Post by Kip WilliamsPost by OPost by Kip WilliamsPost by OSpeaking of the Mickey Mouse Club, anyone remember this?
http://youtu.be/phWGcOOEPZY
Those hands opening the chest are so skinny, I remembered them being
skeleton hands. Of course, I never did find out what happened to all
those gold doubloons, and pieces of eight, pieces of eight, pieces of
eight.
Sounds like Thurl Ravenscroft's deep voice there.
Sounds like a name out of Gilbert & Sullivan.
Best known as the voice of Tony the Tiger, he also recorded with the
Mellomen and many other venues (in big demand, I'd say). If you have
"Seven Dreams" by Gordon Jenkins, he plays a salesman in the train
sequence (in which Richard "Dickie" Beals plays a kid, though not in a
scene with Ravenscroft).
Wow! Yes! Tony the Tiger! That's Greeaaaate! You really do know
your stuff, Kip!
Post by Kip WilliamsPost by OPost by Kip WilliamsWe lived in Southern California in the 50s. I was born maybe some 35
miles from Disneyland. They say that my middle sister (born in '52) was
so excited to see Spin & Marty Ð Tim Consodine and David Stollery Ð that
she ran past a barrier and toddled up to them, and they thought she was
just so cute.
Tim Considine was Spin AND a Hardy Boy? Not to mention a My Three Son.
He probably got to kiss Annette behind the curtain, too.
According to Considine (doesn't look right no matter how I spell it), he
was fired from Disney because of some incident with another boy in a
swimming pool. But who knows? Maybe he'd have kissed Annette too.
Post by OPost by Kip WilliamsI'm also told that they took me to Disneyland twice before I was a year
old. I always felt cheated at not remembering it, so I made up my own
memories. Oh boy! Yogi Bear!
I grew up way too far away in Massachusetts for even thinking of going
to Disneyland. We had some decent (but no Disneyland, of course!)
amusement parks though. Unfortunately, they are all gone now.
Whalom Park? Riverside Park? The latter's a Six Flags in the town next
to where we lived for two-three years. Whalom Park's a longer story I
was researching Palisades Park and found that the rocket ride had been
sold to an amusement park in Massachusetts, not too far away. I looked
at the layout on Google Maps and started making plans to drive up, then
found out it had closed... that donations were being raised to reopen
it... and then a fire broke out in the old ballroom. Now it's condos.
We lived in Southeastern MA, so the big draw was a park called Lincoln
Park in North Dartmouth, MA. It had a great wooden roller coaster (the
last remnants of it just tore down a month ago) called the Comet, which
was good enough to claim a couple of homicides of people who fell off,
one way or another. It had a Ballroom, roller rink and bowling alley,
and tons of rides. It also had a great fun house (which would violate
every safety rule known to man now), which started with a mirror maze,
went through a room where everything was on a tilt (house that Jack
built), past an air nozzle they used to blow up women's skirts to the
end where you'd sit on a couch, which would suddenly collapse and land
you on a giant conveyor belt which you rode to the exit. It was
tremendous fun, and also had a couple of "mystery rides" where you
travel in a small electric car. My aunt met her husband at Lincoln
Park and everybody went there. It lasted more than some of the other
parks, and many of its rides are now in other parks.
Rhode Island was nearby with a couple of parks of their own, such as
Crescent Park and Rocky Point, but there were more expensive and
weren't as good as Lincoln Park, in terms of size and rides.
There was also another park North of Boston off 128 called Pleasure
Island that had a number of spectacular rides which, when they first
opened, were clearly state of the art for Amusement parks, such as a
boat ride with Moby Dick rising out of the water. That was probably
the cause of their demise, as after several years, a lot of the
mechanical rides were just broken down.. I think Pleasure Island is a
business park now. Lincoln Park was an empty lot for many years (I
think it closed in the late 1980s) with just the wooden tracks of the
Comet rotting away (nobody wanted to buy it - a pity - it was a good
coaster). But now the tracks are gone and condos will be available
soon.
It would be great if there were an amusement park with a working
old-time funhouse. There's a Laurel & Hardy silent short with the pair
going through what looked like a remarkable fun house, which was the
long gone Long Beach Amusement Park in California.
-Owen