Sunday, October 01, 2006

Walt Disney and Tour Guide of the Year Plus Bonus

Today's image is another press photo form the Garden Grove Daily News newspaper archive showing Walt Disney with Tour Guide of the year for 1965 Suzanne Fuller. The previous tour guides of the year for 1962 was Iris Umemoto, for 1963 was Reiko Cox, and for 1964 was Dianne Darnell. The photo of course was taken at the Walt Disney Studio. Walt and Suzanne do look very happy.

The bonus is this wonderful color photo of an early tour guide wearing the rarely seen first costume with the Disneyland Hostess patch on the front. And it appears she is standing on one of the Plantation Inn restaurant patios. The outfits were made by Pendeleton Woolen Mills, one of the first lessees of the park. The plaid is a unique plaid design made for the tour guides. This image comes from Dan at A Sampler of Things. If you have not visited his site, I highly recommend it. (It is the first blog I read in the morning.)


Finally a quote from the training booklet for tour guides "it's been my pleasure":
This guide for guides is designed to help you orient yourself in your role in our Disneyland show...an introduction to your training program which will be an easy and pleasant experience...like boot camp in the Marines.

4 comments:

Major Pepperidge said...

That is certainly a BOLD plaid design! Seems like kind of an odd choice, but I guess if you are in a crowd, you won't be able to miss your tour guide. If I could find it, I think I have a slide of a tour guide who is wearing a dark blue jacket. Maybe I am mistaken though....

Anonymous said...

As a former tour guide I must say that the new outfits are a far cry from the original. Being a Tour Guide was magnified in the plaid/black and the plaid/red riding costume. It was something you earned just like the coveted "D" pin. The peson who wore it stood with pride. It's soo sad to see a nostalgic piece of history being thrown away. Why fix something that is broken? The Tour Guide was Walt's favorite after all.

Anonymous said...

hey, i really liked the haunted ballroom picture. i wrote a story in english and i was looking for a picture to match it. The haunted ballroom picture matched my story exactly. Thanks heaps. it was really helpful.
Love the whole article and picture.

Mark Hickson said...

Look at what I found and posted!
http://www.disneybymark.com/2012/01/17/walt-disney-with-suzanne-fuller/
I just discovered that I had a different photo from the same event you posted about over 5 years ago