Walt Disney: A THE BEST Wizard
Walt Disney was a force of nature. He was like a Greek myth
incarnate. Like a fay or a genie or a wizard, he waved his arms and everything
magically turned out fine. No, better than fine. THE BEST. He was a THE BEST
wizard. That’s my new nickname for Walt.
NO!!! That's a THE WORST Wizard!
There’s no reason Disneyland should have worked. None.
Except Walt believed in people. He believed they would respond to a superior
product, made just for them, and NOT for the owners or shareholders. It was a
Christmas gift to the whole world, made all the more perfect because Santa
delivered it. It was like the magical snowglobe ball from The Santa Clause, which is like every other snowglobe except, when
you shake it, you can see where Santa
is, and watch him fly through the sky. Walt took three-dimensional
entertainment and made it fly.
Amusement parks were dirty, They had roller coasters and
ferris wheels. They sold hot dogs and beer from stalls. Customers were treated
as “marks.” There was no effort in landscaping, or providing artistic buildings
that didn’t produce direct revenue. The employees were nasty, because the
owners were nasty to them. That’s what amusement parks were. If it weren’t
these things, it wouldn’t be an amusement park, would it? So Walt waved his
hands…
And no more unthemed coasters and ferris wheels, right? RIGHT?!
I’m providing this introduction because this particular
entry is the only one on my list that directly involves Walt Disney. It
includes the only attractions on this list planned or created before his
untimely death. Now I know, Rock Candy Mountain looks cool and the Monstro the Whale
shoot the chutes…well…doesn’t….but alas, they did not make the Top 30. Though,
there will be an intermission halfway through the series to highlight the
concepts that didn’t make the list…sort of an honorable mention parade…so
they’ll certainly be highlighted there. But the funny thing about Walt was that
he actually built most of his best ideas.
And when he didn’t, often they would come back in another form (One Nation
Under God and Edison Square/Carousel of Progress come to mind). So I really
don’t have much to work with here!
Not happening. Get over it.
But there are some
loopholes in this reality. For example, original versions of certain
attractions, if they’re interesting enough (and they do actually have to be
interesting enough. No Confucian restaurants or Hotel Mels here, thanks) would certainly be included on
this list. And it just so happened that the two attractions most theme park
fans argue about being the best of all time actually had very interesting original versions indeed!
I’m talking of course, of Pirates of the Caribbean and the
Haunted Mansion, the George Washington and Abraham Lincoln of the theme park
world. As many of you know, both of these attractions were originally
walk-throughs! Both were conceived as Disneyland was being finished, and both
took more than a decade to bring to reality! In fact, since these attractions
were gestating since Disneyland came into being, their history is almost a
history of Disneyland itself! What a coincidence that I actually like telling
histories about histories! So to return to our story…Once Upon a Time, Walt
Disney waved his hands and…
The Story of the Museum of the Weird and the Rogues Gallery
Our tour begins here. In this television show.
I TOLD YOU TO TAKE THE WIZARD"S STAFF!!!
Here, where you see a black and white photo of Walt showing
off his newest THE BEST creation, as he appeared in his corruptible, mortal state. (Oh, get ready for a ludicrous amount of puns and allusions
in this one. There’s no turning back now. Okay, not really.)
This is Walt showing off Disneyland via his first television
show, “Disneyland.” As many of you know, many (if not all) movie moguls saw
television as an enemy to be vanquished (much like today’s movie and TV
companies see Netflix and digital content). Walt, of course, saw it as an
opportunity for entertainment and advertisement. And so, in exchange for a
hefty percentage of ownership in Disneyland, Walt gave ABC a weekly Disney
show. Look kids, real synergy!
YES! Real synergy in action!!!
Before we get into the history of Pirates and Mansion, it
behooves one to have the general history of Disneyland on retainer. If one were
to fully appreciate, say, Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, one must also
appreciate the circumstances of the presidency, such as the Missouri Compromise
of 1850, the Civil War, and the disastrous reign of James Buchannan. So, to
that end, what follows is a short, cliff notes version of the history of
Disneyland during Walt’s day. For a detailed account of this time in
Disneyland’s history, I would whole-heartedly recommend Sam Gennawey’s
excellent “The Disneyland Story.” Available in fine bookstores everywhere.
What do you mean, I'm not entitled to royalties for the advertisement?
Disneyland, 1955-1959
Disneyland opened on July 17th, 1955, and
revolutionized the theme park industry. Walt spent a ton on landscaping,
theming, iconic structures with no attractions, and small details galore. The
rides were customized. There were no roller coasters, no ferris wheels, no
beer. The employees were happy. There were just as many small attractions as
big attractions. And it was all surrounded by a train.
And people loved it! The per-cap Guest spending and the stay
time were off the charts, by most estimates both were four times that of the average amusement park. Walt knew that if
people genuinely enjoyed the atmosphere, they would stay longer, and spend more
money. Like the economy, this is an idea professionals still somehow get wrong
today. It’s the stay time, stupid. This was driven by Walt’s idea to have the
park be designed by art directors and animators instead of architects and civil
engineers. The theme parks were stories in three dimensions, imagination
wrapped inside concrete and fiberglass shells. Instead of wandering through an
amusement park, Guests felt as though they were walking through genuine fantasy
realms and exotic worlds. And they didn’t want to leave.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO LEAVE, TIMMY
Now, we all know that opening day at Disneyland was a disaster.
But, to be fair, this was not due to the attraction lineup itself but to the
naïveté that Disney had in actually running an amusement park: the last-minute
construction that caused wet concrete and wet paint, the unfinished plumbing
that caused the lack of drinking fountains, the poor gas line engineering that
caused the Fantasyland gas leak, the poor ticket stock that caused tickets to
be easily counterfeited, the lack of operations knowledge that allowed
employees to overload the Mark Twain and cause it to sink, on and on and on.
