Dixieland at Disneyland

The first nighttime Disneyland event on the Rivers of America was not Fantasmic! Instead, it was Dixieland at Disneyland, debuting in 1960. There was no New Orleans Square yet, but it was such a very popular event, that they did it again. Imagine riding all the beloved attractions of a young Disneyland and getting to see a living legend perform- Louis Armstrong. Live jazz from a master, a cruise on the Mark Twain Riverboat at night, and all of this for one very affordable price! I'd give up Fantasmic! in its current state in a heartbeat to cruise the river at night again. But any way you look at it, Walt's park was the place to be. What a Wonderful World indeed!

Disneyland Attraction Posters: The Adventureland Treehouse

On our recent visit to Disneyland, I walked through the railroad tunnels and was amazed to find this attraction poster for the newish Adventureland Treehouse. It's such a stark contrast to the previous versions in style and color... but I like it! The harsh sun and shadows made it difficult to photograph.

Thankfully due to Etsy, someone posted a better version of it. So, here you have it to add to your collection. Better but not perfect. The reImagining of the iconic Swiss Family Robinson / Tarzan Treehouse was very, very good, however!

(Art copyright The Walt Disney Company.)

Toontown is a Blast!

What a trip we had! I ran across this very bright and cheery attraction poster for Tokyo Disneyland's Toontown. It captures all the fun and zaniness of the land that delights adults as much as kids. At Walt's park, Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway- count me in as a fan who likes this as much as Rise of the Resistance- and Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin are just the beginning of the fun. Gadget's Coaster was something I'd never ridden before, and I thought it was the perfect starter coaster for the younger set. Until I went on it. It has some serious zip! Now I know it's a great starter. The character homes are charming, and the street gags are great to discover as well. There's more here than I ever realized, making this land a surprise discovery each trip.

This sweet little attraction poster reminded me that when all the pieces of the land are placed together as a whole, this land is FUN! 

(Art copyright The Walt Disney Company.)

Attraction Poster for the Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park

Around here, Disney attraction posters are one of the favorite things Disney theme park fans love! It all began with Disneyland, of course, but it soon expanded. By the time Walt Disney World's Disney-MGM Studios theme park was announced, these Imagineering gems had sort of gone by the wayside. But here it is, in all it's glory!
 

New Carousel of Progress Attraction Poster Highlights Changes Coming

Is there's a great big beautiful tomorrow coming? Let's hope so! Disney has just announced a major upgrade coming to Tomorrowland's classic Carousel of Progress. The attraction poster is a nod to the past, but the storyline has shifted significantly. According to the press release, once an Audio-Animatronic version of Walt Disney opens the show, the show scenes are as follows:

Act 1 — The 1960s Set in the summer of 1969, the family gathers around the television to watch the Apollo moon landing.

Act 2 — The 1980s It's Halloween night, 1985. For the first time in the attraction's history, Sarah takes center stage, showing off new appliances and gadgets. John is on the porch handing out candy, while Uncle Orville returns — this time in the bathroom complaining about the lack of privacy.

Act 3 — New Year's Eve, 1999 The family rings in the new millennium as the internet begins connecting the world. Grandpa falls asleep before midnight, while Grandma quietly switches the TV to wrestling.

Act 4 — The Future The finale moves to a distant future home, featuring a helpful robot and space travel. Imagineers drew on original concept sketches by Disney Legend John Hench to shape this new scene.

The concept art for the final Act seems nice if not a bit bland. That said, it is nice to see some love given to the show that originated at the 1964 World's Fair before making its way to Disneyland and eventually the Magic Kingdom. 

Even nicer is seeing the suits honoring the World's park history! What a switch from the money grab move of tearing down the iconic Rivers of America!

(Art copyright The Walt Disney Company.)

Soarin' Across America Attraction Poster #2

This attraction poster is even better than the first one we saw months ago! Soarin' Across America is sure to be a crowd pleaser! Whether you're in Epcot at Walt Disney World or out in Anaheim at Disney California Adventure, the film is a worthy and memorable addition to the attraction line up. How long will it stay around? Probably for decades. :)
 

Disney Film Travel Posters Hint at Future Park Attractions

Travel posters of places home to Disney movies' animated characters. What's not to love? As you'll see, there are some similarities to the original Disneyland attraction posters that everyone loves. At top is Atlantis, from Atlantis: The Lost Empire. The cool blues and greens and purples call out to me. Part of me wishes this was for an attraction based on the film. Real concept art for an attraction at Disneyland exists, and the new version of the Submarine Voyage was teased. You can see it all here. A guy can dream, right?

Ah, the islands! The next two here are for Moana and Peter Pan. Both very good movies, and the latter one is one of my all time Disney favorites. Makes for a great Fantasyland attraction or one at Tokyo Disneysea's new Fantasy Springs area. Will a Moana flume ride make it to the Magic Kingdom's Adventureland? Maybe one day. Those Imagineers are always up to something.

