A Special Place part 2

1963 Hotel and Travel Index

1961-1962 A Special Place

I found a film in the storage vault title "A Special Place" and almost did not take it to have converted to DVD. It was made for convention marketing at the Disneyland Hotel and was filmed from 1961-1962. This footage was shot in beautiful living color with a soundtrack and features some incredible footage.

Tomorrow, in Part 2 of this film footage, I will post some more wonderful shots from this footage.

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1977 South Tower Groundbreaking

I received the following photograph from Liz Bret whose husband Frank Bret (in the picture above) was with the Wrather Corporation from 1960 until the mid 80's rising as far as President of the Disneyland Hotel. Mr. Bret is now in his mid 90's and in fine health.

This looks like an outtake from the same picture shoot. I have more to post of this event shortly.

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Disneyland Hotel The Early Years 1954-1988

My first book, pictured below has been granted a reprint. Books are now available on my website http://www.magicalhotel.com/

We should be shipping by end of April.

We also have an e-version of this book available and if you are interested, please write for details.

1957 First Anniversary Photos & Information

From August, 1957, the Disneyland Hotel's 1st anniversary. Sometimes, when you get a stash of photos, it's a fun project to try and identify people in the pictures. When I first got this group of pictures, I was only able to identify the Wrather family. In the course of time and some extra digging, I am now able to identify all the people in these shots. A couple of them have some extra significance.

This next photo is especially interesting. When I first saw it, I had no idea who was in the photograph with the Wrathers. I knew they looked familiar but still I had no idea. Some time later, I was rummaging through some magazines and it hit me......

The people in the photo above were the very first regsitered guests, Mr. & Mrs. Robert Arnone. Below is the magazine page where it hit me on who they were.

Here is a close-up of the picture of Mr. & Mrs. Arnone.

And the text mentioning them by name:

They are wearing the same clothes so I assume the photo on the cart was from the same photo shoot.

Another page from this article has a picture from this first anniversary photo shoot:

And here it is.....

Here is the cover from the Hotel magazine which was a great inspiration to me to document and record Disneyland Hotel history.

And here are some more from the 1st Anniversary photo shoot!

And here is my favorite shot from the bunch. Everybody who was lucky enough to be around the pool received a piece of cake!

1956 Disneyland Hotel Grand Opening

Walt Disney Family Museum

My son and I were very fortunate to meet Diane Disney-Miller and her husband Ron Miller this past weekend at the Walt Disney Family Museum. They were wonderful, gracious people and it was a real treat to meet them. We shared our pictures and film footage of her father with them.

Merry Christmas To All

Grand Opening in the Newspaper

Here is how the newspapers covered the grand opening of the Disneyland Hotel. These were taken from Bonita Granville's very own scrapbook.

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