E Ticket Memories

Clad in a polo shirt, shorts and tennies, Bob Penfield looks like a typical tourist amid the crowd swarming through the entrance to Disneyland. He’s even wearing a Seven Dwarfs golf cap (“Seven under par”) and has a fistful of Disney trading pins in his pocket.

But Penfield isn’t the average visitor to the Magic Kingdom.

Disneyland has been Penfield’s second home since the days when the 70-foot-tall Rocket to the Moon was the park’s most visible landmark seen from Harbor Boulevard, when admission was only a buck and when Walt Disney himself walked the grounds.

Penfield was even there on opening day, July 17, 1955, as an 18-year-old newly minted Anaheim High School graduate hired as a ride operator for what he figured would just be a summer job before starting college in the fall.

Instead, the summer job turned into a career. And when he retired as a project management superintendent on July 31, 1997, after 42 years at Disneyland, Penfield was the last of the original employees still working at the park.

Even in retirement, the 63-year-old Anaheim resident returns at least once a month--to see old friends, buy and trade Disney pins and keep up on the latest changes, such as the revamped Autopia ride, which debuted June 29.

Of course, Penfield remembers the original Tomorrowland Autopia. He served as both a ride operator and a supervisor in the early years, when the cars weren’t on a center rail and it wasn’t unheard of for one of the gasoline-powered midget autos to get turned around and go in the opposite direction. Employees jokingly called the ride “Blood Alley,” Penfield recalls.

He is a walking encyclopedia--or “e-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-a,” as Jiminy Cricket would sing on the old “Mickey Mouse Club” show--of official and unofficial park lore.

And as the Magic Kingdom celebrates its 45th anniversary this month, who better than employee No. 241 to lead a tour of Disneyland then and now?

Main Gate

Fifteen thousand guests were invited to Disneyland’s grand opening. But the crowd quickly swelled to 33,000, thanks to a brisk business in counterfeit tickets. Within seven weeks of Disneyland’s televised debut, a million visitors had passed through the main gate.

Annual attendance then: 3.6 million (from July 17, 1955, to July 16, 1956).

Annual attendance now: 13.4 million last year, down from a peak of 15 million in 1996, according to the trade publication Amusement Business.

Watching visitors stream through the main gate one morning recently, Penfield recalled that when Disneyland first opened, the park entrance had only four ticket booths, each with two windows.

Today, there are still four ticket booths, but they have eight windows each; and four more booths are being built to accommodate Disney’s California Adventure, the new theme park being built on Disneyland’s old 55-acre parking lot.

“Originally, when the park opened, you paid admission at the main gate, and every attraction had its own ticket booth,” Penfield said.

The original admission price was $1 for adults, 75 cents for juniors and 50 cents for children; individual ride tickets were 10 to 35 cents.

But that changed three months after the park opened, Penfield recalled, “when they came out with the A-B-C ticket books.”

Admission then: $2.50 for adults and $1.50 for children, which included eight A through C ride tickets. The D ticket was added in 1956 and the coveted E ticket surfaced in 1959, the year the Submarine Voyage, the Matterhorn bobsleds and the Monorail debuted. (Adjusting for inflation, $2.50 is equal to $16.05 today and $1.50 equals $9.63 today.)

Admission now: $41 for adults; $31 for children ages 3 to 9. A one-day passport allowing guests to participate in all the attractions replaced the old ticket books in 1982.

“You’re talking a lot of money,” Penfield acknowledged, “but I think it’s comparable to anywhere else, and I think Disneyland has more to offer than anywhere else.”

Number of attractions then: 22.

Number of attractions now: 63.

Disney’s vision for his park called for Main Street to funnel visitors up to the plaza hub in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle, where they could then branch out to the Magic Kingdom’s four realms.

Penfield led the way to Main Street, passing through the pedestrian tunnel beneath the Disneyland Railroad tracks and entering the Town Square, a step back in time to circa 1900.

Main Street

Except for brighter, more colorful paint on the building facades, Penfield said, Town Square and Main Street look much the same as they did when the park opened.

“City Hall has always been here, the Emporium, the fire station--do you know that Walt’s old apartment is above the fire station?” he asked.

The Victorian Era-decorated apartment--about 800 square feet with a kitchenette and a bathroom--is reached by a rear stairway. The apartment is seldom used today, but Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner occasionally uses it for media interviews, and dignitaries are sometimes given a peek.

During Disneyland’s first year, Penfield said, Disney was almost always at the park on weekends and frequently during the week.

“He’d walk around all the time, and he’d always talk to employees. He’d come up and have coffee with you and he’d order a hot dog. He’d ask what you were doing. He also liked to tell the employees what he had in mind--the things coming up--and kind of bounce ideas off them.”

As did the other Disneyland workers, Penfield called Disney by his first name.

