If you ever went to Disneyland when you were younger and before 1982, you will probably remember that you purchased Disneyland Ticket Books to go on the various attractions and rides. Started a bit after Disneyland opened in 1955, the ticket books had A, B, C, D and E tickets.
An E ticket let you go on the biggest and most adventuresome rides like the Monorail, Space Mountain, the Matterhorn, etc. A D ticket was for the slightly less fantastic rides like Mark Twain's Steamboat. A C ticket was for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Snow White's Adventure, etc. And if my mind remembers, A and B tickets were mostly for things on Main Street like the Main Street Cinema, the Fire Truck, etc.
In 1982, Disneyland phased out the Ticket Books for a Passport, which evolved over time to a standard adult entrance fee. Yet those memories of a thrilling E Ticket ride remain. Astronaut Sally Ride was noted to say that her first ride on the Space Shuttle was an E Ticket ride. An E Ticket ride meant something amazing, thrilling, and a must do event. How funny that that connotation crept into our vernacular to describe anything that was that fantastic.
Hopefully, you are remembering the E Ticket rides you took.
Growing up in Southern California, we went to Disneyland almost every 2 years, sometimes with cousins living in the area, so we were well accustomed to knowing how to use our D and E tickets. It was common to return home with a booklet left with A and B tickets, some C tickets, and no D and E tickets.
When Pam went to Disneyland for the first time, I prepped her for the E ticket rides, the long lines, and the thrill of being a kid again. Pam did not like roller coaster rides, which made the E ticket rides a challenge since all were some form of roller coaster.
After the Space Mountain and Matterhorn rides, she was hooked. We planned our day to get thru most of the memorable rides, and as it started to get dark, and the Main Street parade was getting ready, she looked at me and asked, isn't there one more roller coaster ride? There was, it was Splash Mountain, and off we went. The special excitement of being at Disneyland had make its mark on her, and she was forever hooked.
As I look back at what were my E ticket rides in life, a big one happened a few months after my father had passed away. My dad was very involved in the US Space Program, being a key engineer in the design of the Atlas rocket, which after several spectacular failures, finally worked and became the US's first ICBM. It was on alert during the Cuban missile crisis, then was repurposed to send John Glenn and several other Mercury astronauts into space.
With the Gemini and Apollo programs taking over, the Atlas was paired with the Centaur upper stage to launch satellites and interplanetary probes like Surveyor, Mariner, Voyager, and Pioneer. That was because its lift capabilities were only exceeded by the Saturn V. The Atlas and Centaur used liquid propellants, so they were inherently lighter than their solid fuel rockets like the Titan so they could launch heavier things.
My dad was moving up the management ranks and had become the Chief Engineer of Launch Vehicles. Much of what we take for granted today was because of the satellites my dad and his team launched. The Telecommunications satellites made phone calls international. The GPS satellites initially used for government purposes now drive the map tools in our phones. And then there were the numerous spy satellites that let the US government monitor the world.
When I was younger, we spent time in Cocoa Beach, Florida, when dad had a launch planned. While he worked, we frolicked at the beach, the pool, and sightseeing around what at the time was a fairly baren area in Florida. I remember driving one day and seeing a sign stating this was the future home of Walt Disney World. It was accompanied by a Coppertone sunscreen sign with a tanned little girl with pigtails.
We witnessed several rocket launches that happened at Cape Canaveral, which was miles away from Cocoa Beach. I have vivid memories of that. The huge roar of the engines, the bright light as the rocket lifted off the launch pad, the bright arc the rocket took as it roared toward the Atlantic Ocean and disappeared from our sight.
The last time I witnessed a live rocket launch was in my late teens. After that. I was in college and then working, so it was difficult to align with my dad's launch schedule. My brother and sister last experience was when I was in college.
A couple of months after my father had passed, I got an email from a person at the United Launch Alliance (ULA), which was a merger of the Boeing and Lockheed Martin launch teams. They had taken ownership of the Atlas and Centaur vehicles. To honor my father, an upcoming Atlas Centaur launch was going to have his name painted on it! Did we want to come and witness its launch?
Of course, I did. I talked with my mother, brother and sister about going there. My sister couldn't go, so Pam, our son Peter, mom, and my brother Kent, his wife Norma, and son Kent planned to go. We were going to stay at the same place, the Wakula, that we'd stayed at so many years ago. The plan had us going on a special tour of the Kennedy Space Center, seeing Mission Control for the Atlas, and going to the Launch Vehicle Assembly Building. OMG! Way more than the tourist tour.
It was fascinating to see a Centaur upper stage up close. It wasn't the one they were launching, it was going later on another Atlas with the goal of impacting the moon so that scientists could monitor vibrations. Mission Control was out of bounds for most folks, we finally got to see where our dad spent a lot of his time.
At the Launch Vehicle Assembly Building, we rode the elevators up to the section where my father's name was painted on the outside of the Atlas rocket. There were 4 other names, others that had died recently, that the ULA team wanted to honor. We had our picture taken and were all smiles standing that far above the ground as the Atlas Centaur was over 180 ft tall.
When it came time for the launch, we waited for hours in the special viewing area until we were informed that the launch had been scrubbed. That meant something was wrong with the rocket, or there were weather problems. That meant a few days delay. Rockets have a certain window of opportunity to launch. It might be weather, another launch planned, or the right timing to get the satellite into the correct orbit.
A few days later, we were told that there was a Shuttle launch planned and that it took priority. The Atlas Centaur launch would be moved out a few weeks. Ugh. We decided to stick around and watch the Shuttle take off. I'd prepped Pam on what to expect. We partied on the beach as the sun was slowly going down. The launch was going to happen around dusk. An even more incredible sight.
You could hear a loud roar, so we stood up. Then we could see a plume of flames in the distance as the Shuttle had cleared the pad and the buildings in front of us. Then we watched it arc in the sky zooming over the Atlantic Ocean. My childhood memories had been reawakened. The loud roar, the crackling of the engines, the arc of light across the sky, the trail of smoke in its wake. And then it was gone, out of sight, and the skies were quiet, but the beach was filled with giddy onlookers.
I looked at my mom and Pam, their faces were beaming. It wasn't dad's rocket, but it was a rocket. Pam looked at me and said that was incredible. I replied, it will be something you will never forget. That was the last rocket any of us got to watch launch live.
The Atlas Centaur launched successfully many days later, but we watched it online from the ULA launch broadcast. Dad was finally in space, somewhere I think he never wanted to be. He was a firm believer that robotic vehicles were safer and better. But that isn't very sexy or exciting to the public.
Now we have rovers on Mars, a helicopter on Mars, rovers on the Moon, so dad was right. They are all very cool, but over 50 years after the last Apollo Moon landing, there are now plans to send people to the Moon and Mars. That would be an E-ticket ride.
What are your E-Ticket rides in life? How have they changed you, your perspective, and others around you? For me, you can never have enough of Disneyland. It is where dreams are made.
