Disneyland’s Welcome Mat Out Again

When former President Harry S. Truman visited Disneyland in 1957, it was a tossup as to who was most entertained--the President or the public. As his Adventureland boat made its way into the cavernous mouth of a whale that was supposedly Jonah, someone asked the former President if it reminded him of any Republicans.

“Oh, no,” Truman said. “Whales have got some brains. “

And when asked to pose on Dumbo, the elephant, his reply was swift: “Make it a donkey, and I’ll do it.”

Truman was not the first dignitary to traipse through the Magic Kingdom--which draws the famous and infamous internationally--and he will not be the last.

The newest ambassador to hit the Anaheim park is Katerina Lycheva, a Soviet schoolgirl touring America as an emissary for peace. Katerina will head here at noon in the last stop of a 10-day U.S. tour, in which she has stumped for world peace from classrooms in five cities all the way to the Oval Office.

State Department officials refused Monday to comment on Disneyland’s place in national and global diplomacy. But Charlotte Asberry, deputy chief of protocol for the City of Los Angeles, said that almost every dignitary visiting her city makes a sojourn south to the self-professed “Happiest Place on Earth.”

“It is easier to count those who did not go to Disneyland,” Asberry said. “When they come to this area of the United States, they want to see those things we are famous for. Disneyland is a great part of that. . . . It has a worldwide reputation, and if there is time on their itinerary, they go.”

Which makes for some pretty quick trips.

Perhaps the shortest jaunt through the Magic Kingdom was taken in 1982 by former President Jimmy Carter, who jogged by empty souvenir shops and silenced rides, flanked by secret service men in running shoes. Carter’s elapsed time on Disneyland’s lanes? About half an hour.

The former President was staying at the Disneyland Hotel while attending a book convention that May, said park spokesman Bob Roth, when he asked permission to take his morning constitutional through the empty park.

“So we opened the park early,” Roth said. “He ran through the entrance, down Main Street to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, through Frontierland along the Rivers of America. . . . He didn’t go on a single ride. It’s about as brief as they can get.”

Technically, Roth may be right. But the most famous trip to Disneyland was even shorter. It never happened.

While visiting Los Angeles in 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev decided to break with his pre-planned itinerary and take his family to the famed amusement park. It wasn’t that unusual a request, he thought.

But local police officials thought otherwise, and the Khrushchev family was banned from Disneyland. In a press conference after the piqued potentate’s departure from the Southland, then-Police Chief William H. Parker explained that the heavy police escorts assigned to Khrushchev had jurisdiction only in Los Angeles. Parker said he could not assure the premier’s safety if he took his family south.

Although Khrushchev said he was glad that his “house arrest” in Los Angeles had ended, he told reporters later that he was disappointed at missing Mickey. Disney officials were not pleased either.

“We were ready and waiting to host him,” Roth said. “There was even a motorcade that started down here, but Khrushchev was not in there. They drove in the back, got doughnuts and coffee and left.”

As a result, Katerina Lycheva might just be the highest-ranking Soviet to meet with Mickey and Minnie. It took 11 more years for the ruler of a Communist country to hit Main Street, and then it was Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu. Chinese President Li Xiannian--who brought along an entourage of 60 officials, ambassadors and reporters in July, 1985--was the most recent such visitor.

Over the years, VIPs from other nations have also flocked to Disneyland.

Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru stopped by in 1961. Three generations of Japanese royalty have visited the Magic Kingdom: Emperor Hirohito and his wife, Empress Nagako, in 1975; their son and daughter-in-law, Prince Akihito and Princess Michiko, in 1960; and the emperor’s grandson, Prince Hiro in 1982.

Sultan Mohammed V, ruler of Morocco, got to play engineer in December, 1957, when Walt Disney let him take over the Disneyland train in a drive around the park. He saw Sleeping Beauty’s Castle and toured Tomorrowland. Then official duties called, and the king had to leave after a few hours. But he returned incognito later that night to see what the wonderland looked like after dark.

Although visitors usually leave gushing over their good times, there have been somber moments in the “Happiest Place on Earth.”

A member of the King of Thailand’s entourage fell dead of a heart attack during a royal visit in 1960. Though shaken, King Bhumibol, Queen Sirikit, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn and Princess Ubol Ratana continued their tour.

For the most part, however, the VIP visits have been upbeat.

In 1959, for example, Ian Robert Russell, the Duke of Bedford, graced the Magic Kingdom, but his trip was all business. He was at Disneyland to learn how to make a real castle pay off.

The duke is the master of the famed Woburn Abbey and its 23,000-acre park outside London. He inherited it from his late father, the 12th Duke of Bedford, who was killed in a hunting accident. Along with the inheritance went a death tax of $14 million, a burden that forced the duke to open the castle grounds to the paying public.

Throughout his tour, he took notes on popcorn machines, flower vendors, roving band concerts and the Disneyland railroad. But one thing that really caught his royal eye was street sweeper David Ammons.

“That Disney doesn’t miss a trick,” the duke mused. “Might be smart to get someone like Mr. Ammons working on my estate. After all, we have horses in England, too.”