Skip to main content

The Lilly Belle

In September 2010 and I brought my Lilly Belle ticket to City Hall to see if I can actually use it to ride in the private train car.  Now, I thought they would just sign it and I'd be on my way.  Even if you have a ticket and the Lilly Belle is running you have to set up a time to ride it.  A Cast Member had to call the station and set up a time when an extra Engineer/Conductor would be available to ride with me and my family.  Luckily my tickets were good, she filled them out and all I had to do now was wait until my designated time.


4:00 finally came around and it was time for our ride.  Here is what the Lilly Belle looks like from the outside.


Here's an inside shot:


I always heard that the inside of the Lilly Belle was furnished with things from Walt's apartment.  Our Cast Member told us that the chair (at the bottom left) and the carpet were the only things he had heard came from Walt's apartment.  Let's take a look at this picture from National Geographic of Walt in his apartment.


Maybe Walt had the carpet replaced after this picture was taken...?
Maybe he purchased the chair after this picture was taken...?

One thing he knew for sure though was that the coat hanging on the wall was donated by Lillian Disney herself (It was one of hers not Walt's)


Here's a few more pictures of random things inside.


We decided this was a shade placed in front of the window to block the sun.



Thank God this was here or I would have had to spit all over the floor...



Even though it may or may not be Walt's chair I still had to sit in it.



If you want to ride the Lilly Belle my advice is go to City Hall and ask.  Apparently if you know enough about the car to ask and show general interest in a ride a Cast Member will usually hook you up. It's much easier than spending $110....



Labels:

Comments

  1. DavelandJanuary 27, 2011 at 9:04 AM

    Donnie - You don't even need to go to City Hall. Just asking one of the cast members at Main Street Station is good enough. It all depends on if they have enough staff to spare one to ride with you, as riding the Lilly Belle means a full-circle trip...no stopping anyplace else. I hope you were allowed to keep your tickets after the ride!

    ReplyDelete
  2. DonnieJanuary 27, 2011 at 9:13 AM

    Dave - thanks for the tip. They didn't even ask to see my ticket! I just walked up there and said I had a reservation and he said "OK, come aboard."

    Let that be a lesson to you kids just pretend you belong and no one will ask questions.

    ReplyDelete
  3. DavelandJanuary 29, 2011 at 5:21 AM

    I'm "assuming" you know that you can do the same thing with the Mark Twain; just get up to the wheelhouse and ask if you can drive the Twain.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Cory GrossJanuary 29, 2011 at 7:06 AM

    Another note... The "shade" was actually used in Victorian homes to protect women's faces from the heat of the fireplace. Its presence in the Lilly Belle is a pretty random example of "hey, this looks old timey, let's put it in there".

    Riding in the Lilly Belle was one of my favorite experiences of my last trip to Disneyland. You just cannot beat riding in a plush Victorian coach through ancient prehistoric swamps ^_^

    ReplyDelete
  5. DonnieJanuary 31, 2011 at 5:26 AM

    That's awesome, this looks old. let's throw it in there....

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownFebruary 1, 2011 at 6:15 PM

    WOW WOW WOW!!!!! How totally amazingly awesome!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tales From The College Program: Getting Fired. Part 2

Getting my job back: Since Rat Face had gone as high as possible to get me fired, I decided to do the same when trying to get my job back.   Ed Backlor was the VP of Downtown Disney at the time, I decided to email him.   A day later I received an email from Djuan Rivers (who I just discovered is a Disney big shot now ).   Ed was out of town and had forwarded my email to Djuan.   We arranged a time for him to call me the next day.   I was pretty nervous as a sat there staring at my phone waiting for him to call.   I didn’t know where the conversation would go.   Djuan was very friendly, he had read my email and asked me some more questions about the firing.   I left out the part about how everyone eating for free so I wouldn’t get anyone else fired.   He told me the typical “well, I know it’s not a lot of money, but if everyone gave away $3.25 worth of food, it would really hurt the company.”   He said I could reapply with Disney in 6 months and when I did I would most likely be as
18 comments
Read more

Back to the Twilight Zone: Part 2

After the clock tower, the most important set in Hill Valley is probably the cafe.  In the Twilight Zone, the area we know as being the cafe is a police station. In 1985 Hill Valley, it's Lou's Aerobic Fitness Center. The building has not changed that much since the Twilight Zone, all they really did was relocate the door and build that facade.  Funny how Lou went from owning a restaurant to a fitness center 30 years later. Mike Ferris also takes in a movie at The Savoy. The Marquee (and movie selection) was changed when this area became Hill Valley A close up shows, that those busts have been there for quite a while. One scene that really threw me off, was when Mike walked past a drug store. It looks like the clock tower is behind him, and the reflection in the window looks like the post office building, but something about the geometry just didn't make sense to me.  I looked for more pictures of the set fr
42 comments
Read more

The Blank Check House

After the success of Home Alone movie studios did not waste anytime copying the formula (kid outsmarts bad guys).  While the worst offender was probably Three Ninjas, Disney was also guilty with Blank Check.  They even used it as a selling point! I saw Blank Check in the theater, I remember because it was the only time in my movie going life that the theater manager came out and talked to us about how the movie was filmed in Texas (which is where I live).  So, on a recent trip to Austin, I stopped by the Blank Check house. Here is how it appeared in the film: And today: As you can see, they've done quite a bit of remodeling. Not to mention the heavy plant growth which makes it almost unrecognizable. The old garage door is now a window The original entry way has been completely removed. This is the front door now: I drove around to the side and found the back gate open.  In the film, the back yard had a pool, go cart t
34 comments
Read more