Zootopia's staying power has surprised me. Even though the first was a lot of fun, it was really the second movie that made me appreciate the franchise even more. Will I go to Shanghai Disneyland to see the park's land? Probably not, but it seems Disney California Adventure could get its own version if the rumors are true that this is what new Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro wants. Goodbye Pandora West.

It could work in California Adventure- 

the park where theme goes out the window.

Big Hero 6 gives us San Fransokyo. While I think the film is great, the land doesn't seem as well done. There's no real attraction. I mean, as fun as it may be, a meet and greet with Baymax is just not enough. But again, this is Disney California Adventure where the bar gets lower and lower each time an addition is added. 

This is not a precursor to Villain's Land! But it very well could be as the underworld of Hades would make a compelling but very dark backdrop to all those bad guys. 

This next one could be a real life location in Italy! We've been to the Cinque Terra, the inspiration. And it is lovely by any definition. Luca is a clever film that enchants with its atmosphere. Its main characters Luca and Alberto are best friends, much like the Bible's David and Jonathan. You can read into their relationship however you want. I prefer what's really there in the film over what's not. 

Disney Adventure World in Paris is getting the world's first Lion King themed land. The old studios park needs something like this. Frozen is beautiful but the main attraction is not an "E Ticket" by any definition. The new park layout looks beautiful, however. 

Hopefully, this is part of a new and ongoing poster series!

New Attraction Poster for Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run

Here it is in all its glory! A brand new attraction poster for Star Wars Millennium Flacon Smugglers Run starring The Mandalorian and Grogu. That certainly was a mouthful! Be it at Disneyland or Disney's Hollywood Studios, the land known as Star Wars Galaxy's Edge is changing- and that's a great thing!

Has My Ship Sailed?

When I first began the Insights and Sounds blog many years ago, 18 to be exact, it was never intended to be "All Disney All the Time". That's just not where my heart was. I certainly was tempted at times to go that route as so many folks were doing because of all the perks of being invited to special events and such. But I'm glad I stuck to my guns. 

Later, I also toyed with the idea of monetizing the site and then decided against that. You have little control of ad content on your site. Sadly, I've also seen un-family friendly material- actual pornography in the truest sense of the word- show up on family friendly sites I used to visit. One great one never recovered. All due to hackers I suppose, but it is unfortunate that there are those who want to expose children to such things.

Maybe most importantly, I wanted to be able to freely write about what I wanted to write about at any given time. Music, issues of faith and more. Or I chose not to write at all, as evidenced by stretches of time when there just wasn't anything of interest worth blogging about.

You Tube vlogging has now surpassed traditional blog sites. I do not have a face or a voice for video, so that is not a route I am going to follow. 

We will see what happens in the future. I certainly have many more things to write about and have some great posts planned. Will readers follow along or will they jump ship? Hard to say I guess.

Come back tomorrow for my first big Disney related post of the year...

Main Street Cinema Attraction Poster- Tokyo Style!

After decades of denial, its seems like real Disney theme park fans are finally beginning to acknowledge the truth:  When it comes to the same high standards Walt Disney believed in, be in stunning new attractions, guest value, or park and attraction maintenance, the Tokyo Disney Resort is the new gold standard. The love, attention to detail, and money the Oriental Land Company pours into the place is obvious! 

This includes honoring Imagineering history and their wonderful park attraction posters. Here's a great one for the Main Street Cinema! The star of the show is front and center- Mickey Mouse himself. Disney's reliable, ultimate leading man- and corporate symbol- graces the front against a nice golden yellow backdrop. 

Just a little image with a big grin to warm up a winter's day.

Attraction Poster for Disneyland's Tiana's Bayou Adventure

Love it, hate it, or somewhere in the middle, Tiana's Bayou Adventure is a popular attraction due to wonderful music, memorable characters, and an incredible ride system. Sure, the storyline is forced and rather ridiculous even unnecessary, but this is modern Disney we're talking about. 

For Disney theme park historians, the attraction will stay somewhat controversial due to it replacing Imagineer Tony Baxter masterpiece Splash Mountain. I have not been able to ride it yet at either Walt Disney World or Disneyland. When it comes to the Magic Kingdom, I'm very curious how it will fit into Frontierland's soon and coming Piston Peak and Big Thunder  Mountain Railroad. 

(Art copyright The Walt Disney Company.)

The Rarest of All Disney Attraction Posters

The construction of Splash Mountain at the Magic Kingdom in 1990 was a huge undertaking that required a bit of rerouting for guests riding the Walt Disney World Railroad. In fact, for a season, guests rode in the exact opposite direction! 

