Final Hours at Walt Disney World

Sunday 1 June 2016. We've done it. We've reached the final article in this series which has lasted twice as long as the holiday itself! If you can remember from the previous article, we are having our final day in the Magic Kingdom.

Cinderella's Castle. Despite appearances it is not made of individual bricks, but is mostly reinforced concrete over a steel frame. Construction took 18 months and it employs forced perspective. The higher you look, the smaller the features such as doors to balconies and windows, which make it appear higher than it really is.

It is fairly tall anyway. Most sources quote 189 feet but that's measured from the foundations which are six feet beneath the moat. It's a bit of a mix of styles, looking like a medieval fortress castle, all sturdy windowless walls at the bottom, but Gothic Revival above.

Along one wall of the archway through the ground floor is a series of mosaics telling the story of Cinderella. Five panels set into Gothic arches were filled with over 300,000 pieces of hand-cut Italian glass and marble and rough glass traditionally used to make tesserae (mosaic pieces). Over 500 colours were used and some tiles are coated in silver or 14 carat gold.

The second and fifth panels have doors in them so the mosaic picture is concentrated to the space over the door with decoration to each side of the door. Here in the second panel, the Fairy Godmother does her stuff.

It went a bit busy for a while so I've had to include a couple of blurry people passing the mosaic on the third panel which shows our heroine fleeing the ball and losing her slipper on the steps as the clock chimes midnight.

Some license was used with the colours. You may have noticed that the Fairy Godmother was a touch purple of face. This helps explain her "other worldliness" as much as being due to her concentration levels. In the fourth scene of Cinderella trying on the glass slipper note the Ugly Sisters, one of whom is red with anger whilst the other is green with envy!

Oh... and I couldn't get a pic of the final panel which contains the door to the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique where you can pay around $230 including tax for the basic package to have your daughter pampered for somewhere between one to two hours as she is transformed into her favourite made-up and coiffured, be-gowned and sequinned princess. You can pay extras for things like shoes. If you have a little girl who can't sit still or who gets fed up quickly then I'd forget it and just cringe at the state of someone else's kid...

As we emerge from the castle archway we are in Fantasyland. It has a medieval European feeling and facing us is Prince Charming's Regal Carousel. With a bit of artistic license, the Sword in the Stone can be found standing in front of it.

Gable ends and turrets and half-timbered buildings abound. They house merchandise, food outlets and rides. Most of Fantasyland is off to the right, but to the left you will find (darn, there goes that song again!) It's A Small World, Peter Pan's Flight, and Mickey's PhilharMagic, which is a 3D film with some good special effects.

At the back of Prince Charming's Regal Carousel is one of many stroller parks to be found in the park. You can leave your pram (or stroller as the Americans call them) here whilst you go on a ride or for however long you want. As prams are collected, leaving others standing isolated, they are moved to the nearest remaining prams by attendant Cast Members, which must make it fun for anyone trying to find their pram and finding an empty space instead. By early afternoon these parking lots can be fairly large!

It says ice cream, but if you are looking for something else, it's always worth checking a menu board. All the outlets sell a range of drinks from water to fizzy drinks and tea/coffee.

We head out of the park and across the ferry to the landing at the Grand Floridian where we have a meal booked at Narcoossee's Restaurant. They served bread with the starter that was just ordinary bread, not the sickly sweet stuff we have been given to leave untouched for the whole fortnight. Oh Bliss! But then the butter pats came with sugar crystals sprinkled all over them... The meal though was lovely.

Afterwards Gill and Eddie decided to take Grace back for a rest. It would certainly be a long day tomorrow. We caught the ferry back to the Magic Kingdom and headed into Adventureland.

It was starting to go dark and all the lights were coming on. The park takes on a different aspect in the dark, though the sky is still only just starting to lose its brightness.

We cross into Frontierland. Put the people in western dress and it would look really authentic!

It may be approaching evening, but the temperature is still way up there. We pass the Shooting Gallery and cross back into Fantasyland in the top corner of the park. The queue for Peter Pan's Flight is only 35 minutes and we head in there.

