by Martin Sklar
The “two Joes,” Fowler and Potter, responded to a major challenge concerning the water quality of Bay Lake, which was to become the site of the Contemporary Resort. The issue was that all those beautiful cypress tree roots, on and off the Walt Disney World property, stained the water a dark brown. The solution: drain the entire lake and control the water running into it. A bonus that resulted was the discovery, at the bottom of the drained lake, of the sugar-white sand that now lines the beautiful beaches at the Contemporary Resort and around Bay Lake. Like so much of Florida, the ocean had receded from this land eons ago, leaving its hidden treasures.
Even though we were initially dealing with only a fraction of the 27,400 acres Disney originally acquired (for $5.5 million, about $200 per acre), this area alone was almost five times the size of Disneyland. Nearly all of it was flat—after all, the highest point in the whole state of Florida, in Walton County, is only 345 feet above sea level. With nothing on the land, distances were hard to estimate, and the relationships of objects, that is structures, were very difficult to judge.
On two different occasions, to aid the designers, helium-filled balloons were raised at key locations around the Magic Kingdom. They marked the entrance to the park, the castle, the Contemporary and Polynesian resorts, and the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC). At that spot, where guests would park their cars and board Disney transit systems—monorails, ferryboats, and trams—the designers and Disney executives could be elevated twenty feet in major construction equipment in order to appraise the visual distance between major attractions. Getting this bird’s-eye view was extremely informative—and often discouraging, as the distances between locations made it appear impossible to forge connections.
The challenges became obvious. For example, Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle, seventy-seven feet tall, would totally disappear when viewed from one mile away—the distance from the Transportation and Ticket Center to the castle. The solution: design a castle reaching skyward 189 feet, just short of the two-hundred-foot height that requires a red light to warn aircraft of a tall object.
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As WED began planning for the site, it was interesting to read some of the early speculation about the mystery purchasers of that huge tract of land. Under the page one banner headline, “Giant Land Deal Near Orlando Revealed,” the May 27, 1965, issue of the Miami Herald covered the rumors in a story by staff writer Clarence Jones:
A Miami law firm working with $5 million in cold cash has quietly engineered one of the biggest, most-talked about Florida land deals in years.
Twelve miles southwest of Orlando, the firm has bought 30,000 acres of strategically located land that could become the state’s largest industrial complex.
Hottest current speculation says the purchasers will offer 3,000 acres to the Atomic Energy Commission for its new national accelerator laboratory, then develop the remaining 27,000 acres for related space age industry.
Rumor also says the Ford Motor Co. plans to break into missile and space technology at the secret site. Ford officials in Detroit deny it.
The McDonnell Aircraft Corp., builder of the Mercury and Gemini space capsules and a series of supersonic warplanes, is also mentioned as a possible buyer. McDonnell now has headquarters in St. Louis. There were some St. Louis men involved in the land negotiations.
Still another possibility is Disneyland East, the long-planned amusement park that would be bigger and better than the original Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif. Walt Disney was at Cape Kennedy several weeks ago, but denied that he’s still considering Florida for his new venture.
Bankers and real estate brokers have been trying for months to find out what’s in the works. If any outsiders know, they aren’t telling.
It wasn’t until three weeks before Disney’s November 1965 press conference that Governor Haydon Burns officially solved the mystery. He told the Orlando Sentinel, “Walt Disney has extended to your governor the privilege of making the official announcement that Disney Productions [sic] is the mystery industry. They will build the greatest attraction in the history of Florida.”
Our work was cut out for us. But as we began planning and design, at least we had Walt’s answer to Governor Burns’s question, which he posed at the press conference:
GOVERNOR BURNS: Will it be a Disneyland?
WALT: Well…I’ve always said there will never be another Disneyland, Governor, and I think it’s going to work out that way. But it will be the equivalent of Disneyland. We know the basic things that have what I call family appeal.… But there’s many ways that you can use those certain basic things and give them a new décor, a new treatment. In fact, I’ve been doing that with Disneyland… But…this concept here will have to be something that is unique…so there is a distinction between Disneyland in California and whatever Disney does… You notice I didn’t say “Disneyland” in Florida [laughter].… What Disney does in Florida…we have many ideas. I have a wonderful staff now that has had ten years experience of designing, planning, and operating.… You get in, we call them gag sessions…we toss ideas around, everybody’s been thinking of things that might be done if we were redoing Disneyland…and we throw them in and put all the minds together and come up with something and say a little prayer and open it and hope it will go. I’m very excited about it because I’ve been storing these things up over the years and, certain attractions at Disneyland that have a basic appeal I might move here. Then again, I would like to create new things…you hate to repeat yourself…I don’t like to make sequels to my pictures. I like to take a new thing and develop something…a new concept.
WED’s design leader, Dick Irvine was concerned about all the new staff that would be needed to design and build Walt Disney World. How would we begin to get everyone on the same page?