The only real attraction concerns were the pack mules (stubborn and
unpredictable) and the Autopia (the lack of a guiderail caused lots of
accidents, until the guiderail was installed soon after). And what you might
not know was that, while summer and Christmas were very, very busy, the
offseason was very, very not.
Walt continued to build out Disneyland during the first
couple years, but there were no big expansions, just various ride additions. He
would add the Columbia to the Rivers of America, Alice in Wonderland to the
Fantasyland dark ride lineup, the Viewliner, the Skyway, and many, many others.
He wanted to constantly provide something new for his guests. And, given the
success of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “Lady and the Tramp,” these new
attractions did not break the bank.
However, what is often not
told is how precarious the financial position of the park was for the first few
years. It is not certain whether Disneyland was actually making its money back.
Disneyland would be closed two days a week (usually Monday and Tuesday) during
the offseason. Park operating hours (except for Fridays, Saturdays, and
holidays) were not nearly as long as they are today (10-6 operating days were
the norm). And during the winter and spring, the offseason was dead. Like, 500 people in the park dead
(and no, that’s not a Mansion reference. It would have been a Mansion reference
had I said there were 999 people in the park, with room for 1,000. But you’re
thinking. I like that).
Read testimonials from CM’s at the time (especially managers
like Van France, Dick Nunis, or Jack Lindquist), and they’ll tell you that CM’s
literally did not know if they would have a job when the offseason started.
Most CM’s at the time were seasonal, and they didn’t know whether they would
have a position for the next season. The managers literally did not know if
they were going to get paid the next week. It was a very scary first few years
at Disneyland.
Disneyland Cast Member vision of future Disneyland, circa 1957
All that changed in 1959. Instead of taking his money and
running (like the owners of the former Marineland), Walt waved his hands again.
He saw two major threats: the continuing running-in-place of Disneyland’s
profits, and the introduction of new competition across the country. Indeed,
because of Disneyland, there were quite a few parks with Disney’s mindset
springing up throughout America. There was Magic Mountain in Denver,
Freedomland in the Bronx, and Pleasure Island in Boston. All these parks (and
others) were trying to be the next Disneyland, with themed rides and
everything. So, like I said, instead of taking his money and running (or doing
what they do nowadays and advertise a bunch of characters and WRISTBANDS), Walt
took his money as DECIDED TO COMPLETELY ANNIHILATE THEM. No kidding, he went
full Gandalf and told the Balrog where he could shove his dark fire.
Thanks, THE BEST wizard
At the same time he was spending $6 million on “Sleeping
Beauty” (the most expensive animated film to date), Walt bet the farm again and
came up with a full multi-million dollar expansion of the park. He instituted
no less than three major E-Tickets,
along with a ride replacement and two ride enhancements. All in one summer. The
Skyway was rerouted and the Autopia gained an extra track. The Motorboat Cruise
was added to the small waterway between Autopia and Fantasyland. And then there
were the three E-Tickets. It bears mentioning that these rides were so big and
awe-inspiring that they literally invented the term “E-Ticket.” Up until that
point, tickets were sold in just the A-D range. And what E-Tickets they were. Walt
introduced the first Monorail in the western hemisphere (at that time just a
ride around Tomorrowland, since it made no extra stops). The Submarine Voyage
ride, at the time the “eighth largest submarine fleet in the world,” made its
debut as a space-age update to the old glass-bottom boat rides scattered
throughout the country. This time, Walt wanted his Imagineers to know, Guests
would be riding under the water, in
submarines similar to the SS Nautilus, which famously made a journey to the
Arctic Circle in 1958. And of course, Disney created the E-Ticket of E-Tickets,
The Matterhorn, the first tubular steel roller coaster in the United States,
and the first Disneyland roller coaster. The competition simply could not keep
up with Walt’s constant invention, and most of Disneyland’s direct competition
closed within the next few years. At that time, Disneylanders knew that the
park was here to stay.
Pirates of the Caribbean Overview and the Rogues Gallery,
1955-1959
Pirates of the Caribbean is sheer theme park bliss. It is
the culmination of every trick of the trade in the previous 12 year history of
the theme park medium. Every single aspect of the attraction proper is superb,
because it all was assembled by the individual masters of the theming craft:
Marc Davis’s character design and ride pacing, Claude Coats’s staging, ride
layout, and background design, Blaine Gibson’s master AA figure sculptures,
Alice Davis’s costumes, Wathel Rogers and Roger Broggie’s AA mechanical design,
Bill Justice’s figure animation, X. Atencio’s script and song lyrics, Dick
Irvine’s administrative oversight, George Bruns’s background music, Yale
Gracey’s special effects, and John Hench’s color palette and boat designs. And
in the middle, like the conductor of the Hall of Fame orchestra of all time,
was Walt. It was the equivalent of the Founding Fathers collaborating on and
creating the Constitution.
Take it and run with it, Walt!
Literary commentators, both online and off, have woven
gorgeous prose to elaborate on Pirates’s theatrical effectiveness. However,
that is outside the scope of this history article, and besides, the elaboration
of which would give me carpal tunnel and kill me, probably in that order. The
best literature online, in my opinion, is Foxxy’s obsession with Pirates and
Mansion (and New Orleans Square in general) over at Passport to Dreams. Check
out her articles on Pirates
HERE
What I can say is that Pirates will be 50 (!) years old this
year, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t as relevant today as it was the year it
opened. To this day, Pirates still sees the some of the highest ride counts in
the park. It is the culmination of a nascent period in the theme park medium,
similar to how Snow White was the
culmination of the art form of Disney animation’s forays into cartoon shorts.
