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.

Disneyland On The Air

Disneyland and Walt Disney World have served as the setting to many children's books throughout the years. Sometimes the theme parks are the homes of the classic Disney characters, other times it seems that Mickey and the gang are busy running the parks. And once in a while, the Disney parks just play host to the vacationing antics of Mickey Mouse and his friends. In this 1955 Little Golden Book Disneyland On The Air Mickey and Donald arrive at Disneyland for a live broadcast of the Disneyland television program.






This book was perhaps one of the first to use Disneyland as a setting for it's story. A brief note on the copyright page before the story begins reads: Disneyland, in southern California, is truly the land of childhood's dreams come true. Millions have visited this magic land on TV, and soon will in reality. Here for the first time some of its delights may be sampled in book form." Actually not much of Disneyland is featured in the book.

There are a few exterior depictions of Main Street U.S.A. in the opening pages of the tale, but other than that only a few small illustrations on the front cover give any hint to the contents of the park. This picture to the right suggests Main Street U.S.A. as a real working thoroughfare with foot traffic traveling from inside the park to the Opera House. Also, I suspect Walt Disney would not have been happy with a modern automobile taking a spin down his turn-of-the-century Main Street.

One last image from this book...this somewhat disturbing illustration of Donald pulling two guns on Mickey. The question is: How did Donald get those guns past the exhaustive bag search at the main gate? This kind of thing would never happen today (without a cautionary introduction from Leonard Maltin!)