Tag Archives: Miscellaneous post

Carl Sagan’s Birthday

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Carl_Sagan_Planetary_Society

As you may have realized by now, Barbara is extremely organized.  As she was going over topics for her blog last month she noticed that November 9th was Carl Sagan’s birthday.  I only know a little about him and begged Barbara to let me write this post so I could get to know more about this American icon.

Carl was born in Brooklyn, NY on November 9th, 1934 and died December 20th, 1996.  By all reports he was an inquisitive child with an interest in space from a very early age.  Key to his early development were a trip to the World’s Fair in 1939 and his parents providing him with both a sense of wonder and skepticism.  His family moved to New Jersey in 1948 and he graduated from Rahway High School in 1951.  He attended the University of Chicago where he earned degrees in physics, astronomy and astrophysics.  While there he also worked with notable scientists such as Gerard Kuiper and Melvin Calvin.  After college he was one of the first groups of Miller Fellows at the University, a fellowship that is only awarded to eight to ten of the most promising scientists each year.

After his 3 year Miller Fellowship he worked at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory before lecturing and researching at Harvard.  When he did not receive tenure at Harvard he went to Cornell University where he became a full professor in 1971 and where he became the director of the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research.

Voyager-Golden-Record

Being one of the brightest minds in the country and passionate about space, Sagan worked with the US Space program from its beginning.  Among his many contributions to the space program were the messages included in the Pioneer and Voyager missions.

NASA_Distinguished_Public_Service_MedalSagan also supported the search for extraterrestrial life, lobbied to get funding for and was on the board of Trustees of the SETI Institute,  an organization where signals from radio telescopes are searched for signs of intelligent life.  You can help with this search by signing up for Seti@home and letting your computer process signals while your computer is sleeping!  He also helped write the message aimed at informing potential aliens about earth sent out by the Arecibo radio telescope on November 16, 1974.  In addition, he “co-founded The Planetary Society, the largest space-interest group in the world, with over 100,000 members in more than 149 countries, and was a member of the SETI Institute Board of Trustees. Sagan served as Chairman of the Division for Planetary Science of the American Astronomical Society, as President of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union, and as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).” [Wikipedia]  He won many, many awards and honors over his life including the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, A Pulitzer prize for General Non-Fiction, the Oersted Medal and the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal.

Despite his tremendous scientific and academic achievements, Carl Sagan was best at, and is most known for his ability to popularize complex scientific concepts.  He wrote a number of bestselling books including “Cosmos” and the fiction work “Contact” which was made into a major motion picture.  Cosmos was turned into a 13 part PBS program which was watched by over 500 million people in 60 countries.  This series won both a Peabody award and an Emmy.


I’m glad Barbara let me research and write about Carl.  He is the kind of person the scientific community needs around to help people understand what they do and keep interest in research alive.  I wish I could have gotten to know him in person, but at least we have his books and television programs to inspire us.  Thanks for reading and if you want to help with any scientific research check out Seti@home or the Galaxy Zoo.

Sincerely,

Jeff Jones

War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast 1938

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OrWOTW Recording

The date was October 10, 1938, Halloween Eve and the United States was beginning to celebrate the holiday. Things were not going so great in the world as the country was in the fifth year of one of the worst depressions it had ever seen and unemployment in the US was estimated at 15%. The world was very unsettled politically, Japan was at war with China and Korea, Germany was building a large military force, had just annexed Austria and planning to take over Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union was looking for allies to assist them against Hitler, but the US and Great Britain refused.  Closer to home in the United States a hurricane killed 600 people on the east coast and a huge meteor exploded over Pennsylvania.

It was against this backdrop of anxiety and tension that people turned to radio programs to escape the reality their lives and Orson Welles was getting ready to air his adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel the “War of the Worlds” (Original Audio Broadcast).  The radio drama that night started as a series of news stories interspersed with music.  While there was an announcement at the beginning and the end of the program informing listeners that the events were not real, many people did not hear that part of the program.  Newspapers reported widespread panic and hundreds if not thousands of people called their local radio stations, fire and police departments.