It grabs us and pulls us in to a three-dimensional world just as forcefully as Snow White pulled us into a
two-dimensional world. The art of the craft is just as stunning. It defined
three-dimensional storytelling, to the point where it is patently impossible to
drink in all the exploding artistic expression in one lone journey. It is just
too good, and too mind-blowing, to contain in your mind. There, I’ve said my
piece.
Pirates (originally Rogues Gallery or the Pirate Wax Museum)
benefited most from the innovations brought forth due to the 1964 New York
World’s Fair: the amazing scenic design of the Ford Magic Skyway (which far
surpassed the scenic design of any moving vehicle attraction of Disney’s up to
that point, at which time the high point was Mine Train Thru Nature’s
Wonderland), the ultra high capacity conveyance of It’s a Small World
(remember, high capacity rides did not exist at Disneyland before then), and
the lifelike human animatronic figures of Mr. Lincoln and Carousel of Progress.
The AA figures were especially crucial to Pirates: here was a technology that
would allow fully animated characters (like actors) to deliver the same lines
over and over again, day after day. The relevance of this will be described in
a later section.
The beginning of the Pirates of the Caribbean story was very
modest. Walt always had an interest in pirates. He was a big fan of Robert
Louis Stevenson and swashbuckling adventure movies growing up. He made several
pirate-themed movies in the 1950s and 60s, such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and
Blackbeard’s Ghost, and tied pirate
cameos into still more, such as Peter Pan
and Swiss Family Robinson. So it was
no surprise that Walt had pirates in his mind for Disneyland from the very
beginning.
As Disneyland was in its initial stages of design, the area
we know today as Adventureland was called “True Life Land,” in reference to the
then-new True Life Adventures documentary series that Disney was producing and
presenting before its feature films. Walt asked Herb Ryman if he could try to
fit some sort of pirates area into True Life Land. Ryman came up with a small
piece of real estate for two different experiences called “Blue Beard’s Den”
and the “Pirate Shack.” It remains a mystery what exactly these experiences
would entail. Most likely, they would be individual rooms with certain
mechanical effects (think Main Street Cinema crossed with Adventurer’s Club),
however this is purely conjecture on my part.
Ironically this wouldn't be out of place in 1955 Fantasyland
Time passed. Disneyland opened. And of course, there was no
pirate shack. But Walt did not give up on his pirate idea. There was still
plenty of undeveloped land on Disneyland’s west side. In fact, in the late
1950s Frontierland was the equivalent of Soviet Russia. It’s land stretched all
the way from the western border of Fantasyland (what is now the Pinocchio
Village Haus area), through what is today Frontierland, and all along the
Rivers of America from the broadway from Main Street to the intersection with
Adventureland all the way out to what is now Critter Country. Imagine if Walt
Disney World’s Liberty Square and Frontierland were combined into one big
Frontierland and this is how dominant Frontierland was at Disneyland.
The big one is the Mark Twain
In what is the current New Orleans Square area, there was a
very nice park-like area called Magnolia Park. It extended from the Aunt Jemima
Pancake House (now River Belle Terrace) to the Swift Chicken Plantation
Restaurant (now Haunted Mansion). Magnolia Park was a relaxing area with plenty
of shade trees and benches for people to rest (for real though guys, Disneyland
was built on a teeny tiny budget). This area also hosted some live
entertainment on summer nights and weekends, as people would grab food from one
of the nearby restaurants and sit under the stars in Magnolia Park.
Prior to 1959, as Disneyland’s revenues and attendance
increased, Walt targeted Magnolia Park to be the location for a New
Orleans-inspired section. In Walt’s view, it was an obvious choice. In his
mind, the Rivers of America most resembled the colossal Mississippi River, the
artery of American waters. This is most obvious considering the Mark Twain
steamboat is designed after a Mississippi sternwheeler, and that Tom Sawyer
Island (Tom Sawyer frequently made trips on the Mississippi) was at the center
of the circular river. So, Walt felt Magnolia Park would be a natural location
for New Orleans Square.
Apart from Herb Ryman’s concepts for the True Life Land pirate
adventures, John Hench and Bill Martin began principle designs for a New
Orleans Square in 1956. Sam McKim would take over the development in 1957 and
finally released plans for NOS in 1958.
NOS at that time consisted of a giant New Orleans storefront
area (think one side of Main Street) facing the River, stretching from the
Adventureland connection path to the Plantation Restaurant. This giant
storefront would then hide the three major experiences within the Square: The
Blue Bayou Mart, The Thieves Market, and The Pirate Wax Museum/Rogues Gallery.
The major attraction would have actually be the Blue Bayou
Mart. It was the Blue Bayou concept jumbo-sized. In addition to a restaurant
similar to Blue Bayou, the enclosed Blue Bayou Mart area would be connected to
the (also enclosed) Thieves Market, which would be the location for all the
stores, snack, and drink vendors.
So picture this: there is a massive storefront, Main
Street-like, themed to New Orleans and stretching the length of what is
currently NOS (remember no Pirates at this time). Behind this storefront would
be the entirety of NOS as we know it (the alleys, stores, etc.) ENCLOSED IN A
BLUE BAYOU SETTING. ALL OF IT. All the alleys and back walkways of NOS would be
under the eternal nighttime ambience of the Blue Bayou. Not only that, but
according to Sam McKim’s plans, the show building would also have “various rain
and quicksand (!) effects.” DUDE.
The Pirate Wax Museum would be located off to the side, in
the “basement” of NOS. Guests would literally descend via stairs/elevator into
an underground cavern area (famously that area is now the cavern sequence of
the current DL Pirates) and meet their tour guide, who would lead them through
several scenes recreating the life of pirates in the Caribbean centuries ago.
