Miscellaneous Disney Stuff

[Alex]

I have no idea of the accuracy of it (Imagineers are just as susceptible to folklore as the rest of us), but Imagineer Jason Surrell seems to be the source of the story in his book Pirates of the Caribbean: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies.

Originally Posted by Page 80

Skeletons in the Closet - and the Basement

Because the original Imagineering team felt that the faux skeletons of were just too unconvincing, the Grotto sequence originally featured real human remains obtained from the UCLA Medical Center. The skeletons were later returned to their countries of origin and given a proper burial when a new generation of Imagineers replaced them with equally convincing facsimiles.

I don't necessarily find the idea of real bone skeletons that hard to believe. They aren't actually that difficult to get your hands on and I imagine it was probably much easier in the '60s than now (India used to be the main supplier of them but they banned export of human bones in the '80s, China did the same about a decade ago).

The part I find harder to accept is that when done with them they'd actually be returned to countries of origin for burial.

[RStar]

Do/did they keep track of whose bones they are? Like a code stamped on the bottom of a foot related to a registry or something? Is there even a need for real ones anymore (with mass produced facimilies possible)?

I agree, Alex. If they have no reference number or identifier, a skeleton would show up at some address with a note:

"This person came from this part of the world. Please be sure it gets a proper burial. Thank you."

How could they, and who would pay for it?

With a statement like that, I would wonder about the rest of what Jason Surrell said.

[RStar]

Oh, and the principal difference between the corn chip and the tortilla chip is that the corn in a tortilla chip has undergone a process known as nixtamalization, which involves processing the raw corn with quicklime; and that the corn chip, which is not made from a tortilla, but from corn meal, has been processed into a particular shape, typically a small scoop. This is why there is a differnet flavor to a corn chip like Fritos, when compared to a tortilla chip or "strips" (which are tortillas cut in strips rather than wedges).