West Coast Chest

Last week, Craig over at Earning My Ears featured one of his favorite pieces from his collection of theme park memorabilia - a Secret Panel Chest from the Haunted Mansion. At first, I thought he had beat me to the punch. The Haunted Mansion puzzle box is a prized piece of my Disney Park collection as well and I was planning on doing a post about this classic souvenir in the near future. Then I noticed that his Secret Panel Chest was from Walt Disney World while mine was from Disneyland. Both of the chests feature artwork depicting the exterior of the attraction, and since the East and West coast versions of this ride are so different...it looks like there's room in the blogosphere for a post on both versions of this long gone gift shop item.

My Secret Panel Chest came into my possession through my father, who picked it up on a visit to Disneyland in 1971 (a few years before I was born.) The chest has secret panels on it that when moved in the correct order open up to reveal a secret compartment. It features the original Haunted Mansion located in New Orleans Square in Disneyland. The sign, which reads "The Haunted Mansion in Disneyland c. Walt Disney Productions" is the same as the sign on the WDW version of the box except of course for the park logo and the words "Haunted Mansion" seem to be printed smaller than on the Orlando box.

There doesn't seem to be much history or backstory to these mysterious souvenir chests. The ultra-informative website DoomBuggies.com offers this trivia:

Another popular souvenir was the "Secret Panel Chest," a wooden puzzle box that had a colorful illustration of the Haunted Mansion on the top that could only be opened by using a secret combination of movements. The boxes were constructed by a small company in Hikone, Japan, using many types of wood for each box. They were available in three different sizes. These are desirable collectibles in the Disneyana marketplace, bringing anywhere from $50 for a well-worn piece to over $200 for a box in excellent condition with the instruction sheet

There's a scan of the instructions up at Earning My Ears but I guess all the spooks and spirits left my box sometime over the last 37 years because I can't seem to get mine open. I still have the instructions that came with this Disneyland Chest. They are safely locked away inside the Haunted Mansion Secret Panel Chest.

The Models of Toonland

Here's a fun little one page piece about animation models that appeared in issue #4 of Disney Adventures magazine, way back in February 1991. You can click the article to enlarge it.

Disney Adventures Magazine

Disney Adventures magazine made it's debut in the Fall of 1990, around the same time the syndicated block of Disney produced television series known as The Disney Afternoon began. The publication was to serve as a companion to the afternoon cartoons, offering more adventures with the Disney Afternoon characters in comic book form. In addition to the comics, each issue featured news and interviews with celebrities popular with kids and real world stories of sports, adventure and travel. Many issues also included behind the scenes pieces on the world of Disney. The digest sized magazine sported colorful covers, usually spotlighting a celebrity appearing with Disney characters. The cover featuring the Ducktales gang running from a rhino was used on a special preview issue of the magazine that was available the summer before regular printing began. It's dated "Fall 1990" and was only available by mail-order from sending in proofs-of-purchase from (Kelloggs?) cereal.

What follows is the first in a series of galleries showcasing the cover art of the first few years of Disney Adventures magazine. Not only do these covers offer some unique Disney artwork, they also illustrate some of the forgotten celebrities of the early `90's.

Hot off his hit Disney film "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids", Rick Moranis graces the first issue available on newsstands.

The Wonder Years star with the Rescue Rangers...pretty cool, eh!? Fred Savage is actually quite busy with Disney work these days. He's directed several episodes of Phil of the Future, Wizards of Waverly Place, and the mega cash cow Hannah Montana.

Alyssa Milano in a cover reminiscent of "Ducktales The Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp"

Who would have ever guessed that Bob Saget would still be around and Roger Rabbit would be a thing of the past?

