My Ideal Disneyland Part 5

Okay, time for the Buzz Lightyear AstroBlasters and the last part of the Tland series! This is another ride I have never been on. This space in Tland was originally occupied by Circarama, which opened with the park in 1955. It was a circular theater where guests stood in the middle and where able to have a 360 degree view of a projected image. The show changed a few times but the show "America the Beautiful" was there mostly from 1956 until 1984. The attraction closed in '97 for the '98 redo when the space was replaced with "The American Space Experience" exhibit which was reminiscent of the early sponsored exhibits that Tland used to be riddled with. It was part of the ride queue for Rocket Rods (has pics of the sign conversion to Buzz after RRs) I think for a brief time and then the AstroBlasters came in 2003.

I'm gonna go off on a bit of a tangent here, while I'm on the sponsored exhibits of early Tland. Apparently when Tland first opened, Disney was kind of poor and didn't have money for many rides in Tland. So, they had a butt load of sponsored exhibits. There was the Kaiser Aluminum exhibit, and the Monsanto Hall of Chemistry, which both opened in 1955, the Richfield "World Beneath Us" exhibit, the "Our Future in Color" gallery by Dutch Boy, the "Bathroom of Tomorrow" by Crane (which is something I think should be put into Innoventions btw) and "Fashions and Fabrics Through the Ages" by Monsanto. There were probably even more. The Monsanto House of the Future was really like one huge exhibit. When Disneyland first opened, it was like everything was sponsored! I mean, Monsanto was huge, Richfield Oil was in there for a while (Autopia and others), The Bell System, AT&T (Circarama/CircleVision), General Electric (Carousel of Progress), TWA (Rocket to the Moon), Coca Cola (BTW, that link is has a bunch of great pics showing how the Coca Cola Stage/Terrace has changed through the years), ALWEG (monorail), and Goodyear (PeopleMover). All of these were in Tland and probably more. But while I'm talking about it, I'll mention some sponsored stuff in other areas of the park. Dole has sponsored the Tiki Room since it opened and still does. The Tahitian Terrace was Stouffer's. Kodak is found here and there throughout the park with the Photopass stuff and Autopia is sponsored by Chevron now. Innoventions has like a million different sponsors in it. I read on MiceChat that Village Haus in Fantasyland is sponsored by Minute Maid and the Rancho del Zacalo in Fronteirland is (or was/ now is La Victoria?) by Ortega, Big Thunder Ranch is Brawny, Coca Cola is all over the place, and there are probably more. I look at old pics of dland and see these signs all over the place that have nothing to do with dland and are outside companies and I'm glad most of them are gone now. I like to feel completely immersed in disneyland while I'm there and outside advertising really takes away from it for me.

So that's that. Back to Buzz. Again, I've never been on it. I've heard it's like Midway Mania in DCA (which I've also never been on) but not quite as good. It's not the most popular but it gets traffic. I can't say much about it since I've never been on it but it doesn't sound that great. Also, as I mentioned with Nemo, I don't really enjoy Pixar being in dland because it doesn't feel like it entirely belongs there for some reason. I don't know...Tland isn't really supposed to be movie themed, or wasn't intended to be that way. Really, only Fantasyland was supposed to be like that. In my ideal dland, I think I would put something else in that space only I don't know what. I think having something like the old "Adventure thru Inner Space"might be cool, especially with the new technologies that we have today.

So that's it for this land but really, it won't be because it's always changing. And who knows what the future will hold for Tomorrowland? See you in Fantasyland for my next installation of the series!