Peter led his brother to a quiet spot in the shade near the exit of the stream train. People were coming and going from the Haunted Mansion FastPass center, but no one paid any attention to the two young boys. Even though it appeared they were undetected, Peter still took a moment to look around before he pulled off his backpack.
“I think we’re okay here.” When the last of the disembarking passengers from the steam train had filed by, he felt they were safe. Reaching into his pack, he retrieved a flat, gray plastic container. It was about twelve inches long and ten inches wide but only about three inches thick. Sticking out were two short nails that had secured it to the beam. Peter easily removed those and set them aside. Lifting the case to his ear, with Michael scarcely breathing at his every movement, he gently shook the case and heard a dull thump inside.
“What is it? Do you hear anything?”
“What?” In the excitement, Peter had actually forgotten his brother sat next to him, anxiously awaiting any news. “Oh, I can hear something inside. It isn’t exactly rattling around, but there is something.”
“How do we get it open?” Impatient, Michael reached out for the capsule. Just as quickly, he pulled his hands back to his sides, and then reached out again. He would have grabbed it if he had any idea on how to get it open, but finally decided to let his older brother go ahead—slow as he seemed to be. To do something with his hands, Michael jerked a bunch of leaves off of the shrub behind him and shredded the greenery to a fine mulch.
Mindless of his brother’s actions, Peter was busy examining the gray container. “It looks like this end opens. I’ll see if I can just pull it off.”
Peter was quickly learning that hidden treasure didn’t come easily. He couldn’t seem to find an easy grip and his fingers kept slipping down the smooth surface. “I need something to pry it open. I don’t suppose you have a screwdriver on you, do you?”
“Why would I have a screwdriver at Disneyland? Use your teeth,” was Michael’s less-than-helpful suggestion.
“I’m not going to use my teeth. Wait a minute, I might have something.” Peter dug into the dark depths of his backpack. He pulled out various items and dismissed them one by one. Pens, stylus, a First Visit button he had requested at City Hall, gum wrappers, a length of twine, unfinished homework he quickly stuffed back inside before Michael could see it and tell Mom, a stubby pencil with the eraser chewed off, a couple of rocks, a CD, his phone. “Ah, here it is.”
“What are you doing with a can opener in there?”
“Gosh, I don’t know.” As he stared at it, he held it up in front of them as if not sure how it came to be inside his pack. “I saw an extra one in the kitchen and guess I forgot put it back.” He shrugged it off and carefully tried to wedge the thinner end of the can opener between the tight end cap and the base of the container. His patience was rewarded when the plastic moved a fraction of an inch and he was able to slide the metal opener further into the new opening. As the end cap of the container began to finally pull out, both boys found they were holding their breath, excitement shining in their green eyes.
With a soft Pop, the end cap finally came off. Peter looked over at Michael, who held his lower lip between his teeth. In a rare show of brotherly affection, Peter held the container out to him. “Do you want to find out what’s inside? After all, you found the secret opening, not me.”
A look of pleased gratitude crossed over Michael’s face. Still, he shook his head. “No, no. You do it. You’re the oldest.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just do it.” Michael didn’t want to admit that he was still a little scared that they might have done something wrong. He pushed the capsule back at Peter. “You look.”
Never one to back down from any adventure or challenge, Peter silently shrugged his willingness. “Okay, here goes.”
He tilted the capsule toward him and a bunch of yellow-edged papers tumbled out, one of them weighted down with something. Within the folds of the papers they could see something clear peeking out. After another quick glance around to see if anyone was too close, Peter held up the heaviest piece. “Pennies?” He sounded disappointed as if he couldn’t believe it. “Someone went to all that work to hide pennies?”
“Hey! They look like a Hidden Mickey.” Sitting so close to Peter that he was almost in his brother’s lap, Michael pointed at the paper.
Peter took another look and gave a laugh. The pennies were actually glued to the paper so they all touched and were set in a very familiar shape. “You’re right. Bet you won’t find this Hidden Mickey in the books. There’s a lot of writing on the other pages, like it’s a letter or something.”
“What’s on that clear thing?”
Peter carefully pulled out the thick, clear film. They both gasped. “It’s a hand-painted cel of Mickey. It looks really different compared to what he looks like now. Oh….” Peter suddenly broke off, his hands starting to shake.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Michael got instantly worried at the sudden change in his brother’s look.
Peter’s mouth opened to answer him, and then closed again. He just pointed to the lower corner of the animation cel and handed it to Michael.
Michael didn’t want to touch it until he knew what was wrong. He peered closer to read what was written there. “Walt Disney. It says Walt Disney.”
Peter’s slightly pale face turned to face him. “Michael, it doesn’t just say Walt Disney. That is Mr. Disney’s signature. He must have personally drawn this Hidden Mickey.”
“How do you know that?”
“Dad and Uncle Adam were talking one night about Walt’s signature. They both said how hard it was to find real signatures from Walt, how valuable they were. Uncle Adam has one that Aunt Beth proved was a fake. He said he had paid a lot of money for it….” Peter realized he had started to ramble in his excitement. He took a deep breath before he finished. “Anyway, I asked them to show me what a real signature would look like…. And guess what? It looked exactly like this.”
