Disney references in Enchanted

Disney Fact: Dopey was originally suggested for the role of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

21 fascinating things no one ever told you about Disneyland

• There is a basketball court in the middle of The Matterhorn. It's a small, half court, but a basketball court nonetheless. It is inside, towards the top of the mountain and had been a break area for the alpine climbers and some of the cast members who worked the bobsled ride.
• Sitting above the Disneyland Fire Dept. is Walt Disney's personal apartment. It's a small space that was Walt's private area for when he would visit. And if you look at the main window, Disneyland always keeps a lantern lit in honor of Walt's memory.
• Disneyland was built on 160 acres of farmland, mostly orange groves. There is an image of the land before building began.
• There is an interesting cameo in Tarzan's Treehouse. In the kitchen at the base of the treehouse, look closely and you'll spot Mrs. Potts and Chip, from Beauty and the Beast. You can see an image of them right here.
• Disneyland once had a walk-through attraction showing off props from the Disney film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. But the large organ from this long gone spot found a home, it is now housed in the ballroom of The Haunted Mansion.
• This is Marceline, Missouri, the hometown of Walt Disney. He based Disneyland's Main Street on this street. And an interesting note, it is the only place authorized to fly the official Disneyland flag outside of Disneyland.
• Where the popular Star Tours ride is was once the home of Monsanto's Journey to Inner Space. The Mighty Microscope, that was part of the Monsanto ride, is still there! Where? According to this site, "it's down and to the right just as your StarSpeeder shoots over the railing into the maintenance bay, before heading up and out the space portal".
• Once upon a time, the Penny Arcade on Main Street had a shooting gallery that used, get this, real bullets. The game had live ammunition in .22 caliber rifles. The game was quickly pulled and didn't last a year.
• Tom Sawyer Island actually has a Missouri zip code. And on opening day, it was "annexed" as part of Missouri.
• If you go to The Mad Hatter shop in Fantasyland (it's right by the Tea Cups), you might spot a vision of a disappearing Cheshire cat! Look above the mirror that is placed above the check-out counter and the Cheshire cat will magically appear (and then disappear as he does).
• The Enchanted Tiki Room was originally supposed to be a restaurant, not an attraction. But that dream came to fruition with the addition of Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Bar at the Disneyland Hotel.
• On Main Street you might notice what seems like a random cigar store Indian. But he is there for a reason. He resides in front of what used to be an actual cigar store right in the midst of Disneyland.
• While Disneyland is only 58 years old, there is one part that is millions of years old. By the banks of the River of America is a petrified tree that is between 55 million and 70 million years old. Walt bought the fossil from a local in Colorado and brought it home. His wife Lilian said it was "too big for the mantle," and donated it to Disneyland.
• If you listen closely at the train station in New Orleans Square you'll hear some interesting tapping sounds. And those aren't just any random taps, it is Walt Disney's opening day speech delivered in Morse Code.
• About 200 feral cats call Disneyland home. (Yes, there are cats living in Disneyland and the park encourages their living there.) They feed the cats, fix them, and make sure their medical needs are met. Why? Because as one Cast Member said, "they help keep the Mickey and Minnie population down". They added that if a Cast Member falls for one of the felines, they can adopt them and take them home.
• There is an interesting nod to the past in the ride Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye. In the scaffolding of the projector room, there is a poster of Eyeore from Winnie-the-Pooh. Why? Because once upon a time, the area that the Indiana Jones ride resides was once part of the parking lot and the section was the Eyeore section.
• Country Bear Jamboree was housed in the area that is now home to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. In an ode to the now replaced ride, they left the moose heads of Max, Buff, and Melvin of the Country Bear Jamboree hanging around.
• Imagineer Herb Ryman designed Sleeping Beauty Castle inspired by King Ludwig II’'s Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. The team created a model of the castle and Ryman was experimenting with the look of the building, he took the top of the castle (the pink part with the spires) and turned it around. Walt Disney walked into the room soon after and decided that that was the way to build it. So that part of the castle is actually backwards.
• Did you know that Steve Martin got his start at Disneyland? When he was just 10-year-old he would sell park programs. And as a young adult he worked at the Magic Shop, showing off magic tricks to the masses. He even came back for Disneyland's 50th anniversary and went behind the counter to do some of his magic. You can check out photos of him at Disneyland right here.
• John Lasseter has come a long way! The writer, director and chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios was once a Jungle Cruise skipper. He once said of the Jungle Cruise: "I love that ride. I loved being a ride operator because you are part of the ride. Anybody who has ridden on that, you know that the skipper, he has all of these bad jokes. And trust me, they are really bad jokes. You know, you show people the "back side of water" and so on... But one of the things that I loved was that you have this captive audience and I honed my comic sense of timing because of being on this ride and doing the jokes over and over, and really trying to make the audience laugh. And I loved it!"
• If you look closely at Walt's tie in the "Partners" statue, you'll notice an interesting tie clip. Many think it appears to look like some kind of Asian symbol, but it is actually a ranch brand that says STR. STR stands for Smoke Tree Ranch, the Palm Springs ranch that Disney had a home and that he loved to escape to.

