The Skyway was a staple in Disneyland Park. Both fun and relaxing, the attraction offered a break from walking through a busy park between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. It's humble beginnings started with Walt Disney's 1935 vacation through Europe where he spent six days in Germany and Switzerland. He really came to love Switzerland's traditions, music, peacefulness and aesthetic. After making the film Third Man On The Mountain, Walt visited again but with fresh eyes given that Disneyland had recently opened and was in full swing. October 1955, Walt heard about a new Skyway system being tested out in Switzerland by a company called Von Roll. Supposedly it had small gondolas moving along a single cable system. Walt's imagination was immediately set ablaze with possibilities and he purchased the system before it was even completed. Unsure about what he was going to do with it, he was interviewed some days or weeks later and said it might be used for parking lots or huge shopping centers. By November 18th, he had figured out where the ride would go and put John Hench, his head imagineer in contact with the Von Roll Ironworks Engineers to work together. They finalized Disney's Skyway but the details are murky, Walt ended up purchasing a Skyway prototype called the Von Roll 101 model aerial ropeway. It was made partially from leftover parts and equipment from the Rotterdam Fair and the German Federal Garden Show. The Von Roll 101 Sky rides powerful driving system was placed in Fantasyland neatly housed within a beautiful Swiss themed Chalet. While Tomorrowland's industrialized streamline station held the 35,000 pounds of counterweight ballast and kept the 2400 feet of cable nice and taut. Von Roll as a company dates back to 1803 from Berne Switzerland, operating worldwide. Today they mainly focus on electrical insulation systems essentially working to create faster longer lasting e-drives and batteries for electric cars. However in the years leading up to the 1950s, they had built rides quite similar to Disney's Skyway a hundred times over and continued to do so afterward. The Von Roll 101 model aerial ropeway is still operating at Cedar Point Busch Gardens Tampa and the San Diego Zoo however the first Von roll Skyway attraction in America belonged to Disneyland! Walt Disney himself first introduced the Skyway on June 23, 1956 just a year after the park opened. This made the Skyway the very first big enhancement to any Disney Park. It was a big deal because Walt was quoted on Disneyland's opening day as saying Disneyland will never be completed, it will continue to grow as long as there is Imagination left in the world. This was the first time he was making good on that promise! The Swiss Consul General of Los Angeles was at the opening event. He was essentially a Swiss presence to lend some weight to the occasion.
Stay close for Part 2. In part 6 we wrap up the creative genius that went into creating the Matterhorn Bobsleds! Imagineers put a pool of water in the attraction to cool down the brake pads. Once you make it up to the peak - it is a free fall the whole way down!! Matterhorn uses gravity to do its work and water to cool it all off. Believe it or not, with Matterhorn's reputation of being a very rough ride, this two-wheel system was actually designed to make it much smoother and unlike traditional top track roller coasters. The Matterhorn's main mechanism exists in between the tracks actually making it a horizontal ride system. The next time you get on the Matterhorn or while waiting in line to ride, look below the sled and you'll see two different sets of wheels. Take note that you're also looking at innovation that changed the theme park industry forever because this was the first of it's kind. But it was far from being the last; this ride system would end up being replicated in nearly every theme park in every country around the world. Yet another thing that was invented in Walt's Disneyland that has found its way all around the world. The inspiration from Disneyland never stops making its way into various projects that Disney and non-Disney folks work on till this day. Probably one of the greatest tricks of the Matterhorn is that every single day it fools people to believe there's a mountain covered in snow, that they know that they can go in and have one of two adventures. When the Matterhorn was finally finished at a cost of $1.5 million dollars, ($15 million today), Admiral Joe Fowler said to Walt Disney, "next time we have to build a mountain, let's let God do it."