Of course, without the aid of animatronics, these scenes would be static, with
some mechanical and lighting effects to give some life to the scene.
However, Sam McKim’s wax museum concept was very basic, and
was not seriously considered by Walt in the late-1950s. Mostly he was
distracted by other ideas (1959 expansion), but also, it is important to note
that Walt was starting to sour on the concept of walk-through attractions. He
was very excited to open the Sleeping Beauty Diorama inside Sleeping Beauty
Castle in 1956, but he was disappointed how the attraction turned out. He was
having a debate with his Imagineers over whether future Disneyland walk-through
should be self-guided (like Sleeping Beauty or Swiss Family Treehouse), or if a
tour guide should take groups of guests around to set up and display show
scenes. Eventually they would settle on the tour guide for theming and pacing
purposes. However, this concept, along with the Haunted House, was put on hold
for the 1959 expansion, and picked back up at a later date.
Haunted Mansion Overview and History 1955-1957
And now we come to the Mansion, the Lennon to Pirates’s
McCarthy. The Mansion has been called by many to be the greatest example of
special design in human history. It is the favorite attraction of millions of
visitors, despite reaching its 50th anniversary. It fires the
imaginations of first-timers the same way it did when it opened in 1969. It has
survived movies, and TV, and VHS, and DVD, and arcades, and Nintendo, and the
internet, and now virtual reality. And it still has all its teeth, bared. What
a ride.
Again, the thematic design and semiotics of this ride is
outside the scope of this article. I would recommend you visit the excellent
articles at Long Forgotten
HERE and Foxxy’s
excellent articles at Passport to Dreams
HERE.
I highly recommend them…they’re probably the seminal works on Mansion on the
internet.
The Ghost House has been a primal staple of our subconscious
since…I have no idea. But it certainly permeates the American fantasy
landscape. From the scary ghost stories we used to tell as kids (after all, we
all had at least one scary house on
our streets growing up, right?) to the countless Hollywood horror movies to the
Haunted Shack/Mansion/Pretzel rides of the early amusement parks. In addition,
many of Walt’s animated movies and shorts had visceral, primal, and
unforgettable horror elements inserted in them. He knew the primeval power of
the horror motif. Since the Skeleton
Dance was released in 1929, Disney reveled in the macabre. From the “Night
on Bald Mountain” segment of Fantasia,
to The Old Mill, the forest sequence
and the Witch transformation in Snow
White, the dragon sequence in Sleeping
Beauty, on and on and on, Disney knew the most effective fairy tales were
the ones with genuinely frightening elements. If Walt Disney was going to have
amusement park staples like carousels, dark rides, and roller coasters
(Matterhorn) at his park, he surely would want to employ the most thematic of
all the amusement park staples. And he certainly did.
The Mansion would be a thought bubble in Disneyland’s design
literally since the theme park concept began. The earliest known production
drawing of a Haunted House ride was during the days of the Burbank Mickey Mouse
Park in 1951. Hollywood art director and Disney artist Harper Goff had been put
on Walt’s payroll at this time to design his Mickey Mouse Park across the
street from the animation studio. Even these pre-natal Disneyland designs
featured a Haunted House. Walt just couldn’t resist.
As the Burbank park turned into Disneyland, early Imagineers
Marvin Davis and Ken Anderson would take on the Haunted House project. As
Disneyland was taking shape, the prevailing wisdom would be that it would be
off of Main Street, before one reaches the Hub. It was, in fact, the first of
the side-street concepts for Main Street that were never built (International
Street, Liberty Street, etc.). The House would be located on a crooked,
dead-end side street off of Main Street proper, like a mini version of Sunset
Boulevard leading to the Tower of Terror. Obviously, these plans never came to
fruition. The Haunted House concept would be temporarily abandoned as
Disneyland got up and running.
In 1957, the same time that Sam McKim took up new plans for
the New Orleans Square/Pirates concepts, Ken Anderson once again picked up the
plans for the Haunted House. As Disneyland was looking to expand, Walt targeted
the House to be located next to the new New Orleans section, replacing Magnolia
Park. Except, at this time, the House would be located on the other end of NOS from where it sits
currently. In the late-1950s plans, it would be located in the area where the
Adventureland pathway and the Swiss Family Treehouse is now, next to the
current River Belle. Unfortunately, like the pirate plans, the concept would be
put on hold yet again.
Disneyland History, 1960-1964
Disneyland went through an interesting lull after the 1959
expansion blew everyone’s minds. Perhaps they all had to pick their brains up
off the pavement, having just exploded in a tornado of excitement. Wow was that
gruesome. Anyway, stories differ as to the reason for the lull. Some say Walt
did not know whether Disneyland would survive the 1959 expansion before it
happened. Some say his respect for his brother Roy put some of his plans on
hiatus, since Walt literally built the Matterhorn while Roy wasn’t looking
(that’s actually true. Roy expressly forbid Walt from building something so
ridiculously huge as the Matterhorn, since the company coffers were not
inexhaustible. So Walt had his Imagineers design it and started construction
while Roy was on vacation. True story. He was a combination of David
Copperfield and Matt Damon’s pickpocket character in Ocean’s Eleven). Some say Walt didn’t go crazy with Disneyland
because Sleeping Beauty was going
way, way, way, way over budget. Some say he had a bit of a breakdown during
this time (again supposedly because of Sleeping
Beauty, as well as his increased responsibilities everywhere else) and
decided to take a few vacations. Whatever the reason, Disneyland from 1959-1963
did not see a lot of change, at least not nearly as much as it had in the
previous five years of operation. But, there were two monumental developments
during this time.