My Son, The Padawan

Jumping on the Star Wars Weekends bandwagon, I wanted to share some pictures from my trip to Walt Disney World a couple of weeks ago. My kids are all Star Wars nuts, especially my 4 1/2 year old son Elias. It was, without a doubt, the most magical moment of our trip when Elias got picked to go on stage at the (kind of) new Jedi Training Academy show at Disney's Hollywood Studios. Elias spends most of his time at home playing with his lightsaber, so when he donned the Jedi robe and was handed a lightsaber to train with, he felt right at home. (That's him in the middle, with the hood up and the purple lightsaber.) He was so into it and it actually brought a tear to the eyes of both my wife and I. It's a simple little show that is just done so well and really lets kids live out their fantasies.

Simply awesome!

Meet The Robinsons (in 25 Minutes From This Point)

Adventureland's Swiss Family Treehouse attraction is a sentimental favorite for anyone who enjoys the slow-paced, low-tech side of Walt Disney World. It's a sure fire bet that after finishing off your Dole Whip at the nearby Aloha Isle stand you can hop right inside the entrance of the Treehouse and start exploring the tree's 1,400 branches. But can you imagine ever having to wait in a long line to visit the Swiss Family Robinson's home? As soon as you enter the attraction and begin across the bridge to the treehouse, stop and turn around a look back where you came from.

Just off to the lower right hand side of the entrance you can see a rather large queue area to hold guests waiting to enter the Swiss Family Treehouse...

This queue area sits just out of sight from guests walking in Adventureland. Even though this has got to be one of the least used queues in all of Walt Disney World, it's still themed perfectly to the attraction. The railing around the platform is similar to what you would find around the main deck of an old boat, such as the Robinsons had. This line would have taken you right up to where you enter the attraction now...

But it looks like you would have entered the show from this point, which sits quite a distance west of the current entrance, near the benches close to Aloha Isle. There's actually a hole in the top of the tallest pole from where a sign was. From this entrance, you would have walked down and around to the right and entered the covered queue area.

Here's a closer shot of the Swiss Family queue. It kind of has a ghost town like vibe to it!


This mid-to-late 70's souvenir park map shows the treehouse with it's full entrance structure. The entrance is near the number 43. Note the slanted roof (near 44) which can also been seen over the queue in the first picture above.

Next time you're crossing the bridge to the Swiss Family Treehouse, take a moment and turn around and catch this little lost space in WDW.

Wall-E Scholastic Art

It's funny how sometimes the movie studios do everything in their power to keep details about plot and characters in the summer blockbusters hush-hush and then they release books with the whole story inside a month before the movie comes out! Yesterday the mailman dropped off our latest shipment from the Scholastic Disney Wonderful World of Reading club. My kids (and I) were excited to find a copy of Wall-E tucked inside the envelope. I'm going to try and keep the kids from making me read it to them before we go see the movie because last year the Little Golden Book of Ratatouille kind of gave away the ending of the movie before it was in theatres. Anyway, the cool thing about some of the kids books based on the Pixar films is that the illustrations are done in a stylistic fashion that looks different than the actual movie. I don't think there's any spoilers here, but I will say there are some cool looking things in this book. Here's some of the art work from this adaptation of the movie which opens June 27.

Paying The Bills

The Mouse Gear shop in Epcot's Innoventions is always busy with loads of people looking to stock up on WDW goodies to take home with them. It's one of the biggest retail spots in all of Epcot. It takes extra hands to run a store of this size so many of the citizens of Duckburg pull double duty working behind the scenes of this shop. Why ducks? Come on, this ain't no Mickey Mouse operation!

If you look up above the shopping fixtures in many parts of the store, you'll notice the silhouettes of many hard working ducks. In one room, chaos reigns as paper airplanes fly, Donald looses his temper and Huey, Dewey and Louie run wild.


In another area of the store, over by the watches and jewelry you'll find Scrooge McDuck firing off a memo to his secretary, Daisy. Daisy Duck is jotting down the memo while sitting in a very sexist old-fashioned secretary pose. But my favorite employee can be found in the last window of this scene...



... the often overlooked Gyro Gearloose is busy crunching away the numbers on, what appears to be, one of his crazy inventions. My guess is that Gyro invented a machine that could display enough numbers needed to show how much dough Mouse Gears rakes in on any given day!