Post #446755 by quickiki on Mon, Apr 13, 2009 1:44 PM

Saw a segment on the "Disney Treasures" DVD series called "Disneyland USA" that showed Walt Disney explaining audio-animatronics and had a little feature on the Enchanted Tiki Room. It was a segment that was taken from the Wonderful World of Disney TV show (I believe) and has a narration by Jose the parrot explaining the "technology" of the animatronics with a behind the scenes look at the control room. It was a hoot seeing the computers as big a commercial refrigerators running program tapes along with all the relays to animate the birds.

There's also a segment explaining the new attractions to the park with Walt introducing various imagineers such as Rolly Crump, Mary Blair and Marc Davis, showing off their various projects. It's kind of cool to see these icons in illustration although the pacing and structure of the segment is really stiff and unintentionally funny, largely because Disney comes off as a clueless and out of touch dolt.

One DVD segment is of a rather hokey Annette Funicello and Bobby Rydell singing, that I'm sure looks completely goofy by today's youth. Clips showing the dedication of the monorail by the Nixons and the Shaw of Iran riding the Materhorn with his wife are great newsreel footage (I guess it's true about the saying that there's no such thing as bad publicity). Most of the rest of the DVD is pretty forgettable with clips repeated throughout the disc, but if you can pick it up used and you're a Disneyland nut, go for it.

[ Edited by: quickiki 2009-04-13 13:46 ]