“He insisted on that,” Penfield said. “Now, in those days, the first year, you didn’t have a name tag. You had a badge. It had a number on it and he had to ask your name.”

Moving out of the way of a horse-drawn streetcar, Penfield said he’d heard that the Main Street Cinema, a fixture since Day 1, is scheduled to undergo revamping. Which reminded him of the organ grinder and his pet monkey who once worked the area near the silent movie theater, along with a “Phantom of the Opera” character who interacted with the crowd and frequently frightened young guests.

Neither lasted long.

“What you have to remember is this was the first theme park, and so a lot of stuff was tried and might just be tried for a day,” Penfield said. “Walt would come by and say, ‘Boy, I like that.’ Or ‘Get that out of here; I don’t like that.’ That’s the way he was.”

Penfield walked up behind a group of more than a dozen Japanese visitors.

“Here’s something that’s changed,” he said. “We get thousands of [Asian] tourists.” Forty-five years ago, he said, “there were a lot of international people that came in, but not as many.”

Another thing that’s changed, Penfield said, heading up Main Street, “is back in those days there were so many celebrities that used to come to the park. I’m talking big-time celebrities.”

Famous visitors then: Rita Hayworth, Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor.

Celebrity visitors now: Whoopi Goldberg, Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Taylor.

Back then, the Mouseketeers frequently showed up to sign autographs. They made their first public appearance during Disneyland’s grand opening, although “The Mickey Mouse Club” didn’t make its TV debut until nearly three months later. And that Christmas, the Mouseketeers appeared in the Mickey Mouse Club Circus--held under a big top set up in the area where the Matterhorn now stands.

Penfield said veteran Disney animator Roy Williams would set up an easel next to the Plaza Inn off Main Street and draw caricatures.

Arriving at the plaza hub at the end of Main Street, Penfield veered left.

Frontierland

“The fort has been rebuilt, but it all looks the same,” he said as he approached the log fortress.

The pioneer-era themed land tapped into the popularity of TV westerns during the ‘50s, and the Davy Crockett phenomenon, which helped propel Disney’s weekly ABC-TV series, “Disneyland,” to the top of the ratings after its debut in fall 1954. (The three-part Crockett saga generated sales of more than 10 million coonskin caps and an equal number of copies of “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” recorded by Bill Hayes and other singers.)

“Frontierland, to the employees, was always the best place to work,” Penfield said. “It’s the most beautiful.”

Among the original attractions: the Stage Coach, the Mule Pack, the Golden Horseshoe Revue and the crown jewel of Frontierland, the Mark Twain Riverboat.

The Rainbow Caverns Mine Train, which was later renamed the Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland, opened in 1956 and was, according to Penfield, “the best attraction to work.”

“It was fairly low capacity compared to some of the attractions, so you weren’t just rushed. And when you got into the cab of the old mine train, you got away from the guests.”

Penfield laughed. “Sometimes, that’s nice when you’re meeting with them all day.”

The old mine train was retired in 1977, and the site is now occupied by the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which opened in 1979. The El Dorado Hotel and several of the other original buildings survived.

Heading toward the Rivers of America, Penfield noted that Tom Sawyer Island was there when the park opened, “but there was nothing on it. It didn’t open until ’56.”

The Indian war canoes debuted in 1956 and, Penfield recalled, “they were real Indians who paddled them. Actually, the original Indians were all Navajos who had never paddled a canoe before--they were all desert Indians.”

Penfield stopped to gaze across the man-made river.

“Here’s one thing about the park that I think has changed to the good and to the worse,” he said. “Where is the Haunted Mansion? It’s over there, but the trees have grown up so much you can’t see it. And you get on the Mark Twain and you can’t see New Orleans like you used to.

“But it’s better with the trees being big; you’ve got more shade and it’s prettier.”

Adventureland

When Disneyland opened, the only Adventureland attraction was the Jungle Cruise. The ride, according to Disney archives director Dave Smith, was the park’s most popular attraction because it had been heavily featured on Disney’s TV show, which provided periodic park construction updates.

“It was originally seven boats, then went to nine boats, then went to 14 boats,” said Penfield, who served as a Jungle Cruise ride operator and supervisor.

He attributes the ride’s popularity to the boats, the animated jungle animals and the operators’ scripted spiel. “A fellow named David Lee, a former vaudeville comedian, was the best spieler ever,” he said.

The Swiss Family Treehouse took root in 1962 (last year it was transformed into Tarzan’s Treehouse). The Enchanted Tiki Room debuted in 1963 and was the first attraction to make extensive use of audio animatronics technology.

These days, the Indiana Jones Adventure, which opened in 1995, is Adventureland’s most popular attraction.

Fantasyland

Of Disneyland’s four realms, none says Walt Disney more than Fantasyland.

That’s where Penfield spent opening day--a day marred by long lines, intense summer heat, no drinking fountains (thanks to an Orange County plumbers strike), food and beverage shortages and an untold number of mechanical mishaps.