I suggested to Dick that we put together a selection of background material and articles—not just for new staff, but to remind all of us about the principles that Walt had used to create Disneyland. I compiled this material in a thick spiral-bound book I called Walt Disney World—Background and Philosophy. On September 21, 1967, we distributed this booklet at Imagineering with the following memo from me:
This assemblage has been prepared as a background and starting point for developing a “philosophy” for the Disneyland-style theme park in Walt Disney World. There is a great deal of other material, particularly articles about Disneyland, that might have been included. However, the intent here is to provide, as a foundation, Walt’s thinking and philosophy as it was applied in Disneyland, and additionally Walt’s thoughts about Walt Disney World as they apply to what we are now beginning.
The original booklet contained sixteen different articles and historical background material, including the early Disneyland philosophy write-up by Bill Walsh, a transcript of the November 1965 press conference, a selection of Walt’s quotes with regards to Disneyland, my notes from a meeting with Walt discussing the Epcot film, and a series of articles from various publications that I believed captured key aspects of the spirit of Disneyland and provided insight into its popularity with the public. For me, and many others, the booklet became a kind of philosophical bible that I have continued to reference through the years.
Later, after the Florida Legislature had created the Reedy Creek Improvement District as the overall governing body for the Walt Disney World property, I wrote the preface to the so-called Epcot Building Code. Although the basic purpose was to state the objectives of safety, health, general welfare, and good practice during construction, points two and three in the preface were directly reflective of Walt Disney’s Epcot thinking:
To provide the flexibility that will encourage American industry, through free enterprise, to introduce, test, and demonstrate new ideas, materials, and systems emerging now and in the future from the creative centers of industry.
To provide an environment that will stimulate the best thinking of industry and the professions in the creative development of new technologies t
o meet the needs of people, expressed by the experience of those who live and work and visit here.
“Walt’s Epcot Film,” as it came to be called, was a philosophical and historic statement, looking backward to the success of Disneyland and forward to the establishment of Walt Disney World. But its larger vision was for the “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” or Epcot.
Here are a few of the key points from those seven pages of notes I took in one-on-one meetings with Walt, in which he laid out the ideas he wanted to communicate through the film. I turned those ideas into Walt’s dialogue:
“EPCOT will be a showcase to the world of American free enterprise.”
“In EPCOT, we can show what could be done with proper city planning.”
“The philosophy behind EPCOT is the same as Disneyland: people will be king.”
“EPCOT’s starting point: the needs of people (transportation, education, etc.).”
“Hit all the problems—tick them off—because if we control, we won’t let them get to be problems.”
“EPCOT will be a working community. People who grow up here will have skills in pace with the needs of today’s world.”
“Disneyland: a few years ago, it was ‘far out’…a dream…nobody believed (in) it. But it had a philosophy founded in a belief in people, and it answered their needs. We have the experience to do EPCOT based on our practical experience in Disneyland.”
Here’s the first page of my script, where Walt begins to take the audience on a trip across the country, from California to Florida:
Director Ham Luske and Art Director Mac Stewart broke down my script into a visual storyboard, explaining Walt’s concept for the EPCOT community. Here’s a sample page.
Those of us who worked closely with Walt recognized that he had one foot in the past, because he loved the nostalgic, and one foot in the future, because, from his 1937 invention of the multiplane camera (earning his first Academy Award for technical achievement), he was constantly seeking and integrating new technologies that improved what he put on the movie screen. He made it clear that he did not want to repeat himself, and that meant inspiring his artists to continually develop new ways of making magic.
A key source of ideas for Epcot came from Walt’s visits to the research and development centers of major companies: IBM, GE, DuPont, RCA’s Sarnoff Labs in Princeton, and others. Whenever Walt Disney arrived, those future incubators would trot out the most interesting and far-reaching developments they were working on. Walt was frequently quoted as having asked his hosts, “When can I buy a product that utilizes that technology?” When the answer was often, “We don’t know if the public is interested in that,” Walt began to see a role that resembled his experience at the New York World’s Fair.
At the same time I was developing the public face of the Epcot project through Walt’s film, a parallel and, in the larger picture, more important effort was going on behind the scenes. This was the planning and associated legal studies aimed first and foremost to assure that the body of laws the Florida Legislature would ultimately pass included all the bells and whistles Disney needed to accomplish Walt’s objectives in Epcot.
On the legal front, early in May 1966, I was assigned to help organize a seminar at the Disney Studios in Burbank, bringing board members and corporate legal staff together with lawyers and other consultants from the state of Florida and Disney legal advisors from a New York City law firm. My assignment was to organize the factual materials gathered by Robert Foster, the Disneyland lawyer who had spent months in Florida working with Sunshine State lawyer Paul Helliwell and real estate advisor Roy Hawkins to acquire the land that would become Walt Disney World. Foster’s work through those six corporations in Kansas and Delaware had been so secret that I practically had to threaten him to get him to reveal all the information needed to meet the deadline, two days before the legal seminar would take place. (Forty-five years later, at a Disney D23 Fan Club gathering at Walt Disney World, Foster and I participated in a panel discussion about the resort’s background. I was shocked to learn that the “secret” may have been on Bob Foster. He greeted me with this: “You rascal, you—why didn’t you tell me what was going to be in your script for Walt’s film—I never knew any of the details about Epcot!” I guess Walt and Roy thought the less he knew, the more it would look like a “Florida real estate deal” he was helping to structure. Sorry, Bob!)
