Extra Secret Stories of Walt Disney World
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Baxter recalled his pivotal role in the design of the original Land pavilion:
The building was originally designed as a series of very large glass crystals that contained each of the different habitats of the earth, from frozen environments of the high mountains to the low-lying deserts and swamps. But that concept was designed for a lumber company, and when Kraft Foods signed on as sponsor they wanted to tell the story of farming and food production, so everything changed.
Men Who Made WDW
Yale Gracey
If Disney fans know Gracey’s name these days, it is unfortunately because they mistakenly believe that “Master Gracey” was the master of the Haunted Mansion—thanks to a tombstone in the outside graveyard written by Imagineeer X. Atencio, show writer for the attraction, that declares: “Master Gracey, laid to rest, no mourning please, at his request.”
As Atencio told me, the term “master” as used at the turn-of-the-last-century meant a boy too young to be called “mister.” There are many examples in literature including Little Lord Fauntleroy. Atencio was trying to offer a tribute to his friend who supplied so many of the fascinating illusions to the Haunted Mansion.
Gracey joined the Disney studio in 1939 as a layout artist working on Pinocchio and then later animated features including Fantasia as well as the animated shorts.
When Disney curtailed its production of short cartoons, Walt Disney moved Gracey over to Imagineering because he had noticed the different little gadgets that he worked on in his spare time.
With fellow Imagineer Rolly Crump, he developed new effects for Fantasyland attractions. Then he moved on to create the realistic fire effect in the Pirates of the Caribbean and the whimsical fireflies in the Blue Bayou.
The famous ghosts in the ballroom scene of the Haunted Mansion owe their magic not to holographic projections or, as Imagineer Tony Baxter loves to quip, “real ghosts,” but to the Pepper’s Ghost illusion that was refined by magician Henry Pepper in 1862 for his stage act. Gracey had read about it as a boy in his copy of Boy’s Mechanic.
For the “it’s a small world” attraction at the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair, Gracey got the idea for the ice skating penguins from a toy on Walt’s desk that featured an ice skater that would dance thanks to a magnet underneath a mirror
After thirty-six years with the company, Gracey retired on October 4, 1975. He continued to consult on special effects and lighting for attractions at Walt Disney World and Epcot in Florida.
On September 5, 1983, 73-year-old Yale and his wife Beverly were in a cabana at the Bel Air Bay Club on the beach at Pacific Palisades when a transient broke in at 2:30 a.m. and tragically shot to death the sleeping Imagineer and wounded his wife.
The motivation behind this senseless murder is still not known. The assailant fled onto the beach and was never caught. There were no suspects.
One of Gracey’s final illusions was meant for a proposed sunken bar to be called Madison’s Dive (after Madison the mermaid from the 1984 Splash movie) for WDW’s Pleasure Island, but when that project was cancelled, it was moved to the Adventurers Club.
A huge ship in a bottle behind the bar sprang to life experiencing a storm at sea and literally sank out of sight. Today, that illusion is housed at Trader Sam’s at the Disneyland Hotel and is triggered by ordering a specific drink.
Women Who Made WDW
Joyce Carlson
Imagineer Joyce Carlson was born in Racine, Wisconsin, and moved with her family to southern California in 1938. After graduating from Santa Monica High School, she got a job at the Disney studio in Burbank in 1944 delivering mail, coffee, and art supplies to the animators.
Then, for sixteen years in the ink-and-paint department, she worked on such animated features as Peter Pan and Cinderella.
When the work done in the department was replaced by a new Xerox process in the early 1960s, Carlson was moved over to WED (the precursor of Walt Disney Imagineering) and began work on the Disney pavilions for the 1964 World’s Fair, in particular the “it’s a small world” attraction where she worked closely with Mary Blair, Rolly Crump, and Marc Davis. She proved especially adept at making the dolls and toys.
Carlson remembered:
To build the models for attractions like Carousel of Progress and “it’s a small world,” Imagineer Leota Toomb’s father gave her some chewing gum, wires, and earrings. We’d use everything off those earrings, the little jewels, the back piece for the little hinges and all for the models.
When we finished, Walt used to bring guests to show them the projects and he’d say, “Do you believe that this whole set was built on earrings?” and everybody would go “Earrings?!” A lot of secretaries would bring their jewelry in so we could use the beads and stuff for other projects.
When we brought back Small World, we repainted it, freshened it up, and put it in the show at Disneyland. We had slapped it together for New York so we had to do some redesigning. We expanded it and improved on the characters.
For the next few decades, one of Carlson’s major responsibilities was the creation and installation of “it’s a small world” at Walt Disney World and later at Tokyo Disneyland.
When she returned to the United States in 1982 after spending time helping with the building of the Tokyo Disneyland version of the attraction, she decided to make Florida her new home.
Part of her job was to maintain show quality standards in several of the audio-animatronic attractions. She developed new figures for “it’s a small world” such as the children representing Israel and Korea.
Carlson worked on many WDW projects including with Imagineer John Hench to select the colors for the horses’ gear on the Cinderella Carrousel. She worked with Mary Blair on the tile mural in the concourse of the Contemporary Resort. Much of her time was spent mentoring new generations of Imagineers.