The plot of the story is told mostly from the viewpoint of a dedicated radio reporter (played by Orson Welles) who follows a space alien invasion from start to finish.  The radio program starts with various radio reports about the initial appearance of the Martians in a field in New Jersey, to a scene where a brash army colonel gets melted by the Martian heat wave, to a scene where bomber pilots are incinerated.  During the attack the Martians use poisonous black smoke to subdue the defenders.  At the beginning the music is interspersed between the reports, but as the situation becomes more dire the reporter records his tale for posterity, if they survive.  The story ends with the Martians being killed, not by the best of human military might, but by germs they picked up from the humans.

The adaptation is very good.  Welles transferred the location from outside of London to New Jersey and updated the weapons used to damage the alien ships.  He kept the same tone and narrative style and captured all the plot points extremely well.  The production quality was top notch for the time as well.

In addition to the excellent staging of the show, Orson Welles was very clever about it’s production.  Wells had worked for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in its early days and it had only about 1/6th the number of listeners of its main competitor, the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC).  The Mercury Theater on the Air, Orson’s program, was in a time slot up against NBC’s much more popular “The Chase and Sanborn Hour”.  He had one key advantage in that his program was a “sustaining program”, which means they didn’t have a sponsor and had no advertising.  Orson knew the listening habits of listeners at the time and the timing of his competitor’s show.  He timed his “news” broadcasts to coincide with the commercial breaks when many radio listeners would change to other channels, these people had missed the introduction and were fooled into thinking the reports were real.

NYT Headline

The reports of panic that were published in the newspapers the next day were most likely exaggerated.  This was the time that radio was starting to pull ad revenues away from the print publications.  In addition to the fact that big headlines sell papers better, it didn’t hurt the publisher’s feelings any to make radio look bad.

Correa-Martians_vs._Thunder_Child    391px-War_of_the_worlds_illustration_pearson

Before closing I think it is appropriate to talk a bit about the original work by H.G. Wells.  “The War of the Worlds” .  It was one of the first stories about wars with aliens.  The first person style where you never even know the names of the key characters makes it feel extremely personal.  His first book, which was a non-fiction biology textbook, provided a surprising twist to musings he and his brother had one day about what it would be like if aliens descended on the earth and declared war.

The “War of the Worlds” has been in continuous print since it was published in 1898.  It has been made into numerous movies, radio dramas,  various comic book adaptations, a television series and spin off stories by other authors.

In closing I want to thank Barbara again for letting me write another post.  Not only did I learn a lot researching this stuff, but I got to listen to the original broadcast again.  Quite fun and I would recommend it to all!

Sincerely,

Jeff Jones

Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien

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J.R.R. TolkienIt’s Jeff again, here to talk about the Lord of the Rings.  The final volume of the three volume set was published, surprise, surprise, on October 20, 1955.   I read these books for the first time a long, long time ago when I was about 12.  Yes, first time.  I own and have re-read them countless times, mostly in English but several times in German.  Of course I have seen the absolutely spectacular movies and really enjoy the BBC radio dramas.

The Lord of the Rings is the sequel to The Hobbit.  It was written between 1937 and 1949 in stages by J. R. R. Tolkien.  When the publishers first approached him to write a sequel he proposed the book The Silmarillion, which was an early history of Middle Earth (the land where the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are set), but it was rejected. I have never been able to get through it, so I think that was a good choice!  Tolkien was a full time professor at Oxford so his writing progressed slowly.  The Lord of the Rings was originally supposed to be a children’s story, similar to The Hobbit, but it evolved into a much more serious and darker tale before it was completed.  The original manuscript was 9,250 pages long.  It has been officially translated into 38 languages.

Tolkien’s wish was for The Lord of the Rings to be published with the Silmarillion as a two volume set.  Post war paper shortages and the high cost of printing caused the publisher to balk at this.  They chose to split the Lord of the Rings into three books and the Silmarillion wasn’t published until after Tolkien’s death in 1973.  Each book is divided into two parts.  My favorite books are the Fellowship of the Ring (part 1) and the Return of the King (part 3).  The Two Towers, particularly where Frodo and Sam are working their way to Mordor is extremely dark and tends to drag on a bit.  It is still good, but the other parts are better.