Yeow... The temperature of so many people in the small corridors of the queue takes the temperature up to sky high proportions. Like the Winnie the Pooh ride, the queue is full of cool things. You wander through the Darling children's bedroom. On one wall you can see your shadows, but there are also the shadows of lots of butterflies jigging about. If you are quick you can make your shadow catch a butterfly and it will then sit on your hand for a while! Then the butterflies turn into bells and your shadow can hit them and you hear them ring!

This is a very long 35 minutes... The guy before us in the queue was totally ignoring his wife and small daughter and was watching a baseball game on his phone. Something must have happened, requiring the ride software to be reset perhaps. We were in the heat of the queue for an hour. Then the two-minute ride and we came out into a darkened park.

We reached Prince Charming's Regal Carousel again. The number of prams in the parking area had reduced to a small number.

For some reason the sky at twilight always looks bright on photographs, probably because it is bright compared to things around you. But the carousel looked really good all lit up and I took a photo which looked like broad daylight with a totally white sky... Luckily I managed to bring the light levels down to something more like what we were seeing when I got home to my computer and PhotoShop. I don't agree with purists who insist photos should be straight from the camera. Cameras lie.

We came back through Cinderella's Castle and I took this photo looking down towards and along Main Street U.S.A. Only a few minutes separate this photo from the one of the carousel, but we must be looking towards the darkening sky here.

We wandered around the park for a bit as I wanted a chance to photograph the castle in darkness. But - wimps that we are - we were really tired and the thought of waiting another hour for the fireworks and then facing the crush of people waiting for buses to the resort didn't really appeal.

We gave a mental and heartfelt salute to all those Disney Imagineers and Cast Members who had made the Florida experience such a memorable one and walked out of the park for the last time.

Monday 2 May 2016. The following morning we had to be out of our rooms by 8:00am. We had ordered a taxi to take our luggage to the resort's Customs House where the front desk was, but we had to chase the firm up before they arrived.

Then a final breakfast and whilst the ladies looked round the shop for the last time Eddie and I tried out the machines in the small arcade. I won at pinball - he won at basketball...

I found a few minutes to sketch another bit of Barefoot Bay round by the side of Centertown. A cheerleader came jogging round and said "That's really pretty!" as she passed.

Then a small Japanese woman came to talk. She was a Cast Member and was waiting for a party to arrive for their bus to the airport. Although the time had been specified in the brochure, she said the bus would have visited several other resorts first and might arrive anything up to 15 minutes early. They had refused point blank to arrive any earlier than the stated time however - to the point of getting angry at her and she was worried the bus might not wait.
"The brochure time is the time the bus is due to leave, not the time they should turn up!" she worried. I guess there are stupid people the world over... "What is it you're doing?" she asked and I showed her the almost finished sketch. "Oh..." she said, then, "Oh! Is that the water???" You win some, you lose some...

We all congregated ourselves in timely fashion and caught the resort bus for the Customs House where we were reunited with our luggage very efficiently. On time, our bus arrived and we set off for the airport.

Orlando International is - as could be imagined - a very busy airport. There were long queues and frequent hold-ups because there were far fewer security gates than the preliminary security desks feeding them. Other queues may well have gone quicker, but I've long since reconciled to the fact that getting frustrated at airports only winds up yourself and the people in your party. So when another stop came just as we reached the front of our queue, I just shrugged and began to chat with the chap on the desk, as did the man at the front of the other queue that he single-handedly had to cope with.
"It's tough knowing that everyone is staring at you, believing you are just not working fast enough," he said, "but luckily at the moment I've got two friendly faces in front of me!"

We got onto our plane with no problem and then came the long flight home. I hope you've enjoyed this trip as much as I've enjoyed reliving it whilst writing the blog. Fourteen days holiday became twenty five blog articles over the space of thirty one days.

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Blackpool's Jubilee Air Show (Part 1 of 2)

Back in 1977 everything was labelled "Jubilee". It was the year of the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II and after a period when the Royals were out of vogue all of a sudden Britain could not get enough of them. The entire country went red, white and blue and Blackpool celebrated with a Jubilee Air Show, held at and over the Squires Gate Airport over the weekend of 28-29 May 1977.

