Came across this to-do list in a box filled with random newspaper clippings, receipts, bills, you name it. It’s Grandpa’s handwriting all right. And I think you can see why it caught my eye. Nixon, among other things, kind of stood out. Just a bit.
I’ve come across a lot of his writing – the completed stuff I’ve shared with you. Plus boxes and boxes of unfinished typewritten drafts. But I haven’t found too much with his handwriting. At least not enough. The rhythm of his letters, the loops of his capitals – I feel so close to him holding this list. This handwriting is SO uniquely his.
I wonder what was going through his mind as he wrote this list? Was he excited? Stressed? In disbelief? Did he think any of this was a big deal? Or was he used to it; like me being used to working at the video store?
He was probably a bit nervous, but also very excited too!
This note is in reference to the “reopening” of Tomorrowland in 1959, and the day that the submarine voyage, the Matterhorn bobsleds, and the Monorail all first opened.
Amelia, as you mentioned, there is a mention of Nixon, he was at the opening ceremony for the monorail, and I notice that Bob G. (Bob Gurr) is referenced too. he designed the Disneyland monorail.
People have mentioned Bob Gurr before, so I thought that might be him.
Amelia, Bob Gurr is the Balding fellow just above Walt Disney in the TAM portrait that Wallce did.
Oh, I thought that was John Hench.
yes, that is John Hench, who had significant input into designing Tomorrowland.
Hi Amelia, I’m new to this, but I definitely am anxious to help you in your quest! Your grandfather’s handwriting is especially legible for a man! I can’t read my hubby’s handwriting at all, for example! Did your grandfather ever do any study of cryogenics or cloning? Listening to what was on the record some received made me think of these 2 subjects. I look forward to reading more from you!
Wow just wow, it looks like your grandpa was involved with the re-opening of Tomorrowland, and he was working on a special project called E Ticket 59? Wow
1959 was when they introduced the “E” ticket. The Monorail, Submarine ride and Matterhorn were all “E” ticket rides.
For those on mobile, where the cursive may be hard to make out:
-To Do:
*Meeting Tomorrow
-Propose 3 locations for coded PNs
-Submit ideas/outline for TL reopening speech
*Pick up copy of Revised TL blueprints (checkmark)
*Schedule final research trips
-3 Days – Switzerland – Subs
-4 Days – Germany – Monorail
*Talk to Michael about ‘eticket 59′.
Must confirm implementation details. (checkmark)
*Schedule Nixon visit with Bob G. to
check progress on Monorail (checkmark)
*Visit site of Autopia expansion
From someone on a mobile device, thanks! I presume the trip to Germany was because that’s where Alweg was located.
Thanks! These IPhone screens are hard to read on.
just a thought on “propose 3 locations for coded PNs” perhaps the PN stands for phone numbers. there’s three phone locations on Wallace’s map and we have four telephone codes on the tam table top…
Amelia,
This list verifies, for me at least, that your grandfather’s involvement with Disney included both the World’s Fair as well as Disneyland. Most of theattractions referenced in this list opened as part of the Disneyland ’59 expansion of Tomorrowland. The reference to meeting with (then VP) Nixon and Bob Gurr likely has to do with both of their involvement with the dedication of the monorail. Check around the web for a funny story about a giant pair of scissors and their possible malfunction when cutting the dedication ribbon. -Josh
Why does that story about Nixon sound familiar? Hmm.
Here is a video of Walt being a tour guide to the Nixon family at Disneyland’s monorail
sorry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PobUM51Rs48
Spoiler Alert…
OMG…. eticket59…. that is the project code to the http://www.lottfamilyconstruction.com website… it opens the Lott Secret Client Area…a ton a project files about this special project.
Great job Stephen! We finally have the code for the Lott website! High five!!!
The site contains what it looks like is the plans for the Auto Apparatus,Mark 0,and Signal Flag, as well as some drawings for Disney Plot area…
Good one Stephen! But I’m confused as to where we are suppose to enter that project code.
Same here
You just have to enter /eticket59 after the Lott Family website. So the link is http://lottfamilyconstruction.com/eticket59
Awesome, Stephen! Finally!
THIS is awesomesauce, Stephen. YOU are awesomesauce.
We need to bottle some apple sauce and call it “Ameila’s Awesomesauce”.
