History of the Disneyland Hotel with Don Ballard | 09/20/17

hello everyone and welcome to a special edition of the diss unplugged a little special episode that we have for you this week if you've watched the show for any length of time then you have heard me say on more than one occasion that my personal favorite hotel of all the Disney hotels that I have stayed at is the Disneyland Hotel in California and one of the reasons I've always said that is because it's the original it's where the history hits it's where the legacy of the Disney hotels and Disneyland Park is so vested in that in that place so I'm very very happy to introduce the man who literally wrote the book on the Disneyland Hotel mr. Don Ballard is with us hello and we're also joined at the table this week by mr. Steve Porter hello and miss Cathy whirling hi everybody so we first met Don a few months ago on one of our adventures by disney backstage magic trips out in california was a surprise that Jon had arranged to have Don come and give a presentation to our group about the disneyland hotel and I literally like lost my mind when I saw him because I Kevin and I have talked about this book on the show before years and years like places years ago that we first found this book at that little bookstore at Downtown Disney in California Kevin found that he told me about it I got it and I can't tell you how many times you want to talk about a book that just has so much reread value this is it because I have gone back through it so many times it's so fascinating and as fascinating as the book is Don your story of how you got into this is even more fascinating so why don't we start with that talk about tell me about how it is you got to do this book well we were checking into our room and this was 1995 and we were walking from the registration area to our room with the bellman who had been there for I don't know 30 years as a Disneyland Hotel is that the Disneyland Hotel and on along the way we were walking and he had mentioned that nobody's ever documented the history of the hotel nobody's ever written anything in significance about it there were several articles and you know short stories and things like that and he said it has such a rich history in such a so many stories the architecture the people that had stayed there just the way that it paralleled Disneyland and I kind of planted that in the back of my mind because I had always said I would someday write a book it was one on my bucket list of things to do and so it just stuck with me and then I started to try to accumulate things on the hotel and then the eBay came along and I was able to get documents and other paraphernalia ephemera and things like that on the hotel much to my wife's chagrin because I started buying everything I could find and then I started getting more and more information and everything in more substance to do a book on it and then it just grew from there and eventually now the the original you know Walt Disney did not build this hotel he contracted it out effectively because I think he spent all his money building Disneyland and Jack rather was the man who stepped up and you got access to the family vault yes yeah that's correct Walt was out of money he had spent everything he had hocked things to build Disneyland plus he really didn't know the ins and outs of hotels he knew that he would need a hotel there he knew that in order for Disneyland that would really help Disneyland be successful they had to get people staying overnight so they went to Disneyland more than just one day and Jack rather through his connections with the Lone Ranger and other ABC television shows that he owned at the time approached ER was introduced to the to the Walt Disney Company because one one thing that goes around a lot that says that Jack rather knew nothing about hotels that's just not true he owned LA horizon that was in Palm Springs which is a hotel and he owned the Twin Lakes lodge in Las Vegas so he knew about hotels llaha risin was more of an upscale for celebrities because his wife Bonita Granville was a an actress from the 30s and 40s she was nominated for a Supporting Actress Academy Award in an early film that she did but Jack and Walt were introduced or they were introduced to Disney and he agreed to to go in and build a hotel there were actually four partners three of them mostly silent and Jack the most visible and vocal and they agreed to to build the hotel and spend ten million dollars which in 1954 1955 ordinary amount of money extremely yeah it was it was a was a lot of money Plus like Disneyland I mean everybody was saying you're building it out in the middle of nowhere this is not going to be successful and and that's another thing that fascinated me through all my research is the parallels between Jack rather and Walt Disney Jack too was a visionary he you know both were family men both were visionaries both were willing to take a risk in their dreams they too both like their families to spend time together and do things and so the hotel kind of fit right in because Jack from the beginning believed in Disneyland as well when it was explained to him by Roy Oh Disney Walt's brother so the parallels the things that I found that the two men had in common is just is just incredible and so tell me about you know what once you take us through the history of the hotel from your from your perspective from from the books perspective cuz you have some some of the things that are in this book are incredible like you have there's a lot of pictures of the area before anything was built mmm-hmm what Anaheim looked like which is hysterical and then there's an awful lot you have brochures from the early days of the hotel that show the rates of the room and things like it's just it's an incredible amount of of information that really and what I love about