The Lord of the Rings is an phenomenon.  It is the second best selling book of all times (excluding religious works) having sold over 150 Million copies. (Charles Dickens “A Tale of Two Cities” is the first with over 200 Million copies. Check out Wikipedia’s list of best-selling books – very interesting.)  The work has spawned multiple live action and animated movie series with action figures and all the marketing materials which is not so uncommon, but also board games, online role playing games, comic books, radio dramas, artwork and music.  Led Zeppelin songs “Misty Mountain Top”, “Ramble On”, “The Battle of Evermore” and “Over the Hills and Far Away” are all supposedly inspired by Tolkien’s works. National Geographic did a special which is currently available on Netflix or you can stream for almost nothing here: National Geographic Beyond the Movie – The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring.

There are many groups that were built around Tolkien, but he most prominent is the Tolkien Society.  There are university courses taught on Tolkien and his works.  Being a linguist, the languages he created for the different races in the books were “real” and there are societies devoted to their research and propagation.

This post is a little short and a little light on facts, but there are literally thousands of web pages, classes and programs devoted to the subject.  The best I can do here is guide you to some of them and tell you they are really, really good books.  They are exceptionally well written, fun to read and full of meaning that relate even to today’s society.  While I strongly recommend you read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I suggest you read The Hobbit first.  It is lighter and sets the stage.  Don’t get lazy and just watch the (admittedly very good) movies.  You will miss a lot!

Writing this post reminds me I haven’t re-read these books in a while.  I think I’ll go pull out my copies and take another pass at them! If you don’t have a copy you can find a wide assortment at Amazon – Tolkien Books.

Jeff Jones

The Phantom of the Opera – the Musical

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The Phantom of the Opera 1

“Le Fantome de Opera”, was originally a French novel written by Gaston Leroux and was first published in serial form in the newspaper Le Gaulois from late 1909 to early 1910.  When the story, “Phantom of the Opera” was publish later in book form but it sold very poorly and over the years there were various films and state productions, the most successful were the 1925 silent film adaptation starring Lon Chaney and the 1986 Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical.

A brief history of Andrew Lloyd Webber and “The Phantom of the Opera”

Andrew Lloyd Webber has created some of the most recognizable Broadway plays from “Evita” to “Cats” to the hugely successful “The Phantom of the Opera”.  He has received numerous awards and honors such as seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, the Kennedy Center Honors Award and a British knighthood.

Andrew Lloyd Webber was born in London, England on March 22, 1948.  He came from a musical family; his father William was a composer and organist, his mother Jean was a violinist and pianist, his brother Julian was an accomplished cellist.  Lloyd Webber was a musical prodigy and he played piano, violin, the French horn and began writing his own music at the age 6.  He studied at the Royal College of Music to pursue an interest in musical theatre.

In 1965, Lloyd Webber had started his long collaboration with Tim Rice.  Their first musical was “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and it was an immediate success.  Their next production was the 1971 “Jesus Christ Superstar” followed by the 1976 “Evita”.  By this time, Lloyd Webber and Rice had developed a tradition of composing the words and music first, then recording an album of the music and finally producing the stage play.  Unfortunately, the successful Lloyd Webber and Rice partnership ended by the 1980s.  Lloyd Webber went on to create his first solo production “Cats”, which opened in London in 1981.

Lloyd Webber had been longing to write a romantic musical and he became inspired by the 1909 “Le Fantome de Opera” book written by French author Gaston Leroux.  In collaboration with Charles Hart and with some additional material provided by Richard Stilgoe, Lloyd Webber’s score of “Phantom of the Opera” is operatic in style while maintaining the form of a traditional musical; the songs are interspersed with the play’s dialogue. In 1982, “Phantom of the Opera” premiered in London’s West End at Her Majesty’s Theatre and is the story of a beautiful soprano who becomes the obsessed with a mysterious, disfigured musical genius.  Sarah Brightman was cast as Christine and Michael Crawford played the title role of the Phantom.  For the original West End production, Hal Prince directed and Gillian Lynne provided the musical staging and choreography.  Maria Bjornson was the set designer and she created the intricate sets that included a large chandelier that seemingly crashes to the stage and a gondola that travels through the dark underground world beneath the opera house.  She also created the 200 costumes with the majority of them being the elaborate gowns in the “Masquerade” section of the play.  In 1988, “Phantom of the Opera” came to the Majestic Theater on Broadway in New York City with Crawford and Brightman reprising their roles.  Since that time, “Phantom” has become the longest-running Broadway show in history with over 10,000 performances.

