I guess my obsession with Disneyland began when I was a kid in 1966. I'd been there once or twice before that year, but I was too young then to really appreciate it. In 1966 I loved jungles, and I was so enthralled with the Enchanted Tiki Room from my 1966 Disneyland visit that I wanted to recreate an exact copy of the Tiki Room at home, even if only in model form.
This obsession became much stronger on my next visit in 1968. From then on I visited Disneyland at least once per year, I collected all the info and pictures of Disneyland I could afford, and I eventually ended up working there. In the 1970s I wondered why nobody had created a focal repository for pictures, information, and objects from Disneyland. It seemed to me that such a place would be of great interest to tourists as well as to Disneyland fans and historians. One particular two-story house in Tustin near a west offramp of the 5 freeway caught my eye as a great, convenient location for this, and I fantasized about starting such a showcase there.
Then came the Internet and virtual tours. At last my fantasy was realizable, at least in part. The final motivation for this site was by the Scott Weitz site called etixland (E-tickets land), which has a section called Disneyland '68. I had been wanting to create a Disneyland site for many years, and Scott's site provided the inspiration to get my butt in gear. It's nice to know other people enjoyed the same place in the same year that I did.
The starting date of this site was September 25, 2001. This site is always under construction. On the average, at least one picture per day is added, and usually about three.
Want me to post your experiences or pictures from this era? E-mail me about this, and if I will most likely include them.
The main set of postcards posted on this site were scanned at 50% size, partly because 100% scans take up too much space and often show excessive pixel detail. Postcard scenes are arranged into the order in which they appear on the attractions, as much as possible, not by postcard serial number.
On November 11, 2001 I began running out of GeoCities disk space and had to begin removing pictures and text that was less relevant to a 1968 postcard collection. Sorry! Maybe I'll get a COM site one of these days.
The file prefix is an abbreviation for the name of the book, booklet, or postcard packet, and the suffix is the page (or plate) number. For example, ODAD_p042a.jpg stands for One Day At Disney, page 42, picture #a. On the 12-scene packets, the plate numbers are modified slightly with an f or b, depending if the plate is on the front or back of the packet. For example, file name IASW_pb3.jpg means It's A Small World, plate #3 on the back of the packet.
Some book abbreviations used are:
DIS = Disneyland: Inside Story
ODAD = One Day At Disney
TAOWD = The Art Of Walt Disney
WDPSBOD = Walt Disney's Pictorial Souvenir Book Of Disneyland
Some postcard-sized packet abbreviations used are:
12CSFF = 12 Colorful Scenes From Fantasyland
12CSFT = 12 Colorful Scenes From Tomorrowland
CSFF = Colorful Scenes From Frontierland
DGCD = Disneyland Grand Canyon Diorama
IASW = It's A Small World
TID = This Is Disneyland
When single postcards have two-part numbers, the file name for the picture will include both parts, separated by an underscore. For example, postcard number 01110444/DT-35939-C has file name 01110444_DT-35939-C.jpg. When postcard serial numbers are ambiguous, I created my own descriptive suffix to describe the difference in scenes. For example, the two files for the two versions of card #1-281 are named 1-281_greenish.jpg and 1-281_brownish.jpg.
I have a special convention for naming booklets without page numbers. I consider both sides of the front cover and both sides of the back cover to be special entities, and I assume that page 1 starts on the right-hand side, where the first page would be if the front cover were removed. The naming scheme is then:
..._fce = front cover, exterior
..._fci = front cover, interior
..._p... = regular page/plate number follows (e.g., ..._p001)
..._rci = rear cover, inner
..._rco = rear cover, outer
Note that when the computer automatically alphabetizes the resulting files, this scheme will cause all page numbers and all covers to be in correct order relative to each other.
The story behind the URL for this site (http://www.geocities.com/oooketchup/) is as follows.
On my November 23, 1968 school trip to Disneyland with my friend Steve, some kids on the Skyway were dripping ketchup onto the people below. (They probably got free packets from the Tomorrowland Terrace.) When we learned about this, we were nervous every time we passed underneath the Skyway. Capitalizing on this fear, we joked with each other by pointing to each other's clothes and exclaiming in a loud voice "Oooh, ketchup!" This stupid joke continued all day, even onto the school bus home, where we got heads to turn each time we tried it. But by the third time kids were mostly ignoring us so we finally gave up.
Immature? Of course. Memorable fun? You bet!
Updated: November 11, 2001