In 2006, Patrick Brennan, Walt Disney World’s director of show design, said:
Without a doubt, Joyce influenced a whole group of us about the importance of detail. It’s all in the detail. And the authenticity. And color… She would have you remix a color ten times if it was required. You learned that it wasn’t arbitrary.
Carlson became the first woman in the Disney company to become a 50-year employee and later a 55-year employee before she retired. She was made a Disney Legend in 2000, and was further honored with a window on Main Street in the Magic Kingdom. The inscription on a second-floor window above the Emporium states: “Dolls by Miss Joyce, Dollmaker for the World.”
A doll that is a caricature of her wearing her trademark large glasses is by the Eiffel Tower in WDW’s “it’s a small world.”.
Things That Never Were
Beastly Kingdom
When Disney’s Animal Kingdom was first announced, it was supposed to feature animals real, extinct, and imaginary. In the area now occupied by Pandora: the World of Avatar would have been a section beyond a bridge called Beastly Kingdom featuring creatures of folk tales and mythology.
The “good” realm would have featured these attractions:
Fantasia Gardens would have been a musical boat ride inspired by the Disney animated feature film Fantasia (1940) and similar Disney family-inclusive theme park rides like “it’s a small world.” The boats would have sailed past classic Greek architecture like temples and Mount Olympus, as well as floated beneath a brightly colored rainbow archway, with beautiful gardens and fountains decorating the landscape.
According to the Disney press release, the attraction was described as:
A gentle musical boat ride through the animals from Disney’s animated classic, Fantasia. Both the crocodiles and hippos from “Dance of the Hours” and the pegasus, fauns and centaurs from Beethoven’s “Pastoral” are found here.
(The Fantasia animated segment alluded to in the press release didn’t feature crocodiles. It had alligators.)
Quest of the Unicorn was to be an interactive walk-through that challenged guests to find and awaken five golden idols sc
attered through a garden maze.
Each idol would provide part of the code necessary for unlocking the far end of the maze where there would be a rare encounter with an audio-animatronics unicorn in a secluded grotto with crystal waterfalls. The clues would have been simple enough for children to decipher. Throughout the maze there were additional mythological creatures like a griffin.
The “bad” realm would have featured these attractions:
Loch Ness Terrace was a waterfront eatery that would include periodic visits outside from the legendary sea serpent-like creature. This was not the silly sea serpent of Disney animated cartoons but a threatening, large monster. This eatery would have been in a humble hamlet in the shadow of the nearby castle.
Dragon’s Tower was to be the land’s looming major icon just like the castles in other Disney theme parks. This thrill ride roller-coaster was to be housed in a tall, charred, and ruined castle. After a fearsome battle that devastated the original inhabitants, it had been taken over by a massive dragon as its new home.
The jewel-encrusted dragon was very much inspired by the villainous Smaug in Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Both greedy dragons guarded vast hoards of treasure.
The dragon figure was to be the largest and most sophisticated audio-animatronics creature ever built up to that time. Inhabiting the nearby caves is a colony of bats who are also clever thieves. Hanging overhead as the guests enter, their whispers convince the guests to help them in their plans to rob some of the dragon’s riches.
Guests would have been strapped into a suspended inverted roller-coaster to create the sensation of flying along with the bats on this ill-advised caper in a wild chase through the dark caverns, collapsing ancient castle corridors, and even the fabled gold lair. The climax would have been a confrontation with the dragon and his fiery breath.
The winged dragon would have been the major character icon of the park. The Animal Kingdom logo even features front and center the silhouette of a winged dragon marching along with the other animals. McDonalds released a Happy Meal toy of a purple winged dragon when the park opened. Even a ticket kiosk at the entrance has the head of a dragon.
Things That Never Were
Cypress Point Lodge
The plan for Walt Disney World was for Disney-themed resort hotels on property so that guests could stay for an extended vacation and have easy access to the theme park and surrounding amenities like golfing.
Originally, WDW featured the Polynesian Village Resort, the Contemporary Resort, and Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground. The plan for phase two was to build three more resort hotels within the next three years: the Asian, the Venetian, and the Persian.
The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 that dropped attendance at WDW by twenty percent or more prompted Card Walker, the conservative and cautious chairman of the board of the Disney company, to delay proceeding with the building of those resorts even though land and infrastructure were already being prepared for the Asian.
The small and inexpensively themed Golf Resort did open in 1973. It was the last WDW-owned resort hotel to open for fifteen years until the Grand Floridian Resort and Spa in 1988.
With the development of Epcot Center, the need for more hotel rooms on property to accommodate the hoped-for influx of visitors became apparent and so plans were announced for more resorts.
Disney executive Dick Nunis was quoted in the May 1982 issue of the cast newspaper Eyes and Ears:
We also have in design three hotels. The Mediterranean will be located between TTC and the Contemporary. The Cypress Point Lodge will be west of River Country and be themed as a western hotel. It’ll include log cabins along Bay Lake.
The third hotel would have been the Grand Floridian since preparation for the area had already been done years earlier. All three hotels were announced in 1980.
