Conversation starts after a short break. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying this week's mass shooting at a kosher grocery New Jersey is now being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism and the f.b.i. Is taking over state attorney general group beer gray walls says the shooters a man and woman subscribe to views consistent with the black Hebrew Israelite movement though they acted alone and that they were apparently motivated by hatred for Jewish people and police officers when they targeted the kosher grocery in Jersey City in a series of events ending in a police shootout 6 people police officer 3 civilians and the shooters were killed . The House Judiciary Committee is about to resume debate on proposed changes to articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump N.P.R.'s Miles Park says Democrats and Republicans have been sparring for hours the articles accuse President Trump of abuse of power for pressuring Ukraine to commit to investigations that would help him politically they also accuse Trump of obstruction of Congress for not cooperating with the house's investigations the hearing to edit the articles predictably has turned into a partisan arguing match about whether the president should be impeached at all Democrats say it's their solemn duty to impeach Trump but Republicans say Democrats are only moving towards impeachment because they're scared to face Trump and 2020 no changes to the articles been passed and none that fundamentally change the document are expected to pass the articles are expected to reach the full floor for a House vote next week Miles Parks' n.p.r. News the Capitol the National Suicide hotline could get a shorter easier to remember number 988 N.P.R.'s Yuki Noguchi reports the Federal Communications Commission has voted to move ahead with plans to simplify this number as the country suicide rate continues to rise currently one of the most effective ways of preventing suicide is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline the number of people who've relied on it for lifesaving resources is climbing last year over 2000000 people called the toll free line at 180273 talk but assigning it a shorter dialing code 9. $88.00 would make it easier to access for many in crisis the measure has bipartisan support not just at the f.c.c. But also in the Senate which is considering legislation the f.c.c. As proposal will be open for public comment if it moves ahead the new number could take effect in about a year and a half Yuki Noguchi n.p.r. News Washington and rage over a new citizenship measure in India is stoking more unrest N.P.R.'s Lauren Frayer reports from Mumbai 2 people have been killed and several wounded in clashes between police and protesters mobs have torched buildings burned buses and up rooted telephone poles thousands violated local curfews they're opposed to any amnesty for undocumented migrants police fired tear gas and live rounds Prime Minister Narendra Modi is appealing for calm his government is offering citizenship to religious minorities from neighboring countries except for Muslims and critics say that by late secularism in India's constitution this is n.p.r. Support for n.p.r. Comes from Abscam committed to providing analytics and insights to libraries that enable smarter collection development improved work flows and a greater user experiences learn more at eb Sco dot com and listeners like you who donated this in p.r. Station this is k.u.n.c. News I'm Amanda Andrews coming out of schools are performing a little better this year the State Board of Education released finalized ratings for all public schools under the state's accountability system this week just be Colorado reports $154.00 schools got one of the lowest 2 ratings slightly fewer than last year those will serve $70000.00 students the low status qualifies them for additional assistance and possible outside intervention the kind of buddy system has for ratings and most students attend schools that fall into the top 2. A group of retired top officials from the Bureau of Land Management is in d.c. This week criticizing the agency's planned relocation out west for k.u.n.c. Need hedgy reports the Bureau of Land Management says its planned relocation of more than $150.00 top employees will bring regulators closer to the lands they manage but former b.l.m. Director Bob Abbey says there's a different motive behind this we believe that this reorganization plan what was vetted by the department your is just a blueprint for dismantling of the agency itself Abbie ran the b.l.m. During the Obama administration he says top officials are choosing to quit or retire rather than move their families from d.c. To Colorado and other states in the West Abby and other former b.l. I'm officially are advocating lawmakers defund the agencies move in a statement the b.l.m. Says they're moving ahead with relocation and have cooperated with Congress at all points for them out west news bureau I mean hedgy the House just passed a comprehensive defense bill late Wednesday the legislation will establish a new armed services Brandt's the United States Space Force the Space Force will become the 6th branch of the us military and the 1st new branch to be added since the Air Force was created in 1907 the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act earmarks $140000000.00 for combined Space Operations facility it will be built on Streator Air Force Base near Colorado Springs u.s. Congressman Doug Lamborn represents the region he says the new branch will answer to the Air Force it will be a relationship similar to the Navy overseeing the Marines and it will be the Air