Main Street Cinema
Only at Disneyland CA, will you find the Main Street Cinema in its original form. Entering this stylish Victorian brick building, you will be transported back to the golden age of cinema, where you can view vintage animated shorts on six different screens. A second version operated at WDW's Magic Kingdom until it was transformed into a gift shop in 1998.
The headliner is the original 1928 Steamboat Willie, which introduced the world to Mickey Mouse.
When the cinema first opened in 1955, it showed a variety of silent movies and vintage news reels. It wasn't until the 1980s that the cinema stopped showing live action films and only showed Disney shorts, including Steamboat Willie.
Small posters from each film hangs in the entry way to the theater.
The current line up of films...
*Steamboat Willie , 1928
*Plane Crazy , 1928
*The Moose Hunt , 1931
*Traffic Troubles , 1931
*The Dognapper , 1934
*Mickey’s Polo Team , 1936
Guests are greeted by Tilly, the ticket seller.
According to her name tag, Tilly is from Marcelaine, Missouri, Walt Disney's boyhood home.
A door at the left of the cinema leads to Disneyland Casting Agency. (Well, not really.)
The wood-paneled interior is round shaped, where the audience stands in the center, surrounded by six projection screens that all play simultaneously.
A raised platform in the center gives kids (and short people) a better view.
Steps leading up to the platform are illuminated with lights shaped like Mickey Mouse. I'm not sure if these qualify as "Hidden Mickeys" as they are pretty easy to spot. (I plan on doing a feature on all the Hidden Mickeys in the Disneyland Resort in the near future.)
Steamboat Willie, released in 1928, marks the birth of Mickey Mouse.
One of the most entertaining of the six shorts is "Mickey's Polo Team." It features a wild game of polo between the "Mickey Mousers" - Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck, and the Big Bad Wolf, vs the "Movie Stars" - Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Harpo Marx, and Charlie Chaplin. Cameos include Shirley Temple, Charles Laughton, W.C. Fields, Clark Gable, and many more. The video below features the film in its entirety.