the way you did this is that there there's no spin in this it's you're providing this is what happened this is and and and you have all these different documents photos and things that just kind of take you through the story and you by the time you get done reading the book you feel like you've gone through it you've you've gone through the history so talk to me a little bit about that talk to me a little bit about the history of the hotel from your perspective and you know some of the things that you've learned that surprised you okay this is actually the second book that we that we did the first one was a hardbound yellow colored book and that is a general history from 1954 to 1988 the reason I picked those years is that's the years that the rather family owned the hotel Disney bought it from the rather family in 1988 the deal was actually consummated in very early 1989 but for all intensive purposes it was 1988 that the the deal went through and what I tried to do was I just tried to show the evolution of the hotel through the years from a small little motor hotel in the middle of the orange groves to what it became in 1988 with three towers 1,400 available rooms all the amenities and features and things that the hotel had it was always the Ed McMahon to Johnny Carson you know with Johnny Carson being Disneyland and Ed McMahon being the hotel and they knew it they knew that they were second fiddle to Disneyland but they still the rather family still wanted people to have a good time when they went there and have plenty of things for them to do there I mean it had shopping centers it had restaurants you could even get a there was a barber shop there a beauty salon they had a nursery for kids they had a radio station that broadcasts live from from the facility's starting in 1959 the monorail was added in 1961 to connect with the park pools they had you know state-of-the-art swimming pools it was one of the first hotels to ever have television it was the first hotel to have color television well and it was one of the first hotels to use solar power for heating and and and electrical use just so many things that the hotel had and did over the years that they were just like a forerunner to other hotels many precursors to things that you see today dancing waters in the early seventies became world of color of color yeah I'm sorry lost it there for a second sorry I became world of color and they had the marina you know which they're using at California Adventure now but Jack just wanted families to be able to go somewhere spend time together and have fun and relax and it's just it's it really did have a rich and fascinating history just researching the the expansions and the people that stayed there the restaurants that they had the architecture I'm a huge 50s fan which is why I wrote the second book because the second book covers 1954 to 59 and the second book was also written because after a while I had access to a rather family storage vault in Hollywood California and the story of that goes I was driving home one day I can't even remember where I was at and this was 2005 or something 2006 and it was Chris rather on the phone and he said Don I've got this storage vault in Hollywood and I haven't been there in 40 years he said you want to go have a look Wow he said you know there might be some business-related things in there and rather business where they owned lassie The Lone Ranger sergeant president of the Yukon later they owned Queen Mary in the Spruce Goose Corrigan Ville movie ranch radio stations televisions is a very wealthy man anyway he asked me if I wanted to go take a look in this storage vault and I said is this a trick question of course I want to go take a look so can you imagine yeah I know and we had no clue we you know I told my wife on the way down there and it was a 12-hour day we left at 7:00 in the morning our flight was at 7:00 in the morning surprise you have a left I'd still be yeah we've been back five times and our flight was at 7:00 or 8:00 that night and anyway I told her on the flight there I said if I find 10 pictures in here that I haven't seen before this will be a successful trip and I scan 1,700 Wow and I found 14 films some of which are just gonna blow your mind as to the contents and things and it was just a gold mine literally a gold mine we've been back five times and each time I find something different several of the film cans aren't labeled so you don't know what's on him I bought a 16 millimeter film viewer so we can see and on one of those trips that we went back it was right around the time Disney had released their version of The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer and somebody there had mentioned to me why don't you try to find some background stuff for the DVD when it comes out on the original Lone Ranger and I found a can of film in there that said TLR on at 1955 1956 and TLR is the Lone Ranger and I said should I bring this one you know Wow because this is before I had the viewer and I put it in the cart to bring back to take a look at and what I found at the beginning of that film was Disneyland opening day in color it was it was it was in beautifully preserved Technicolor or Kodak color and it actually shows Walt Disney dedicating Disneyland and a whole movie this is a color home movie film by Jack rather and it was just it was incredible because there's very little color footage of opening day they have a whole Dateline Disneyland episode that was an hour and a half that's in black and white and the only surviving version of that is in kinescope which means they took the camera and put it right up to a television screen so it's real kind of not really good visual quality but this is crystal-clear in beautiful color shows the first flag raising ceremony the first topia ride the rocket to the moon clock of