The first was the migration of Marc Davis. Marc would
revolutionize the entire concept of Disney’s themed attractions. In 1961, Marc
had just completed his tour-de-force animation of Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatians. He had planned to help
create a new animated movie himself, based on the fantasy story of Chanticleer.
(Chanticleer was about a swashbuckling rooster. Moving on.) Unfortunately for
Marc, Bill Peet was the reigning story king at the animation studio at the time
(having written/storyboarded Dalmatians
ALL BY HIMSELF), and Walt deferred to Bill to create the next Disney animated
movie, which would turn out to be Sword
in the Stone. Having lost a lot of his enthusiasm for animation, Marc
joined the Imagineering team over at Disneyland. Marc had an incredible story
sense, and had helped with storyboards and story direction for the animated
films (he actually influenced the design of most of the animal characters in Bambi). He also designed many great
moments for his memorable animated characters, from Maleficent to Tinker Bell
to Cruella.
Walt invited Marc to “take a look around” Disneyland, and to
come back with notes. When Marc did in fact come back, he told Walt that he had
many concerns about the theming and story pacing of many of the attractions. So
Walt got Marc started by helping re-theme the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train, which
at the time was a mellow train ride through a landscape inspired by the
True-Life Adventure film The Living
Desert. The ride featured show scenes of (stationary) animals in a desert
habitat, along with the infamous teetering rock formation, geysers, and the Rainbow
Caverns. Marc told Walt there was plenty of ideas he had that could make the
attraction more entertaining. He was flummoxed by some of the design decisions,
such as the decision to arrange the benches on the train to face toward each other, like the front rows
of the parking lot trams. Marc told Walt quite adamantly that “people don’t
like to ride like that…it’s unnatural and uncomfortable.” So Walt challenged
him to re-design the attraction. Marc took the most exciting elements of the
Rainbow Caverns attraction and added several more show scenes, with the
intention of telling a story for each one. The pigs trapped a bobcat on top of
a cactus. The bears were fishing and napping by the river. The coyotes would
pull on a piece of meat.
The biggest element that Marc felt was sorely lacking at
Disneyland was humor. When you think about it, there was little to no humor in
any of the attractions in the 1950s. The Tomorrowland attractions were
science-fiction and deadly serious. Frontierland was made up of natural
attractions like the pack mule ride. The Fantasyland dark rides were very,
well, dark in tone. So that was Marc’s number one priority throughout his
career at Imagineering. Famously in Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland, he
saw a fox nodding up and down, and a hundred feet away there was another fox
shaking his head left to right. So he immediately placed the two foxes facing
each other, and suddenly you have humor. He would also do weird things like
design cactus in the attraction to look like the seven dwarfs. Whatever it
took. Overall, Marc’s designs for the Imagineers would present stories in each
scene, well-defined characters, broad thematic situations, and visual humor. These
would all become trademarks not only of Marc’s theme park style, but Disney’s theme
park style over the next decade.
Marc would also do the same thing with the Jungle Cruise,
adding the elephant bathing pool and, of course, the comedy spiel. Walt ate it
up. He was especially happy with JC, because it was an attraction that was
starting to get old with repeat visitors. JC was the attraction where Walt
famously overheard a family saying, “we don’t have to go on that, we’ve already
seen it” as they walked past. Walt was determined from then on to add as much
repeatability as possible to his attractions, starting with JC.
The second major development in Disneyland’s history during
this time was Walt’s sudden obsession with Audio-Animatronics. As the story
goes, while on vacation Walt was wandering around a store and saw a little
mechanical bird in a cage. He bought the little bird and took it back to his
Imagineers and said, “We have to find a way to do this!” He had his buddies in
the machine shop (Roger Broggie and Wathel Rogers) take the bird apart to see
how it worked. He would then spend the next few years working with his
Imagineers to bring Audio-Animatronics to life. From the Dancing Man figure of
Buddy Ebsen to the little mechanical recreation of So Dear to My Heart to the singing Barbershop Quartet, the
Imagineers continued to make progress in constructing bigger and better
animatronics.
Eventually, Walt hit upon the idea for an Adventureland
restaurant where an animatronic Confucius would regale diners with his stand-up
routine and impressions of Buddy Hackett (okay, he would impart wisdom and
stuff).
GET IT??!! Come on, this could have been great!
Since the Imagineers would have such a hard time bringing to life a
humanized animatronic, eventually Walt would return to the source and replace
the Chinese philosopher with a restaurant full of tiki birds, who would sing
and serenade the diners throughout their meal. As we all know, the restaurant
idea was abandoned, and the Enchanted Tiki Room became the first
Audio-Animatronic attraction.
Over the period of a year in 1962-1963, Adventureland got a
lot of loving and received a major makeover, with the addition of the Tiki
Room, the new and improved Jungle Cruise, and the Swiss Family Robinson
Treehouse. This was the most action Disneyland had seen since 1959. However,
after these attractions opened, Walt tasked the entire Imagineering team to
work on the four Disney attractions at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. So,
Disneyland would not see any new attractions for another few years.
The Rogues Gallery/Pirate Wax Museum Overview and History,
1959-1964
Picking up where we left off, right before plans for the New
York World’s Fair came to fruition, Walt gave the go-ahead to start
construction on the New Orleans Square project, which would be the first new
themed land built since the park’s opening. Construction on New Orleans Square
began, to the point where steel beams for the Pirate Wax Museum were put in
place in the basement underneath the construction site. However, like
everything else at Disneyland, New Orleans Square would be halted so the
Imagineers could work on attractions for the World’s Fair.