30 curiosities about Peter Pan

• 22 year-old Margaret Kerry (who measured 35-25-36, and provides the voice of the red-haired mermaid) was the real-life model for Tinker Bell. Persistent rumors have incorrectly named Marilyn Monroe in this position.
• Although original author J.M. Barrie is credited, this is the only major film version of "Peter Pan" which uses little of his original dialogue. (Even the live-action musical versions, as well as the silent film Peter Pan, use much of Barrie's original dialogue.)
• Kathryn Beaumont, who provided the voice for Wendy, also performed the live action references. In an interview, she said she had to hold out her arms and pretend to fly for all the scenes requiring it.
• In compliance with the tradition of the stage version, the same actor, Hans Conried, performed the roles of both Mr. Darling and Captain Hook. Nana and the Crocodile are also a "dual role" on stage, which the animators acknowledge by giving the Crocodile canine qualities.
• The melody for "The Second Star to the Right" was originally written for Alice in Wonderland for a song that was to be called "Beyond the Laughing Sky".
• Bobby Driscoll (as a voice actor) was the first male to play the title role on film.
• The phrase "second to the right and straight on till morning" was changed into "second star to the right..." for the Disney version. Also, since the stage musical version with Mary Martin opened on Broadway in 1954, non-Disney versions have used the term "Never Never Land" as opposed to "Neverland."
• In the original play, Hook loses his right hand, but the Disney artists felt that would limit his actions too much, and switched the hook to the left hand.
• Though the film was extremely successful, Walt Disney himself was dissatisfied with the finished product. He felt that the character of Peter Pan was cold and unlikable.
• This film marked two "lasts" for Disney: first, it was the final Disney film in which all nine members of the Nine Old Men worked together on it as directing animators; second, it was the last full-length Disney animated film distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. All of Disney's films after early 1954 would be distributed by Buena Vista, as well as all of the post-1954 re-releases of his earlier films.
• Henry Brandon was the live action reference model for Captain Hook.
• When Walt Disney was a child, he played Peter Pan in a school function.
• GOOFY HOLLER: Heard during Captain Hook's fight with the crocodile inside the cave at Skull Rock, when Smee accidentally hits Hook on the head with his rowboat oar. The "Goofy holler" is partially obscured by gargling noises as Hook goes underwater after taking the hit.
• The opening line of this film, "All (of) this has happened before, and it will all happen again," is quoted frequently in the song "Seek 200" by Information Society, though it is not a direct sample. (Information Society adds the preposition "of.")
• This is the second film production of "Peter Pan" in which Tinker Bell has a form. The first was made in 1924 and starred Virginia Brown Faire as Tinker Bell. In stage productions she is portrayed as a bright light which is accompanied by the sound of bells when she is meant to be speaking.
• "Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the film on December 21, 1953 with Bobby Driscoll reprising the title role.
• The original Broadway production of "Peter Pan", or "The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up" by J.M. Barrie opened at the Empire Theater on November 6, 1905. It ran for 223 performances, closed on May 20, 1906, and starred nineteenth-century stage actress Maude Adams, who never made any films and should never be confused with model-actress Maud Adams.
• Walt Disney had been trying to buy the film rights to J.M. Barrie's play since 1935 having been smitten by a traveling production of the play when he was a child. The hold-up in negotiations was because Barrie had bequeathed the rights to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London. Disney finally secured the rights in 1939.
• Active story development began in the early 40s as Walt Disney intended for Peter Pan to be a follow-up to Bambi. Plans were put on hold, however, with the outbreak of World War II and would stay that way up until after the war ended.
• In the originally planned version, Nana traveled with the children to Neverland. It also had a much darker ending.
• Disney attracted negative comments for their stereotypical depiction of Indians, as indeed did J.M. Barrie with his original play. It's probably for that very reason that the Indians do not appear in the 2002 sequel, Return to Never Land.
• Michael Jackson's favorite film. He bestowed the name Neverland on his ranch in Santa Barbara, complete with a private amusement park. Jackson was forced to vacate it after controversy over his involvement with young, unsupervised children on the premises in 2005.
• Ronald D. Moore, one of the executive producers and developer of the revamped Battlestar Galactica, cites this film as the inspiration for one of the recurring themes of his series concerning the cyclical nature of time. The opening line of the film "All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again" is frequently quoted as a piece of scripture in Moore's series.
• Unlike the voices in animated films today (which use and are promoted by big name film stars), this drew a lot of its voice cast from the radio, a medium where actors are used to performing solely by their voice. Bill Thompson who voices Smee in the film is one such example.
• The Reluctant Dragon features a tour of the Disney studios in which drawings of Captain Hook can be clearly seen, indicating that the film was in active development as early as 1941.
• Many Peter Pan purists were very upset by the characterization of Tinker Bell as a petulant (and voluptuous) young woman.
• Originally, this was intended to be the second animated feature created by the studio after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
• One of the early concepts of the film involved it being narrated from Nana's point of view.
• In an earlier storyboard, Michael was to have come with Wendy and Peter, but John was to have stayed behind. The reason why was because John was originally intended to have been more like his father.
• Animator, Frank Thomas who was responsible for animating Captain Hook, had some initial difficulty trying to get the character started. Thomas was torn between two iterations of Hook: as Erdman Penner's foppish dandy or as Clyde Geronimi's snarling heavy. Eventually, Walt came to Thomas' aid in regards of his approach to Captain Hook. Walt told him, "I think you're beginning to get him," and then advised him to keep going in that direction.