the world the parade the Mouseketeers even shows former President Ronald Reagan getting ready to interview the Rather's and this is all in color shows the camera crews that were there and you can see the colors of the cameras there was a red camera and I said wow I you know in black and white you would never be able to get the same perspective so that was incredible and then on a subsequent trip I found another can of film that wasn't labeled but at the very beginning of the strip of film it said Disneyland opening day and it shows Walt getting into his car with Governor Knight and then some of the parade and and and things like that but that was just one of the things that we found in there and it was just like I said a goldmine and so obviously you have a good relationship with the rather family they're letting the end of the family fault and you know and you were able some of this stuff you were able to use obviously and putting putting the book together what you know you focus like I said in this book you focus on 1954 to 1959 I think it's important for people who may not know that the original Disneyland Hotel the original buildings are no longer there they they raised those buildings to make room for Downtown Disney now Jack rather did build the three towers that exist right now but I you know I I didn't they raised those in 2000 I think it was 1999 2000 I my first trip to Disneyland was in February of 2000 and it was all dirt piles I so wish I'd been there yeah see that oh yeah they they did get rid of there isn't the oldest structure there and there's actually four towers there not three because they built the Sierra tower and it was half its size and they just built the second half of the Sierra tower in 1965 so there was a tower that was existing there that was half its size and business was so good they just clamped another building right the exact same size right next to it and so that's I called two towers and then the marina tower and then the bonito tower I don't even know what the towers are named today adventure found here and fantasies yeah I still when we go there I say I think we're in the bonito tower and most of them know what I'm talking about they know what I mean and they say they just kind of give a little chuckle yeah but the the oldest building there is from 1962 now built in 1961 opened in 1962 I have a question on the land so that property was that the Rather's property and then Disney brought them or is that Disney property that they built the hotel on they signed a 99 year lease with Disney the rather family it was Disney and Disneyland or Disney property that was designated for the hotel it was originally 30 acres and then it switched to 60 acres and when they built the miniature golf course in the heliport and and the full golf course there but that had a 99 year lease I think it expired 2054 huh that would have expired yeah so yeah and that's the other thing is that you know right now where the pool is used to be a marina the marina yeah and I remember that I remember the marina being there but there was so much there when it was built that unfortunately we don't we don't have anymore right right well one interesting thing that I found is through all this - I've met some fascinating people I was able to meet Diane Disney Miller Ron Miller but one gentleman in particular that I met that's just fascinating is a gentleman named Alfred Nicholson and he was in an architectural firm called Weber and Nicholson and who were they they built all of the towers at the Disneyland Hotel 96 he's still alive he lives in Malibu California and I've known al now for about 10 10 years 8 to 10 years he called me on the phone one day and said I'm looking for Don Ballard and I said this is him and he said this is Alfred Nicholson and I thought in my head this couldn't be the Alfred Nicholson and it was and he said and at this time he was in his early 90s or late 80s and he said well I'm driving up to see you and he drove up from Malibu and and pulled up into the court that we live in opened his trunk and had a trunk full of blueprints picture brochures documents and I've had an 8 to 8 to 10 year friendship with Al now and unfortunately his health is starting to to slip quite a bit now he joined me in May for an event at Disney but a fascinating guy and when I meet with Alan when I talk with Al he always has a yellow pad and he sketches as he he talks like he says well when we designed the Tower and he's drawing it why and I saved all of those drawings I said can I have these out absolutely but he's a very visual or you know physical kind of guy and he was drawing everything out and he was telling me stories about like there's tunnels in there under the Disneyland Hotel that are access for food service laundry and just so people can get around under there without being seen up above which was a I guess a precursor to the yellow doors we have mentioned him here yeah they got the ideas you know a lot of ideas from there about the hotels about you know the running of hotels and everything for Walt Disney World but sometimes I'll go out to the hotel with Al and he'll point out things you know like for instance you can walk in the Sierra tower again don't know what it's called and he said look at notice how when you walk right here you kind of go over like a little hump in the floor he said that's where the two buildings are joined together he said we just joined the building I gather anything feel the difference in the the height of the floor and then another time that I was there it was for the sixtieth anniversary and I had done a presentation for Disney on the 60th anniversary and I was just looking at the the murals on the walls at 10 o'clock at night and a guy comes up to me he goes are you Don Ballard and I said yeah and he said I'm the banquet manager here because