Force overseeing space its mission will be to protect the interests of the United States in space and to deter aggression in from into space and to conduct space operations the legislation still needs to go to the Senate where it's expected to pass this is k.u.n.c. . To Disneyland might be the closest one can get to being inside one of Walt Disney streams the obsessive attention to detail the visual splendors the cleanliness of the park those are things Walt insisted upon even at a time when visitors expected amusement parks to be sticky seedy and strewn with trash see all the locomotive stops the animator was fascinated by trains and of course guests are greeted by characters Disney and his creative team invented it's hard to believe that on his opening day Disneyland was called a blatant nightmare from take in Dallas this is think I'm Chris Boyd author Richard Snow is the former editor in chief of American heritage magazine his research on the history of Disneyland actually started 60 years ago when as the 12 year old boy he paid his 1st visit to Frontierland Tomorrow Land Cinderella's Castle and Main Street USA Snow's new book is called Disney's land Walt Disney and the invention of the amusement park that changed the world he joins us from the studios of n.p.r. In New York Richard welcome to think. Thank you and I think it's actually Sleeping Beauty's Castle isn't that. Yes yes although they went through a lot of names 1st he just called it the medieval castle then it was Snow White's castle but now it's Sleeping Beauty hassle All right well you can't Disneyland the extension of the powerful personality of one man which is to say this was not an idea designed by committee what was Disney's vision for the park. One of his lieutenants said that the park was a map. Of his life he he was. Very. Drawn to the past. And very drawn the sounds are from the for him from a very early age but the part came about mostly because he was sick of everything else he he does of brought Adam made cartoons for most sort of course jittering novelty into a tremendously. Lucrative public art. But he had been bittered of by a 941 studio strike and he like everybody else was you know he spent all of World War 2 making movies with titles like for methods of flush riveting and like everybody else in those restless post-war years he thought sort of dislocated and he suddenly he gradually I think began to feel that well the trouble with my cartoons is are 2 dimensional but I'm trying to invent an alternative world and now I'm going to build one that people you know they're not just part of the audience they are part of the show. And this lodged in his mind more and more strongly in the late forty's and. It's significant that he began. The he knew from the beginning that you go into the park along though of what he called Main Street USA a which as everybody has been there known this an exuberant sort of turn of the century fantasy of what a small commercial block looked like in a mildly prosperous Midwestern city and that was sort of the key to the whole thing because it was I mean Main Street was not like the main street he knew which was in Marston lean Missouri it was Marse Lean was Main Street was a squalid as any other Midwestern main street naked of trees but it's but but the people who live there at the turn of the century when Walt was a child. Very much believed in progress and the architectural fixtures on their buildings stored it suggested that and that lodged into Disney's mind very early and he called Main Street his Main Street the heart line of America and that So you know no accident that that leads to all the other lands Well here he is in his own words describing what his beloved park would be or at least in words that were I take it written for him. And now own. Well didn't he would step forward to raid the dedication of Disneyland. They all have come to this happy place welcome. To the Land is Your Land here age relives fond memories of the past and here you may savor the challenge and promise of the future this is the land is dedicated to the ideals the dreams and the hardbacks that have created America with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world like it. That was 955 on the opening of the park Richard these days it's like natural for a media company to extend its brand with a theme park in a lot of other side businesses it was unprecedented in Disney's area and he wasn't like swimming in spare cash from Disney Studios to become fixated on the idea of an amusement park to get away from making animated movies Oh I think very much so he felt he did reach the limit of that he'd sort of sold he reached the limit of everything he could do and he. He began in an odd way by building his stream Lee elaborate. Small but live steam model railroad. In a home in homely hills that he actually built to build the railroad allowed around that this would be in the in the $940.00 s. And. And he landscape the extremely elaborate was really working railroad grade crossings and signal switches and he also took great care with the landscape and as he developed this it became clear that. What he was what he was doing was a. Tiny prefigure ration of the part he was going to build that people who rode his little train went through changes the mood and scenery and from that germ once once the idea of doing it big lodged in his mind there was no there was no stopping him and boy did people try everybody thought this is an awful idea at the. You know it's just a this is like early fifty's when. The American the means the park industry had declined the world was only saw an amusement park was only a slightly more respectable