by Jim Korkis
It was signed by Merlin with a star instead of a dot over the letter ‘i.’ The certificate was rolled up and a purple ribbon held it together.
For Walt Disney World, the medallion was roughly an inch and a half in diameter and less than one-fourth of an inch thick. The front of the medallion had a drawing of Wart (young Arthur) from the waist up with an extended left hand pulling the sword up from the rock anvil as he looked up. On the back is a small crown and in fancy script “Temporary Ruler of the Realm’ Walt Disney World © Disney.” It was attached to a purple lanyard.
After the ceremony, Merlin spent another fifteen minutes signing autographs and greeting guests before he ran backstage to prepare for the next performance.
Things That Disappeared
Mickey’s Birthdayland
Michael Eisner and Frank Wells gave the immediate green light to creating a special land at the Magic Kingdom to celebrate Mickey’s special 60th birthday, Mickey’s Birthdayland. It was planned to be there only for eighteen months and there was only three months for it to go through the design process after it was approved.
The area allocated included some backstage land near Fantasyland, but in addition, the Grand Prix Raceway had to have its track moved and shortened in order to allow for construction.
Brightly colored circus tents seemed very much in keeping with the party spirit and would be easy to erect quickly for the temporary location. Steve Hansen was the show writer and the director for the first new land added to the Magic Kingdom. It was also the smallest land at the Magic Kingdom, covering roughly three acres.
The train that circled the park was re-named “Mickey’s Birthdayland Express” and was decorated for Mickey’s surprise party. Even a new train station was built so that guests could more easily get to the outlying area.
Cindy Williams (of the then-popular television program Laverne & Shirley) and First Lady Nancy Reagan were on hand to open Mickey’s Birthdayland on June 18, 1988.
Where did the Disney toons live? Duckburg! Yes, a town with a population according to the prominent sign of “bill’ions and still growing. A town that’s everything it’s quacked up to be!” It was just ducky with its quickly built two-dimensional storefront façades intended for photo opportunities leading to the main circus tent. Only Mickey’s house was three-dimensional with interior rooms that guests could view.
Why Duckburg, the famed hometown of Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, and all their friends? The animated syndicated television series Duck Tales featuring the adventures of Uncle Scrooge and the nephews in Duckburg had premiered to great success in September 1987.
Mickey’s Birthdayland included a children’s playground and a topiary/shrub maze. Nearby was Grandma Duck’s petting farm filled with goats, pigs, ducks, miniature horses, and chickens presented by Friskies. The farm also included Mickey Moo, a white cow that had a black silhouette on one of its sides that looked like Mickey Mouse’s head.
Donald Duck had a boat, the S.S. Donald, but it was only a flat façade like the ones for the Duckburg News (founded 1928), Scrooge McDuck’s bank, Daisy Duck’s millinery, Goofy’s Clip Joint barber shop, HD&L Toys (Huey, Dewey, and Louie), the Duck County school, and other establishments placed along the pathway as more photo opportunities.
However, most guests rushed to the Birthday Party Tent. After watching Disney cartoons in the pre-show area, guests could see a live character show called Minnie’s Surprise Party, celebrating Mickey’s birthday. Reportedly, in the beginning the show would run over two dozen times in a single day.
After the show, guests would proceed to Mickey’s dressing room and visit with the birthday boy to get an autograph or a photo. Multiple dressing rooms guaranteed that guests would not be disappointed and that the line would move quickly even with just a small number of guests being allowed to visit at a time.
The area was so popular that instead of closing after eighteen months, it remained open until April 22, 1990, and only closed at that time so the area could be re-themed as Mickey’s Starland that opened on May 26, 1990, since the birthday theme was no longer appropriate and the place was, after all, the land of all the Disney cartoon stars.
Things That Disappeared
The Birth of Pleasure Island
Church Street Station started as a downtown Orlando entertainment concept of Bob Snow in 1972. In 1985, it drew in 1.7 million visitors annually and became the fourth-largest tourist attraction in the state, right behind Walt Disney World, SeaWorld, and Busch Gardens.