I'm gonna bring you I'm gonna show you something that you're just gonna die so he brought me over to the Sierra tower I gotta figure out what that tower his name but anyway he brought me over there and he had keys to everything and he opened a door and then he opened these giant doors from with inside there and he said that's the former outside of this building and there's all these beautiful little blue tiles that you'll see in all the pictures and he pulled one off and gave it to me he said this is where the building used to end and they just strapped it right along next side to the other building and he said and you can see the actual outside of the old building uh-huh and here's a tile for you wow that was incredible so if you go there and you'd look right now over by Goofy's kitchen there's a there's kind of a hallway it's it's by that shadowbox you know that large shadow box there's murals in there now from that our tribute to the rather family right there's three of them I gave Disney every single picture that they're using in those mural oh wow and when did I do that July 17th 2015 I was working with WDI during the 60th anniversary celebration I watched from wdi right behind Pirates of the Caribbean just outside the berm I watched was it Robert Sherman Richard Sherman Richard Sherman I'm sorry playing feed the birds from a closed-circuit television with the Walt Disney Imagineers as that was going Wow so that was incredible and then they used all those pictures and we had a huge celebration on October the 5th 2015 because that was the 60th anniversary of the opening of the hotel they only opened the hotel later because everybody that was a plumber or an electrician was built in Lincoln Disneyland and so the hotel was delayed they wanted to open them at the same time but they just couldn't do it they just didn't have the workers and even when the hotel opened only had seven rooms opening night the eighth room was used as the registration desk so that people could actually register they were turning away 300 people a month three or 300 people a night Wow because they they just didn't have the rooms and then they had a hundred rooms within two weeks 96 rooms within two weeks and then 200 within about nine months but they were turning away people left and right because they just wasn't big enough so right away they knew they had to expand and of course Disneyland kept expanding and they both grew together so it's a it's a parallel story no am I correct in in I think I read this in your book that the Disney had actually given Drac rather the rights to the name that he could have built Disneyland hotels across the country my correct than that that's correct he could have built the Disneyland he could have built a hotel in San Diego and in Orlando and called it the Disneyland Hotel and he never did because I I don't I never really got the definitive answer but from what I gather just from talking to the family was he wanted it to have that connection that it was right next to Disneyland and so he didn't choose to do it plus you see a I'm sorry you that that that's a level of integrity in West's that you would not see today ever now you know it's incredible too because in my research I see so many things that they did back then were over a handshake you know okay we'll do it and they shook hands and that handshake was their bond you know I found Jack Rather's daytimers which were little books that people used to write instead they did have computers back then right so they wrote everything down and he had several meetings with Roy Disney signing the lease discussing the terms mayor Pearson from Anaheim was at one of them the attorneys were at another one and he would write in there you know deal done handshake completed we're moving forward you know and that's just the way they did things you know and and Walt trusted him and Roy Oh doesn't he trusted him they said you know how we want Disneyland that's how we want the hotel we want that same kind of quality and attention to detail and that was Jack Rather's Chris rather told me this many times the Disneyland Hotel was far and away his father's favorite business in her rice he loved that hotel more than any other business that he had he fired a guy once because he found dead flowers in the flower bed he went down unannounced and then the the people there used to call it the 45-minute warning because it took 45 minutes to get from Beverly Hills to the hotel and the minute jack would leave saying he was going to the hotel everybody would be getting calls okay you got a 45 minute morning's gonna be there any leads or pick up any flowers and there was one flower bed that didn't have it didn't look right and Jack fired the guy Chris told me later that he had to talk with the guy in brought him back on but that's how serious he was about that hotel it sounds like him and Walt were like like-minded with attention to detail so maybe that's why they got along so well see and you know I I feel like to some degree that still exists at that on blocking light I'm sorry you gotta you know warn you what I'm doing that I move the microphone I feel like that still exists to some degree there it there's you know I call the time about some of the service issues I find here in Orlando versus the experience I have when I'm out in California but even more specifically at that hotel you know generally speaking I think the cast members in Disneyland really have a great greater sense of their legacy the legacy we're presenting and at that hotel I really feel that we just like I said you feel the history there and you were talking about the shadowbox that exists right outside the convention center from where steakhouse 55 is which is and and Goofy's kitchen but that used to be Francis named after Jack Rather's wife and that shadow box by itself you could