Do you remember the relatively short lived Mickey's Starland? It was the cheaper knock off version of Disneyland's incredible Mickey's Toontown (which shockingly opened years later in 1993.). The land started its existence as Mickey's Birthdayland in 1988 before becoming Starland in 1990. Well, guests would board at the Main Street station and off they'd go to Mickey's Starland. This clever attraction poster was designed to take advantage of the construction as well as remind guests the popular railroad was still open for business.

When Splash Mountain finally opened October 2 of 1992, the Walt Disney World Railroad resumed its normal clockwise route. As for Starland, during the 1995 Christmas season, it became Mickey's Toyland then reopened as Mickey’s Toontown Fair. The land lasted until 2011 when it made way for the park's expansion of Fantasyland.

As you might have guessed, this image directly above these words is NOT the fully original poster. It is a little too perfect and also a bit sanitized, removing some of the scrollwork even if it filled in the background to a solid color. But you get the idea. The original right above it had to be AI enhanced to bring it back to life. This image with the blog marker is above and the first AI version below it. The original is from the great now defunct Disney Park Attractions blog. The very top piece of art at the beginning of this article is a combination of AI and some photoshop to fill in bits of reflection from the photograph of the poster. 

But, with just more than a little persistence and the right AI program, you can get what you want IF you are patient enough. The image above is proof.

As always, the art is copyright The Walt Disney Company.

 

Soarin' Across America Attraction Poster is Here

We all love Disney attraction posters, so here's the one for Soarin' Across America. I love it! It's at once patriotic and non-political- an impossible balance to achieve but Imagineering pulled it off. Can't wait to see it at Epcot! (I know it's at Disney California Adventure as well, but it's still not enough to bring me back.)

New Animal Kingdom Attraction Poster Misses the Mark

LOVE Disney attraction posters! Classic Disneyland to those designed for the reImagined California Adventure and beyond. But this brand new one for Animal Kingdom's new Zootopia: Better Zoogether! just misses the mark. Lacking imagination and flair, it's a pretty bland offering. I hope the new attraction in the Tree of Life theater is better!

(Art copyright The Walt Disney Company.)

 

The Original Opening Day California Adventure Attraction Posters

The premier of DCA 2.0 in 2012 brought Disney fans a new slew of attraction posters. But did you ever see the ones designed for the opening day of Disney's California Adventure? Here they are! Do you remember Condor Flats, the Golden State, and Paradise Pier? 

Nowhere in the park was the theme of California more convincing than in the collective area known as the Golden State. With Grizzly Peak as the park's centerpiece, guests were drawn into separate areas celebrating the state's key experiences with unique attractions fans were sure to love... like agriculture and bugs. I kid you not. The desert themed Condor Flats honored the realm of aviation. In the later re-imagining of the land, desert gave way to the forests of California since Cars Land made the original desert area redundant. Soarin' Over California survived, at least seasonally.

One of the park's most disdained lands was Paradise Pier, a seaside carnival that never belonged in a Disney park. Cheap, tacky, and plain ugly, the lone star attraction was California Screamin', now the lesser Incredicoaster. There was a season of time when the San Diego themed overlay to the land actually made it more attractive. But now, it's Pixar Pier, an even tackier overlay than the original mess. 

Hollywood Pictures Backlot continues to disappoint. But it will soon give way to a Pandora / Avatar themed attraction in a park honoring California. That's modern Disney for you! 

If you'd like to see the next set of attraction posters for this park, you can take a look here.
 

The Disney Gallery Attraction Poster: Evolution of A Dream

Attraction posters continued to be one of the most searched for items on the Insights and Sounds blog. For good reason! First generation Imagineers created gorgeous works of art to celebrate and advertise the attractions at Disneyland. The tradition continued decade after decade. Here's the Imagineer's latest creation- a nice poster that advertises the preshow exhibition to the impressive Walt Disney - A Magical Life theater presentation. The exhibit is named Disneyland 70- Evolution of A Dream. This piece is in the style of the day for Main Street U.S.A., circa the turn of the 20th Century. 

There's posters for the attractions in each land at Disneyland on the blog as well as some for the Magic Kingdom, the "renewed" Epcot, Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo Disneysea, California Adventure (yes, some great ones, actually!) and a smattering of them for other Disney parks. What a great number of treasures waiting to be found as you search here!

And watch for the November post which shares the rarest Disney attraction poster of them all...

Rare Hong Kong Disneyland Attraction Poster

Some Disney park attraction posters are rare and some are really rare! This one was only shown publicly at the Hong Kong airport in late 2019 and early 2020. It was designed to give residents and visitors a small taste of what their reimagined castle would look like. The Castle of Magical Dreams turned out much better than I would have thought! The reaction has been more positive than not, and I agree 100%- each Disney castle park should have a unique icon. Don't you agree?