venue than a bordello the park said of. You know they had a prosperous boom in the 1920 s. And there was the thirty's no new paint. No upkeep and then the war when there's a lot of over use so. By then that was the park was sort of synonymous with those qual or and being cheated in throw League Baseball of bottles game and so when Disney announced that he wanted to build one of everyone from his wife to of all the investors were were absolutely horrified what parameters to didn't Disney have in mind searching for a location to build Disneyland Well he. Grew and grew with his his 1st extremely optimistic thought that he could build on the studio backlot which was about an acre and a half. Of then across of the across from the Burbank studio on a plot of land that was you know a couple of acres more than that and. He hired architects and told them what they wanted and learned 2 things one of the 1st one was you need a hell of a lot more space than this and the 2nd was no architect can do this for you this is this is your idea you know you have to do this so he hired the Stanford Research Company which would just been founded in California to us. Sites for new businesses and that while the growing state at that time and they conducted a very elaborate search for. Not for where the population was at the moment before were 6 or 8 years and they. Only they they tried dozens of sites they they they called it the amoeba which was floating closer and closer to the place where where they finally live on which was the town of Anaheim which at that time was. Known to Americans but only because it was a joke on the Jack Benny Show there is that the every so often there'd be a mock train and then instrument 3 leading on track number 2 from Azusa among and Anaheim meaning 3. Nothing towns but. Disney. You know the advantage to that was all orange at all planted with orange trees Disney bought up 160 acres there and. It's funny he's a I don't know if people remember Art Linkletter today but he was a close friend of Disney's and a television personality on the you know level of Johnny Carson at the time who would. And Disney took him out to after he'd finally solidified the purchase and they are come I want you see something and. The Linkletter later said that was it was the most depressing trip of my life he dropped out in 2 of the drove was I want to do this desolate farmland and started walking along a dirt road and said Look I've spent all the money I can but there's land available outside art I think if you buy this now you'll make a lot and. Linkletter made polite noises and went home and despair and later wrote oh my God I wish I'd listened that walk cost me a $1000000.00 a foot. Well he did but cause yeah he didn't invest right Art Linkletter didn't invest No he didn't in that though he was though he was smart enough once once the park was finished then Walt needed a host for the. Television show announcing it he asked Linkletter to do it then he said the art of that article now I can't pay you. I'm broke and let all pay me union scale and this he said $100.00 sure sure yeah I know we're friends but I know you'll be grateful enough to give me 10 years of income on the film sales in the park. And so we missed the big deal he got millions of dollars on that he was also smart enough to invest early on in the hula hoop. So what deal did Disney strike with a.b.c. To secure funding and why was that such a valuable thing it was a gamble for for Disney and for a b c o you once he got his once he got the patch of land that so this made Art Linkletter. It's been there you spent all the money had you thought the $800000.00 buying buying the land and now it was an entirely broke he hocked as life insurance he sold a summer's summer home and. For years. Television stations have been wooing him they all wanted a Disney show and Disney was quite a futurist he. He is 1936 when there were perhaps 2000 television receivers in the world he broke a deal with r k o because they wanted the television rights to his cartoons Heath he held on to all laugh and when he digs also at everything else he thought Ok I'm going to make a deal was some television station and. I will give them a show and they will pay for my park and he went to the 2 big stations a.b.c. And c.b.s. . They wanted nothing to do with it are going to jump in here we'll take a break and get the rest of that story and then it and I guessed is Richard Snow former editor in chief of American heritage magazine author of Disney's land Walt Disney and the invention of the amusement park the change the world will be right back. Rachel Martin n.p.r. Is available everywhere. That's one of our listeners. The Public Radio. 365. Now. Mostly. Funding for think comes from the u.t. Dallas' gentle school of management global leadership m.b.a. Ranks number one for best online m.b.a. By c.e.o. Magazine January 1st is the spring semester deadline details at g.l. E.m.b.a. Dot u.t. Dallas' dot edu. Real soon. Because we like you. This is think I'm Chris Boyd My guest is the story and Richard snow we're talking about his book Disney's land Walt Disney and the invention of the amusement park that changed the world so you were saying before the break that Disney approached the more successful 2 networks the big the big station c.b.s. And n.b.c. And they they all they both said we want your show but we don't want anything to do with the news that park and then he went to a.b.c. Which in those days was all very very far behind struggling 3rd of the industry joke had the a.d.c. Stood for the almost Broadcasting Company and the Comedian Milton Berle once said Say if the Russians ever drop the bomb