Closing out the week with one more shot from Disneyland before I take you back over to California Adventure next week.
This is the Columbia. It debuted at Disneyland in June 1958, three years after the park opened. According to The Walt Disney Family Museum, Walt was looking out at the Rivers of America with Dick Nunis and, rather than thinking the river was already busy enough, said it needed another large vessel. That vessel was ultimately the Columbia.
It’s a full-scale replica of the Columbia Rediviva, the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. The real ship’s voyage began in 1787, before the U.S. Constitution had even been ratified, and it returned from its second major voyage in 1792, after George Washington had become president.
Disneyland’s Columbia is 110 feet long, fully rigged, and sails guests around the Rivers of America on 15-minute voyages. Then at night it becomes a part of Fantasmic, sailing through the show as Peter Pan and Captain Hook battle it out on the ropes above. It’s the detail of Disneyland’s Fantasmic that put it miles above the one on our East Coast.
I took so many pictures of it throughout the day. This one was taken at 75mm, 1/2000 second to tamp down the bright sunlight, f/2.8 to soften the surroundings, ISO 250.