spend an hour there looking at all these little pieces of memorabilia and then you know there pictures throughout the lobby area and in there of you know all the celebrities that have come a-visiting land or stayed at that hotel and you really it really does give you that sense of of the history of it and there is a real there is a real history there and it's one of the things I just I love about your book is that you really captured that history and you know and you got to go into the vault well you know this is all people have left to remember because it's not there anymore yeah and what I've also done over the course of these past few years is I've actually traced down the exact spot on the property where they first broke ground on March 18th 1955 I can take somebody to that exact same spot I can show them that hump in the floor where you know that the buildings were joint I can go right back to where the Olympic pool was I can take them you know to all these historical places at least to me there's significant historical places to bring people and that's all they have left they you know the pictures I post a lot on Facebook and I have a website and everything and I try to keep that historical version of it alive I'm working on a project now with Disney where I'm trying to get them to bring back an old two-story garden structure because there's a roomful and if they brought that back think of how many people spent their honeymoons or brought their kids for the first time there or or just have memories of those rooms and they could do it in a 50s retro style but with today's modern conveniences no out of my mind out of my month I lose my money oh I know and I have hundreds of pictures so they can use you know to base the new designs of those buildings and things like that but you mentioned Granville's named after Ponyta Granville you know one of my favorite restaurants to go into and I have to admit I watched a couple of your previous episodes over the last week and you had mentioned about the breakfast and I loved their eggs benedict there yeah yeah it's a best kept secret at Disneyland it is the breakfast especially the dinner's great - don't get me wrong but breakfast at that that restaurant is amantha and it's it's never packed never can always get a table but there's one thing missing in there that I've been lobbying Disney to do if you go in there and you look there's pictures of celebrities from the 30s and 40s all over the walls they're missing Jack and Bonita rather and I have the perfect perfect picture for that I think that should be yeah and I would think they would put it in the front with maybe say your hosts yeah or you know something but I have the I have them and I'll show you later I have the most amazing photo that they could use that fits right into the theme of all the other pictures that are in there you know but that's just fun going in there and looking at those pictures yeah and they encourage you they even have a checklist it says that's you know Joe Lewis that Shirley Temple that's Gary Cooper whoever whomever is in there and they encourage you to walk around and look they're friendly in there it's not really that expensive either I mean it's it's not cheap but it's not you know it won't break your pocket no it's not obscene there yeah and and it's wonderful my most amazing experience in there was at the Disneyland Hotel they had a thing called the Oak Room for years from 1956 all the way till they tore down the in 99 and the Oak Room was a private club it was shirts and ties very stuffy kind of formal and for the longest time men only it was very sexist and the there were rules when you could bring your wife or your girlfriend or whatever or kids for that matter and it went away in 99 and 2000 but they brought back the Oak Room and it's in steakhouse 55 it's a separate room within there it's not hidden or anything it's right there but my most amazing experience in there was in 2011 I had been lobbying Disney for about three years to have Jack and Benita named Disney Legends and I had a dozen you know the only I had a dozen meetings with them and finally one day I think it was April or May I get a call from the archives no you're not gonna believe me but who was it at that time it was a very high up guy at Disney called me and he said Don Ballard and I said this is him and he said you can stop writing us letters you can stop calling you can stop emailing Jack rather and Bonita Granville rather are now Disney legend Wow and he said and we'd like to invite you to speak at d23 and we'd like to invite you to the legend ceremony and that's awesome son Chan after so we were at this luncheon with jodi benson and and and all the princesses that were named legends that year Paige O'Hare I forgot the others names but it was the girl in the a toad I I can't remember her name but there were four Mulan who ever played Mulan Lea Salonga yeah and there were four of them there and at that time we had a daughter that was eight or nine and she was playing with Jody Benson's daughters and and it was just it was just such a magical experience to go there and see Jack named a Disney Legend and to be able to present there and that's right after I found these items in the vaults like I put together this presentation with all this footage and and and documents and everything but that was special but the special part of that that I need to get to was the rather family was there the surviving rather family was there and we had dinner in the Oak Room with the rather family knowing that the next morning we were going to go see their father and mother thus his grandkids and kids surviving kids he had four children and three of them were there and their kids some of their kids were there and some of their grandkids were there so we were eating in the Oak Room with the rather