I want to know about the marketing that led up to the park opening. The pre-opening tv show on ABC drew 90million viewers - more than half of the population at the time. Where did those people come from?! We crazy Liners exist because there’s parks and such that we love. But before there were parks??? What drew people in?? Whss ast made people line up predawn before the very first rope drop?? THAT is a lesson in marketing that I would love to know more about!
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There were only about 3-5 television channels in any given market back then so I would guess it was far easier to draw viewers than it is today.
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Ok sure.
But even so you could open to watch the other channels or nothing at all. And it doesn’t completely explain the frenzy and swarm to attend on day 1.
That first guy that bought a ticket had camped out most of the night. Why? ROTR wasn’t even a thing yet 
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I guess it was largely the sensation of seeing something new.
Add the suspense from the media buzz pre-54 speculating on what Walt was up to and then of course his ABC TV series promoting each land.
But you’re right, 90 million boggles the mind
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This is what I was going to say. For basically a year leading up to Disneyland’s opening, Walt had been coming into people’s living rooms to show them what was coming in Disneyland, and to present some engaging and adventurous shows and programming in its own right (including the massively popular sensation, Davy Crockett). After building his reputation through his cartoons and films, people were already primed to be hyped for his park. The marketing was Walt himself, and the genius of all his prior creations.
It is truly remarkable and fascinating to think about.
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I was not expecting Rolly Crump to pull on my heartstrings at the end of episode two. 
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I love him. I still have about 30 mins left of episode 2 so I will grab my tissues JIC
I just kept saying, as I watched these first two episodes, these are LEGENDS. Mark Davis, Rolly Crump, X Atencio…
Giants.
Not sure if this thread should be managed for spoilers but just in case.
I love how the HM one calls out the two different design styles featured in the attraction, and explains the why. I knew about it from my Marceline to Main Street tour, in which HM was featured. And I had just told my husband about it, before we watched the episode. He said he always noticed the difference from being creepy to being silly/jovial, and kind of wondered why. Well, now you know!
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I watched Ep 2 last night. (Skipped Ep 1 because my wife and DS11 didn’t care about Jungle Cruise, so I’ll have to go back to watch that one.)
It was cool and interesting…but not as deep as I had hoped. The constant revisiting to the same quote, for example, just felt silly and a time-filler when they could have given us something more.
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Yes, they have chosen the style of some other shows out there in the ether where they try and throw in slap stick by repeating quotes.
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This embedded video is annoying because as long as I’m looking at this thread, it just keeps playing (with audio) over and over again and I can’t find a way to block it from happening.
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If you click it again it should stop playing. If that doesn’t work, I can break the embed.
But I have to do it every time I come back to this thread…which means I’ll have to avoid this thread going forward.
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Funny it doesn’t play for me at all unless I make it.
Super powers.
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I fixed it for you. I converted it to a JPG and added a non-embedded link to the video so I can still find it later.
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Oh, thank you! 
Now I can participate in this thread in peace!
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I watched Episode 5 — Space Mountain — first, as it was the one that seemed the most interesting.
It gives me another opportunity to rant about the horrifying vandalism of the DLP version of the ride in the name of damned IP. For those of you not familiar with the French version, you’ll see just how original and creative and clever and exciting it was. Until they trashed it to the point of worthlessness.
The tone of this series grates with me. It’s incredibly irritating to have some smart alec endlessly make clever, snide comments about everything all the time always. Oh. Wait. Maybe I should sue for breach of copyright. Whatever. It still annoys me.
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The narration is annoying. We’ve watched them in order but we did see the Space Mountain one last night.
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How many cuts did they need? One person could barely get out a sentence before they moved on to the next. I have no clue why they chose this “tone” for the series. The AK series was totally normal and I expected something similar for this one.
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Isn’t the tone a nod to the past ?
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I’ve really enjoyed the series. It makes me want to sign up for more tours when I have the chance to return to WDW. The only tour I have done is Marceline to Magic Kingdom. I’d love to do the Keys to the Kingdom tour as well as one of the Epcot tours.
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