The airport was not as busy then as it was to become. Apart from the Isle of Man, round the Tower and the occasional mail planes, it was fairly quiet. Quiet enough at any rate to hold the air show overhead with just a couple of regular flights taking off or landing between displays.

I was there myself and yet when I look back at these photos I took almost 40 years ago, I'm amazed at the carefree, let the punters walk round the aircraft atmosphere that there was. Yes there were a few barriers - even then, Health & Safety was not about to let people wander about the runway. But they could could walk around very close indeed to the aircraft including some which would have display slots during the day.

As witness the crowd around the Fairey Swordfish - we'll have a closer look in a minute - during one of the pauses in the programme to allow a local plane to land.

There were two Spitfires flying that day, one of which was licensed for a full aerobatic display and the other which was allowed to fly up and down alongside the row of spectators at the barriers but without doing any loops or rolls.

The Avro Lancaster, probably Britain's most famous World War II bomber, was there in the shape of the City of Lincoln which flew during the day and when not airborne was parked close to the barriers.

The Fylde Radio Controlled Models Society had laid out a display before the Lancaster. I think there was a smaller version of a Lancaster there. They too gave display flights of their models as part of the day's programme.

A few shots of the Lancaster...

It had been built right at the end of the war, too late in fact to carry out any hostile missions. Instead she was put to use undertaking aerial surveys over Africa until 1952 when she returned to the UK to face an initially uncertain future. Luckily she was spared and restored and joined the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight in 1973.

The Fairey Swordfish was one of last biplanes in service with the British armed forces, serving in the Fleet Air Arm as torpedo spotters and dive bombers. Already considered obsolete by the start of the war, the 1936 Swordfish never-the-less had great successes in their field and served right through to the end of the Second World War both in Europe and the Far East.

The photos here have been scanned from prints, the negatives having been lost I'm afraid. Yet another of my collection of photo albums from the year 1977.

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Ancient Wonders Cruise Ends

A while since we last heard about the cruise, so it's time to finish things off properly and bring the cruise holiday to an end.

We had spent Sunday 27 May in Mykonos, Greece and that night saw us once more in the Horizons Bar onboard the Thomson Celebration for our last chance to hear Tomas and Maris singing.

In fact it was Maris's comeback night - she had been stricken with laryngitis and had totally lost her voice earlier in the week being ordered by the doctor to keep to her cabin and not sing, not speak for three days. She had been devastated by this - it's something that affects most singers at some point and is worrying to say the least. But she had been very good. We joined them for their evening meal most nights and she was doing her best to keep quiet, only whispering. All those good looks and silent too - an ideal woman, hee hee! Sorry Maris! Tomas had done a magnificent job on his own but it was great to have 2 Intense back together again for our last night.

And Maris was sensational that night. We spent some time chatting with them afterwards and I'm sure will see them again before too long.

Monday 28 May came along and we awoke back in Marmaris, Turkey where we had to say goodbye to the ship and travel back to England.

Dalaman Airport was its usual crowded and chaotic self. We were told to join a queue only to see lots of later arrivals bypassing us and after a while we bailed out to join the less formal crush. You go through security with your bags on entering then go to check-in where your bags are taken as usual, then you go through another security check and then through passport control. I beeped going through the first security, was ignored, retrieved the bags and then got an apologetic tap on the shoulder and was frisked.

Then six or seven hours later we were home. The sun had been cracking the flags whilst we were away and we enjoyed the last evening of that before the rain started again the following day...

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Flying at Blackpool

Blackpool made an early investment into powered flight. As early as 1909 they held an Air Pageant at Squires Gate following a suggestion by Lord Northwick, whose newspaper, the Daily Mail, put up money for a prize for the highest altitude attained. Blackpool Corporation themselves put up a Grand Prize of £2000.

The Grand Prize was won by Henry Farman who had flown 24 circuits of the fledgling airfield, covering over 47 miles, only giving up when the strain of controlling the aircraft in Blackpool's winds became too much physically.

The event would have been Britain's first flying pageant but for Doncaster Corporation at the last minute hastily publicising and staging an event 3 days before Blackpool's event opened on 10 October 2009.