family who were the original owners of that hotel so what I did to make that night extra special is I spliced together some of the home movies not Disney this was at their house swimming in their pool in Beverly Hills Wow I had the guy he set up the a/v ahead of time and I put that on there and so that was the longest dinner because they were just sitting there one you know it was just amazing and then my daughter was playing with some of the rather grand children and they became good friends and it was just an incredible three or four days that we got to spend with them there and of course Jack being named legend which was a lifelong dream of mine I'm working on one more right now he needs a window on Main Street yeah yes yeah and I'm working on that so he said you really I mean you're the keeper the flame now well Chris refers to me as the official family historian because most of the things that I find I make copies and I give to the family so that they can preserve them for the family and so the family can remember and occasionally the the grandkids will call me and say hey was my grandpa involved in this or what what did he have to do with with you know with this building or that building we were just at loyola marymount where the rather family donated there a lot of their archives because our son was getting ready to go to college and we were walking around there and then all of a sudden we come into this room and right above the room it said this room provided by the rather family funded by the rather family Wow so yeah and that's another great spot the Loyola Marymount has their archives a lot of their archives the guy brought out a box to me one time and there were four gold passes all signed by Walt Disney 5650 1965 and he said are these worth anything and I said nah they're not worth anything and I said are you kidding I said you need to put these in plastic and you need to make copies of these and show the copies to people these are priceless Walt's signature on the front and Jack Rather's on the back I said these are priceless so that's I have a question looking at Walt Disney World with the closeness of the ratah family and the Disney family when Walt Disney World was created do you why wasn't ROH I didn't reach out to him to say can you help us with this I especially after Walt's passing you would think that hey you helped us with this how come was that a falling-out or was it just a business decision it's real interesting that you asked that because just before coming here I have you know 35,000 copies of paper documents and I did some research before coming here and I found some letters from Jack rather to Roy Disney and these were from January of 1966 so Walt still alive and Jack is saying we just heard about your Florida project as well as Mineral King and he said we know a thing or two about hotels if you want to if you want our help because I'm sure Jack would have loved to have built a hotel in Florida and Roy just kind of writes back and says well Mineral King it depends on if the highway goes through and our Florida project is still a few years away so I gathered it as kind of a don't call us we'll call you I think at that time they had money they had the ability to get people that knew about hotels they didn't have a bad relationship I found one one instance in all of my research and you're talking about thousands of hours of research thousands of documents where there was a falling-out between Rather and Disney and that occurred when Jack put the words Disneyland Hotel on the top of the Sierra tower first it said Hotel Disneyland because they could only fit the word hotel to the left of the elevator anyway that's another story Walt was not happy with Jack because you could see that from inside the park until they built a special area in New Orleans square but for a time you could see it if you looked there was a several angles where you could see the hotel and Walt didn't want people to see the outside world and so he told Jack I'm not happy with this and Jack said well what can we do they worked it out and I have a whole bunch of other letters between the Rather's and the Disney's before and after Walt saying this partnership has been so mutually beneficial and we've loved working with you and Roy would write back and say and we've loved working with you this has worked out beyond our wildest dreams and so it was a wonderful working relationship outside of that one little rift that was settled within you know a couple of weeks he just said there's nothing we can do about it now and they built something that eventually covered that up New Orleans Square or something but it was it was an amazing relationship now were you a big Disney fan before you did all this yes I've always liked Walt Disney the thing I like and admire about Walt Disney the most is that he could educate you and entertain you at the same time it was a family tradition growing up where we would watch the Sunday wonderful world of Disney or wonderful world of color episodes you know while we were having our Sunday dinner we would watch that show and I was always just impressed impressed with Walt Disney his attention to detail just the way that you know he brought families together the way that he provided fun and and made people smile and things had happy endings and Disneyland was fun we never really got to stay at the Disneyland Hotel because we had relatives that lived real close by so my aunt would always say just stay with us you know and my dad would say yeah you know it'll save money we can spend money inside Disneyland instead of the hotel and my aunt Liv live literally three miles away four miles away so we would just stay with her but we'd go over there and we would have lunches there or we would just walk around the shops and things like that but I've loved Disney practically