“Oh, everything broke down; you know new attractions,” Penfield said. “I was supposed to start on the Peter Pan attraction, but it wouldn’t run, so I went over to the carousel.”

Although all of its attractions have been remodeled, redesigned or relocated over the years, Penfield said, “Fantasyland hasn’t changed that much.”

The Chicken of the Sea Pirate Ship and Restaurant, later called Captain Hook’s Galley, is gone, however. So are the Motor Boat Cruise, the Fantasyland Autopia, the Skyway to Tomorrowland and the Mickey Mouse Club Theater.

Penfield remembers that employees had their own names for many of the attractions:

“Dumbo was called the Flying Pigs. The Skyway to Tomorrowland was called a poor man’s Vic Tanny--remember the original exercise place?--because it was hard to work. And the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Exhibit in Tomorrowland was called Squid Row.”

Recalling the park’s early years, Penfield said that during winters--when daily attendance might be only 2,000 and Fantasyland was virtually empty at night--workers would have contests to see who could spin the teacups the longest and fastest without getting sick.

To pass the time during slow periods, Fantasyland employees also played what they called carousel roulette: They’d place a pencil mark on the carousel, then place their bets around the ride and whoever’s bet came closest to the mark when the ride stopped won all the money.

Laughed Penfield: “You’d probably get fired for doing that now.”

Tomorrowland

Tomorrowland was Disney’s tribute to the Sputnik-era’s futuristic impulses. But when the park opened after a year of construction, Tomorrowland was Disneyland’s least finished realm, the result of a lack of time and money.

“Walt debated on whether they would even open Tomorrowland,” Penfield said. “But he said, ‘We’ve got to open it.’ That’s why you had attractions like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea--a walk-through attraction featuring scenes from the movie--and other exhibits.”

Penfield said virtually nothing in Tomorrowland is the same as when the park opened.

Gone are such first-year attractions as the Circarama (a 360-degree film, “A Tour of the West”), Space Station X-1, the Hall of Chemistry and the Aluminum Hall of Fame.

But Tomorrowland, more than any of the Magic Kingdom’s realms, fulfills Disney’s opening-day declaration: “As long as there is imagination left in the world, Disneyland will continue to grow, to add new things.”

The biggest expansion in the Walt Disney Co.’s history in Anaheim is occurring just outside the Disneyland main gate.

Disney’s California Adventure is the centerpiece of a $1.4-billion expansion that also will include the 750-room Grand Californian Hotel and Downtown Disney, a restaurant, entertainment and retail complex.

The new theme park is scheduled to open Feb. 8.

Penfield hopes to be there.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Disneyland Then (1955) and Now (2000)

Number of attractions then: 22

Number of attractions now: 63

Admission cost for family of four (parents and two children) then: $8, which included books of eight A through C ride tickets

Admission cost for family of four (parents and two children) now: $144, which includes one-day passports allowing guests to participate in all the attractions

Food fare then: Pancakes and waffles at Aunt Jemima’s Kitchen, fried chicken dinners at the Plantation House, tuna sandwiches at Chicken of the Sea Pirate Ship and others

Food fare now: Gourmet pastas at Plaza Inn; Benyan beef, chicken or vegetable skewers at Bengal Barbecue; assorted pizzas at Redd Rocket’s Pizza Port; and others

Most popular attraction then: Jungle Cruise

Most popular attraction now: Space Mountain

Most popular souvenir then: Mickey Mouse ears

Most popular souvenir now: Mickey Mouse ears

Sponsored attractions then: TWA’s Rocket to the Moon, Kaiser’s Aluminum Hall of Fame, Monsanto’s Hall of Chemistry and others

Sponsored attractions now: Indiana Jones (“presented” by AT&T;), Autopia (presented by Chevron), Honey I Shrunk the Audience (presented by Kodak) and others

Disneyland parade then: No daily parade

Disneyland parade now: Usually twice a day

Disneyland costumed characters then: Disneyland didn’t have any of its own costumes when the park opened, so it originally borrowed costumes from the Ice Capades, which had a Disney unit.

Disneyland costumed characters now: Disneyland makes its own costumes for its large cast of characters.

Number of Disney TV shows then: One, the weekly “Disneyland” series on ABC-TV

Number of Disney TV shows now: 28, including “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” “Felicity,” “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee” and “The Wonderful World of Disney”

Current Disney movies then: “Lady and the Tramp”

Current Disney movies now: “Dinosaur,” “Fantasia/2000”

Noted “Mickey Mouse Club” alumni (1955-59): Annette Funicello, Paul Peterson, Don Grady and Johnny Crawford

Noted “Mickey Mouse Club” alumni (1989-94): Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Keri Russell and ‘N Sync band members Justin Timberlake and J.C. Chasez