve popped back on screen, this time dressed as a Jungle Cruise skipper taking a boat out for a little spin. Donald was still a bit angry (a shocker, I know) and hopped onto an elephant to douse Steve after he had made the classic joke about it being a little bit of dry humor. From there, Steve and Donald took a look at each of the lands that were part of the park on Opening Day, with some footage from countless extinct attractions shown throughout. For a guy like me, it was a true gold mine to see bits and pieces of so many attractions that I sadly never got to experience myself.
Along the way, Steve appeared in various costumes to make him look like he was part of the action in each attraction, with my favorite being when he appeared alongside the Country Bears. That diversion helped segue into a look at live entertainment in the park, an often overlooked element especially when considering how much of it is no longer a part of the parks. After that, there was just a fireworks finale left with Steve and Donald coming to terms with the fact that they made a pretty good team.
Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years was a perfect showcase of the “edutainment,” blending the history of Disneyland perfectly with the humor of Steve Martin and some fun character animation in Donald. The show had a good amount of heart, while also making you chuckle a lot. It was a perfect fit for the 50th anniversary, especially with a runtime of fifteen minutes to kill some time during those busy summer days.
Amazingly, the show managed to stick around until March 15, 2009, almost four years after the end of the 50th anniversary, a pretty amazing amount of time for a show that was primarily geared towards celebrating a very specific event. But it wasn’t truly the end of the show, as all of the exhibits remained in the lobby with a slightly-shortened version of the movie added to a television there starting on September 26, 2009. The new hybrid version of the attraction was christened The Disneyland Story Starring Great Moment with Mr. Lincoln, a bit of a stretch but it remains that way to this day. The video was brought back to its original length in 2013, but was ultimately removed completely on October 18, 2023 with the new animated short Once Upon a Studio taking its place. I’m not ruling out it ever returning in the future, but it was cool that something created for such a specific event was able to live on as long as it did.
Via Resort TV1
As always, don’t forget to check out my interactive maps of the Disney Parks throughout the years where you can watch or learn more about all the attractions from every Disney park around the world.
Thanks for reading and have a magical day!