Source: IMDb

25 curiosities about Alice in Wonderland (1951)

• Color screen tests of Mary Pickford as Alice were made for a proposed live-action/animation version of the story.
• Kathryn Beaumont, who was the voice of Alice, narrates the "Alice in Wonderland" ride at Disneyland.
• The first Disney animated feature in which the voice talent is credited on-screen with the characters they each play. This would not occur again until The Jungle Book.
• In the Walrus and the Carpenter sequence, the R in the word "March" on the mother oyster's calendar flashes. This alludes to the old adage about only eating oysters in a month with an R in its name. That is because those months without an R (May, June, July, August) are the summer months in England, when oysters would not keep due to the heat, in the days before refrigeration.
• One of the jurors is José Carioca.
• Originally, Alice was to sing a song different from "In a World of My Own". It would be a slow ballad entitled "Beyond the Laughing Sky", and it was a song about Alice dreaming of a new world, a world better than her own, very much in the spirit of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz. However, Kathryn Beaumont had difficulty singing, and it was decided that starting the film off with a slow ballad would be a little risky on audiences. The song we hear today, "In a World of My Own", is livelier, and was easier for Beaumont to sing.
• Continuing the pattern of film versions of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" not being commercially successful, this movie was a huge box office failure. However, it did become something of a cult film during the 1960s, where it was viewed as a "head film". Several years later it became the Disney studio's most requested 16mm film rental title for colleges and private individuals. In 1974, the studio took note of this fact, withdrew the rental prints, and reissued the film nationally themselves.
• The movie took five years to complete, but was in development for over ten years before it entered active production.
• This movie is actually a combination of Lewis Carroll's two "Alice" books, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass".
• The Doorknob was the only character in the film that did not appear in Lewis Carroll's books.
• This was the first Disney theatrical film to be shown on television, in 1954. It was shown as the second installment of the Disneyland TV show, edited to fit into a one hour time slot. It is also the only Disney feature-length cartoon film to have its first theatrical re-release after it had already been shown on television (although the film had been televised only in an edited, one-hour version).
• Early drafts of the script had Alice encounter the Jabberwock (to have been voiced by Stan Freberg), from Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky". The sequence was rejected, either because it slowed the story down, or because of concerns that it would be too frightening. Elements of "Jabberwocky" remain in the film, however: the Cheshire Cat's song "T'was Brillig", consisting of the opening stanza; and the Tulgey Wood sequence, which includes at least one of the creatures mentioned in the poem, "The Mome Raths".
• Lewis Carroll wrote the riddle "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" as nonsense - it has no answer. This has not stopped people, despite being repeatedly told that there is not, nor should there be, any answer, from trying to contrive one. Among the suggestions are, "Because Edgar Allan Poe wrote on both" and "Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes" (the second of which is very similar to a solution that Carroll himself wearily suggested when he grew tired of people asking him about it).