Among the features of Church Street Station were several unique club restaurants including Rosie O’Grady’s Good Time Emporium that celebrated the happy time of the Gay Nineties and the Roaring Twenties with Rosie’s Good Time Dixieland Band, bar top can-can girls, and Charleston dancers. It had antique brass chandeliers, etched mirrors, and leaded glass.
In addition, there was the Cheyenne Saloon and Opera House that was a re-creation of an Old West saloon with the Cheyenne Stampede, country music, and the Cheyenne Sweethearts.
Phineas Phogg’s Dance Club was a popular dance club decorated with memorabilia from daring balloonists both past and present. Lili Marlene’s Aviator’s Pub and Restaurant had authentic aviation memorabilia from both world wars.
The Orchid Garden was a romantic setting amid wrought-iron balconies and balustrades, mellow old woodwork, brick floors, and stained and beveled glass. It featured live rock ‘n’ roll from the 1950s to the 1990s.
There was also Crackers Seafood Restaurant and Church Street Station Exchange, a three-story shopping emporium featuring more than fifty specialty shops and eateries in a beautiful Victorian setting.
To keep guests on Disney property instead of visiting this popular entertainment venue, at a press conference on the Empress Lilly at the Downtown Disney Marketplace on July 21, 1986, Disney CEO Michael Eisner told the press that Disney would build Pleasure Island.
It was the answer to the need for evening entertainment for guests, locals, and conventions. It would be a six-acre man-made island that was scheduled to open in spring 1988 and would be “a place to go when the sun goes down … in a nice Disney way,” unlike the rowdy Church Street.
Attending the press conference with a model of Pleasure Island was Madame Zenobia (actress Anita Goodwin), who Eisner said would be in the Adventurer’s Club and “who will read your palm and tell your future.” Also in attendance was old seaman Captain Spike who would be in the a club called Madison’s Dive where he would tell salty stories about his love of a mermaid. Captain Spike was portrayed by Craig McNair Wilson who was artistic director of SAK theater (a well-known improvisational theater group in Orlando that began in August 1977) and later helped shape the entertainment at both the Comedy Warehouse and the Adventurer’s Club.
The Imagineers came up with an elaborate but never fully functional or understood back story. In 1911, wealthy adventurer Merriweather Adam Pleasure settled on the island with his family and built his own personal paradise. The disappearance of Pleasure at sea in a boating accident and a devastating hurricane in 1955 caused all of the island’s buildings to fall into disrepair. In 1987, it was re-discovered by the Imagineers who re-habbed the existing structures into nightclubs.
The concept of a manufacturing district came from an idea by architect Chris Carradine who had become enamored of Granville Island in Vancouver, an industrial-fishing-manufacturing island under a huge bridge that was in the process of having the old buildings transformed into shops, theaters, restaurants, cafes, and galleries.
To help guests understand the story, there were twenty-seven plaques placed at the entrance of the island and on the individual buildings by the Pleasure Island “Histerical” Society, but they were rarely seen or read.
Things That Disappeared
Pleasure Island New Year’s Eve
While Pleasure Island officially opened May 1989, it went through some changes almost immediately as the Disney company adjusted to running a club district for the first time.
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Disney felt it needed something to catch people’s attention that this was going to be a new experience that guests needed to attend every night. At one point, it was suggested that a spaceship land on Pleasure Island each night that would lead into a nightly celebration of Christmas. Part of the Merriweather Pleasure mythology was his attempts to contact life in outer space and, in fact, the West End Plaza had a plaque stating that Pleasure had originally intended it to be a landing platform for extraterrestrial craft.
Fortunately, wiser Disney marketing people realized that Christmas and outer-space visitors didn’t seem to be a good fit for the Island, but that suggestion did spark the idea of celebrating New Year’s Eve, a time traditionally known for partying and drinking and fireworks. So, in 1990, the island welcomed in the New Year every night (sometimes on weekdays as early as 11pm) with fireworks, confetti, and professional dancers.
