Ep269: Armchair Imagineering (Frontierland)

Aug 14, 2019 | Armchair Imagineering, Podcast episode

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Restoration

We don’t have much to post for this episode (for now) except the images of Kevin and Jody’s Swiss Family Robinson piano. Take a look at the restoration below!

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Are you as big a fan of Disneyland's Swiss Family Treehouse as us? Kevin's obsessed with it actually. This year a dream came true when he was hired to restore the original pipe organ that sat high in the treetop, pumping the giddy "Swisskapolka" across Adventureland for nearly forty years. In 2018 the organ was sold in an auction of fantastic Disneyland artifacts put on by the Mike Van Eaton Gallery— did you get to see it while it was on display? The restoration of the prop (it's not an actual musical instrument but a work of Imagineering artistry) quickly evolved into a massive undertaking, requiring months of labor to restore the deteriorated finish, repair broken pipes, replace lost "stop knobs", and reconstruct missing parts, panels, molding and trim. Everything from the ivory keys to the fabric-wrapped foot pedals were meticulously repaired and redone. At long last, the organ now looks as good as it did when the Treehouse debuted in Anaheim in November 1962. And best of all, with the help of an amazing tech-savvy friend, we were able to get the audio track to play again--through the original speaker still inside. If you'd like us to post some behind-the-scenes pics of the work that was done, please comment below. We documented the entire process. Well, of course we did! #Disneyland #icon #VintageDisneyland #classicdisneyland #swissfamilyrobinson

A post shared by Kevin and Jody Show (@kevinandjody) on Aug 2, 2019 at 4:30am PDT