let's all run over the a.b.c. They never had a hit yet. So. They were they were eager and does the struck a deal. And he would give them an hour of programming a week and they would. Invest directly invest into the park and guarantee loans and the show was a tremendous success that it really literally in a couple of months it put a.b.c. Up with the big boys but it and it's quite telling that he didn't call it an hour with Walter of the wonderful world of Walt Disney or of he called it Disneyland and I was of a very early and total convert that ran on Wednesdays I don't think I missed a one and there'd be you know 10 minutes of Donald Duck spluttering and then you know and then basically of a half hour commercial for the park that had even yet been built but it had been the norm it's impact and also of. It also led the part of the problems that beset them when opening day finally came because they had it. Locked in. Iron on July 17th there had to be the largest live television broadcast. Ever by that at that time. To show the opening of the park and so. Once that was in place he only had a year to build it so let's you know let's let let's in 12 months get rid of the orange trees and build a little city state. So under no circumstances were any of the attractions in Disney's park to be known as rides Why did Disney object to that term. All of there were this was part of the of. This was part of the whole vocabulary that that that grew up around the park his his. He realized that in order to. You know in order to have this park be what he hoped it would be it wasn't just a question of building entirely new rides which of course they also had to do but also you needed the huge staff of people who would who would be as delightful as the rides so one of his very gifted lieutenants of an are still friends. Who do you know train people to build bombers in World War 2. Worked up a Disney school where there were no customers there were only guests that everything you know everything was a euphemism and this is. That that school is still very much work and it's also spilled over into the world at large in my grocery store now when I'm next in line the person calls next guest please the that's all part of what came with this immensely influential theme park it was a whole a whole new kind of public relations or more accurately relations with the public. What did Walt Disney mean when he said he wanted his part to be full of wienies. This. This so he would come home from work and his and there's a rather undignified term of. Park employees are discouraged from using it the day he would come home from work at the end of the day and though he loved the frankfurter and he had the not entirely appealing habit of pulling 2 wrong ones out of the refrigerator he won and tear off pieces of the other and drop them in front of his dog duchesses you follow him around the house sold Frankfurter Wiener we need and he translated this when he was building the park as something that would draw you on something that would get you to the next spot and he he he was very interested in crowds lol and he thought the way to do that is to always have something that will draw the. The visitor along to the next attraction and so the only one you can see from outside the park or the steam trains circle it but once you get inside you're on Main Street and then the 1st weenie is the Cinderella Castle when you're drawn to that the next Winnie is the lacy scrollwork of the Mississippi River trip steamer Mark Twain he always. He always wanted to keep his people his visitors enticed and being drawn to something else and his. Very gifted landscape architect the whoa rock of a woman then roof shell Horn who who was brought in halfway through construction. Understood this and tire Lee and she made sure that the planning's long Main Street . As you approach the castle 0 percent of the sort of botanical strip tease where 1st you'd see an enticing Rampart then you'd see a golden spire then you know there was always a little shot of something to keep you moving and this was so Walt Disney's idea how a weenie should work. 20 end of construction Disney and his wife villian literally moved into Main Street. He did I am not sure Lillian stayed with Marilyn but yes he had he had a little love apartment of all the turn of the century. Fire house on Main Street of and of the tiny but. Fully tricked out in the you know high 910 middle class furnishings. It's still there and they have a light on the window that burns Neha night in memory of Disney but toward the end he never left the part for the end nobody did they that they were they were. So pressed for time I mean everything and everything had been a problem oh you know we had they had the famous Jungle Cruise in the Rivers of America and you know you could build the boats but you had to supply the rivers and the ground they had to work with was what one of his landscape architects called it was ball bearings sand that everything that got poured into it was a mediately drunk all they every you know they solve that with clay but but everything took longer than they thought it would so. Right at the end. Everybody was working 24 hours a day Disney was making hard choices he had. Of the there was among his other miseries there was a plumber strike so he had to choose between installing drinking fountains and restrooms and he chose the restrooms he said people can drink Pepsi cola but they can't pee in the street. It was like that it was it was very close. At 4 o'clock in the morning of July 17th the 6 hours before opening the asphalt still hadn't been poured on Main Street Wow So it didn't have time to completely