The well-loved Blue Bayou Restaurant in Disneyland’s New
Orlean’s Square recently celebrated its 47th birthday. Opening on March 18, 1967, the restaurant’s
unique location inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and its famous Monte
Cristo Sandwich made it a favorite then as well as now.
I was lucky enough to visit the restaurant in the late
1960’s and have a little keepsake menu from that time as a souvenir. I’m not
sure if this was a giveaway or if I stole it. Either possibility has equal
likelihood.
Eating at the Blue Bayou was an extravagant dining
experience. Beef Tenderloin in Madeira Sauce cost a hefty $4.25! Can you
imagine? There were no child menus back in those days and I remember the Monte
Cristo being my favorite ($2.25). I also recall the Chocolate Bavarian Cream
Pie (.50). If my parents wanted coffee it was Hill Brothers and cost .20.
It was a magical place, and I just couldn’t understand how
it could be evening in here and
daytime out there. Being a part of the
Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which opened the same year, had me feeling like
an actor in a play as I was part of the experience for those going by.
The back of the menu is The
Story of the Blue Bayou Terrace which peeks into the original design of the
restaurant. If you can’t read it in the picture, I’ll rewrite it here:
Walt Disney cherished the traditions that made out nation
great. In Disneyland, he gave those traditions life again, so that those who
come here may relive the story of our county’s past, in the days when America
was the land of the pioneers.
Little more than a century ago, New Orleans was such a
place. They called her the Crescent City, after the crescent head in the river,
and her name spoke for many worlds. She was French, and Spanish, and Frontier
American. She was Queen of the Delta when cotton was King, and the steamboat
ruled the Mississippi.
Here in New Orleans Square, Walt Disney recreated many of
the worlds that were old New Orleans. One of these worlds surrounds you now-the
mysterious water wonderland of the bayous. Here where Spanish moss drapes the
live oak trees, where shrimp boats hide amongst the cypress, where a waterfront
shanty stands in the shadow of a graceful antebellum mansion-here are the
strange sights of the Louisiana Bayou.
The Blue Bayou Terrace is a world that knows no day.
Moonlight shines here all day long; nighttime is eternal. Towering overhead at
one side of the terrace is a rare unnatural tree, “species Disneydendron,”
named long ago for its creator. In truth it is based upon a legend nearly as
old as the Crescent City; under the “dueling oaks,” Creoles of old New Orleans
are said to meet to settle “affairs of honor.”
A summer evening on the Blue bayou Terrace is an adventure
in entertainment as well as moonlight dining. Here the Terrace bandstand
welcomes the time-honored sounds of Dixieland and all that jazz. And here the
balcony of the old plantation house is really a stage, where singers and
dancers may step in time to the beat of the band.
And if perchance the sounds that float across the bayou are neither jazz nor water
creature, remember this: the boats that sail here chart a course for high
adventure…and nearby lurks the wildest crew that ever sacked the Spanish Main!
True gentleman of fortune one and all, the infamous PIRATES of the CARIBBEAN
await the pleasure of your particular company.
“Weigh anchor now, ye
swabbies! We sails with the tide! And only them that dares to sail among us
will ever know the terror that lurks in the Black O’ Night an’ the angry seas
below!”