Phoenix Delivers Blast From the Past

Friday, July 23, 2010

Page 15

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Phoenix Delivers Blast From the Past

By J’AMY PACHECO

To all who come to this happy place: welcome. Disneyland is your land.

—Walt Disney

It’s no secret that Disneyland is my happy place. It is, therefore, a pretty good bet that you can find me at the Happiest Place on Earth each July 17 celebrating Disneyland’s anniversary.

This year, my daughter and I took a detour on our way to Disneyland’s 55th anniversary celebration, stopping by a Garden Grove hotel to view a slide presentation by an entertainer named Charles Phoenix and hosted by the online site MousePlanet.

I didn’t really know what to expect from the presentation, but I knew I was going to like this guy the moment he entered the sold-out ballroom. He wore a sparkly hot-pink suit, aqua shoes, and a Mickey Mouse ear hat. It’s not an outfit that would work for everybody, but Phoenix pulled it off—with style.

For 90 minutes, we sat in the dark as Phoenix gave a narration that accompanied slides depicting tourists visiting Disneyland over decades past. The slides were fascinating for their historical value and hilarious for their content.

I know a great deal about Disneyland, but even I learned some new facts. While I am familiar with the House of the Future that stood from 1957 to 1967, for example, I’d never seen images of the inside. There it was on the screen—the boy’s bedroom in all its red plastic glory. The house even contained a big white predecessor to today’s big screen television. How cool is that?

Rides and attractions I’d enjoyed as a child were shown—GE’s “Carousel of Progress,” the Circle-Vision film, “America the Beautiful,” the Skyway, the PeopleMover and Captain Hook’s ship, where I loved getting tuna sandwiches. A slide showing another of my former favorite Disneyland restaurants, Casa de Fritos, actually drew applause from the crowd of Disney fans.

Reliving the nostalgia of Disneyland’s early days was fun, but what made the slide show unique was that it was filled with vacation photos. Long legged kids in summer shorts; overdressed mothers in dresses, pearls and gloves; people in serious and silly poses who probably never dreamed their vacation photos would be shown to the public in 2010.

Phoenix explained that he obtains the photos by visiting flea markets, thrift stores and estate sales. He searches through them until he finds just the right image to capture a particular moment in time; a snapshot of a cultural image that might otherwise one day be lost forever.

Disneyland isn’t the only cultural phenomenon into which Phoenix breathes new life—I bought one of his books, titled, “Southern California in the ’50s.” In it are images that capture pop culture in the Golden State of the 1950s. One of my favorites is a 1956 brochure advertising a Whittier housing tract.

“Happy Mothers Make Happy Homes,” the brochure exclaims. “Scientific room arrangement, planned with her preferences specifically in mind, will make mother happy as a lark! So will Flamingo Rancho’s labor-saving Blue Flame kitchen!”

(If I was the mom in question, I’d be happier that Whittier is so close to Disneyland than I would be with a labor-saving kitchen. But that’s me.)

Pacific Ocean Park, Calico Ghost Town, Santa’s Village, and the Apple Valley Inn are all featured in the book, and all places I remember first visiting as a child. Of course, Disneyland is there, too, with its own section.

Much in the Magic Kingdom has changed over the past 55 years. The trees are taller; the flowers more plentiful. The Skyway buckets are gone, and the PeopleMover track remains unused.

The Monorail still transports guests around Disneyland, and somehow manages to keep looking futuristic. The Matterhorn continues to soar over the park, serving as a beacon for anxious visitors; an answer to the question, “Are we there yet?”

But as Phoenix’s presentation and my trip later that day to Disneyland demonstrated, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed: the faces of the guests who continue to fill Walt Disney’s park.

Compare a picture of guests spinning a cup on the Mad Tea Party ride today to one from the 1950s and you’ll spot the same thing. Compare photos of children meeting Mickey Mouse over the years, and one thing will be identical: ear-to-ear smiles.

It’s been more than 55 years since Disneyland opened its gates, and at least 45 since I first visited. I can’t catch that first glimpse of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle without feeling the rush of knowing I’m at the Happiest Place on Earth.

Thanks to Charles Phoenix, I know I’m not the only one who feels—and has felt—that way. And that makes me…well, happy as a lark.