Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Main Gate Scripts

As you disembarked from the Disneyland parking lot (those were the days) tram ten feet from the front gate (those were REALLY the days) or arrived on foot, here's what you might hear as you approached the ticket booths.  It featured a spiel about the ticket books, terrific value, etc.

If you were unlucky (read: stupid and unorganized) enough to arrive on a day when the park was closed, they had a special recording for you, too.

How badly would it suck to arrive on a wintery Monday or Tuesday only to be informed (via tape) that the park was closed?  And how sadistic to LET SOMEONE INTO THE PARKING LOT AND PARK THEIR CAR only to arrive at the empty ticket booths.  I'd probably punch a rubber moose and kidnap a security guard, too.

Would it be better for the Monorail to be open for a ride or closed for the day?  At least if the Monorail was closed there wouldn't be the torture of seeing all of those spectacular attractions just sitting there and waiting for guests that would arrive tomorrow or the day after.  Makes me edgy just thinking about it.

There's even a recording for rainy days.

Coming soon(ish), the narration for the Main Street vehicles.






7 comments:

SundayNight said...

These are excellent. Keep 'em coming!

outsidetheberm said...

Thanks, Jed.

Are you sure Harold Ramis didn't write these? They give you renewed empathy for the Griswolds...

Great scripts.

Vintage Disneyland Tickets said...

I swear I can hear Wally Moose reading the first two!

My favorites of course are the ones that talk about TICKET BOOKS!!!

Awesome post - Historical if I may say so.... THANKS!

Major Pepperidge said...

Yeah, I can only imagine the excitement of arriving at Disneyland (maybe for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity) only to find it closed. ARG!

Sorcerer Mickey said...

You can listen to a couple of these Ticket Booth Spiels from 1972 & 1974 at the Ticket Booth Page at Sorcerer's Workshop:
http://sorcerersworkshop.org/ticketbooth.shtml
Enjoy!

FZ said...

Well, there are a couple of differences, for one thing the park in the movie was closed for the whole year or something like that while Disneyland at worst would only be closed for a few days.

Also, the ticket booth scripts were read by Jack Wagner in his soothing tones, not by some hyperactive Moose.

So, on the whole, the experience would have been nowhere near as grating as that experienced in the movie.

I don't think it was a matter of *letting* people drive in and park their car when the park was closed. On off days, there probably was nobody there to watch for cars to let them through anyway. It probably was not so much them being sadistic, as it was simply a case that some people would slip by even if there were guards to the parking lot and a tape to greet them was better than nothing.

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