A Window Into the Brand-New New Orleans Square
When New Orleans Square opened at Disneyland on July 24, 1966, it marked a milestone in park history — the first entirely new "land" added to the original 1955 layout, and the only section of Disneyland that Walt Disney himself lived to see completed. Tucked into the southwestern corner of the park, this elegantly themed district conjured the sights, sounds, and sultry romance of Louisiana's most storied city. This set of five original Sawyer's Pana-Vue slides captures that world exactly as Disneyland guests first encountered it, making it a remarkable primary-source artifact from the land's earliest days.
The Pana-Vue Format and Sawyer's Legacy
Sawyer's Inc. of Portland, Oregon, was one of the preeminent manufacturers of view-master reels and slide souvenir sets from the 1940s through the 1970s. Working under license with Walt Disney Productions, the company produced meticulously photographed sets sold in park gift shops and through mail-order catalogs. The Pana-Vue format — standard 35mm slides packaged in uniform cardboard mounts — was their answer to guests who wanted a larger, crisper image than the tiny lenticular discs of the standard View-Master reel. These slides were meant to be projected at home, transforming a living-room wall into a flickering memory of a California vacation.
Set code VP-70, designated "Set One," contains five slides covering the signature visual moments of New Orleans Square: the glassy Blue Bayou Lagoon as it appears just before guests board the Pirates of the Caribbean boats, iron lace balconies dripping with bougainvillea, the sounds of Dixieland jazz implied in every ornamental detail, and the intimate antique and curio shops lining the cobblestone walkways. Together these five frames form a miniature tour of the land exactly as Walt's Imagineers intended it to be seen — unhurried, atmospheric, and steeped in Southern Gothic elegance.
New Orleans Square in Its Golden Era
The window between 1966 and 1970 — the date range assigned to this set — was a defining chapter for New Orleans Square. The Blue Bayou Restaurant opened alongside the land in 1966, becoming instantly famous as one of the few full-service dining experiences inside any Disney park. Pirates of the Caribbean debuted in March 1967, immediately becoming a signature attraction and cementing the square's identity as a place of swashbuckling adventure wrapped in antebellum charm. The Haunted Mansion followed in August 1969, completing the land's triumvirate of iconic experiences.
Slides produced during these years therefore capture the land in its absolute first flowering — before later refurbishments altered signage, before decades of repaints changed building hues, and before the guest experience was mediated by digital photography. A guest who slipped these slides into a projector in 1968 would see colors, shadows, and details that exist now only in archival photography. That documentary weight is precisely what makes sets like VP-70 so compelling to serious collectors of Disneyland ephemera.
Why Collectors Seek Out Early Slide Sets
Souvenir slide sets occupy a distinct and underappreciated niche in Disney collecting. Unlike postcards, which flatten a scene into a single printed image, or guidebooks, which describe rather than show, slides offer photographic verisimilitude — actual light that bounced off actual painted plaster and wrought iron in the park, captured on emulsion, and preserved in cardboard for more than half a century. The best-preserved examples still project brilliantly, their Kodachrome-era colors holding a warmth that modern digital reproduction struggles to match.
VP-70 Set One is particularly sought after because New Orleans Square is the most architecturally detailed land in the original park. Collectors who specialize in Pirates of the Caribbean history, Blue Bayou Restaurant memorabilia, or early Disneyland operational history all find common ground in these slides. The set also documents elements of the land — certain shop facades, a particular balcony arrangement, the lagoon's original landscaping — that have been subtly altered over the intervening decades, giving the images a quiet historical authority.
This example comes to us from a larger Disney estate collection, the kind of patient, decades-long accumulation that often yields the rarest surviving examples of park-sold ephemera. Sets like this were used, enjoyed, and in many cases worn out or discarded; finding all five slides intact and in their original packaging is not a given. The survival of a complete set in presentable condition is itself a small act of preservation.
For the collector who already owns Pirates concept art or a Blue Bayou menu, or for the enthusiast just beginning to explore early Disneyland land-specific collectibles, Sawyer's VP-70 Set One represents an authentic, tangible piece of the park's inaugural decade — five small rectangles of light and memory from the moment New Orleans Square was brand new.
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