• This was the first feature film for which Walt Disney was able to use television for cross-promotion. Disney's very first television program, One Hour in Wonderland, which was broadcast on Christmas evening of 1950, was devoted to the production of this film. Naturally, the entire program, including the clips from the movie, was in black and white.
• "Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60-minute radio adaptation of the Walt Disney version on December 24, 1951 with Kathryn Beaumont, Jerry Colonna, and Ed Wynn reprising their film roles.
• In the Walrus and the Carpenter sequence, the dates on the calendar are the same as they would be in March 2010, when Disney would release Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton.
• The English novelist Aldous Huxley worked with Walt Disney on early scripts for this project in late 1945. The original idea was for a cartoon version of Alice embedded in a flesh-and-blood episode from Lewis Carroll's life. Huxley's mother, Julia Arnold, was one of the little girls that Carroll used to enjoy photographing, and to whom he told the Alice stories. The project was close to Huxley's heart, but Disney found his work too intellectual, and it was not used. Huxley received no credit on the finished picture.
• During a break in the recording sessions, Ed Wynn ad libbed the speech where the Mad Hatter tries to "fix" the White Rabbit's watch. ("Muthtard? Leth not be thilly!") Walt Disney, who was listening in a nearby sound booth, saw that the recording tape was still recording Wynn's speech. He told the sound technicians, "Hey, that stuff's pretty funny. Why don't you use that speech in the movie?" The sound men objected. "We can't use that speech. There are too many background noises on the tape." Disney smiled, and told them, "That's *your* problem," then walked out of the room. Eventually, with much labor, the sound technicians managed to erase all the background noises from the recording tape so that Ed Wynn's ad libs could be used in the film.
• Every time the White Rabbit's watch is seen, it is always 12:25.
• The only Disney animated film that had to wait more than 20 years for its first theatrical re-release.
• The Mad Hatter was drawn to resemble Ed Wynn.
• As Alice is helping paint the roses red, they sing, "not pink, not green, not aquamarine." Immediately thereafter, the queen's card army arrives, and after the first rank of normally-colored cards, the following three ranks of cards are pink, green, and aquamarine.
• Though Alice in Wonderland was said to be written by Lewis Carroll, that is actually a fictitious name. The author’s real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and one may consider him a "Renaissance Man". He was not only a successful author, but also a mathematician, photographer, and philosopher.
• For those who have read the original Alice books, you may recall the illustrations throughout the story. However, Disney opted against using those illustrations and instead hired Mary Blair as the concept artist. Her art can also be seen in the movies Peter Pan and Cinderella, and the ride “It’s a Small World”.
• In the scene where Alice grows and gets stuck in the White Rabbit's house, if you look closely at the Dodo bird's flame as he lights his pipe, there is a hidden Mickey flickering in the flame.

Sources: IMDb and Saving Every Day