Lloyd Webber’s stage production of “The Phantom of the Opera” has proven to be his most popular musical.  The total worldwide gross receipts are the highest in history at over $5.6 billion and the total Broadway gross In the United States at $845 million.  “Phantom” has been seen by millions of people in almost 150 cities in over 25 countries while the musical still continues to play in both London and New York.

A synopsis of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” musical

Prologue – Date: 1905  Location: a fictional Opera House

As the play opens there is an auction going on at an old Opera House and theater props are being sold.  Lot #665, a monkey shaped music box, has been bought by an old man named Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny. He recognizes the music box and looks fondly at it remembering someone who was once very special to him.  The auction proceeds and the next object up for bidding is lot #666, a shattered chandelier that the auctioneer says holds a mystery never fully revealed and a strange connection to a phantom that haunted the old Opera House.  As the chandelier is uncovered it appears to glow and very slowly ascends to its original place high above the theater audience as the orchestra starts to play the overture …

 Act One – Date: 1881

 As the scene opens it is several years earlier and Carlotta, the Opera House’s leading soprano, is rehearsing her performance for that evening.  Suddenly the backdrop collapses and the frightened Opera House cast members start to whisper that it is the work of the ghostly Phantom.  Unsettled by the incident, Carlotta refuses to continue with the rehearsal and will not perform under these conditions.  The new owners of the Opera House are ready to cancel the evening’s performance but Madame Giry, the ballet mistress, tells them there is a chorus girl named Christine who has a beautiful voice and she can sing Carlotta’s part.  The owners are enchanted by her voice and decided she will substitute Carlotta for the night’s performance.

Later that evening after her debut, Christine is in her dressing room when Raoul, an old childhood friend, comes backstage to congratulate her on her wonderful performance.  Christine reminds him of the Angel of the Music stories that her late father would tell them when they were children and she reveals that the reason she sings so beautifully is that the Angel has come to visit her in the past and he taught her to sing.  Raoul, who is secretly in love with Christine, tells her the stories her father told could not possibly be true and it is just a fantasy.  As Raoul leaves, the Phantom appears in Christine’s dressing room mirror.  She becomes frightened and demands that he reveal himself.  The Phantom does and he tells her that he believes her story because he is the Angel of the Music.  He convinces Christine to come with him and she follows him to a dark place beneath the Opera House.  As they board a gondola, to calm her fears, the Phantom starts to sing to her as they travel across an underground lake and go deeper into his subterranean world.

The Phantom of the Opera 2

Christine becomes frightened by something and faints. She awakens to the sounds of a strange little monkey music box.  She sees the Phantom composing music at his organ and curious about what is hidden behind the Phantom’s mask she cautiously approaches him and as he is distracted with his music she takes off his mask to find that his face is hideously deformed.  He is shocked by her actions of revealing his face and he shamefully confesses to her how he longs to look normal and wishes she could possibly love him despite the way he looks.

While the Phantom has Christine underground, Madame Giry delivers a note from the Phantom to the Opera House owners demanding that Christine replace Carlotta in his new opera, II Muto, and if they fail to meet his demands something terrible will happen.  Carlotta is very upset about the Phantom’s request and the owners assure her that she will remain the lead soprano.  But during her performance that evening the Phantom causes her to croak like a frog as she tries to continue singing.  As the ballet dancers try to go on with the show, suddenly the body of the stagehand Buquet appears hanging from the rafters and falls to the stage floor dead.  There is panic on stage and the owners plead for everyone to remain calm explaining it is just a horrible accident but a sinister laughter from the Phantom can be heard somewhere in the theater.

A frightened Christine finds Rauol and tells him of her previous encounter with the Phantom in his underground world but he does not believe her and swears to love and protect her from harm.  The Phantom is in the shadows and overhears the conversation and claims he will seek revenge against Raoul.  The scene ends with the Opera House’s large chandelier crashing to the stage and the curtain falls on Act One.

