Happiest Place On Earth?

Now I know Disneyland is called the "Happiest Place On Earth," but for a lot of people it is missing one ingredient that would assist greatly in making the slogan a reality.

Having gone to Disneyland off and on all my life I never really noticed the problem, but when I took my nephew Jeff there a dozen or so years ago, he noticed it immediately. He was on a break between Marine boot camp down in San Diego and going wherever he was to be stationed and came by to see my wife and me. He wanted to go to Disneyland for the first time and so I took a day off to show him the ropes of the Magic Kingdom.

We were there a couple of hours when we got hungry and decided to eat in New Orleans Square at the Blue Bayou Restaurant, which overlooks and is partially inside of the Pirates of the Caribbean (if I have a choice, I'm gonna eat Cajun). We sat down ordered our food and then Jeff ordered a beer. "I'm sorry, there is no alcohol inside of Disneyland," the waitress said. Jeff was in shock.

"How can you call this the happiest place on Earth and not serve alcohol? I just got out of boot camp, I need a drink!" Jeff declared.

She was very understanding and told us to take the monorail to the Disneyland Hotel. We could drink there and then come back. And that's what we did.

As soon as we left the restaurant we made a bee-line for the nearest monorail station and took off for the Hotel. We drank three or four beers in the next hour at an outdoor bar near a pool, then took the monorail back into the park, and I have to say it was an improvement.

A few years later, when I worked at Disney, we had our Christmas party at Disneyland one cool December night. As my wife and I walked through the front tunnel under the train station we were greeted by waiters with trays of champagne. The "Happiest Pace On Earth" is a lot happier once you have five or six glasses of champagne in you. Even the Disney people know that!

Drawing on Disneyland

Over on the Tony Isabella board we are talking about all things Disneyland and that got me thinking about a story Bill Stout told one Sunday while we were drawing a naked woman.

He was talking about how, for him, the most important aspect of drawing is putting down the line with confidence. He went one about how he hates it when he sees an artist who is unsure of where a line should go and so he/she feathers the line, using short strokes to find the one right line (I looked down at my drawing and sadly noted all the short strokes I used to find "the" line). He said, "You have to be confident in your line if you ever want to draw fast."

Bill learned that one summer when he worked at Disneyland doing portraits on the street. Bill said it was him and two or three other guys and they worked all day, most every day. It was a poor base pay, but you made your money on each drawing you completed, so he learned very quickly to put down a fast line with confidence. After he got the hang of it, he could fly through them, doing a portrait in about five minutes and that made for good money.

When they would finish a drawing, the person either took it with them, or if they liked it a lot, it went into a stack where another person was framing and matting the drawings. One day he looked over at a drawing in the stack for framing and the portrait looked more like a potato than a person.

It was one huge oval shape with these round shapes for eyes, nose and ears that looked more like the eyes on a spud than a human face. He thought, "My god, some of these guys are just horrible." He then wondered which of his associates drew this monstrosity. On closer inspection he saw the signature "William Stout" and decided he should slow down a bit.