Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk - Beachcombers Club Ticket Book

Let’s drive six hours north of Anaheim today, all the way to Santa Cruz California. The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is California’s oldest amusement park and a State Historic Landmark. (Wikipedia link). One hundred years old last June, and you thought Knott’s and Disneyland were old!

This ticket book is a “Bonus Book” for Beachcombers Club members. I think this was probably something like Disneyland’s Magic Kingdom Club. This ticket book has no date. $5.00 value for ten tickets, my math skills tell me thats 50 cents a ticket! Does anyone know how old these are?

Globe Paper!!! Oh, just like an old friend. This is “D” ticket yellow, or maybe “goldenrod”. Hey, it’s the exact same size as the later year “A” tickets from Disneyland – Coincidence??? I like the “Santa Cruz Seaside Company” Logo. They’ve owned this place since 1915.

Casino Imports, I wonder what kind of souvenirs and other goodies they had in there? 10% off, just show your membership card to the clerk!

Here are some recent pictures I found on the web. The Giant Dipper, opened in 1924 sure looks like fun. I can’t believe I’ve lived in California my entire life and I have never been here!!!

This 1911 Looff Carousel still contains its original 342-pipe organ built in 1894! It does’nt have the “flash and flare” of the Disneyland Carousel, but it does have some neat history, and you can still try and get the brass ring!

And here’s a map, can’t have a post without one of these.

Looks like this is a fun park with lots of history and charm. I think I found a place to visit this summer!

Complete Guide Books

I promised a complete post of two guide books for today, and I did scan two complete books. One is the 1980 Disneyland’s 25th guide from yesterday’s post and the other is a 1974 Walt Disney World guide from Tuesday’s post.

In the interest of saving some space on “blogspot” and since all these pages combined would total more than 40 scans, I have created files of the complete guides in Adobe Acrobat (.PDF) format. You can down load them here: (best viewed with the size set to "fit page")

Walt Disney World Guide Book -1974
Disneyland Guide Book - 1980
Disneyland Guide Book – Spring 1976 (from last weekends post)

If you download these, let me know if you like this format. “Anonymous” suggested this format and I think I like it.

For those of you that do not wish to download the complete guides, here are the highlights from each guide with all the lands included.

First up, Walt Disney Word 1974. This guide makes it truly look like a Disneyland fan's alternate universe.

Disneyland’s 25th Family Reunion 1980 – Presented by the now defunct Polaroid Company.

Ah yes, who can forget “The Watcher in the Woods”? Um, I forget…. Is that Betty Davis?

I hope you enjoyed the Guide Books, I sure did!

Family Reunion Free Dinner 1980 - Bye Bye Polaroid

Let’s all have a grand Family Reunion! It’s 1980 and Disneyland is 25 years old, so why not head on down and join the celebration!

To help you enjoy your visit, how about a Family Open House Complimentary Dinner Ticket? I’ll let you pick either September 22, 1980 or September 29, 1980, which ever works best for your time machine. You’ll find me at the Plaza Inn on the 22nd!




Snazzy Guide for the 25th, I had the exact shirt that kid is wearing, Millers Outpost Rocks! The lady on the fare left is scaring me.



*** This news just in yesterday, Polaroid (The presenter of today’s 1980 Guide) has announced they are no longer going to make instant film. (news link). Oh my, this saddens me deeply. I have a few Polaroid Camera’s, I guess they go in the “useless” box along with my Polavison Instant movie camera that I coincidently purchased new in 1980, when they were basically giving them away ***

So, cheer up, and take a look at the “good old days” on the back of this 1980 Guide. Borrow a Polaroid camera free (or Polavison, see, I’m not crazy!) Or best yet, get a full 8 by 10 Family Reunion Portrait on a replica of the Lilly Belle. I still want to see one of these 8 by 10 Polaroid’s, I wonder how they looked?

An now that you have a free Dinner Ticket, your Color Guide, and your free Polaroid Camera, here is a 15 Adventure Ticket book so you can enjoy the rest of your visit in 1980! Remember, 15 tickets and 40+ attractions, “good things come to those who chose wisely”

$9.25! Inflation starts to set in. But hey, it’s a $16.60 value, not $16.50, but $16.60!