I’ll drink to that!
Haha awesome idea XD
Go figure, I’ve been checking through that site everyday, I step away for an hour or so, and I miss something with a code… Hah! Go stephen, let’s start poring through that.
YES YES YES!!! You ARE awesomesauce!
Great work, Stephen! Thank you and Andrew for the links. I just looked at three of the blueprints and the RR tracks appear on two. Mark 0 was a virtual reality simulator? whoa. here’s a thought: perhaps someone should ride the RR and look for clues that pop out from the backstage area of Tomorrowland.
anyone else have trouble downloading, or is it just me?
DL-ETICKET-NEWT-4050-173-A102.pdf
DL-ETICKET-NEWT-4050-173-E1
DL-ETICKET-NEWT-4068-001-L401
Thanks Andrew!
Did any one else see the note about Transit portals?
I think we need to look over the diagrams, find out where these ‘portals’ were suppose to be and then send some one to check it out
Ok I know I’m posting a lot, sorry guys
So on the DL-ETICKET-NEWT-4050-173-A403 it talks about “virtual reality projection system that surrounds the viewer” which reminds me a lot of the 360 patent we found earlier
Portals…virtual reality…. this is all getting very interesting.
My guess is that the portals allow guests to enter from one place in the world…. like in India and exit in another part…. like the British Isle…. or whatever was show in the “maps” created by Wallace
The drawings for the three projects; Auto Apparatus, Mark 0, and Signal Flags have notes on them. The notes replace the notes that are on the actual patents and describe what the devices REALLY do. Amelia from the checklist above it looks like your Grandfather at the very least helped hide the patent numbers that we found earlier, and had a hand in creating these devices as well.
Huh… So these are hiding information about the true purpose of the devices, so as to hide them from public record in patents. Nice.
I have a good feeling your grandfather definitely helped work with that, Amelia; he definitely seemed busy since his pick up of Orbit’s story…
Stephen, you may have to post those… It appears I’m getting a fatal error in downloading three of them; conveniently, I bet those are the three…
Those were not working for me either. One more mystery
Heh… So Lott still has some stuff up his sleeve.
Same here. A101, E1 and L401 are giving me fatal error warnings. I want to combine maps in Photoshop (If they piece together) But I can’t download those three.
I was able to combine 4 of the 5 images I could access. This is very rough as I had little time to clean it up but here’s what I have so far…
http://i1303.photobucket.com/albums/ag158/greatscott13/The%20Optimist/blueprints_zps6c5af914.jpg
Christina – i have the same problem. tried opening A101 and got the fatal error message. Thanks Carson for combining the blueprints that we could open. yacht club? hmm. i wonder did the subs replace the speed boats?
The same thing happens for me. I can download all except for A102, E1 & L401. I noticed that if you look at the urls, the three that can’t be accessed look like this
http://lottfamilyconstruction.com/download/eticket59-download?fid=DL-ETICKET-NEWT-4050-173-A102.pdf
And the rest look like this
http://lottfamilyconstruction.com/download/download.php?file=DL-ETICKET-NEWT-4050-173-A101.pdf
I tried changing the urls to match but I still can’t download those three.
Or…. for the sake of this…. the portals could be in the locations of where the “telephones” were indicated on Wallace’s map of Tomorrowland
I think we need to look over the maps to find out where to send our friends in Disney
Should be easy to locate those locales. We have the latitude and longitude to each of them it looks like
Also my guess is that the Tomorrow land map would have automated panels that would activate a pre-recorded message, almost like a picture in picture experience. Also the previous script found and the words on the record may be the first and second stages of this phase of Mark 0.
If anyone is going to the phones, be sure to take a list of potential numbers to call. On the reverse side of most of these drawings (which show through) are numbers. On at least 3 of the schematics, you can make out 4050 173. Also, we got some numbers earlier from the Tam table. Just throwing it out there…
Well if we match up the locations on Wallace’s Tomorrowland map and the current map of Disneyland. The telephones would be located at the merchandise store Star Trader, Little Green Aliens pin trading store and Tomorrowland Terrace facing the Finding Nemo attraction.
Wow nice job! Anyone at Disney cool to go check this stuff out?
Katherine and Christina were there tonight and said that the only phones in tomorrowland are pay phones and that there was nothing special about them.