The November 4, 1982, issue of Eyes & Ears provided the following description of the rustic, moderate resort:
Cypress Point Lodge will be a medium-sized hotel facility, located on the south shore of Bay Lake near our Fort Wilderness Campground Resort. Encompassing 550 rooms and 50 log cabins on the beach, Cypress Point Lodge will offer a romantic notion of a turn-of-the-century hunting lodge secluded in a deep forest.
Neither the trees nor the buildings dominate the entire area, but blend together in a natural harmony. One can almost hear the crackling fireplace and feel the large wooden beams offer a haven of security and comfort.
Cypress Point Lodge will also include two restaurants, a pool, extensive beach, and lake dock. Guests will commute in and out of Cypress Point Lodge by watercraft.
One of the advantages of building the hotel was that it was not on the monorail loop and so would not disrupt its operation or the Magic Kingdom.
The location and theme echoed the Wilderness Lodge Resort that would be built in 1994 but with several key differences including several separate waterfront cabins that would have made the area feel more like a villa.
The land in the area had been cleared of trees by 1971, although some claim that this was originally meant for additional campground. The 1973 WDW souvenir guide states that an unnamed “Lodge” was planned to be built at Fort Wilderness for guests. A rough replica of the resort was featured in the model in the post-show area of the Walt Disney Story attraction in the Magic Kingdom.
However, cost overruns for the building of Epcot Center resulted in Cypress Point Lodge being cancelled and it is no longer mentioned in any documentation starting in 1983.
When Michael Eisner became Disney CEO in 1984, he chose to develop both the Grand Floridian and a lodge-themed resort but with much different approaches.
Things That Never Were
Venezuela Pavilion
Imagineer Alan Coats (son of Imagineer Claude Coats) was deeply involved in the creation of attractions for Epcot Center just before it opened in 1982.
He worked on a film for the Universe of Energy pavilion that at one point was being written with Jim Algar and would have had a dialog between a scientist (author Isaac Asimov) and a reporter (actor Walter Pidgeon) with animated scenes of Jiminy Cricket interspersed to help explain things.
Coats told me:
I think the first piece I wrote was a sequence with Asimov, Pidgeon, and the cricket about using turbines for harnessing the wind to generate electricity, something common today but rare back then. I wrote a scene where Jiminy in a lab coat demonstrates how to make a solar cell and in another, how to heat a house with sun power. When I re-read the script, it seemed he knew more than our expert did.
When we finally pitched it to Ron Miller, it was called “Dialogue on Energy” and we were now thinking of Arthur C. Clarke as the scientist and Hal Holbrook as the reporter. Ron loved it, but when we later showed it to an Exxon executive, he fell asleep in the middle of the presentation. Later, Carl Sagan got involved but wanted to take over the whole thing and wanted it to focus more strongly on other alternatives than Exxon did who was paying for the thing. Sagan did like the use of Jiminy Cricket, though.
Among his other never realized projects for Epcot was a World Showcase pavilion that he told me about in an interview in 2012:
I jump-started development on the Venezuela pavilion with initial research on the country. Negotiation had been on-going with several nations and the feeling was that it was a priority to include at least one country from the southern hemisphere. Brazil and Venezuela had shown interest in World Showcase participation.
Using the WED research library, I assembled a series of storyboards, actually more like “subject boards” on the history, culture, architecture, natural resources, festivals, whatever I could come up with as sort of a snapshot of the country. The overall idea for all the World Showcase pavilions was to give the visitor a feeling of having been to the country, if only briefly, to taste the food, listen to the music, purchase the merchandise, and meet some of the young people from the nation who would be working there.
These subject boards became the basis for renderings,
models, and ride-system layouts that would follow. My dad as show designer used every foot available. He laid out a suspended cable-car ride that snaked through the attraction giving visitors a bird’s eye view of activity below in the village sets filled with shops, the open restaurant, the musicians’ stage, and other scenes. The entire area was dominated by a large-screen projection of Angel Falls in the background on a continuous film loop.
Collin Campbell painted a beautiful rendering of the interior in a nighttime setting. X. Atencio was show writer and also responsible for the theme song, “Discover Venezuela!” The show was really coming together when Gordon Cooper acknowledged in an interview with Orlando-land magazine in October 1976 that among ten or twelve pavilions in the works, full-scale sections had been built and “We’re very far along on the Venezuela pavilion.” However, as we know, that nation never was represented in World Showcase, nor was any other country in South America.
Things That Never Were
Meet the World
The huge show building in the Japan pavilion at the back of the Mitsukoshi store was meant to house an audio-animatronics attraction called Meet the World and is still there.
Imagineer Tony Baxter stated:
It’s now the place where we store all the paint that’s used at Epcot and is also used for carpentry and some storage for the park.
Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, had a strong interest in Japanese history and a fondness for WDW’s Hall of Presidents audio-animatronics in re-creating historical figures. When he was approached to sponsor a pavilion at the forthcoming Tokyo Disneyland, he agreed—as long as there was an attraction that matched his interests.
Imagineer Claude Coats had been working on a theater attraction for Epcot’s Japan pavilion called “The Winds of Change” that would incorporate the history of Japan and use audio-animatronics of important figures of the past.