Two years later, however, following another similar event in 1910, the land at Squires Gate was leased and a racecourse was established with the first meeting drawing crowds of 20,000. This early success was not sustained and by 1915 the site was in use as a convalescent home for soldiers from the First World War, the home continuing until 1924.

From the end of the war A.V. Roe operated pleasure flights from the beach immediately in front of the Pleasure Beach, which was itself literally on the beach at that time.

I suspect that the postcard is a fabrication, almost all of the postcards showing the Illuminations were taken in daylight and then darkened and painted with shadows from people and objects and the fact that most of the light bulbs would be the size of footballs giving the game away.

But whilst no aircraft could be lit as is suggested here, there is no doubt that they were a regular sight at Blackpool as many of the Edwardian postcards of Blackpool were obviously taken from aeroplanes flying a good deal lower than any plane would be allowed today!

The Corporation decided to ban flights from the beach after a short while, although the spectacles had also included, for a time, a flying boat called Progress (Blackpool's town motto) which landed on the sea and taxiied onto the beach to load and unload passengers to and from the Isle of Man.

Flying reverted to Squires Gate for a few years until the Corporation, eager to establish a municipal airport, were persuaded to buy land east of Stanley Park for the purpose. This land needed levelling and the Ministy of Labour "trained" unemployed men for two years on the site to develop the airport.

It included a clubhourse with restaurant and bars and an observation tower which still exist and can be seen in the background to this 1983 view of Blackpool Zoo, which was developed on the site in the 1970s.

Despite the success of Disney's Dumbo, elephants do not make good flyers and one here is being attended to by a mate after crashing and rolling on landing...

The site was fairly successful, but could not expand and by the 1930s, aeroplanes were much faster and bigger and required longer runways than could be provided.

Another company re-opened Squires Gate as an airport and won contracts with larger airlines and also to do mail runs to the Isle of Man.

The Corporation eventually sought to take over the site and transfer operations from Stanley Park, the expansion at Squires Gate causing the route to St Annes and Lytham to be suddenly halted at the Halfway House pub but the Second World War saw the site used for military purposes. A huge factory was established to build Wellington Bombers. Parts of it survive as trading and industrial estates. In the 1970s on first moving to Blackpool I worked at Warriners Cash & Carry, housed in one of the units created by the division of the factory space.

After the war there were plans for a ridiculously large airport, including a lagoon for the landing of seaplanes near Southport with road and rail tunnels under the River Ribble providing fast connections to the main Squires Gate site. None of this came to fruition as the Government kept control of airports through the Ministry of Civil Aviation following the departure of the RAF at the end of the war.

The factory turned to making Hawker Hunter jets in 1953 causing yet more Blackpool-Lytham roads to terminate and requiring the building of the current non-coastal route - Queensway - to take traffic around the new long runway required for jet aircraft.

Despite the success of the Isle of Man traffic, international and domestic flights at Blackpool continued to be outshadowed by the successs of the pleasure flight industry.

In the late 1970s and early 80s the airport was quiet enough to allow large Air Displays to be held there. I took the photo of the Flying Fortress making a low pass there during an event in 1978.

Air displays are still a feature of Blackpool's calendar, but although many aircraft use the airport as a base for the event, the displays take place over the sea. These inevitably are against the sun (if it makes an appearance) and are free to spectators as there is no way of charging people to watch over several miles of beach and Promenade. Present displays are flying displays only though, with spectators unable to walk around static displays of historic aircaft apart from very limited displays on the Promende.

Blackpool retains some of the older hangars and buildings and in the 1980s Air Atlantique were still flying DC3 Dakotas, to my mind one of the most beautiful of aircraft on a par with the Spitfire. Two of them were used in 1981 to make a TV series called Airline. Starring Roy Marsden, the series was so successful that a second series was made.

Today the airport has been expanded again. For a while Ryanair operated a twice-daily service to London Stansted which was well used, and although many bemoaned the withdrawal of the service, the improvements to the West Coast rail services made the journey to London much faster anyway.

Whether the airport's fortunes will wax or wane in the future remains to be seen. Which can be said of almost any business!

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