Hmm… I’m curious. We need to make a list of all the codes themselves to be easily accessible.
Yes, no other “special phones” but I have pictures of the pay phones if anyone wants to see
I’m a college student on summer vacation so I don’t have too much on my plate
I wouldn’t mind going back to Disneyland as long as I have some guidance. I was a little lost today and would’ve been completely done for without Stephen and a few others (thanks guys!)
I wanted to go back anyway since I didn’t get a chance to check out IASW and Innoventions (you never know).
I did take some photos of the payphone just in case and recorded video of the DLRR ride and the Monorail ride. Will be posting in the next few hours and will link to it.
Okay, I’ve got the videos of the Monorail and DLRR uploaded. You can watch them here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO-DXLBRIWs&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OKzwng8Cj0&feature=youtu.be
Line up both with “To those joining us, Welcome Aboard…” on the Side B audio.
I felt like the monorail lined up with the audio better than the railroad did because the RR had about 2 minutes left over after the ride ended but the monorail ended almost perfectly.
Also the only thing that lined up visually to me on the RR was primeval world and that the audio said hatched right before passing the dino eggs.
The Monorail didn’t line up with the audio that much better but some visual cues I saw were:
1) saw the heart of tomorrowland (Space Mt, Tomorrowland Terrace, Rocket Rods etc.) for the first time right when the audio said “as we enter the world of tomorrow” (I film mostly out the left window and this was on the right. You can see me unsuccessfully trying to grab it at 3:20)
2) passed by innoventions around the time CoP was mentioned (that’s where CoP was, right?)
3)passed by where the path of the skyways would be right as the audio mentioned them.
3) monorail came to a stop as the audio said “We sure have enjoyed riding this wave of the future with you”
Still not sure about it though…
So what do we suspect is located where the “restrooms” are marked on Wallace’s map?
Don’t know or think that this has anything to do with the E ticket stuff but just throwing this out there. The Time travel, portal stuff Kingdom Keeppers by Ridley Pierson, he is gong to announce his last book in the series At the Expo. His books take place in the parks.
Yeah. I’ve had a sneaky suspicion that this may have something to do with Kingdom Keepers. I really hope not, though. No offense to the fans or anything.
Almost positive that this has a tie-in to the upcoming Tomorrowland movie, as I found the same symbol on the “1952″ mystery box (image Tweeted out as part of the movie buzz), that is on the Tam art, Lincoln art, and the record. See the tag on the upper right hand corner.
I reconstructed the blueprints I could from the Lott family site. Here is a photo. I have an HD version too but it wouldn’t let me leave it in the comments.
Nice job, Kira! I was about to start making my own copy; I Imagine we might have a hidden something in here….
Kira, you beat me to the punch I did the same thing, it is defiantely the map of Tomorrowland, but what does it mean??
I may be behind on this, but did anyone notice that the scales are different on the DL-ETICKET-NEWT-4068-001-A1 drawing. I did a quick paste up. Main 4 are at 1/8″ = 1’0′ and the A1 drawing is 1″=20′. It should be a 250% increase, but to line up I had to zoom a little more. Also have an HD file
There are 3 files on the site tha we still can’t open. I wonder how they are going to be connected.
Can you post a link To tHe file as well
Hmm, how did I miss that last one? I could have swore I downloaded all of them. And yes, that’s odd, especially when they are supposed to be of the same area. It’s possible the map was done at a different time, and these are altered, but I don’t know. In any case, you’re right. That is a red flag; for the sake of uniformity and accuracy, plans have to be at the same scale to be legal to use by engineering/construction boards… ( I could be wrong though)
i looked at this blueprint closely and it’s for “Fantasyland Expansion” project, which was different from the “Tomorrowland” project – which explains why the difference in scales. Also upon reading the detail box, i’m thinking “Signal Flag” had to do with the submarines (20,000 Leagues ride).
Automat Blog??? I went to the automatblog.blogspot.com. Bunch of funky and eerily similar stuff there. I need to go to bed, someone tag me and take over!
Automat Bldg. It looks like it is just abbreviated. Is everyone else getting error codes on a few of those files? I emailed Lott trying to sound executive like to see if he will send me replacement files… we will see how that goes.
Yes, and instead of linking directly to the file, they coded some sort of php script that retrieves and downloads the file … so trying to type in the “broken” link url doesn’t work.
