|
In 1962, my father bought a sliver of land on
the shore of Lake Bryan in southwest Orange
County, Florida. Two years later, Walt Disney purchased a much larger
tract of property 1/8 mile to the north. My parents built their first house
on that land and had two children in it before Walt Disney World opened in 1971.
My brother Brian and I grew up less than a mile from the WDW Village, spending
our formative years in that house and the nearly literal shadow of all that Disney
wrought; the closest playground was at
the Lake Buena Vista Travelodge, the closest post office in the old Preview Center
and the closest doctor in the same clinic where WDW
sent sick tourists for treatment.
So
Disney's presence in our childhoods was dominating, but we didn't know
anything was wrong. We just, like most other kids our age, really liked
the place. We had nightmares about swimming with Jungle Cruise hippos, debated
which of Mr. Toad's two tracks was superior, got freaked out
by the guy in the zebra mask in If You Had Wings and pondered at length what might lie beyond the musty dark
Haunted Mansion portal from whence doom buggies flowed endlessly. Beyond
those fixations, WDW by virtue of proximity also provided us with an introduction to - or a prism
through which we came to view - major aspects of the world around us (foreign
cultures, U.S. history, space exploration and classical music among them).
The main difference between WDW's impact on us as individuals was that Brian,
being a paranoid hedonist, thought it was the ultimate pleasure zone (full of
patently non-threatening fun) and I, as an antisocial idealist, regarded it as
the perfect example of how the rest of the world should be: immaculately
planned, overtly efficient and unfailingly cordial ... even to someone of a
contrary demeanor.
Other people had already made that observation. Long before WDW opened,
California's Disneyland had been
lauded for operating under aesthetic and functional principles of the highest order.
The formula was repeated in Florida, only on a larger scale,
displacing alligators along with orange groves and giving the master planners a
chance to shape thousands of acres as they wished. They started off
wonderfully: early WDW architecture
was non-confrontational but dynamic; each feature complemented the next;
transitional areas and open spaces were pleasantly landscaped; traffic flow (human
and automotive) was logically configured; employees were
well-groomed, well-spoken and friendly - almost to a fault. For an effete misfit like me growing up around a place like
that, it was Pollyanna from day one.
As proof of my hopelessness, in 1980 I wrote to WDW inquiring about the possibility of a future job.
They sent a handout outlining how one is "cast
for a role in the WDW show." I flaunted that in front of Brian, who had only ever received mail from Ranger Rick, and he expressed
enthusiasm at the prospect of one day being a costumed character.
Unfortunately he said this in front of our father, who vehemently proclaimed that no son of his was
"going to
dress up like a damned chipmunk" for a living. This upset Brian
to the point of
attacking Dad's right leg with a butter knife. Later they made up and Dad
redeemed himself by taking us to EPCOT Center on opening day, after much
hesitation, where he horrified
radio interviewers by saying the park bore no resemblance to Walt
Disney's plans for a city of the future.**
By the time I
was sixteen, my disposition toward working at Disney had cooled as I looked
for meaning in Bauhaus and the opposite sex. My first girlfriend, however, worked
at Mickey's Mart in Tomorrowland and suggested her employer
line my empty pockets. Reluctant capitulation had me closing out 1985 as a
Foods
host at Liberty Square's Columbia Harbour House. This provided an unexpectedly fascinating re-introduction
to WDW. Dozens of childhood questions about how the place operated were
answered. The mere business of approaching the park from the tunnel system was
almost worth enduring its various odors (a third-world potpourri of dead birds, wet
French fries, cleanser and cigarettes) and any employee who had the interest
could easily get to If You Had Wings projector platforms
and rainy Tiki Room picture windows when no one was looking.
Through sheer good
luck, at
seventeen I landed a transfer to the Haunted Mansion simply by asking for it.
It was the first time something I'd always wanted
to do lived up to my expectations*** and that costume was the living
end. When Brian turned sixteen he applied for a job there too. Before long he was dressed like a Logan's Run
extra, slinging cardboard-flavored pizza at the Plaza Pavilion and gazing with
wonder upon the massive bank of Wometco vending machines in the Main Street Break Room. Yet he never
wore a
chipmunk suit. Over the next several years I
worked a lot of other rides, wore many shades of polyester and took friends on ill-advised tours of off-limits areas. Brian
got turned on to pot**** and kept losing his wallet.
Back then there were still many
original employees in the park, still most of the original rides
and still a feeling of the place we knew as kids. All these
years later, anyone familiar with WDW between 1971 and 1986 probably remembers it as a very
different place than it had become by the mid 1990s. There was more to do
at WDW by the time it turned 25,
but its personality had changed. The cohesive identity that permeated
the property - before the rampant appearance of non-Disney brands - started to
drift around 1988.
The logos of corporate sponsors had always adorned the
entrances of certain shops or attractions, but by the 1990s WDW was turning so
heavily to outside influences (Star Wars, Muppets, Rainforest Cafe, McDonald's, et
al.) for presence that the line between its creative legacy and that of others would
be blurred and, perhaps, made indistinguishable for its younger guests.
At the same time, the parks and resorts were aging and the task of keeping them
up to Disney's high standards became less manageable. Postmodern architecture that broke dramatically from Phase One elevations and color
schemes began to pop up across property. And it became much harder to
retain employees who delivered the level of service for which the company was
once known.
Although those developments were regrettable, the part
of WDW's evolution that directly affected Brian and me was seeing things we
loved disappear. When the Mickey Mouse
Revue was shipped to Tokyo in 1980, it didn't resonate too deeply because we
thought it might be returned someday. In 1985, Space Mountain's voyeurific Home of Future Living was replaced with
RYCA-1, a poor follow-up, and it made WEDway rides less fun. Then two years later,
If You Had Wings was turned into an Eastern Airlines-less shell of its
former self called If You Could Fly. This felt really wrong; even though the
ride's situation was logical (it was, after all, tailor-made for a
sponsor that pulled out), that didn't make the reality of it going away forever
any less sad. It was like losing a really cool grandparent, except you
can't
ride most grandparents through a Puerto Rican fortress while a traffic cop plays
"stop and go" with the flamingos. If You Had Wings
became my
first meditative struggle with the concept of impermanence, which only got worse
as more early WDW elements vanished or suffered perplexing overhauls with
far greater frequency from that point forward.
I had made some audio recordings in the parks and taken some photos as a kid,
but when my favorite things started to seriously keel over I went a little crazy
on building an archive of that which hadn't been axed yet. Being an
employee helped, and led to a misguided newsletter (Jane Our Teenage Daughter) on the topic, a timeline of things gone missing and
lots of generous input from total strangers in the
form of photographs, videos, and tapes of ex-attractions.
Massive help came from specific individuals who shared the same
obsessions. "Miami Mike" Hiscano has been contributing to this project since its
inception and is one of the most knowledgeable and generous WDW
fans you could hope to find. Ross Plesset has also gone out of his way
countless times to arrange interviews and drive down bits of information that
would have been lost were it not for his diligence. Dave Ensign went on scores of reconnaissance missions behind the
scenes to gather rare photos and video. Others who soiled their hands by
associating with me in this project's infancy include Mike Cozart,
Dave Hooper, Christopher Merritt, Robert Boyd, Dave Smith and Gerald Walker.
All of these guys expanded my knowledge of WDW back when I actually had time to absorb and record
the details.
One thing I learned during this period of intense education was that some
people in California who had grown up with Disneyland were paying tribute to
that park's history in far more impressive ways than I could ever hope to ape
for WDW, most notably the late Randy Bright's Disneyland: Inside Story and Jack and Leon Janzen's horrifically wonderful magazine,
The "E" Ticket.
Bright's book was so cool because, although written
by a Disney employee, it didn't feel like it had been "approved."
Bright was a WED Enterprises "Imagineer" who worked at the park as a
teenager and whose affinity for Disneyland was fully apparent in his
text. He also compiled a fascinating appendix, entitled "Sequence of
Disneyland Attractions," that traced all the major additions to the park
since it opened. The Janzens' massive grass-roots effort to drag out
the most arcane facts about Disneyland are unsurpassed in the world of
fandom. Like Bright, they grew up with the park and were still
infected as adults. They
|
|
 |
|
initiated a noble quest
to produce a visual and written history of the Disneyland's earliest years which
has brought forth scads of previously unseen images and stories from WED
personnel who made it all happen.
Their work made everything I'd written about WDW look like gibberish, but
it also didn't appear that they would
get around to covering Disney's Florida parks. So with the crucial help of my wife Amy
(references to WDW blueprints are only possible because she Erin Brockoviched at
the Florida State Archives), in 1994 I had a crummy new fanzine called Widen Your World
- a phrase from the last scene of
If You Had Wings. WYW became a website in 1996. There are four reasons why it's
still here:
1. It has put me in communication with other people who have early WDW in their bloodstream,
people who have been incredibly
helpful with comments and old photos or have simply written to say
they like the site, even if they're lying.
2. It's an easy way to pass on research, photos, audio and video to the widest
possible audience. The unfortunate flip side of this is that, as the
oldest site to cover WDW's history, content from WYW has been lifted by others
(even by Disney itself a couple times - how flattering!) for years and often not credited.
Although I can't stop that, I promise that
everything presented here as original material - or the product of my own
research - is exactly that and anything else
is credited to the proper sources.
5. Many people younger than me don't know what If You Had Wings was and might
think the former site of 20,000 Leagues had always been a Pooh playground.
They're not likely to learn about these things from sources within the park
itself. Although there
have been a few instances of WDW covering its own history, like 1998's WDW
Resort - A Magical Year-By-Year Journey, accurate records of WDW's
past attractions in book form are scarce.
Take for example
Bruce Gordon & Dave Mumford's Disneyland: The Nickel Tour, which upon its
1995 publication became the biblical account of one theme park's march
through time. No one on the company's payroll seems to have both the
intimate knowledge of WDW's history combined with the resourcefulness
needed to round out a similar publication. There have been some less
massive attempts, but most of them tended to shortchange WDW's first 15
years (one made zero mention of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride) and seem to suggest
that the place just gets better with time. In the immortal words of
Nicolas Fehn, "No! ... " So even if WYW isn't vital - and it's
certainly no Nickel Tour - it has filled some gaps.
Along the way it picked up the support and input of some phenomenal
modern-day WDW
historians and researchers,
including Chris Foxx, David Koenig, Eric Paddon, Spencer Cook, Martin Smith and Michael Sweeney. Assembling a complete list would be very difficult,
but I have tried on the
"Credits" page.
There are of course many other sites out
there now with a changing Vacation Kingdom as their raison d'ętre.
If you'd like to see some of the ingenious ways that people are
demonstrating an appreciation for vintage WDW, try these sites:
Passport to Dreams Old
and New
Virtual Toad
Mesa Verde Times
Walt Disney World - A History In Postcards
The growing interest in this Florida
subject matter has led to a surge in the amount of
early WDW information and media entering
the public arena. As the legions of people who grew up with the parks in those
early years (or simply want to know more about that time period)
make themselves increasingly known, maybe WDW will get equally serious about its rich
history and offer something more than silly pins to mark its dearly departed. As Mike
Hiscano sagely suggested, the company could easily convertthe old Preview Center building at Lake Buena Vista into
an "Early WDW Museum" along with a retro-based merchandise outlet. The
mere thought of it underscores the kind of opportunities the company is missing
to preserve its past.
Whether they pursue something that cool or not, between the exponential
proliferation of online resources and WDW's own efforts, there
should be no shortage of
options for those seeking details on the resort's history. As for
this site, it still has some growing to do. I never intended to
spend 20 years paying amateur tribute to lost dark rides, but with that
mistake behind me I feel a little more inclined to finish up rather than
stop cold. So WYW will probably round out and provide just one
lopsided account of how WDW was back before so much of its original self
faded away.
* They lived on the lake for years before Brian was born, so why they wouldn’t
spell his name Bryan is inexplicable. Maybe so he wouldn't get all cocky
and shit.
** This was true. It did not, however, make Horizons or World of Motion
any less amazing. Or the old Spaceship Earth paper boy any less annoying.
*** I had not yet taken a prostitute to Ponderosa.
****
In 1985 WDW had roughly 20,000 employees and half of them were constantly high.
As Walt Disney often said, that's twice as high as the island of Manhattan. |
