New Orleans Square

In a way, New Orleans Square’s two real attractions are themselves markers of the end of Walt-era Disney and the beginning of post-Walt Disney. The opening of the park was Walt’s last great public appearance. The first ride to open in it, several years later, was the Pirates of the Caribbean, which Walt personally supervised to a certain extent. The other ride to open in it—there are still only two, after all—was the first ride to open after his death. Running alongside them was the train, which you don’t have to be Jenny Nicholson to see the metaphor in.

On Day One at Disneyland, there were five lands, if we count Main Street, USA, as a land. The others were the four of the TV show. Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland. They’re fairly easy to explain and fairly universal. Okay, Adventureland has a lot that’s aged poorly. Frontierland is specific to the United States, but it’s familiar to anyone who watches American movies—especially in the era in which Disneyland opened. Fantasyland? Hell, it’s got no little straight out of the Brothers Grimm, and a lot of the rest of it is European anyway. Tomorrowland? We can all dream of the future.

In the ‘50s, plans were already starting, and there are maps from as early as 1958 with the land appearing on them, before construction had even begun. That would not be until 1961. Construction took five years. Then-mayor of the real New Orleans Victor H. Schiro (a former assistant cameraman for Frank Capra) attended the grand opening, and Walt joked to him that the building of the land had cost the same amount as the Louisiana Purchase. Walt was wrong. With inflation, the new land cost more.

I was weirdly fond of the area as a child despite not liking the drop of Pirates—I liked the rest of it, but not the drops—and being terrified of the Hitchhiking Ghosts. You might not think it, because it’s a train station, two rides, a couple of restaurants, and winding alleys of shops full of stuff my parents were simply never going to buy me. And it’s not just that my older sister and I were the only faithful Disney-going children who loved the Disney Gallery; even our younger sister thought it was boring.

Oh, part of it was the cool breeze of the Rivers of America. New Orleans Square and Adventureland always felt a little cooler than the rest of the park. Part of it, too, was that my parents wouldn’t necessarily buy me what you could see in it—wouldn’t even give me coins for the games in the Pirates Arcade Museum (arcade more than museum), when that still existed—but that I did find some of what was there intriguing. Lafitte’s Silver Shop. Cristal d’Orleans. The One-of-a-Kind Shop.

What New Orleans Square had room for despite its small size was things that didn’t really fit elsewhere in the park. Even before the rides, it was different. It was the place where X. Atencio might consider there would be room for an actual dilapidated manor. (Walt said that they would take care of the outside and the ghosts would take care of the inside.) It was the place where Walt would have the apartment in which he could entertain important people. Even though two of the other lands, or three, are set in real history and one in theory in a real place (Marcelline, Missouri), New Orleans Square was more grounded in realism, if not reality, than anywhere else.

Heck, the original plan for Pirates was a walkthrough where you’d learn about historical pirates. Main Street, USA, may be roughly based on Walt’s boyhood, and there may be a bit of a museum and Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln, but neither of those are exactly centerpieces of the area. (Though we’ll be getting to Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln one of these days.) It’s hard to figure out exactly what Walt thought the land would be, and it’s interesting that it opened without a single ride in place, nothing but more shops and a single restaurant; even Club 33 hadn’t opened yet.

But the plans were there, at least some of them. Marc Davis would work on Pirates; Atencio would work on the Mansion. You could see the development of the what could be there. One assumes that, in its barest bones, there was still great potential. Walt famously said that Disneyland would never be finished, and indeed his uplifting opening words from the park are playing in a continual loop at the train station—in Morse code, from the telegraph office. And if that means that we have, alas, lost the best pun in the entire park when Le Bat En Rouge closed, well, I’m sure the Tiana stuff will be well done, and she deserves the attention.