Greetings family, friends and Disney buddies! Today's rambling is a brief backstory about Holliday Hill, a temporary Disneyland "attraction". Take a look at the attached photo...The zig zag path up Holiday Hill can be spotted to the right of Sleeping Beauty Castle in this 1955 drawing.........Bill
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HOLIDAY HILL
Disneyland fans are familiar with the big three mountains: Matterhorn, Space, and Big Thunder, but only the most dedicated fans know about the parks more obscure first “hill”. What did Disney do with the tons dirt removed to create the moat surrounding Sleeping Beauty Castle with opening day fast approaching, looming budget constraints, and the expense of having the dirt hauled away?
They made a twenty foot high pile of dirt and named it Holiday Hill.
Holiday Hill was developed as a picnic area with benches, pathways, and planted with small pine trees, but it didn’t take long before the secluded ”attraction” became a security issue with adventuresome guests seeking prime photo spots and teenagers looking for an isolated make-out location. One of the parks more industrious cast members even created a hillside marijuana grow plot. Walt Disney came up with an idea of putting the troublesome hill to better use by creating a toboggan ride featuring real snow. Needless to say the idea was quickly shot down because of the logistical nightmare and Anaheim’s scorching hot summers, however Disney’s infamous dirt pile still became known to cast members as “Snow Hill”.
Walt was so taken with the beauty of the Matterhorn while in Switzerland during the filming of Third Man on the Mountain that he sent a photo postcard of it back to Imagineering with the message “build this!”. In 1959 the pile of dirt known as Holiday Hill became the foundation of the worlds first tubular steel rollercoaster, Matterhorn Mountain Bobsleds. -Bill 4/23
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