No Mickey Mouse Club Here : Disneyland’s Exclusive Enclave Has Seen Kings and Presidents

There is an attraction inside Disneyland that most visitors never get to see, and the waiting line for entry is nearly two years long.

Set in the heart of New Orleans Square, its elegant confines have comforted kings, princesses, presidents, Michael Jackson and Cher. It has been a been a showplace for rare Disney mementos, and it is the only place in the park where the strict ban on alcoholic beverages does not apply.

Designed by park patriarch Walt Disney, Club 33 is the city’s most exclusive private club, where corporations pay up to $20,000 in membership fees to enjoy gourmet meals and fine wines, all within view of Tom Sawyer’s Island and down the street from the Haunted Mansion.

It is a place, park officials say, where the limited membership has earned the club a mystique all its own, and where myths abound about even the name Walt Disney chose for the French Quarter-styled hideaway above the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction.

“It is a different experience because it is so quiet,” Disneyland Executive Vice President Ron Dominguez said. “There is fine linen, china and glassware. It’s different to have that right in the middle of the theme park.”

Membership has been limited to about 400 people who, Dominguez said, represent a wide-ranging combination of business executives and others--largely from Orange and Los Angeles counties--who use the club to entertain clients or out-of-town family guests.

Even during the recession, park officials said, there has been little turnover in membership, causing new applicants to wait up to two years for a membership card.

So popular is it for Sunday brunch, Dominguez said, that the club’s own members need to make reservations up to three weeks in advance.

“It’s such a unique place to entertain,” Disneyland President Jack Lindquist said. “This is for members to bring relatives from out of town to Disneyland and gives them a new experience in the park.”

In keeping with the club’s exclusive tradition, park guests would be hard pressed to find the front door.

No different from any other facade in the New Orleans Square area, the club’s entry is distinguished only by its address, 33 Royal St., from which the club takes its identity.

Lindquist said aficionados of Disney lore should disregard other rumored derivations of the name, the most popular of which is the story that Disney named it for 33 of his most trusted associates. Others believe that Disney simply liked the way the numbers looked together.

In a fashion reminiscent of a Prohibition-era speak-easy, members and their guests enter only after pressing a hidden doorbell and announcing their presence to a host or hostess through an intercom.

Inside, a French lift ushers guests to the second floor and the club’s two dining rooms.

Glossy parquet floors lead to the main dining room, decorated in early 19th-Century French style and lined with the original conceptual sketches of the New Orleans Square attraction and the works of other Disney artists.

Down the hall is the more intimate Trophy Room, where diners can relax in a setting walled with cypress planks and stroll the rustic, pegged-oak floors.

Design sketches from the park’s Jungle Cruise and Tiki Room attractions adorn the walls, while a collection of game birds and other wildlife stare from their perches throughout the room.

Dominguez said it was Disney’s intent to extend the park’s use of creative audio devices to the Trophy Room so the birds could be brought to life and converse with guests while they were dining. To achieve that, electronics were incorporated into each chandelier, but Dominguez said the concept became difficult to execute, so the feature is no longer used.

“I think we used it on the first day (of the club’s opening), and that was it,” Dominguez said.

Service is provided by attendants dressed in formal black and white, with the club’s numerical insignia embroidered on jackets and aprons. The emphasis is on personal attention, down to the personalized matchbooks that come inscribed with the club and members’ names.

Although Lindquist ranks it on a par with Costa Mesa’s equally exclusive Center Club, the range of clientele is not reserved solely for power brokers. Last week, lunchtime guests ranged from small children and their parents, casually clad in shorts and T-shirts, to businessmen and women.

Lindquist said plans for the club began after the New York World’s Fair in 1964, when Disney was trying to lure the General Electric Co. to Anaheim as a sponsor for a Disneyland attraction.

The New York fair was equipped with executive lounges stocked with alcoholic beverages for dignitaries and corporate sponsors, including GE, and the company wanted the same amenity for its Disneyland attraction, Lindquist said.

That clashed with Disney’s ban on alcoholic beverages inside the park and was nearly a “deal breaker” in attracting the sponsorship, Lindquist said, until Disney agreed to design a private club with the intent to open it to all corporate sponsors.

“It was an important point for GE,” Lindquist recalled recently. “That’s not to say that everybody at GE needs a belt.”

His aversion to establishing a simple lounge where alcoholic beverages would be sold still strong, Disney reportedly made sure that the club would serve alcohol only with meals, Lindquist said.

According to park officials and a written history of the club, Disney and his wife traveled to New Orleans to choose many of the antiques that decorate the dining rooms.

Also included in the plan, Lindquist said, was an allowance to build a private residence for Disney in an adjoining New Orleans Square building, now occupied by the Disney Gallery, which sells varied collectibles. Blueprints for the living quarters indicate that the Disney residence would have shared the club’s kitchen.

Ironically, Disney died five months before the club’s opening in 1967, so plans for a private residence were scuttled.

For all the club’s elegance, Dominguez and Lindquist said, it was rarely used in the early years. In later years, park officials opened membership to the public.

By 1984, membership grew to 580 and was open to all who could afford the fees and dues, which were $300 to $1,000. Still, few of the members actually used the facility, so officials decided to raise the membership costs.

These days, the corporate membership requires a $20,000 fee, entitling the organization to designate nine associate members who are charged $1,800 each per year in dues. Limited corporate memberships are offered for a $10,000 joining fee and provides for one executive membership at the same dues rate. The fee for individual members is $5,000, plus the annual dues charge.

The fees do not include meal costs, but members and up to nine of their guests get free parking and admission to the park, provided that the member dines at the club during the visit.

After the fee increases of 1984, the number of memberships declined, but Lindquist said use of the club’s dining facilities dramatically increased.

“I think people felt that if they were going to pay that kind of fee, they were going to use it,” Lindquist said.

Although Dominguez and Lindquist said they have never analyzed the club’s membership roster for such things as minority representation, Lindquist said the application process has always been open to anyone who meets the financial requirements.

“I don’t think we’ve ever turned anybody away,” Lindquist said.

Park officials said the club is popular for family celebrations, but perhaps it is most notable for the world leaders and celebrities who have been entertained there.

Since its opening, the club has welcomed King Hussein of Jordan and his family, former President Ronald Reagan, Prince Rainier and the late Princess Grace of Monaco and a long list of others.

The club remained the only one of its kind in Disney-owned parks until Tokyo Disneyland opened about eight years ago.

Lindquist said park planners were so interested in the detailed duplication of Disneyland attractions in Japan that a Club 33 was added there too.

About the only thing not duplicated in the Tokyo club was the U.S. membership roster, Lindquist said. Disneyland club memberships are not honored at the Tokyo club.