Got digital photos of your layout? How about old prints or slides? Have a way of scanning or otherwise converting them to a digital format? Then let me show you the future of scrapbooking.
There’s no need anymore to print individual photos and spend hours pasting them into a scrapbook or photo album. Today’s photo sharing sites can print them into a book for you!
A couple of days work was all it took to organize, write and order my very own layout scrapbook.
A 30 page 8" by 11" hardbound book with dust cover cost me $49.15 delivered. It would have been about $72, but I had a 40% off coupon for creating a new Shutterfly account. There were a lot of options for page layouts, including having the Shutterfly people do it for me. I chose to do it myself and have plain white pages, but there were many options for backgrounds I could have used. There were also options for
HaHa!! Becky hooked me in on that one too! Great idea, though. I know there’s at least 6 full scrapbooking totes taking up valuable train storage space in my basement…
Becky, we had some chocolate covered dates a few Christmases back, they were especially tasty. Prunes, dried figs, raisins, all good.
All kidding aside,
Great info on scrap booking. I’ve got 10 bazillion slides from railfan days I need to scan. Someday… Most of the steamers I chased aren’t running anymore. I managed to somehow miss 611 every single time.
Lucky to have seen 1361, she hasn’t turned a wheel since.
FYI, I’ve made books like this for all sorts of reasons, but wanted to add a tip. Before checking out, go to retailmenot.com and look for a coupon code. Places like Shutterfly and Snapfish almost always have coupon deals!
Rene, since you’ve looked in on this, how about Kalmbach publishing Becky’s book? Certainly it can’t be called “Disneyland,” copyrights and all, but how about “A Penny Trains Christmas?”
Keep the price reasonable and I’ll betcha it’ll sell!
Really, from what I can see from the photos in the post it’s stunning!
I’m out of the loop on what our Books department may be interested in, but if Penny is interested, message me and I’ll give you the contact person/info.
I was born in '56, one year after Disneyland opened. Our first trip to Disney was about '59 or '60. I have this fuzzy memory that has stayed with me all my life: Driving the Mark Twain riverboat! For years I have tried to figure out if this really happened, or was it just a dream. I have sat down with my mom, and in this course of reminiscing, I asked her. Yes,this really happened! Disneyland was a much more low key place back then, so there my brother and I were with our matching shirts, and crew cuts, in the pilot house of the Mark Twain. Turning the wheel, and piloting the mighty riverboat. What a great experience for a kid ! Of course, we know now the Mark Twain and Columbia are on a track, but that was a really cool experience for a 4 year old ! Don’t know if they would take the time for this today…
Another memory from the early days;
Frontierland: very well thought out, and conceived. The Jungle boat ride, Swiss Family Robinson treehouse, Tom Sawyer’s Island.
Fantasyland: basically a ride based on each of Walt’s movies. You had Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beaty’s castle, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
And then there was Tomorrowland. For the first 10 years, Tomorrowland was like that area on the back of everyone’s layout that is a " work in progress" . I am not knocking it, it just lacked the polish of the rest of Disneyland. I can remember one attraction from the early days: kids were flying model airplanes in a circle. That was it ! They also had these bumper cars that were round like a flying saucer,and floated on a cushion of air. That was actually pretty cool. And, they had the " House of Tomorrow". That’s a great concept, but probably lost on most young minds.
Then came the big makeover. About '66 or '67, Disney advertised big. New attractions. Things got real exciting! In came " the Pirates of the Ca
I went to Disneyland back in 1971, just before taking a plane ride to my ship’s homeport in Pearl Harbor. What impressed me most was the submarine ride - probably too tame for today’s kids. When Disney World opened not long after, I remember reading in Time magazine that Disney had the world’s 7th largest sub fleet. My family went to Disney World 2 yrs. ago, and I was disapointed that the subs were no more and hadn’t been for years. It’s a shame: “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” is still one of my all-time favorite movies. To keep this train related, under a bridge on my layout you can find 2 Hallmark ornaments of the Yellow Submarine and the Nautilus at the starting line for submarine races at midnight on the 3rd Tuesday of every month (says so right on a sign). I’m hoping for a “Seaview” one day too.
This website: http://davelandweb.com/disneyland/ is indespensible to me! [:D] Take a look, you’ll really start tripping down memory lane! [:D]
Here’s a pic from the 2010 refurbishment of the ships that clearly shows the track on the concrete bottom:
The original Fort Wilderness was a real work of love, hand hewn out of real logs:
It closed in 2003 and was torn down in 2007. [:S] Only to be replaced by this “thing”:
Which isn’t open to the public and is used as a staging area for Fantasmic".
The original treehouse in the original “Disneyodendronsemperflorensextremis”:
Tarzan has lived there since 1999:
Tomorrowland was (and still is) the hardest part of the parks to get right. In this aerial view you can see the Richfield Autopia at the top and the Rocket to the Moon on the right. At the center is the original Astro Jets and just below that is the Tomorrowland Flight Circle for control line model planes!
The Flying Saucers!
They floated on a cushion of air which blasted through holes in the ground. This, as you might imagine, was a bit problematic. The
Really fantastic pictures, and info. My recollection of exact dates is only a rough "guesstimate “. I remember many of these exhibits, and the many changes. The " Haunted Mansion” contained a lot of cutting edge technology by 1960’s standards.
Here’s another humorous story you may enjoy:
On Main Street, they had an “audio animatronic” Abe Lincoln. This was also cutting edge at the time. As you may know, his motion came from pneumatics. He would stand at the end of his speech, and look quite lifelike. It was a very cool illusion.
I had a cousin who worked there for a time, and he said that over time Ol Abe developed some air leaks, and they referred to him as " Mr. Leakin’" .
Yeah, I’ve heard about the “hissing Lincoln”! [(-D]
Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, The Carousel of Progress, It’s a Small World and the Primeval World were all constructed for the 1964 New York World’s Fair:
Honest Abe moved into the Main Street Opera House in 1965:
Freaky realistic, isn’t it? Walt claimed that they even copied Lincoln’s voice characteristics for the original version. How, 100 years after his death, they managed to pull that off I can’t say.
Even though he’s quita a bit more articulate (and less hissy) the modern incarnation isn’t quite as good as the original in my opinion:
But even that looks better than the WDW Hall of Presidents version in my book:
Here’s a funny bit of Disneyland lore you may have never heard.
One day Walt discovered to his horror that there was unused space inside Sleeping Beauty Castle. Gathering up some of his imagineers he journeyed into the park to have a look at the offending attic. To Walt, underutilization was anathema, and he just couldn’t let this continue.
So here’s Walt and several of his best and brightest ascending a ladder into a recess of the castle that was never intended to be used for anything except keeping the roof up and maybe a bit of storage. In their everyday business attire by the way, they had to do this while the park was open after all. Upon entering the loft, they quickly de
That sounds like my first apartment. Never heard that one before.
Do you remember the train ride through "Nature’s Wonderland " ?
At least, I think that was what it was called. It was a saddle tank Porter, sort of a mine train. It went through a desert landscape with bright bubbling mud. Geothermal activity, but the mud was bright blue, red and such. It’s a great example of early Disneyland. The rides were somewhat quaint, but lots of fun. I loved that train, when I was a kid. The fastest ride they had then was the Matterhorn bobsleds. How tame that seems now !
You know, the rides that have come and gone would be an interesting sub topic, all in itself.