my whole life so is there anything that you found that surprised you or that really you went like wow as far as the hotel or Disney or Disneyland yeah like when you were doing all your research and I never knew that Disney didn't own it at first when I first thought it I always just thought it was a Disney hotel and that was something that certainly surprised me but when I when I learned about all the costs and everything and you were talking about the 50s ten million dollars that again was another parallel Jack rather wanted it right he didn't care what it cost he could always drum up the money or he could find a way to finance it or make it happen he just wanted it to be special and some something that people remembered and wanted to come back again and stay in again but just the you know I saw a lot of okay that's gonna be a $275,000 overrun and he just okay go for it you know that kind of surprised me that led to I mentioned earlier there were four partners one of them was his mother Maisy rather who may Z's pantry was named after another one was a money only firm called Loeb investments in New York they were in on a lot of Jack Rather's investments and everything and they were the ones who were like the Roy Disney to Walt Disney always calling him on money you're spending too much you're spending too much you know we're never gonna get a return on our investment and they had a big riff early on and they wanted to sell in 1957 they said let's get rid of this because we're never gonna make our money back and Jack rather wrote this letter them saying I have not only money in this but my my blood my sweat my tears are in this this is an important hotel and it's going to be very successful they were used to you know getting a ten times return on their investment in this had a time and a half-hour to time return because it would take time to build that right and anyway you could just feel the passion behind Jack when he wrote that letter it was a four-page letter why you know if you want out I'll find somebody else to to help with this and go ahead you know and he was really ticked off at that point but they hung on and they said okay we've ridden fair winds and rough winds with you we'll ride this one out too and they stayed till they sold then the other partner he had I forgot her first name of Alvarez Helen Alvarez Helen L maiden name was Harman and the Harmons were radio station personalities in Southern California they were disk jockeys radio station owners and things like that Helen Alvarez was a very wealthy woman she had she too had oil wells and radio stations and television stations Keo TV in Tulsa Oklahoma very ahead of her time in the 50s you know this doesn't mean that the 50s women stayed home with the children and you know they didn't they didn't get involved in business much less lead a business like she did and she came in with Jack to also put in some money to build the hotel Jack was always leveraged I mean he was always leveraging one asset or property onto another thing that he was buying her building so cash flow he didn't have a lot but credit and things like that he had plenty and she came in she you know was multimillionaire and she came in and helped him out as well they got into it right away there was severe litigation and by the 1958 he bought her out and and she was no longer involved that's why some of the earliest souvenirs that you see that are the most valuable say rather álvarez hotels right okay yeah if you see a document that says that it can't be much older than 1958 unless they had a surplus of them that they use later but if you see rather or álvarez hotels that's a significant item to have for your collection Wow incredible incredible an incredible job you know you've dedicated how many years of your life now - well since 1995 yeah a lot of time a lot of time I actually quit my job for thirteen months to finish the yellow book because I knew I had to dedicate I flew down to Loyola Marymount to Disney just to get it to where it contained the information and I had it the way I wanted it even when I submitted the last manuscript I said no send it back I want to change something but they said no deadlines over you got it you know it came out in 2005 50th anniversary of Disneyland and they wanted it out for that so but I'm working on another one I mean I what I'm either gonna do is I'm gonna make a decade on the 60s now and then the 70s and in the 80s or I'm just going to redo the first one with much more it'll be probably 250 pages oh wow yeah with much more much more into possible pictures yeah I'll buy them all and I I really can't recommend this for any Disney fan I cannot I'm gonna hold it up again can that record recommend this book enough I know what I'm getting it's I'm gonna go buy that it is absolutely incredible the history of the hotel especially if you know I had stayed there before I found this book after you read this book and go to that hotel it's an entirely different experience you just look at it through different eyes and you really really see that history and that legacy and I can't thank you enough for taking time to come and talk to us and and share share your stories about about the hotel again I could sit here for hours oh yeah and talk about this but we will provide links Dom Ballard's website and where you can buy the book on our show notes page diz unplugged calm I want to thank you down for joining us thank you guys for being with us we'll see you again next time with another edition of the discount walk thanks everybody to see you next week [Music]

Channel: DIS Unlimited

Views: 21,934

Keywords: disneyland, disneyland resort, disneyland hotel, don ballard, anaheim, california, disney history, disneyland history

Id: kjkTwBkuUiQ

Length: 44min 33sec (2673 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2017