The importance of this find began to sink in with Michael. “Wow,” he whispered. “That’s really cool.” Getting nervous again, he suddenly pushed away Peter’s hand that was holding the cel. “Put it away! Put it away out of sight, Petey. Don’t let anyone else see it. They might take it away from us.” He looked anxiously to the left and the right as if assassins were about to close in on them. When he seemed satisfied that they were at least momentarily safe, his eyes still wide, Michael leaned closer to Peter and lowered his voice. “What does the other stuff say?”
Agreeing with Michael’s desire for secrecy at this point, Peter carefully covered the animation cel between the blank papers that had originally protected it and slid them back into the capsule. Not immune to the importance and excitement of the find, he took a moment to steady himself before he lifted up the letter. In a hushed voice he started reading; so hushed that Michael had to strain to hear him.
“Hello, there. I’m your host, Walt Disney.
“Sounds kinda formal, doesn’t it? That’s the way a lot of my television shows are introduced. Since this little Park of mine is an extension of those shows, I thought it was fitting to greet you that way.
“If you are reading this, you must have found my hiding place. The Golden Horseshoe, as well as the rest of my Park, is very special to me. I don’t know when you will find this note of mine, but I hope you are still enjoying the show.
“It came—somewhat vividly—to my attention that all I have created needs to be protected. I have more than one system in place and some key people already at work. But, time happens to all people. Time continues and people change, move on, or even die.
“I want my Park to keep going long after I am gone and I hope you can help me with that task. If it sounds too much for you, go no further, keep the trinket I have enclosed, and put the capsule and this letter back where you found them. Someone else will surely come along someday.
“But,
if you are willing, keep going and see where this Hidden Mickey adventure will take you. I hope it will be a fun quest.
“Your first clue is centered on someone I really admire: Charlie Chaplin.
“Best wishes, Walt.”
Peter quit reading and stared at the pages. When he remained silent, a confused Michael looked up at him. “What does he mean? He said ‘your first clue’ and then he just said ‘Charlie Chaplin.’ I…I don’t get it. What kind of a clue is that?”
Peter turned the note over, but there was nothing written on the back. “I don’t get it either. What else is there? Check the penny page.”
“Here it is!” Michael almost yelled as he flipped over the page that had the pennies glued to it. He thrust it at Peter. “You read it. I can’t make out the curly letters very well.”
“Take this with you and go see the boy who never grew up. He will tell you where to go next. Remember, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try, try again. Bring some pennies!”
“The boy that never grew up…. He has to mean Peter Pan…. But, how do we get Peter Pan to tell us where to go?” Peter scratched his sandy blond hair.
“How do you know he means Peter Pan?” Michael felt he had to challenge his brother, frowning as he stared at the old paper as if willing it to divulge its secrets.
Peter looked off toward Fantasyland, a contemplative frown between his own eyes. “It has to mean Peter Pan. Who else would be the boy who never grew up?”
“You mean, besides you?” Michael suddenly grinned and swerved away enough so Peter’s gentle swing missed his arm. “Okay, so I think we need to read the story.”
“Or ride the ride.” Peter gave another shrug as he weighed their options. “We are here in Disneyland.” He briefly thought that it might be a good idea to ask his dad about this, not knowing that his dad had also experienced one of Walt Disney’s quests a few years back. But he really wanted to see if he could figure this out by himself.
In the excitement of their discovery of the letter and a hidden clue—and the possibility of more treasure that they were subconsciously building up in their minds—both of the boys had completely overlooked what the letter had told them. The letter seemed to imply that there would be some form of responsibility that they would assume if they continued to follow what Walt had put into place so long ago.
1956
”Say Walt,” one of his animators stopped him in the hallway, “did you hear what happened on the Peter Pan Ride yesterday?”
Head down, deep in thought, Walt was on his way to a storyboard meeting. At the mention of one of his favorite attractions, he stopped in his tracks and gave the man his full attention. “No, what happened? Anything I need to take care of?”
“No, no.” The man let out a chuckle and waved off Walt’s concern. “Well, I guess it could’ve been bad, under the circumstances,” he broke off, looking off into the distance, his hand on his chin.
Not liking the sound of that, Walt’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe you need to tell me the whole story.” Arms over his chest, he waited.
Knowing he needed to do this quickly, the animator dove right in. “Well, first off, no one was hurt, okay?” Seeing a look of alarm come into his boss’s eyes, he hurriedly added, “No, really, they are fine. See? This older couple was riding Peter Pan and the ride broke down. They were right at the part where Mr. Smee is pointing his gun at the boats flying overhead and Captain Hook is shouting for him to ‘shoot them down!’ Well, right then, the mechanism holding the pirate ship broke and they came falling out of the sky. They walked out of the ride and were rubbing their hips. The gals working the ride, of course, rushed right over to them and asked if they were all right, if they needed a nurse. This couple laughed it off and said, ‘We love this ride! Can we go ride it again?’ When told the ride was broken, they just walked off smiling and said they’d be back later.”
