rolly

Animator-turned-theme park designer Rolly Crump, who was instrumental in the design of early Disneyland, died Sunday in his Carlsbad home, where he had been in hospice care, said his son Christopher. Crump was 93.Crump received his big break at the Walt Disney Co. in 1952, when he was 22. Those at the animation studio liked to remind him that he was an oddball. “A diamond in the rough,” as Crump once proudly said he was labeled by a superior. Crump would later laugh, recalling — with swagger — that he was once told, “What…

When we find electric vehicles for this weekly column on China’s bottomless pit of a shopping megasite Alibaba, we generally look for something that looks weird, fun or at least remotely useful. This week I’d say we nailed the first two. I’m not quite sure what to call this thing, so I guess I’ll have to go with the name given to it by its creators: the Happy Car. Though unless you have a stomach of steel, you might not be the happiest rider after a few revolutions in one of these. I’ll do my…