solidified I think time people showed up no it certainly didn't mean streets certainly didn't that. Opening day the asphalt was still so wet that it sucked the shoes off women's feet. So what was the deal with the demo ride. Oh that was a that was a it was one. Every ride every ride had difficulties but the double ride which was. In explicable popular in that it's slow and has long lines and doesn't go fast but it did have to lift. A flying elephant on the. Arm and they they the people everybody he didn't want any real amusement park people there so everyone he hired was sort of an amateur and the gifted as it turned out of course but but the people who built the Dumbo ride. The 1st the dumbos which weighed $700.00 pounds were too heavy to lift and they figured out complicated you just it's temporized a complicated thing where you had a mixed year of volved of some kind of heavy fluid in some kind of gas and it would work for about 10 minutes and then it would suddenly produce and squirt out quarts of white goo so it had to be cleaned every 15 minutes and the among the very early Oh the mysteries of the early days of the part of Port every of the early days of the park everybody. Was saying oh God we have the milky elephant again. This is think I'm Chris Boyd and they were also worried Richard about whether these rides could bear the weight of say a parent and a small child so they had I guess a big guy who was on staff at Disney and his job was to be official ride he was a good sport he was a he was actually a very of. He was a very you know he was a real Adam a he was a get very gifted artist as he had. He had been with Disney from the earliest days when that when Disney was. Looking at possible cars for Mr Toad's Wild Ride. He had come out with some of the sketches and. Disney figured that he wanted a ride to hold one of the cars to be able to hold one adult and one child and he said Ok you're big and fat come sit in the car. And he was a pretty peremptory boss when he wanted to be. The guy was very good natured and then served for the rest of the time was the sort of ride capacity human check point. So the deal with a.b.c. Included making this making the opening of Disneyland a live t.v. Event let's listen here to Art Linkletter tipping off audiences that maybe they shouldn't get their hopes up all and your way over television with the help of $29.00 cameras and dozens of crews and literally miles and miles of cable now of course this is not so much your show as it is a special event The rehearsal went about the way you'd expect a rehearsal to go if you were covering 3 volcanoes all erupting at the same time and you didn't expect any of it so all from time to time if I say we take you now by camera to the snapping crocodiles in advance your land instead the somebody pushes the wrong button and we catch on everything done adjusting her bustle on the mark plane Don't be too surprised it's all in fun and that's what we're here for the grounds are loaded with about 15000 people who are especially invited guests up well there's news and they're here from movieland from Motion Picture and correspondents from every possible kind of activity connected with the opening of the 8th wonder of the world how did that t.v. Special go Richard Ha Well the grounds in fact were loaded with possibly as many as $40000.00 guests. And that was the 1st thing that went wrong the Disney had set out invitations for $15000.00 guests and. The show had been successful enough so that half the country was wild to get there and people swarmed there and they had counterfeit tickets. Some entrepreneurs put up ladders on the far side of the park and charged $5.00 a throw to climb up them and jump in so when the temperature instantly went up to $100.00 degrees and stayed there all day the. Every single ride except the Jungle Cruise wrote down. For Disney and self was seen running fresh supplies of toilet paper to one of the restrooms he providentially provided and. While. The newspaper headline the next day was. Was pretty typical of. All the press then that said the $17000000.00 people trap that Mickey Mouse built. But the fact is that the show was very well done this on the it's on You Tube You can see it it's pretty entertaining there are little there little glitches and gaffes but you have no idea Dia of the chaos is actually going on that it really was quite a triumph but there were mean like the rides weren't necessarily safe you have in the book this employee talking about ferrying kids back and forth to the 1st aid station one of them had a handful of his own teeth Yes. That was the one that was the Autopia ride which was sort of the surprise hit of the park you know you drove me to the very head they had a lot of trouble figuring out what the point of them are land because tomorrow's harder to figure out the main street but they knew that the freeways for casting in that over Los Angeles all they knew there had to be a free re ride for kids and they had little honest to God gasoline automobiles and . Oh they like everything else of a had not had time to develop them properly so. The wheels were the steering wheels were. If not metal in the extremely hard plastic so whenever the cars collided as they olds did with kids of the of yeah there there were there were there were that the boy who was shepherded to the into the 1st aid station on the 1st day though was worried about his teeth only because he wanted to get back on the wrong My guest is Richard Snow a former editor in chief of American heritage magazine and author of Disney's land Walt Disney and the invention of the amusement park that changed the world we'll be right back. Funding