Walt set the tone for the meeting, stating it was a key to establishing planning parameters, so that the legal staff could lay out the requests that Disney would make to the Florida Legislature. Walt emphasized the need to control the area, so that what happened around Disneyland—a neon jumble of signs along Harbor Boulevard in Anaheim, fronting the entrance to the park—could not happen again. “By keeping standards high,” Walt said, “we can maintain the prestige of the entire area.”
Walt outlined four basic developments that had to be encompassed on the code-named “Project Future” property:
The theme park, based on what Disney had learned in nearly eleven years at Disneyland.
The resident and guest hospitality areas, including “neighborhoods” and hotels and motels.
An industrial complex, providing both a “showcase of industry at work” and an employment base.
Other recreational facilities—water sports on Bay Lake, golf courses, campground, etc.
Of these, Walt thought of numbers two and three as the Epcot areas of Project Future.
Day one of the meeting was one of the most tense days I had ever experienced. Both Walt and Roy Disney spent the entire day listening to the presentations, with Walt asking key questions of the New York legal team and Disney vice presidents Donn Tatum, Foster, and Joe Potter, who had become Disney’s front man in Florida. Walt had hired him as the company’s number one executive in Florida, for his administrative skills and because of his familiarity with the Army Corps of Engineers, which played a key role in creating the drainage canals on the Walt Disney World property.
As Walt stood up to leave at the end of the first day, Joe Potter had the final say. “Walt,” he gushed, “I’ve been in Florida as your representative for three or four months now, and everyone I talk to thinks that you can do anything and everything. They think you can walk on water!”
Without a word, Walt walked to the door and exited the room. We heard his footsteps, echoing down the hallway. Suddenly, they stopped, and we heard him returning in our direction. The door opened, and Walt Disney stuck his head back inside the room. “I’ve tried that,” he said, before closing the door and leaving all of us to wonder: was he successful?
I doubt anyone in the room thought otherwise.
As the only designated staff writer at WED in those days, I was a jack-of-all-trades, leading a small team in creating the attraction scripts, all the park and resort nomenclature, some of the written marketing materials, and working with our key “Participants” (sponsors) on anything related to the shows, exhibits, and name displays they sponsored. In that connection, Dick Irvine asked me to create a standard for the display and recognition of our valued sponsors. None existed, even at Disneyland; Dick’s idea was to make sure everyone—those selling sponsorships, park operators, and our graphic designers—all knew the rules. We recognized the importance of making sure the public, our guests in the parks, knew that the attractions were created by the Imagineers, while providing recognition and an opportunity to associate with a particular attraction for our participants. We developed the form that is still in place today:
TITLE OF ATTRACTION
presented by
Name of Sponsor
For instance, one that exists in Epcot today is:
SPACESHIP EARTH presented by Siemens
Dick Irvine was ahead of his time on this issue. Just turn on your TV set to the New Year’s Day football bowl games to see why: Allstate Sugar Bowl, Capital One Bowl, GoDaddy.com Bowl, and, my favorite, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. Only the Rose Bowl in Pasadena has he
ld firm. On a recent New Year’s Day it was “presented by Vizio.”
A key to maintaining the Disney standard is consistency around the world. Thus, guests find these examples: The Broadway Music Theatre, presented by Japan Airlines (Tokyo DisneySea); Hong Kong Disneyland Railroad, presented by UPS (Hong Kong Disneyland); Autopia, presented by Chevron (Disneyland); and Rock ‘N’ Roller Coaster presenté par Gibson Guitar (Walt Disney Studios—Paris).
As that jack-of-all-trades on the Imagineering staff, I was constantly being given new challenges by Dick Irvine. One day Dick gave me a new assignment: get Herb Ryman to finish the concept design for the Walt Disney World castle.
“Herb is holding up the whole project,” Dick explained. “The architects can’t do the design and working drawings until they have a concept direction.”
“Dick,” I asked innocently, “doesn’t Herb report to you?” “Of course,” Dick responded.
“Then why don’t you talk to him?” I asked.
“Because,” Dick replied, “he won’t listen to me. So I want you to tell Herb he has to close his door and finish the design.”
I approached my new assignment cautiously. First, I suggested to Herb that Dick wanted him to keep his door closed: Dick’s thinking, of course, was that if Herb had his door closed, he’d stay in his office and focus on finishing the design. Herb complied with part of Dick’s request…except, with the door closed, it was easy for him to be invisibly absent from his office. Herb loved to wander about and help his fellow artists with their projects—especially spending time mentoring any young artist who needed a brush-stroke or two to straighten out his or her drawing.