Nice! Thank you.
Hey Kira, nice job! Do you have a link to that HD copy of yours? Please and thank you. =)
So I was just checking out the Wallace drawings on the site and this may have already been discussed, but I noticed the following:
The Mr Lincoln poster has the large gear in the background which also reminds me of CoP.
The CoP poster has atoms (EPCOTish) in the wallpaper as well as the CoP design in the woman’s dress.
IaSW poster has the dolls holding satellite phones linked to the satellites circling the globe.
Finally, in the Tam poster we see Walt and crew over plans of Lincoln, IaSW, and what definitely looks like plans for the city also called Experimantal Prototype Community of Tomorrow as seen on the PeopleMover ride in WDW.
Not sure what all this means, but it is awfully neat to me!
I wonder if Disney’s started (or finished!) any of this crazy project work yet…? So, um, which attractions correspond to the devices? Auto Apparatus is a time-travel/space-travel/portal-travel training device, Signal Flag is the travel portals, and Mark 0 is a virtual-reality “car” projection system, working with pre-recorded films as well as real-time events. So which rides fit the bill…? I’m going to say the Monorail is the Mark 0…
The record narration says that’s these have already been built and test. Unless it wasn’t referrIng to these devices.
Christopher – with the descriptions, you don’t suppose they has something to do with Space Mountain and/or Mission to Mars (now Star Tours) rides?
my theory – Auto Apparatus may be “Flight to the Moon” and Signal Flag may be “submarine voyage (20,000 Leagues)”.
on the “Fantasyland Extension” drawing there is a note by the by the box at the bottom right that says “check with Bill Martin” for revisions” Bill Martin was an Imagineer, the Art Director for Fantasyland, and eventually President of design at WED. he is also a disney legend.
I noticed that too. Also has listed three revision dates.
Hmm… I’m curious. We need to make a list of all the codes themselves to be easily accessible.
Well, with issues posting this, my original comment was replaced by a replica comment…
Anyway, I took the maps and edited them to fit, cutting what I could. I hope I didn’t cut something important, minus the descriptions. I uploaded the biggest size I could, which isn’t even a quarter the size this really is. Oh well
Not sure if this is relevant but look at this that’s going to happen at D23
Sounds Delightful! An Illustrated Audio Adventure
Join Disney Artist and Historian Stacia Martin for an entertaining trip across the decades via vintage Disney Vinyl Recordings from her extensive personal collection. Forgotten favorites from the family turntable of yesteryear will be heard along with rare promotional and production tracks… including never-before-heard musical moments from Walt Disney’s own “journey down the Yellow Brick Road.”
My wife and I “heart” Stacia!
I second the awesome sauce!! You guys so rock. I get busy for 24 hours and everything e poorest. Lol. Great job. I am try to catch up with the new information. Amelia, this is just getting better and better
Lol that was suppose to say everything explodes. Love auto correct. Sorry.
great job guys!! you all ROCK!!
So, just putting this in perspective….Amelia, your Grandfather wrote “Orbit’s Story” sometime prior to 1952. In 1952, he was contacted by Disney in an attempt to option that story. Following that he was brought “into the fold” at Disney (probably WED) and appears to be heavily involved in the 1959 redo of Tomorrowland at Disneyland. He is also somewhat involved in the Disney efforts at the 1964 World’s Fair. That’s at least 12 years of working with the Disney people…including Walt himself (not to mention Nixion!).
That is quite a legacy that you have uncovered. This is not just a writer who wrote one story that got optioned by Disney…He was a high level imagineer, working closely with Walt himslef.
Well, this confirms that this tech was being developed and had been installed by 1959. It seems that by the NYWF64, this stuff had been secretly installed and implemented. more than likely they were showcasing it for VIPs
Hey there, everyone! I just checked out the Micechat website. Bob Gurr writes articles here. Today it is on 1959, The Golden Age of Air Travel. I don’t think there is anything to help us, but quite a coincidence. http://micechat.com/36521-design-those-were-the-times-no-14-1959-modern-air-travel/
Does that last bullet on the list refer to the Midget Autopia statue we already visited? Or is it something else?
I dont think so but the first bullet definately does!
I’m sure you all have seen this but JIC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Fgj3L6U9LPE
The Veep and the Monorail!