for thing comes from t.c. You named the number 8 best college in the nation for internships and career services by the Princeton Review and dedicated to educating the ethical leaders of tomorrow t.c. You will lead on. This is think I'm Chris Boyd speaking this hour with author Richard Snow former editor in chief of American heritage magazine and author of Disney's land Walt Disney and the invention of the amusement park that changed the world Ok Richard if many of the reporters who showed up on opening day to write about this event for the rest of America said the place was a bust Why did people keep coming. Well. The ground could not have been better prepared by disease television show of the of. The opening show which. As I was saying very very nicely had the mounting pandemonium behind the cameras. Was watched by a larger percentage of the American populace and watched the moon walk out it was it was like it was in a Normas success. And the other thing is the disney. Was. Could be a very tough and intimidating task master but he himself never shied away from hard work he knew he had damage control to do he of. And he was very good at it and so there were. So there was a huge push to of of course fix the rides that you know were working but also to get the press in to show that he a good knowledge all the. All the early grief he didn't he didn't try to hide anything but he conducted a very savvy publicist he campaign and by. By. Early August the press reports were were getting much kinder But the fact is that even if they'd stayed hostile people were coming I think the millionth customer went through the doors by the by the end of that fall the the show would been so persuasive and Disney's working in correcting things so effective that you know just a month after the opening of sampling said the something like 95 percent of the people who went there felt they'd gotten their money's worth and that it wasn't cheap then and just as it isn't now but but people did though if one radio announcer sourly said I could send my kids to college or to Disneyland and not know which to do well but the fact is that. People were paying and they were feeling they got their money's worth and that's been pretty much the case ever since how were Disney employees trying to understand what worked in the park and what didn't in order to give visitors a better experience Well they are they that this training school kept going and the. Although they were. Although they were. Given of fairly standard vocabulary responses they were told that all was always be attentive always be pleasant always answer questions and. They. They they were of the that that the that training school that are still Francis training school of which has been picked up by corporations across this Bactrim was extremely. Affective and also Disney would actually put on a dopey looking hat and wander around the park Incognito. Day in and day out he was. He was a human receptor to how people are responding to things and they. They very early found out where do you need more shade and how to make a line which they are masters of how to make a line look shorter than it is and in some weird cases where there weren't long lines because they found that. That if there wasn't a long line people would think the ride wasn't popular how to make lines look longer there are all sorts of there were all sorts of little calculations they went through with the great skill and the growing authority so by the end of the year. There was there was no chance that this terrific gamble wasn't going to pay off and no sooner did he have it working the way he wanted it than Walt Disney started adding attractions to the park he called that plussing And he he it right right from the beginning he was he was. All was adding things he and and and. And with. And that showed up on the bottom line because it turned out that when he put in the new attraction and of course give an hour to it on television park attendance would jump 10 percent the 1st big one was something called the rainbow caverns mined train ride where you went through an underground cavern with 2 of colorful waterfalls which I went through when I was 12 and I've never gotten over so he was he was doing very well he was also as you said earlier abs suit we obsessed with the tail he knew that. His all his lieutenant said don't do this Walt no one will know descend Disney said no we stand or fall on the details the details will save the park people notice people are smarter than you think they are and that. Early on before it opened he was walking along his railroad track of his beloved railroad train something was nagging at him what was the matter something was wrong the ballast the trains were 2 thirds full size but they were what they were but the rocks in the road bed were full scale railroad run Wow And with everything with everything else weighing on him with a month to go he had all the ballast reground. I mean that was that that was the that was the kind of attention he paid what it is it's very. Very effective and eventually troublemaking the lieutenant cv would was particularly frantic when the of the. Through the century Main Street buildings there was a lot of a decorative ironwork it with 40 feet up from the street on the top of the building and wooden wanted that made out of plastic and no one with a delegate from the street he said this he said don't feel a difference it's on fire and so it was. So one of the things that he added in the 1st few years was the matter horn which was like unprecedented at the time right Oh absolutely and. Again that nobody wanted the Disneyland. And nobody you know nobody wanted the