Act Two – Date: six months later

As the scene opens there is a gala masquerade ball being held and the Phantom is in attendance and disguised as the Red Death.  He reveals himself to the guests tells them he has written a new opera, Don Juan Triumphant, and demands that it be produced immediately and that Christine play the lead role.  Once again he warns that unless his demands are met there will be horrible consequences.  Christine is now engaged to Raoul and the Phantom approaches her and grabs her engagement ring and vanishes in a flash of fire and smoke.

The new opera goes into production with Christine as the lead and Raoul has a plan to set a trap to capture the Phantom, knowing the he will be attending the première. Distraught and torn between her love for Raoul and her sympathy for the Phantom, Christine goes to visit her father’s grave and wishes that he were still there to guide her.  The Phantom appears in the cemetery and Christine is once again starts to fall under his spell but Raoul arrives to rescue her.  The Phantom challenges Raoul with his words and Christine pleads with Raoul to leave with her.

On opening night of the new opera, Christine is on stage singing her duet when she realizes that she is singing with Piangi, the lead tenor, but with the Phantom.  The Phantom has strangled Piangi and uses this opportunity to express his love for Christine but she rips off his mask exposing the Phantom and the audience is shocked by his deformed face.  The Phantom grabs Christine and flees the theatre.  Madame Giry tells Raoul where to find them in the Phantom’s underground world.

The Phantom forces Christine to wear a wedding dress and Raoul finds them but the Phantom captures him.  The Phantom tells Christine that he will free Raoul if she agrees to stay with him forever and if she refuses his demand Raoul will die.  Christine comforts the Phantom and having experienced compassion for the first time he agrees to set both of them free.  After they leave the Phantom starts to weep and covers himself with his cape just as an angry mob searching for Christine arrives down in the underground world but the Phantom has vanished and only his mask remains.

Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion

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Haunted Mansion exterior April 2007With the celebration of Halloween this month I thought it would be a great time to do a post about Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion located in Anaheim, CA.  There is a Haunted Mansion attraction located in the other Disney Parks: Walt Disney World, Tokyo Disneyland, in Disneyland Paris it is known as Phantom Manor and the newest in located at Hong Kong Disneyland is known as Mystic Manor.

Back in the early 1950s, the original concept of Walt Disney’s Disneyland illustrated by legendary Imagineer Harper Goff was designed with an old manor house and adjoining graveyard on a hill overlooking the main street.  Eventually the attraction was omitted from the plans and not included when Disneyland opened in 1955.

Years later when Disney was planning an expansion of the park to include New Orleans Square located between Frotierland and Adventureland, Disney Imagineer Ken Anderson was assigned the task of creating a story using the original concept of a “haunted manor” and developing it as a walk-through attraction.  For inspiration Anderson traveled to New Orleans to study the architecture and designed an old plantation antebellum style manor in a state of disrepair.  Disney had the plans revised because he thought a neglected looking building should not be located in his clean park.  He famously said, “We will take care of the outside and the ghost can take care of the inside”.

Andersen came back with a new redesigned mansion and a basic story concept about a sea captain who kills his wife in a rage and then hangs himself when he sadly realizes the tragedy that he has caused. Additional Imagineers, Rolly Crump and Yale Gracey, were brought in to further develop the project.  In the Disney tradition of fully researching a project, the Imagineers studied ghost hauntings and old horror movies for inspiration and they experimented with different types of special effects to further expand the basic storyline.  Walt appreciated the ideas and the special effects that they were creating but he did not like the sinister stories that they were developing and the project was once again put on hold for several more years.

Disney announced the new attraction in 1961 even though Walt was still unhappy with the ride’s current concept. Construction on the building began in 1962 and the exterior of the “haunted manor” was completed by 1963.  But the building stayed empty for several years as the Disney Imagineers worked on several other attractions for the New York World’s Fair of 1964-65 and then  the project was further delayed when Walt suddenly died in 1966.