When Pleasure Island began celebrating New Year’s Eve every night (a concept that was wonderfully parodied on an episode of The Simpsons), there was an attempt to revise the Merriweather Pleasure story to more closely come in line with this new entertainment directive. Chris Oyen, who was the show writer and director for both the Comedy Warehouse and the Adventurers Club, came up with this revision in June 1991.
On New Year’s Eve 1873, Merriweather Adam Pleasure was born. He would say later that he had been born on that day deliberately, so everyone in the world would have a reason to celebrate with him. As fate would have it, on New Year’s Eve 1901, his eldest son, Stewart, was born. A plucky Merriweather claimed he had planned it that way all along. When a second son, Henry, was born on New Year’s Eve, 1905, people began to believe there might be something to Merriweather’s claim of orchestrating the date of his offspring’s birth.
On New Year’s Eve 1911, when Pleasure steamed into Lake Buena Vista, a new chapter was opened in his life and Pleasure Island was born. When his last child, Miriam, was born on Feb. 17, 1912, Merriweather said that it was a sign. A family tradition of landmark events occurring on New Year’s Eve had been broken, and the only way to correct this chronological indiscretion was to correct time itself. Pleasure said that since it was his island, he could say it was any day he wanted it to be. He claimed that the birth of Miriam on a date so far out of Pleasure family tradition was clearly a sign that every day should be New Year’s Eve on Pleasure Island.
This, of course, meant that every night there was a New Year’s Eve party on Pleasure Island. At the end of each work day, every day of the year, laborers, artisans, inventors, and globe-trotting millionaire visitors alike would dance in the streets as the entire island community kicked back with wild abandon. The buildings that provided industrial functions during the daytime were reset to be dance halls, concert or theatrical venues, or locations for dining or refreshments. Every night there was a fireworks display, choreographed by Merriweather Pleasure himself.
It is in honor of this spirit of unabated whimsy and dedication to unrelenting fun that the tradition of a nightly New Year’s Eve Party had been restored to Pleasure Island.
Things That Disappeared
Bill Justice Main Street Mural
Bill Justice began his career at Disney as an animator on Donald Duck and Chip’n’Dale theatrical animated shorts. Besides working on special projects, Justice moved to Imagineering where he programmed most of the audio-animatronics shows at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
The Walt Disney Story debuted April 1973 in what is now the Town Square Theater.
The pre-show lobby area was filled with fascinating artifacts honoring Walt’s long career. At the end of the hallway were the entrances to two 300-seat theaters. Between the entrances on a curved section of wall that jutted outward was a mural created especially for this attraction by Bill Justice. It featured 170 Disney characters and used 1,200 separate colors.
Up until the mid-1980s, characters from more recent releases including The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, The Fox and the Hound, Pete’s Dragon, and The Rescuers were later added to the mural by artist Russell Schroeder.
When The Walt Disney Story closed in 1992, guest access to view the mural became more limited. In 1998, the building became the Main Street Exposition Hall and the mural was placed off limits with the entrance to it concealed behind a curtain. In 2012, the interior was re-designed as the Main Street Town Square Theater for a Mickey Mouse meet-and-greet location and the mural was removed.
Back in 1991, I talked with Justice about this mural’s creation:
I did a mural with 170 Disney characters and the final painted version was 24-feet long and eight-and-a-half feet high. The company was worried about it getting dirty and fingerprints and mustard and ketchup and all that kind of stuff all over it. It turned out that people for some reason kind of respect it and it looks like it was freshly painted. It was done on canvas and then glued to the wall.