Thank you uncle Walt for creating the Matterhorn Bobsleds and the idea that changed not only Disneyland but theme parks all around the world forever. Wow part 5 of this amazing structure! Because the Matterhorn had such a tight Inner Space there was no way to build a wooden roller coaster where essentially you can go as far and as long and as high as you want. You don't have the flexibility of endless turns; that's where the steel tube came into play. With an early sketch of what Matterhorn was going to look like, imagineering was given the task of figuring out how to lay out a track inside of the Matterhorn. But as pointed out before, there's over 2100 steel girders inside, the track would not only need to fit inside the mountain, but it would need to avoid every vertical and horizontal support that kept the mountain standing. Imagine having 10 months to try to figure out how to put a roller coaster inside of a sketch, looking at the architectural blueprint and try to dodge every single support beam that would make the mountain stand! With two roller coaster tracks, the most practical idea was to design a lift that would take guests up as high as possible inside of the Matterhorn, for a Fantasyland side and a Tomorrowland side. An absolutely amazing feat of architecture and design if you consider that this is an incredibly crowded space. That's where the tubular steel comes in. A wood roller coaster could never make all of the turns and the banks and the curves that were needed to get gas from the lift down to each side of the Matterhorn and get dropped back off in nearly the same spot. The only way to bend the tracks inside of this incredibly tight footprint was to use something that could bend. Steel became a part of the Matterhorn because steel can be heated and curved in any direction needed to create all the banks, inclines, twists and turns required to get two sets of track inside of this footprint. With older traditional roller coasters, they're designed more like a train where a cart rides on top of the track and the train track takes you on all kinds of twists and turns. But the turns can't be that tight and couldn't exist inside of a mountain nor would a train be able to replicate the smoothness that one would feel if they were actually going down a mountain on a bobsled through snow and ice. It would need to be a very smooth ride. The steel tubes created another problem, they realized they couldn't run steel wheels on a steel rail because it would be way too bumpy and way too noisy. Imagineers figured out a solution using rubber and they would run tests on small sections. They quickly realized that a traditional rubber wheel wouldn't last and keep up with the demand of this roller coaster. It was then that they came up with the idea of using polyurethane, a relatively new plastic in manufacturing in America that originated from Germany in World War II.
Disney began working in partnership with Dupont and they were able to figure out a proprietary urethane wheel that would actually ride on this steel beam. The polyurethane wheel rolls on top of the steel tube giving a smooth ride, while all of the lifting is done on the mechanism that hits the horizontal plane. As a result there's actually two sets of wheels. The vertical wheel and then the horizontal wheel does all of the lifting on the incline and helps with the braking process. Stay close for part 6! Disney had a very backwards way of building the Matterhorn. They built the mountain first, had the exterior completely planned out then Disney imagineering was given the quest to do the problem solving of building the roller coaster inside of the already existing footprint of the mountain. One would normally think you would build a roller coaster and then build a mountain around it. Since it had never been done before they did it the opposite way. Disneyland's Matterhorn is 100th scale of Switzerland's Matterhorn which sits 14,700 feet in the air. Disney's Matterhorn is 147 feet and made up of over 2100 steel girders that make the frame and give mountain its strength. Nearly all 2100 were different sizes and lengths to create this jigsaw organic looking mountain. The a very well hidden 15 story building's exterior was originally made out of plywood that was then painted and sculpted on the outside. That left for Aero development and Disney imagineers a very intricate puzzle of space to try to put in not just one, but two roller coaster tracks! Admiral Joe Fowler knew that this would be something that would be in high demand and he also knew that Disney could use a lot more capacity for guests at Disneyland. Putting in two tracks theoretically would mean twice as many guests could enjoy Matterhorn mountain. This is something they've gotten away from in recent years with other roller coasters where they do a switch track. Instead of actually building two different tracks operating at the same time, Disney figured out that it's easier to make two different loading areas. Like what we see at Big Thunder Mountain or the Incredicoaster, by using one track and loading guests in two different locations. It's a lot more affordable than building the ride twice. And it gives you the capacity that you need because you're always loading a train or cart to get on that track. More to come in part 5....
When Harriet Burns made the very first model of the Matterhorn, it was one foot high. She made it like a birthday cake where it was done in layers, so that if one layer didn't get approved, it could be removed, redone, re-sculpted and put back together. She would recreate this process over and over again until finally they would have an approved rough sketch of the Matterhorn built in this birthday cake style out of clay. The large model was then cast and that's what you see today replicated from a model that started out being made like a birthday cake. If you look at the Matterhorn now, you can see that there are various different layers to it, then the top peak is made up of about three layers each layer gets incredibly smaller creating the force perspective making this feel a lot taller than what it is. The height of the Matterhorn is pretty fascinating. There's a lot of steel buildings that are constructed in a way where all the steel beams are the exact same size because you're essentially erecting a grid up into the air, but with the Matterhorn all of the various still beams (and there were a lot of them) were various different sizes. This was like constructing a jigsaw. To think that this right here it's actually a building, a 15-story building, built in so many different jig Jags and seesaw pieces. But to our eye, it really does look like a snow-covered Mountain! Part 4 coming soon!
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