The image to the left is the cover of the 1991 booklet,
Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park: An Adventure With the Movies. It is a 24-page booklet that, I am assuming, was sold as a boxed set. I have a similar title for the Magic Kingdom and both booklets have the same ISBN, leading me to believe they were packaged together.
Besides being an amazing time capsule, guides from previous years are a great way to see how Disney promoted their Florida properties. What were the star attractions? Was there a theme that was being promoted? How did they expect you to spend your time and money?
If you look closely at the cover, our bud Mick is wearing star-studded, finger-less gloves that matches his shirt and hat. He also has a white scarf draped around his neck. It looks like a little bit of East Coast vs. West Coast. You gotta love when Disney tries to be timely instead of classic.
Anyway, the real meat of the post is the single page dedicated to Studio Dining. I scanned the image and separated the photos to give a better view. What is probably the most exciting image is the one of the Catwalk Bar that was located above the Soundstage Restaurant. Not many people took photographs and the bar closed in the late 1990s (1999?) during the Bear and the Big Blue House expansion. For some reason, I always had a sense that this restaurant would have been painted matte black and was a very dangerous place to drink.
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| Backlot Express |
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| Catwalk Bar (Soundstage Restaurant) |
Shane at Parkeology bemoans that fact that he missed out on the Catwalk Bar, as well. You can
read his post here.
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| '50s Prime Time Cafe |
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| Min and Bill's Dockside Diner |
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| Dinosaur Gertie's |
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| A hot rod caramel sundae from the '50s Prime Time Cafe |
Feel free to print out this page and try to reconstruct the entire image in a Tetris-like fashion.
4 comments:
Great find!
It's hard to tell but the Ctawalk bar was in fact pretty dark in reality and it was of course up high looking down into the main "soundstage"... the photo does not convey that well.
Shane will have a hard time sleeping tonight he will be so excited.
Thank you so much for posting these! Coincidentally, I had been searching the internet for a picture of the Catwalk Bar just last week, but to no avail.
That photo makes the thing look like it was at ground level! But I am thrilled to see it in all its uninspired glory! For years I have dreamed of this as a secluded, plush lounge hidden deep within the Studios, where only exclusive VIPs could track it down... Seems my imagination was a bit off.
It amazes me how many things from the late '80s and early '90s that have not been documented very well on film or video.
It seems like every nook and cranny at Disneyland has a site dedicated to it, but people aren't sharing their photos of Walt Disney World.
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