Disneyland Attraction Posters: The Main Street U.S.A. Collection

Today, I want to reintroduce a very popular series on the Insights and Sounds blog- Disney Theme Park Attraction Posters. I want to thank the various sources from which I have collected these over the years. Some of these came from the incredible Daveland blog and some from many others- including scans and photographs by me. Thanks to everyone on the web who contributed to keeping especially Disneyland- Walt's park- history alive.

I'm beginning with posters from Disneyland, but I also have collections from California Adventure, Walt Disney World and even Tokyo Disney Resort and more. 

Soon, we will be adding a poster for Walt Disney – A Magical Life. Those of you newer to the blog might find this article interesting. It was an interview with Disney historian Didier Ghez and a surprise guest, Eddie Sotto, who revealed that an Audio Animatronic of Walt Disney was first discussed by Imagineering decades ago. Yes, decades. You can read this article here.

Enjoy these beautiful posters! As long as there is imagination left in Imagineering, there should be more attraction posters!
-----------------------------
As Walt Disney and his team were planning Disneyland, they instinctively knew this was going to be a different type of park. How could they communicate to the public what they would see in it? Of course, television played a huge role in sharing the vision and the details.

With a plan for the park to be defined by the railroad tracks, it was only natural that the Main Street U.S.A. train station would be at the park's entrance. It would have two tunnels in which to pull guests from the front of the turnstiles into Main Street, one on the left and one on the right. Inside these tunnels, the Imagineering team proudly created posters advertising the attractions.

Over the years, the attractions would also be found in front of the park along the fences and over park benches as guests found seating alongside the main entrance. It's only fitting that we begin this look at the attraction posters by starting with the ones first encountered by the earliest guests- the ones for Main Street U.S.A.

Although the Grand Canyon Diorama was a very small part of the route, this poster did a magnificent job of communicating the grandeur and beauty to be found by guests making the full circle tour on the trains.

Primeval World would come later and provide even more thrills.

It's difficult to tell which color scheme of the attraction poster was actually used. Either way, the artist's use of colors not normally associated with railroading and bold imagery created a stunning representation! The beautifully intricate version at the top of this post came many years later, communicating the elegance of Disneyland's railroad in an entirely different way than earlier versions.

The Red Wagon Inn restaurant was the predecessor to the beautiful Plaza Inn and operated by that name until the mid 1960s. Again, the colors in these two posters are slightly different.

Arguably the greatest attraction found on Main Street U.S.A., Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln was quickly recognized as a masterpiece of engineering, artistic accomplishment, and exquisite storytelling. The poster above advertised the attraction at its opening. 

 Above is a proposed version of the poster.

 Another variation on a theme.

Several years after Walt's passing, the Disneyland Opera House presented "The Walt Disney Story", a very fitting tribute to the man who started it all. The first version of the attraction replaced time with Mr. Lincoln in favor of a film about Walt. A later version left Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln as the stunning finale of sorts to the attraction. A new poster reflected that change.

This poster was used during the park's 50th anniversary.

The posters for attractions found on Main Street, U.S.A. are quite an impressive lot! There's more to come as we explore the other lands of Disneyland- and eventually Disney parks all over the world.Next time, we'll take a look at those posters for attractions in Adventureland. The exotic attractions form a very beautiful basis for another set are great artistic interpretations. Stay tuned for the next segment in this series- and stay tuned for additional posters to be added!

(Art copyright The Walt Disney Company.)

A New Autopia Poster for Disneyland Paris

Those great Imagineering attraction posters are some of my favorite pieces of Disney theme park memorabilia, and here's a brand new one from Disneyland Paris! (Will they create them for Disney Adventure World when the revised studio park opens in 2026? Let's hope so!) 

I'd say this new poster for Discoveryland's Autopia is not one of my favorites, but it does have some cool elements, particularly the shiny centerpiece red car. 

Now, I'll admit Autopia is one of few attractions I haven't ridden there. During our first trip in the 90's, my youngest son was this much too short for Space Mountain. My wife came to the rescue and took him for a spin in the cars. (Surprisingly, Star Tours is the other attraction I haven't ridden!)

Imagineer Tony Baxter's pet project for Europe is a park that must be seen to be believed! It's sets a very high standard for what a Disney castle park should be. So, go see it- even if you don't see all of it.  ;)

(Art copyright The Walt Disney Company.)

Venice By Day or By Night

Venice, Italy is a world famous location, a city of dreams. The beauty of the canals is uninterrupted by the swarms of people who visit. One of the most interesting but not immediately noticed aspects of Venice is the utter lack of green space. Few trees, few shrubs, and next to no grass. Stone, stone, and more stone. But it's an incredible place you must experience to really understand.

These two travel posters- one by day and one by night, give a highly romanticized version of the beloved destination. Make no mistake, Venice is charming and magical in a manner than neither Disney Imagineering or Universal Creative can ever duplicate!