Haunted Mansion construction 1

As the project continued a few years later for the newly renamed Haunted Mansion attraction, the concept changed significantly from a walk-through to a vehicle ride attraction using the Omnimover system that was developed for the Monsanto “Adventure Thru Inner Space” ride that Disney created for the New York World’s Fair.  This new ride system would solve the problem of the original low capacity walk-through attraction.  Now these new Omnimover vehices, renamed the Doombuggies, would be able to accommodate a much higher ride capacity using approximately 131 cars with an hourly guest capacity of over 2,400.  These new ride vehicles would also help in the attraction’s storytelling because the Doombuggy could be rotated in any direction at any point in the ride and this would allow the Imagineers to control what the guests not only heard but saw throughout the ride.

Around this time Anderson left the project and several other Disney Imagineers, Marc Davis, Claude Coats and X Atencio, were brought in to develop the attraction’s interior.  Coats was originally a Disney background artist and he wanted the attraction to be a scary adventure with a moody interior designed with endless hallways and a corridor of unusual doors.  Davis was a Disney animator that wanted spooky characters and funny gags throughout the ride.  X Atencio combined these two different concepts of scary and funny into an entertaining ride and he also wrote the lyrics for the ride’s theme song, “Grim Grinning Ghosts”.

Haunted Mansion hitchhiking ghosts

The Haunted Mansion opened in August 1969 and the attraction was an immediate success and has proven to be one of Disneyland’s most popular rides.  As mentioned previously in the post, The Nightmare Before Christmas movie, in October 2001 the attraction premiered the seasonal overlay featuring characters from Tim Burton’s 1993 movie and from mid-September to early January the attraction becomes “The Haunted Mansion Holiday”.

Haunted Mansion Holiday 1

Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion Trivia

  • As noted earlier, the Haunted Mansion original building stayed empty for several years before the Disney Imagineers moved forward with creating the ride attraction.  For this reason, the Haunted Mansion that is seen from New Orleans Square is just the elaborate entrance to the ride; the show building that contains the actual ride is located outside the park’s berm or boundary.  The Disneyland Railroad tracks that circle the park are directly behind the Haunted Mansion and in order to reach the main show building on the other side of the tracks there is an elevator cleverly disguised as the stretching room that takes guest down and the hallway with the changing portraits is really a tunnel where guests are actually walking under the railroad tracks and the Doombuggy boarding area is located on the other side of the tracks in the main show building.
    Haunted Mansion - the streching room Haunted Mansion interior 150
  • As guests travel on their Doombuggy through the Haunted Mansion attraction they will notice a raven in every scene.  Inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “The Raven” originally published in 1845, the Disney Imagineers planned on using these ravens as the narrator on earlier versions of the ride.  The idea never made the final plan but the ravens have still remained in their original positions in each scenes.
  • As guests travel through the ballroom scene in the Disneyland Haunted Mansion, just before leaving this section in one of the last plexiglass panels look for a bullet hole caused by a gunshot from someone years ago, it is cleverly disguised with a spider web.
  • Before leaving the ballroom scene look for the large organ at the end of the room being played by a ghost organist, the organ was actually a prop from the 1954 Disney movie “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”.
  • Originally in the attic scene there was briefly a “Hat Box Ghost”.  Located near the end of the room, on the left there was a bride and on the right was a groom holding a hat box.  The groom’s head would slowly disappear and then reappear inside the hatbox and then the illusion would continue cycling back and forth.  The special effect never worked quite right and was soon removed from the attic scene and the bride was repositioned from the left to her present position on the right side.
    Hat Box Ghost
  • One the signing busts at the end of the graveyard scene is not Walt Disney.  The bust that is confused as being the face of Walt is actually modeled after Thurl Ravenscroft who provides the deep bass voice heard in the theme song of the Haunted mansion, “Grim Grinning Ghosts”.  Ravenscroft sang in a popular quartet known as the Mellomen that provided backup vocals for many popular recording artists such as Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby, Doris Day and even Elvis Presley.  The group went on to sing in several Disney movies, such as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp.  Ravenscroft is best known as the voice of Tony the Tiger from the cereal commercials.

Haunted Mansion - singing busts

 

Be sure to check out the five part Disneyland series for information about the history and park information about the eight different “lands”.  Part One – The history of Disneyland, Part Two – Main Street and Fantasyland, Part Three – Adventureland and Frontierland, Part Four – New Orleans Square and Critter Country, Part Five – Tomorrowland and Mickey’s Toontown.