Tomorrow; Double Complete Guide Book Sunday!!!! As promised early in the week, I will post the entire 1974 Walt Disney World Guide and in honor or Polaroid, I will post the entire 1980 Disneyland Guide shown above…

Yesterday's Trip - Now & Then - This and That

No Vintage Ticket post today, I got home late from Disneyland last night. Indulge me a little and check out my post today, it’s more of a “Trip Report” and “Now & Then” post. This weekend we’ll get back to some vintage stuff.

Let me say first off, it was a Beautiful day at the park yesterday, topped out at 73 degrees, sunny, no clouds, very light breeze and NO CROWDS!!!!

I can never get enough of Thunder Mountain pictures, seems like it was made for picture taking! I think this one came out pretty good.

This was the line for Space Mountain, yup, there was NO line! A total “walk-on” I rode it three times!

Ah, Steamboat breakfast from the newly remodeled Lillie Belle restaurant. Hey, I’ve had much worse for $7.99 (15% off with an Annual pass!) The pancakes were fresh and yummy, same with the bacon & eggs. The orange juice was $4.19, had that price been posted somewhere I may have opted for water…

Now for a couple “Before and After” shots, First up, from Daveland’s blog post of a few days ago, here is Casa De Fritos January 1966.

Here is the same place taken yesterday. I examined the structure closely. (yes I am such a geek I printed Dave’s 1966 photo and took it with me to the park!) It has got to be the same building. Or they did one heck of a job re-creating it, right down to the brick work under the stucco.

This was interesting (for me at least) here is a photo again from Daveland (thanks Dave!) of America the Beautiful late 1960’s. Notice the black square tiles.

This photo taken yesterday reveals that some of those black tiles still exist! I love this stuff.

This shot just came out freaky... Esmeralda was reading my fortune so I thought I'd snap a picture of her (with no flash) but I got a weird reflection, for some reason I like this "self portrait with fortune teller”

And last up for the trip report, a little video clip (from my digital still camera, pardon the quality) of Pirates of The Caribbean after it broke down and we sat at the Mayor dunking scene for 45 minutes!!! I’ve never been in that ride when it broke for so long. After about 20 minutes they cut the audio, but all the AA’s kept moving, very weird…. This clip is from when we finally started to move but still no audio track. About 5 more minutes and they were going to evacuate us, darn that would have make some nice pictures!!!!

Next post, some Vintage Tickets!!!!!

Using the AP - Today

Today’s post is very short because I am on my way to Disneyland!!!! It’s going to be such a nice day here I just had to give my Annual Pass a workout!



I just received this nice letter from Disneyland yesterday, it too made me want to go to the park!

Ok, the only issue I have with this nice letter is it was mailed from FLORIDA!!!! Oh well, “One World Disney”….

Walt Disney World - October 1971 Ticket Book

“Welcome to Walt Disney World and The Magic Kingdom” This ticket book is the first stand issue Adult Book for the new Florida Park. Its print date is October 1971. It’s seems that Walt Disney Productions wanted this park to have a more “upscale” look, at least with the tickets!

Notice the stylized letters on the tickets and the curly-cues. And of course The Magic Kingdom got its own special font.






The back of the ticket book is different than Disneyland’s in a few ways; Its vertical instead of horizontal, they include the serial number where Disneyland didn’t, and its for “7” adventures! Even back in 1955 Disneyland books had “8” tickets!

Here is the attraction list. I guess with this skimpy list “7” tickets was enough!

Here are the tickets, A thru E, enjoy.

Back side to show the extra curly-cue’s, how elegant!

Those of you with a keen eye (Progressland) may notice the above “E” ticket is from a Child book and from 1972. My collection is missing an “E” ticket from 1971, every book I’ve gotten has the “E” tickets missing! Sorry for the "inconsistency" but its better than nothing....

Here’s a sneak peak at this weekends “Complete Guide” post, yes it’s back to Florida, 1974!

I am getting excited about my first trip to the Magic Kingdom this summer (link). However, as I study these tickets and Guide book, I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone! Like this Florida place is really some odd “Alternate Universe” for Disneyland fans.