I did a rendering that’s five-feet long and 24-inches high that was copied by Clem Hall and a couple of his assistants at the Disney studio in what they call a “scene easel.” That’s a great big frame and there’s a pit and you can raise and lower the final eight-and-a-half foot canvas down into that pit and you can paint along the top of it. You can move it up a little bit until you get it up here and finally you are painting the bottom of it. Instead of being on a ladder and painting, this makes it real easy.
They just stand on the floor and the image is always at eye level. They’ve got their paints over here and their brushes and everything and they project the thing onto this big canvas, make a line drawing, and then they followed my color scheme for each figure and so forth. Basically, they traced my figures using the projector onto the canvas. The mural took almost four months to complete.
All I had to do before the painting was shipped from the studio to Florida was some minor touch-up work.
Once it was installed, I got a phone call. Somebody had complained that their favorite character was not on the mural. It was the Cheshire Cat. I guess I was feeling feisty or creative, but I immediately responded that the cat was there. He is invisible like he is in the film and is in the upper right-hand corner of the painting. He could only be seen on Tuesday and Thursday nights at 2am when the park was closed. After that, I didn’t receive any more complaints.
Things That Disappeared
Bill Justice Baby Care Center Art
There once was mural artwork done by Bill Justice that decorated the inside of the Baby Care Center near Casey’s Corner off of Main Street, U.S.A. in the Magic Kingdom. This center is the largest one in the four theme parks, and offers the opportunity for such things as changing diapers, feeding, potty training, and purchasing items.
Today, the interior of that location has striped wallpaper to theme in with the design of Main Street with some Plexiglas full-colored images of classic Disney characters overlaid in a handful of spots.
For over two decades there was different artwork that greeted parents and their children as they sought the services for the unique location. From an interview with Justice in 1991, here are his memories of that unusual assignment:
In January 1976, Walt Disney World built a baby station just around the corner from Main Street, but they were upset that it looked too much like a doctor’s office. So I asked for a copy of the plans for the four rooms. When I submitted my proposal, it was immediately approved and I found myself on a plane to Florida in March 1976.
I actually painted right on the wall. The wallpaper is a kind of a plastic with a little tooth in it and can be washed and stuff so that it was easy to keep clean. That’s the reason they chose it rather than regular wallpaper. I did it in a technique called dry brush, but it’s wet paint on a brush and it shows a little bit of texture through the line. I just did it in a brown line on the wall.
It’s a real nice baby station, much better than the one at Disneyland because it has four rooms and a kitchen and a couple of ladies who work there that are in uniform, so they kind of look like maids
. They can warm the baby’s bottles in the kitchen and stuff and then they have a room where they change the diapers and they have little bunks.
It’s a real nice facility. And each wall in each room has a Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket and maybe a Geppetto on maybe one wall and a scene from Dumbo on another wall and maybe a scene from Fantasia on this wall. Each wall has a center picture that represents one of our films.
As you enter, like a picture in a children’s book that shows “Welcome to Baby Land,” Goofy’s painting it and Donald Duck’s watching him and a couple of little Dalmatian puppies are looking into the paint and one puppy’s running away leaving brown footprints. There are puppies all around every wall.
Every wall has several puppies and footprints that go a certain height above the floor and puppies are running up the wall and sitting on top of the door and looking like can’t get down and things like this.
As you exit, on a wall that you pass, a small little jog in the wall, Mickey says “Have a Nice Day” and a couple of Dalmatian puppies down below. Somebody counted and there are 74 Dalmatian puppies in these four rooms altogether and there’s something like 1,268 footprints and 34 other Disney characters. People that write, authors when they write an article or something, they’ve got to know statistics. I painted it all right on site.
Unfortunately, the murals were covered over when the location was refurbished many years ago.
Things That Disappeared
Who Was Cornelius Coot?
Mickey’s Birthdayland at the Magic Kingdom opened on June 18, 1988. It became Mickey’s Starland on May 26, 1990. It was extensively refurbished and on October 1, 1996, it reopened as Mickey’s Toontown Fair. It closed completely in February 2011 for the construction of New Fantasyland.