matter horn but he made a film about mountaineering in the matter horn of gotten stuck in his head and he sent a postcard from. From Switzerland which is. Absolutely no poli onic in its brevity you said these you said build this. And nobody thought he was kidding so they started to it was it was not only that he liked the idea of having the matter more in there but he also realized that of the only the beginning he wanted no standard amusement park rides no roller coasters he needed something that went faster than Dumbo the Flying Elephant and so he decided to have a bobsled ride inside the matter horn which. Which was. Again something absolutely unprecedented the. You know roller coaster to be as big as you can afford but this one had to be build inside an eccentric skyscraper and the people charged with it the arrow development company. There was no way they could make the cars make the sharp turns and the salt Well wait instead of having them run on tracks what if we have them run on steel too and this was an invention that transformed the outdoor amusement industry it. Allowed roller coasters to have loops 140 feet high it. Within within a decade every other amusement park in the country had to have one it was one of the small but enduring things that flowed from Disneyland. My guest is Richard snow this is think I'm Chris Boyd Richard you mentioned that you 1st went to Disneyland when you were 12 Take us back to 1959 and your most vivid memories of that day. Oh well it was as a total. Convert to the show I mean I had the effect on me just. Just the same as everybody was worried television would have on children in those. I wheedled like parents and the sending me out there were my nights at local lived in l.a. Took me there and from the moment I stepped in I thought this is you know this is I love that amusement park but boy this was this was different this was a this was a new world and. We went on the submarine ride with my uncle who the. Who'd been on a submarine because he worked on acoustic torpedoes in World War 2 And he said as the hatch was dug down gosh even smells right some rooms had been built by a shipyard but I I loved it all I was a little startled when Mr Toads run wild ride ends up with Toad dead and then hell that. Was a show of fags that you know this nice Disney lot and all that soft but. The thing that stayed with me was that Main Street I remember. Being there right at the other by my my my aunt and uncle were great they just turned me loose I spent the whole day there and but I remember being at Main Street as the dust came down on the lights began to go on all those busy cornices and I thought you know. I want to stay in this place forever. And in a strange sense I did it gave me an interest in American history that. Eventually led me to a. Job a historical magazine and. I worked my whole life there and put bread on my table. For 40 years so I owe good deal to Walt Disney What did it take for Disney Land to convert to kind of one price for all the attractions Well they're there. It had been the beginning of each each ride. You had the page went aboard and this sort of this that this involved hells of complex cities bringing buckets full of change back and forth and stuff so I add that also Disney realized very early on that if you're going to have your hand in your pocket every 8 minutes you're going to think about nothing but money so they came up with the idea of the ticket so you get a ticket book and. They were and they graded the rides alphabetically a.b.c. Easy for the most expensive ones and. That way you that way you felt somehow that you were a bit of that it was play money and free and that was very effective and I think and it's something that shows how Disneyland seeped into the human spirit when Sally Ride became the 1st American woman astronaut to go in the space of the 1st thing she said when she got off was that was a real eat take it ride. They'd abandon the tickets for the $1.00 price policy 2 years before but the was so firmly planted in the national imagination that everybody knew what she was talking about. Do you have children or grandchildren that you've taken to Disney Oh good heavens yes. Oh yes yeah yeah. Oh no grandchildren yet but. To children they are. It's sort of irritating because neither of them liked it as much as I did really yeah yeah I know I would feel betrayed but my kin So you think they just you needed an excuse to go back would you go back to your absolute Well I did when I was working on the doing research on the book although research might be a rather inflated word for taking a trip to Disneyland but yeah I went back and I myself and. I had a fine time it's as magical in $21000.00 as it ever was to me and most of the world and of course it's there there are a dozen Disney parks now but I would say that if you're going to go to one go to that one the scale is smaller it's more intimate you can still feel Disney's presence there in a way that you can from the other parks not none of which you ever saw and. You can still feel the genius that brought us out of there Richard Snow is former editor in chief of American heritage magazine and author of Disney's The land Walt Disney and the invention of the amusement park that change the world Richard thanks so much for making time to speak with us Oh thank you is a blight you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter our handle is at a think subscribe to our podcast and what about upcoming shows at thank our aid dot org Again I'm Chris Boyd thanks for listening have a great day. You've been listening to think this afternoon on. 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