But before this event happened, the Pirates project
underneath New Orleans Square was given to Marc Davis, at around the same time
he was helping with the Tiki Room. Walt gave Marc only vague instructions; he
knew that he wanted to have “something” with pirates, but he was never able to
articulate exactly what. So, without any real options (a standard dark ride or
train ride would be inappropriate in the NOS basement location), the project
became a walking tour/wax museum almost by default. Marc would go on a trip and
found influences in the Madame Tussaud’s wax museums around the country, as
well as the Chamber of Horrors attraction in London.
The original wax museum concept was very dark, with
influences of the voodoo past of New Orleans (some of which can be seen at the
Mansion). Marc actually kept the tone for the attraction because of the
location, but injected humor and pathos into many of the wax museum scenes to
make it “more Disney.”
Sam McKim had already designed an attraction that was very
heavily themed, placing guests in a surprisingly immersive environment for
1957. Marc, of course, upped the ante even more. The guests would be fully
transported to the Caribbean Islands of the 18th century. This was not
to simply be a series of displays with wax figures. Marc designed an attraction
where the Guests would be thrown in the middle of a Caribbean town as it was
being ransacked by pirates (hey, just like the eventual attraction!). Each
scene would be a full show scene, Marc Davis action scenes as the tour guide sets
the mood and delivers the adventure spiel. The tour guide would take
approximately 50-70 Guests at a time through 6-8 show scenes (depending on
Marc’s draft version). Each scene would display a vignette of the pirates, and
each scene would include state-of-the-art lighting and projection effects, as
well as mechanical props.
With each pass that Marc did, the sets and tableaus became
more and more elaborate. Eventually, there was a real possibility that the
first human animatronics would be for the Rogues Gallery. After the failure of
the Confucius figure and before the Lincoln figure, the Imagineers had the idea
that each of the pirate show scenes would feature one pirate animatronic, who
could also act out the plot. Eventually, this led to the idea that there would
not be any more tour guides. Guests would be let in 50-70 at a time, and would
be free to wander through the attraction at their leisure. Once an appropriate
amount of Guests left the attraction, another group would be let in. Each show
scene would come to life every 5 minutes or so, and guests could spend as much
time as they wanted inside the attraction. However, once the Imagineers reached
this point, all Disneyland projects were put on hold for the World’s Fair.
Haunted Mansion Original Versions and History, 1957-1964
As we left off, Ken Anderson had once again taken over the
Mansion project in 1957. Anderson was an appropriate choice for Walt, not only
because he worked on the original Main Street Haunted House but also because he
was the lead designer for the Fantasyland collection of dark rides. Anderson
would pour his heart and soul into designing the Mansion before leaving to
return back to the animation division to work on 101 Dalmatians. And he would certainly have an interesting and
convoluted conception period.
No kidding, Anderson went through no less than four distinct versions for the overall
plot of the Mansion. Before he began, he talked with Walt about what he had in
mind for the concept. As Walt usually did with these sorts of projects, he gave
Ken his feelings of what the attraction should be, but left out many crucial
details. He would often leave it to his Imagineers to fill in the blanks. For
the Mansion, Walt wanted to have the idea that it would be a “retirement home”
for ghosts, since he “felt bad” that they had nowhere to go.
He also liked the
idea that the Mansion be designed to look like a big mansion or plantation from
the Old South. Beyond that, he didn’t have much. Anderson then went to work. He
did copious research on southern mansions and plantations, eventually birthing
the iconic Louisiana plantation house/antebellum mansion that exists today (to
note, Walt did not like the look of Anderson’s mansion, thinking it looked too
dirty and run-down, and it featured lots of dead trees and hanging Spanish Moss
lining the pathway to the Mansion’s entrance. Anderson would often fight with
Walt on this, insisting that a haunted mansion should actually look haunted. But
Walt was adamant that “the ghosts take care of the inside, and we take care of
the outside.” Eventually the Disneyland Mansion would be cleaned up and feature
a neat and tidy front lawn as Walt wanted. But the look of the Mansion itself
is very close to Anderson’s original concept).
For the story of the Mansion, Anderson drew upon not just
the horror tradition in Hollywood, but also the Winchester Mystery House, the
infamous 161-room mansion with doors and stairways that lead literally to
nowhere. Anderson’s first story concept (remember, at this point the House is a
walk-through attraction) involved the bloodthirsty Captain Gore, owner of the
Mansion. You would be lead through the Mansion by your tour guide Beauregard
the Butler (for real). The Mansion was to be the seaside manor of the old sea
captain named Gore, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances years
earlier. The tour began in one of the front rooms, reached by descending a set
of stairs from the entrance. A precursor to the eventual Stretch Room sequence,
after the butler completes his introduction, the entire floor of the front room begins to descend, and Guests
realize that they are actually on a ride platform/elevator. The floor descends
into the basement, where the tour begins. Along the way, there are the expected
special effects elements: secret passageways, changing portraits, wandering
statues, watching walls, and inanimate objects come to life. One especially
memorable scene involved a pair of hands emerging from a secret panel in the
wall behind the butler. The story would be told through several animated window
displays (similar to the Rogues Gallery), eventually revealing that Captain
Gore killed his wife Priscilla and hung himself in the attic.
Anderson’s second story involved the Blood Family of
Bloodmere Manor. The Blood Family was not a group of vampire serial killers but
just an unlucky family who owned the Mansion but died under mysterious
circumstances. As the story goes (and this is played out in a similar sequence
and tone to the Captain Gore story, including many similar tricks and effects),
ghosts began to haunt the Mansion after the deaths of the Blood Family. The
subsequent owners tried to make changes to the house (where it is mysteriously
always night), but the ghosts wouldn’t let them, always playing pranks on the
construction workers, and the Mansion was left abandoned. This attraction was a
similar walking tour attraction.