Walt, once he knew the couple involved was really all right, was relieved and could smile at the humor of the incident. He knew things could happen with mechanics. Rides broke down all the time. It just was hopeful that guests wouldn’t be there when it did happen and possibly get hurt. His mind, always quick, jumped to a related story. Leaning against the wall of the corridor in which they were standing, Walt got a far-away look in his eyes. “Did I ever tell you my story with Peter Pan?”
The animator thought he had heard the story once before, but never minded listening to the boss relate some fascinating bit about his past. “Come on in my office and have a chair, Walt. I’d like to hear it.”
Once they were seated, the storyboard meeting pushed to the side of his mind, Walt leaned back in his chair. Warming up to the subject, he rubbed his hands together as he transported both of them back almost forty-five years in time to Marceline, Missouri, where Walt had spent some of the happiest days of his life. “There was a traveling show that was doing Peter Pan, gosh, I don’t know, sometime around 1909 or 1910. It was Maude Adams who played the lead. There were all kinds of posters plastered all over town. You can just imagine how exciting it was to an eight or nine-year old boy like myself.” Walt had leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Why, I had to break into my piggy bank to afford to go, but, by golly, Roy and I bought tickets! I’ll never forget those two hours that took us into Never Land. Did you know I got to play Peter Pan in a school play?” He didn’t stop to wait for an answer. “No actor ever identified himself with the part he was playing more than I. And I got to do something I had always wanted to do. I got to fly!” Chuckling now, he slowly shook his head back and forth as that day came vividly back to mind. “It was at my elementary school there in Marceline. Roy used some kind of block and tackle rigging to get me up into the air. It worked pretty good, too…right up to the moment it broke! You should have seen the looks on the faces in the audience as I flew right into them!”
Chuckling along with his boss, the animator had a thought. “Is that one of the reasons you worked so hard to get the rights to the book?”
Walt’s head snapped back at the question. He had actually forgotten where he was, lost as he was in his special memory. “Rights? Oh, yeah. It took two years of negotiations before we got the rights. I wanted to work on Peter Pan right after Bambi was released, you probably recall. But, there was so much I wanted to do with the story that couldn’t be done properly just then. We all knew animation was constantly improving, so I just had to be patient.”
Nodding, the animator remembered the time well. “Yeah, another eleven years before it came out. That’s a lot of patient.”
Walt got to his feet, knowing he had to get to the storyboard meeting. “But, it was worth the wait. Let me know if there any more mishaps at the Park, all right?”
“You got it, boss.”
Disneyland – Current Day
Peter added the pages of the letter to the animation cel inside the gray capsule and returned it to his pack. He kept out the penny page as the note had said to bring that along. “Let’s go ride Peter Pan and see what happens. Maybe the pennies will set off a hidden sensor and we’ll win a prize.”
Standing in line for the popular dark ride that flies the guests in their own pirate ship over the rooftops of London and around the colorful peaks of Never Land, the brothers didn’t have much to say to each other. Both of them were thinking of possible cool prizes they might get. When it was their turn to ride, they eagerly leaned forward against the black padded restraining bar as their red and white-sailed ship lifted up off the ground and swung around the Darling’s nursery. Craning their heads, they looked at every possible thing in the rooms. But, by the time their ship dropped down into the battle scene between Peter and Captain Hook, the boys were a little deflated.
“I don’t see anything different. Do you, Peter?”
“No, it is just the same as it always is. Nothing got set off by the pennies. Maybe we did it wrong. We’re at the mermaids already. Let’s ride it again.”
Michael stifled a groan. This wasn’t
one of his favorite rides. He liked Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride better. “’Kay.”
The next time through, Peter and Michael switched places in the pirate ship. “Anything, Peter?”
“No. Let me see that paper.”
“You can’t read in the dark.”
“Just give it to me, Michael.”
“Hey, why is it glowing?
“I don’t know. What did you do to it?”
“I didn’t do anything to it! What did you do to it, Peter?”
Frantic that they may have inadvertently ruined Walt’s clue, Peter turned the oddly-glowing sheet in question over. On the back of the page, however, they could clearly see that it was yellow letters that were creating the glow. “It’s a hidden message!”
Their pirate ship turned a corner and the black light effect faded so that they could no longer see the hidden words. Impatient, the boys stared at the paper until they entered the next room filled with special effects. They could see the words ‘Chaplin Mutoscope’ which made no sense to either of them. The message faded again as they entered the mermaid scene and their pirate ship came to a stop at the unloading platform.
“It has to be the lighting in the ride that set off the letters.” Peter felt that was the explanation as they pushed out of the black iron exit gate and let it bang shut behind them. “Like the handstamp you get when you leave the Park. Remember? We need to find a black light and see the words again. The only word I only recognized was Chaplin.”
“Don’t all the rides in here use that same lighting?” Michael hoped they weren’t going to have to ride Peter Pan again.
“Yes, but most of the rides are so short I don’t know if we would have time to figure out the other word.”
Michael glanced at his watch and then held it out for Peter to see. “We’re supposed to meet Mom and Dad in less than an hour and go home.”
Hidden Mickey Adventures 1 Page 3