Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Christmas at California Adventure

The revised California Adventure has become my second favorite Disney park. This is mainly due to the Buena Vista Street set in one of my favorite eras of history, the late 1920s and early 1930s. Many fantastic items were created during this time period, the V8 Ford, the rise of Marx toys, Lionel Toys, and the rise of Comic Strips and Animated Cartoons (in color!) For the Holiday Season, California Adventure gets decked out in tinsel, holly and trees. The Christmas Tree has some nice reproductions of classic ornaments. First up is a general view of the tree.

A nice red trolley ornament and a nice Santa Claus head ornament.

Great giant size Noma lights from the 1930s, with the graphic being Donald in his 1930s version.

The windows on Buena Vista Street also receive the Holiday treatment. These windows feature graphics from the 1933 animated short The Night Before Christmas. Though difficult to photograph, the windows are bright and colorful. This one had some limited motion.

And this one also featured motion of the toys going into the sack to be delivered on Christmas.

Disney also does live entertainment well, including a great group of carolers and bell ringers on the street. The outfits, hair and make up are great with some nice details and appear to be contemporary to the 1930s.

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3 comments:

  1. K. Martinez9:43 AM

    Nice set today with such awesome Christmas tree shots. DCA has definitely become a great place to visit since the additions of Buena Vista Street and Cars Land. Thanks, Matterhorn1959 and have a Merry Christmas!

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  2. Major Pepperidge7:38 AM

    I still have yet to see this place! Soon, I hope.

    Merry Christmas, Matterhorn!

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  3. keeline8:31 PM

    DCA went from a place we visited every couple of years to one that we try to visit each trip, if only for a few hours. The Buena Vista Street and Cars Land additions were the major factors in this.

    During the Christmas season we enjoy the sound loop with the older music. As with Main Street, there's no single year and it feels as if it could encompass the 1920s through the early 1940s.

    Elias & Co. is a nice touch, especially the vintage-style products you can sometimes find there. In November we purchased a nice vintage-looking hat. The department store Santa is a great feature of this.

    We saw book covers, designed by Kevin Kidney, for many Disney-related classics and it seemed like it would not have been a great leap to make these books available for sale.

    Similarly, the upper shelves have tin toys that should be part of the merchandise available for sale.

    In the 1970s the department stores I visited had signals to staff and departments in the form of the sounds of "tone bells" in codes. If this is correct for the period, I think it would be a nice addition to the atmosphere of the store.

    I especially like the newspaper, the Buena Vista Bugle. We don't visit quite often enough to have a complete set. We'll see about filling it in though.

    I long had my doubts about DCA but the revamp makes it a second favorite park and the Christmas season is a great time to visit it.

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