Greetings family friends and Disney buddies. Today's rambling is about one of Disneyland's opening day  sponsored attractions. 

Admission to Disneyland in 1955 was one dollar!    Bill

Disneyana

CIRCARAMA

Raoul Grimoin-Sanson patented Cineorama in 1897, a unique

motion picture filming and projection system that he hoped to

introduce at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition. Raoul’s

apparatus simulated the 360 degree view from a balloon floating

over the capitals of Europe by using synchronized projectors

showing the films shot by ten individual motion picture cameras on

a white screen in a three hundred foot circumference circular

theater. To enhance the effect of drifting through the sky, he

placed a reed gondola basket in the center of the large round room

outfitted with an anchor, ladder, and sacks of ballast. Cloth was

hung from the ceiling along with ropes and the appropriate tackle

creating a believable simulation of floating in a balloon.

Unfortunately the heat generated by the ten projectors was

uncomfortable for guests, and local officials sensing the threat of a

potential catastrophic fire, closed Cineorama and ending Raoul’s

vision of an immersive attraction after just four performances.

One of the few Tomorrowland attractions operating in Disneyland

on opening day in 1955 was Circarama, a 360 degree theater

featuring a fifteen minute auto journey A Tour of the West

sponsored by the newly formed American Motors Corporation

(AMC). Guests shared the Cir-car-ama theater with the companies

latest automotive models and Kelvinator kitchen appliances while

watching the dizzying travel film projected on screens circling the

theater above their heads. Peter Ellenshaw art directed the film

that was shot from a complex device consisting of eleven 16 mm

cameras designed created by the Disney Studio’s Engineering

Department and mounted on the roof of an American Motors car.

In 1960 with improved technology and with a new sponsor, Bell

Telephone, Disney introduced a brand new non promotional

patriotic film, America the Beautiful. The popular tour of the United

States was re-branded as Circle Vision 360 in1967. With dwindling

attendance and taking up valuable space, Disneyland’s 360

degree theater, influenced nearly a century earlier by Raoul

Grimoin-Sanson’s Cineorama, closed permanently in 1997 to

make way for the short lived Rocket Rods pre-show, and is

currently the home for Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters. -Bill 10/23