A Ken Anderson show scene
The third version of the story was probably the weirdest
version, because instead of a tour guide, Guests would have actually been
accompanied by Walt Disney himself! Of course, Walt would not be physically
present, but his recorded voice would lead the tour group, Ghost Host-like,
through each show scene. The Walt version of the attraction was similar to the
Blood story, with the added element of a “ghost wedding” climax at the end
(bringing the idea of Priscilla the bride back in).
The fourth and final version combined elements from all of
the above. Anderson kept the Blood story but also brought back the sea captain
and his wife as being two of the ghosts residing in the Mansion. An entire
scene was built around their story, climaxing in a major cool flooding effect
of the room the Guests were standing in. This final version featured an added
climax of the Headless Horseman (of Ichabod Crane fame) breaking up the ghost
wedding at the end (this scene was actually quite similar to the current
Mansion graveyard scene, and is undoubtedly the impetus behind the final
version).
Though Walt was not completely satisfied, he gave Anderson
and the Imagineers the go-ahead to continue with the development of the
Mansion, and to create mock-ups and models of the eventual show scenes. During
this time, Walt felt it was time for the Mansion to gain some extra
inspiration, so he recruited Imagineering legends Yale Gracey and Rolly Crump
to brainstorm ideas about the spooky effects to be used in the Mansion. This
was probably his most inspired decision. Rolly Crump was actually an amateur
magician and was a whiz with kinetic sculptures and weird architectural
features, and he knew the secrets to many of the oldest magic tricks. Yale
Gracey was a mechanical genius and model builder, and knew the secrets to many
of the movie industry’s go-to special effects. Both were, to put it mildly,
outside-the-box thinkers. The two of them would spend most of 1959, locked in
the same office, dreaming of mind-blowing effects for the Mansion. And
eventually, they delivered them, in scene after scene after scene.
After a few years of work, like the New Orleans
Square/Pirates projects Walt approved the next phase of development for the
Mansion. However, he still wasn’t entirely convinced with the product. The
Operations team thought the show was too long, since each scene took 3-4
minutes, having 6 or so scenes (plus walking) made the tour over 30 minutes
long. Walt also wasn’t big on the walk-through format because of the Sleeping
Beauty Diorama, and he still didn’t like the run-down look of the outside of
the Mansion. But plans continued.
After a while, the Mansion had to get kicked to the northern
section of NOS. Though it was originally planned for the area between NOS and
Adventureland, this land was suddenly swallowed up by the Swiss Family
Treehouse and the Indian section of the expanded Jungle Cruise. So, the Mansion
was set to replace the Swift Chicken Plantation Restaurant. Disneyland souvenir
maps and advertisements claimed that the Mansion would open by 1963.
Construction began on the exterior of the Mansion, and was actually completed by 1963. But
alas, Walt still wasn’t happy with the final product, so the Mansion sat empty,
with the Mansion itself sitting only as a façade. Before plans were halted,
Operations had finally got some of its way. They increasingly pushed for more
and more capacity, and finally the Imagineers came up with the idea that the
attraction building be built outside
the berm, with an underground tunnel/themed area to connect the entrance and
the show building. This would allow the Imagineers to have room enough to build
two identical walk-through
attractions, for more capacity. Most stories agree that the Imagineers came up
with this idea (the show building outside the berm) for Mansion first, before
using it for Pirates. This is the point where all Disneyland projects were put
on hold for the World’s Fair, and the Mansion sat empty for years, with only
Marty Sklar’s tantalizing advertisement for ghosts to get youngsters far and
wide to wonder what was in that spooky antebellum Mansion.
This is a Ken Anderson original...so yeah, I'd say it was pretty close to the mark
Pirates of the Caribbean Finalization, 1965-1967
You’ll notice that we skipped the history of Disneyland from
1965-1970. This section is very simple, since most of the
attention was given to Pirates and Mansion. Once Walt and Imagineers were done
with the World’s Fair, they returned back to Disneyland (and in the background,
Walt started plans for Project X in Florida). During this time, Walt’s
imagination was running on overdrive, as the Fair and the Florida idea (plus
the Mineral King Ski Resort, plus CalArts, plus Mary Poppins, plus Jungle Book,
plus…) had unleashed his creative instincts. And as we all know, Walt Disney
hated sequels, and was always looking for something bigger and better that he
could do next. During the 1965-1970 time frame, Walt decreed three orders of
business for Disneyland: first, bring the attractions of the New York World’s
Fair to Disneyland. Second, finish the New Orleans expansion. And third,
complete a complete renovation of Tomorrowland, which Walt had felt had been
unfinished since the park opened. These three objectives were completed, some
after his death. The four World’s Fair pavilions found their way to Disneyland:
the Pepsi/UNICEF Pavilion (It’s a Small World at the back corner of
Fantasyland), the General Electric Progressland Pavilion (the Carousel of
Progress show, a staple of the New Tomorrowland), the Illinois Pavilion (Great
Moments with Mr. Lincoln in the Main Street Opera House) and the Ford Pavilion
(dinosaurs appeared in the Primeval World Diorama on the last leg of the
Disneyland Railroad, and the conveyance system for the Ford Magic Skyway was
used as inspiration for the Peoplemover, again part of the New Tomorrowland).
And of course, Tomorrowland received its extreme makeover, with several new
attraction experiences, including (most relevant to this article) Adventure
Thru Inner Space, the first attraction to use the Omnimover conveyance method
for the ride vehicles.
And so Walt also had the Imagineers pick up the plans for
the New Orleans expansion. At this point, Marc Davis’s star was rapidly rising,
having not only hit home runs with the Mine Train and Jungle Cruise, but also
with the Tiki Room and It’s a Small World, which was designed and built on an
incredibly rushed timeline. Coming back from the Fair, Marc picked up where he
left off on Pirates. His first inspiration, approved by Walt, was to make
Pirates less scary/voodoo-y and instead play up the pirates to have broader
personalities and have more potential for comedic moments. The story, then, would
be turned into more of an adventure tale like Treasure Island rather than a horror/mystery.
