Marc Davis and Disneyland's Rivers of America Rehab

Updated 5/12

I nearly peed my pants when I saw this.  But this time it was the good kind of pants-peeing.  I am thrilled to see that this Marc Davis concept is being used for the latest Rivers of America renovation.  I've never seen this raccoons looking at the skunk piece and it's fantastic.   

This is what the Rivers need.  A little more wild life here and there, some of which is in true classic gag form. (Thank goodness it's not Meeko).

Photo from MiceChat

Marc Davis has been my favorite concept artist since I can remember.  Disneyland and Magic Kingdom would not be what they became without Marc Davis.  He put more personality into the rides than anyone.  Not even Walt himself could have done the job so well.  

It's a cryin' shame he had to die in early 2000 at the age of 86.  It's also a cryin' shame some of his greatest concepts never made it very far off the drawing board (Thunder Mesa and the Western River Expedition).  Anyway, I'm happy to see that he has not gone completely forgotten when it comes time to add to existing classic attractions.

I'm terribly sad to see the old broken down train from Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland taken out.  I'm am happy to see the addition of Mike Fink and Davy Crockett to the river (in voice form).  The old burning cabin (remember the dead guy out front with an Indian arrow through his chest?) will now be Mike Fink's cabin complete with keel boat out front.  Remember that ride?  I hope we get to hear Fink mouth off to ol' Davy but it might just be them singing.  Keep in mind, they could have had some stupid voice recording of Johnny Depp or Brother Bear or some crap like that.  "Who in the world is Mike Fink??" You best be doing your homework if that just went through your mind.  Go out and rent yourself "Davy Crockett and the River Pirates" tonight.

This is another cool old Davis painting used in the early development of Rivers of America (Magic Kingdom).

Don't he look like something right out of his own drawings??

Here's some pretty cool footage of the man.  It's the third of three parts.  The other two are great too, mostly about his fantastic animation career.

Other Rivers of America Rehab articles:

http://www.ocregister.com/video/?videoId=84086250001&lineupId=1125901233

http://micechat.com/forums/blogs/dateline-disneyland/1489-rivers-reopened-swingin-symphony-creating-carsland-d23-remembers-roy-more.html

Magic Highway U.S.A... It doesn't get much better than this.

You've gotta see this.  1950s and 60s views of future transportation systems were so optimistic and wonderful.  Sadly, few of these predictions have come true.  However,  I am hopeful that soon my family car will be able to separate into two pieces, allowing my wife to head to a high-rise shopping center in one direction while I head to work in another direction.  Of course I'll be following color-coded highway lanes to glass tubes under the ocean on my way to my office-in-the-sky.

I love when I happen upon something on YouTube that I was not entirely aware of previously.  This was part of a 1958 "Disneyland" TV episode narrated by the great Marvin Miller and directed by the legendary animator, Ward Kimball.

Swiss Family Treehouse Model

I ran across this on one of Mike Cozart's blogs.  Hope you don't mind me posting this, Mike.  You guys may be familiar with one of his other blogs, TomorrowLounge67.  He built this 1/8 scale model at the request of a friend who worked with him at Disney a while back.  It's a model of the Disneyland Swiss Family Treehouse of the late 70s.

This thing is one of the coolest looking scale models I have ever seen.  I worked on scale models at a few model shops years ago and ever since I've admired a good model every time I've seen one.  Excellent work, M.C.  More photos here.

The square grid marks 1" squares so you can see how small these pieces really are.

Actual Swiss Family Treehouse Leaf on model 

Related posts:
Fantasyland Expansion Model
2 Fantastic Disneyland Scale Models