Flying Saucers--Disneyland History--TMS-453

MickeyMousePark

Watch Flying Saucers--Disneyland History--TMS-453 - MickeyMousePark on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00It is viewers like you that make videos like this possible.

00:07Please support MickeyMousePark.com

00:24Flying Saucers are now a reality based in a space station in Disneyland's Tomorrowland.

00:29Here the guest may climb aboard his own craft, fasten his safety belt and actually take off in free flight and guide his own spaceship.

00:36Showing more ambition than practicality, Disneyland debuted its unique space-age bumper car ride in mid-1961.

00:43UFOs had been a hot topic throughout the 50s when sightings headlined newspapers and bug-eyed Martians invaded America's drive-in movie screens.

00:52Thus, the time seemed right for flying saucers to invade Disneyland.

00:56The park's promotional literature played up the attraction,

00:59Fly Your Own Flying Saucer at the Space Terminal, touted the attraction poster.

01:03Each guest pilots his own ship in free flight, announced the 1961 souvenir book.

01:08Space travel at a space station captioned the 1962 book for a flying saucers photo.

01:14Choose your flight pattern, away you go, exhorted the 1965 book.

01:19All intriguing descriptions, to be sure.

01:21The Bob Gurr-designed saucers were small, one-seat hovercraft six feet in diameter.

01:26In reality, Disneyland's flying saucers probably should have been called the hover saucers,

01:30operating in a circular, open-air platform that covered a third of an acre next to the Rocket to the Moon attraction.

01:37The saucers got airborne when they were lifted up by high-powered jets of air generated by large mortars under the platform.

01:44When they hovered successfully, the 64 saucers, in two fleets of 32, could lift a few inches off the ground.

01:50Though they had no controls, only handles inside their cockpits.

01:54The saucers could be steered independently by guests who only had to lean to dip their saucers in any direction,

02:00even into other saucers for some bumper bashing.

02:03Unfortunately, persistent problems with the air jets led to lots of ground time for the e-ticket attraction.

02:09Body weight was also an issue.

02:10Small guests couldn't get their saucers to dip anywhere, while some larger guests couldn't even get off the ground.

02:16Other guests occasionally turned their saucers completely over, risking a crash.

02:20Too often, guests couldn't go anywhere because the whole system would shut itself down.

02:24Five million pilots gave the saucers a test flight, but after five years of headaches and extremely loud,

02:29noise, Disney designers finally grounded the troublesome ride in 1966,

02:34remodeled the whole area as a Tomorrowland stage in 1967.

02:38The Flying Saucers attraction was one of the worst maintenance headaches at Disneyland.

02:42The ride was built by the Aero Company.

02:44The Flying Saucers area was 16,000 square feet with two sections, each section with 32 saucers.

02:5116 flying while 16 were being loaded.

02:54Flight times were three minutes.

02:56The Flying Saucers were designed by National Research Associates, Inc.

03:00NRA was founded in 1958 by Mel Beardsley.

03:03An early use for a similar single-seater, but not self-propelled, being inflated by blowers below the deck, was a ride at Disneyland.

03:10Disney licensed the technology from NRA.

03:13The name GEM is derived from the acronym Ground Effects Machine.

03:17The Flying Saucers Army Mallers.

03:22The GEM.

03:23Theionинки on the Discounted alto.

03:26The NRA's Story of the Feminist, the yoke.

03:29The Amount Tf.

03:31The Amount Tf.

03:34The Amount Tf.

03:36The Amount Tf.

03:38The Amount Tf.

03:40The Amount Tf.

03:42The Amount Tf.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended