Today with all of the advanced technology that goes into new attractions and all of
the study and thought that goes into new projects at the parks, it’d be no surprise to see
Imagineers take years to put something together.
That’s not a bad thing, since the projects are usually pretty great.
Keyword: usually.
However there have been instances where attractions and parks of the resorts were hastily thrown
together.
Here are five examples of rushed Disney projects.
First up is pretty minor, but it’s also pretty clever, and a wonderful example of
the kind of last minute rushes that Disneyland faced before its grand opening.
When Walt set July 17th 1955 as the opening day for Disneyland, he was giving Imagineers
and construction workers about one year to build the entirety of the park.
It was a major task, and so understandably there were a lot of loose strings by the time
opening day arrived.
Overall, the one part of the park that was least developed was Tomorrowland, and that
included a lack of foliage for the area.
Walt didn’t want to open the land with no greenery, so what did he do?
He instructed imagineers to find all of the weeds and overgrowth from around the park
that would have otherwise been discarded, and had them planted in the land.
In order to add some legitimacy to the move, he also had them setup little placards with
the plant's Latin names.
Suddenly a display of common and undesired weeds became an educational installation on
various “plantlife.”
Disney would find themselves in a similar situation sixteen years later as they prepared
to open their first east coast resort, Walt Disney World.
This time however the problem would be a bit larger.
The Contemporary Resort on the Seven Seas Lagoon wasn’t schedule to open until a few
weeks after Disney World would open, so the fact that it wasn’t complete wasn’t much
of a problem.
However it was important to Disney for the exterior of the building to look finished,
as guests would be able to see the site and they didn’t want arrive just to find a dirt
covered construction zone.
As the story goes in David Koenig’s Realityland, Dick Nunis, who was overseeing the project,
found that quickly planting a few trees the night before the opening around the hotel
wasn’t enough to make the resort look presentable.
So instead, he had four and half acres of sod trucked over to the property.
With just sixteen hours to go before the press would arrive, he tasked anyone he could find,
from construction workers to executives, with laying down the sod.
Nearly one hundred people worked through the night, and by 6am the lawns of the Contemporary
resort were completely finished and ready for the media.
When Walt Disney set out to create Disneyland, he wasn’t trying to create another amusement
park or circus show, he was trying to create something that surpassed it.
And you know what?
He did.
The Disneyland experience was without question a step up from either of those.
Yet in Disneyland’s first year of operation Walt was dead set on adding one of those,
a circus show, to the park.
There was some question internally as to why, as most people were coming to the park for
a unique Disney experience, but at the end of the day Walt got his way.
Thinking it would make for a great tie-in with the Mickey Mouse Club, Disney began to
plan a circus in October of 1955.
Just fifty-two days later, on Thanksgiving day and for an additional entrance fee of
fifty cents, the Mickey Mouse Club Circus opened in Disneyland back where the Matterhorn
resides today.
Now fifty-two days might sound like a short turnaround for a Disney attraction, but even
shorter was the attractions lifespan.
The Mickey Mouse Club Circus only ran for six weeks and with poor attendance due to
both guests not wanting a circus experience at Disneyland, not to mention not wanting
to pay another entrance fee, the circus ended its run.
If there’s one theme that carried through the early years of Michael Eisner’s tenor
as Disney CEO in the 80s, it was that he was very focused on trying to win over the teenage
demographic.
He felt that teens thought Disney was lame and that Disney had to do something about that.
He wasn’t wrong either.
This focus lead to a number of projects that were built in an attempt to win them over,
from Alien Encounter to Splash Mountain to Captain EO.
One other project was the Disneyland Videopolis.
Teens loved music, so clearly Disney would benefit from a music venue.
Disneyland's Videopolis was a 5,000 square foot, three million dollar, dance venue
that could hold up to 3,000 guests.
It featured musical acts such as Boy George, Janet Jackson, and the New Kids on the Block.
It was built in just 105 days and as Imagineer Carl Bongiorno put it, the Videopolis was
“The first, the fastest, and the finest.
It was the first attraction completed under the new Eisner-Wells team.
The fastest construction project we’ve ever completed, and the finest dance facility of
its kind anywhere.”
The videopolis would entertain guests for a decade before being re-themed in 1995 to
the Fantasyland Theater.
In the early 1960s companies and countries from around the world were preparing to design
and build attractions for the 1964-1965 World’s Fair in New York City.
Pepsi had chosen to sponsor the UNICEF pavilion, but the board of directors couldn’t manage
to come up with an idea or plan for their attraction.
Joan Crawford, board member and actress, decided that with time running out and the fair quickly
approaching, she would turn to her friend Walt Disney for help.
Walt proposed a slow moving ride that focused on all the different cultures of the world,
and that ride was aptly named Children of the World.
With so little time left, the board of directors couldn’t really say no.
They didn’t have any other options.
Disney only had 11 months to design and built the attraction, and so they worked at breakneck speeds.
Along that process Walt tasked the famous Sherman brothers with writing a theme song
for the attraction and before long the ride was renamed to “it’s a small world”.
Sure, small world isn’t the fastest project ever attempted at Disney, but in under just
one year Walt and his imagineers created an attraction that has become one of, if the
the most, iconic rides ever.
It features a song that is well known outside of the realm of Disney fandom, and is said
by some to be the most played recorded song in human history.
The boat ride mechanics used in small world would influence a number of attractions that
would follow it.
It was an eleven month project, but it’s legacy has lasted more than half of a century
and is bound to continue on into the future.
If you want to learn more about the craziness before the opening of Disney World, I’ll
have a link to Realityland, the book I mentioned earlier, in the description below.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.