As Marc started to work, another necessary change became
apparent. The World’s Fair had taught the Disney operators about the need for
increased capacity (since at this time, Guests were paying with tickets to go
on each ride). The Fair really impressed upon Disneyland’s operators how fast
Guests could be moved through an attraction. There was enormous pressure on the
current planned walk-through adventures (including Pirates and Mansion) to
include a much faster and more efficient means of conveyance. The obvious
answer for Pirates was a boat conveyance system. Not only did it fit
thematically, but a high-capacity boat system was constructed for It’s a Small
World, which could then carry more than 3,000 Guests per hour through the
attraction with an endless procession of 22-passenger boats (much better than
the walk-through, which would average about 800-900). Dick Nunis, then an
Operations Director and the eventual President of Walt Disney Attractions, was
insistent that Pirates be given a boat system. Walt and the Imagineers agreed,
on one condition. When Claude Coats was assigned to the project and began to
work on the ride layout, he hated the Small World fiberglass flume system. He
suggested instead that the boats be put on a guided path through a natural
waterway. This would not only work within the bayou/pirate bay setting, but
would also help with reflecting the lighting and the dark ambience of the attraction,
as well as give the feeling that the ransacked town had been “flooded.” This
would provide Guests, as Coats described, “a genuine waterborne adventure.”
And so, with the new ride idea in place, the Pirates concept
would have to outgrow the basement area that had originally been assigned to
the Rogues Gallery. Like with Mansion, the Imagineers were to build the show
building outside the berm. The boats would plunge down a waterfall into a
prelude “caverns” area (actually the original area for the wax museum), where
they would also flow underneath the Disneyland Railroad tracks, until they
finally reached the show building in all its full glory. The jail scene would
then be the return to the park proper underneath the tracks, where a “reverse
waterfall” would take Guests back up to New Orleans Square and the load area. The
show building would be constructed in an area that was once used for
Holidayland, which was a large patch of land that Walt put aside to invite
companies to Disneyland to have picnics. Along with picnic areas were softball
fields and event tents for other companies to host parties and get-togethers,
where their Guests could also enter Disneyland proper through Magnolia Park.
And so, everyone said goodbye to Holidayland.
And so the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction was born. Marc
Davis understood the layout of the scenes now that Guests would be passing on
boats and not standing in one place for several minutes. All the scenes had to
be simple and broad, because each scene would act as a piece of a puzzle. Marc
loved to say, and repeated often, that the theme and atmosphere of an
attraction mattered more than the plot. After all, Pirates has very little
plot. Marc often repeated that what was important was that Guests experience
the “idea” of pirates, not the plot of a pirate movie. It is how you put Guests
in the headspace, and let them use their imaginations. It is about the
experience, the feeling of the attraction. This is part of the reason why
survey after survey proves that Guests find non-plot driven attractions like
Pirates, Mansion, Space Mountain, Jungle Cruise, and Small World to be far more
memorable than the more recent plot-heavy attractions.
To support Marc’s brilliant show scenes, Claude Coats and
John Hench put on a tour de force in designing the backgrounds and ride layout
for the attraction. The mood and tone in Pirates throughout is literally note
perfect, from the lighting, the colors, the atmosphere, everything. Coats and
Hench not only were artistic geniuses, but, as true background artists, knew
that backgrounds were supposed to support
the action, and not be an artistic statement in itself. One of the most unsung
artistic efforts in cinematic history was Claude Coat’s brilliant work on Lady and the Tramp, which is full of
amazing Victorian background art and stage-setting, yet is always overlooked,
because every frame of the background art is designed to support the story, and
not cry out for attention. If you have the Lady
and the Tramp Platinum DVD, I whole-heartedly recommend watching the art
documentary where current Disney artists marvel over Coats’s background art for
the alley dog chase scene. It is so masterful, but you’d never notice, because
you’re so caught up in the story itself! Coats and Hench do the same thing with
Pirates. Both of them were truly unsung heroes of art in the Imagineering
circles.
Walt had also plucked X. Atencio from the middle ranks of
the animation division to write the show script for Pirates. While X. was
hesitant at first, like Blaine Gibson before he was picked by Walt to take up
sculpting (and become the finest sculptor at the company), he trusted that Walt
knew what he was doing (smart move). X studied several dozen pirate movies and
read plenty of pirate history to get the slang and pacing of the dialogue down.
He and Walt also decided that there should be a song sung by the pirates in the
attraction to take some of the edge off the rascally pirates, and to provide a
sense of thematic continuity. X came up with a few lyrics and presented them to
Walt, thinking he would give the idea to the Sherman Brothers (who had written
the songs for the Tiki Room and Small World, as well as Mary Poppins). But
nope, Walt just told X to see George Bruns to come up with the music. So X, with
no music training whatsoever, wrote all of the lyrics for “Yo Ho, A Pirate’s
Life for Me.” The brilliant George Bruns (another unsung artistic hero who
wrote the background music for Sleeping
Beauty, Jungle Book, and the Davy Crockett series, among many others) then
devised the melody for the song and wrote it into the background music for the
entire attraction, which set the mood brilliantly.
These artistic grand slams run through every aspect of the
attraction, from Blaine Gibson’s character models to the animatronic animation
to Alice Davis’s costumes. And it was all conducted in perfect unison by Walt,
the old Mousetro himself. Like the greatest fantasy orchestra of all time, the
Imagineers on the Pirates team conducted a mind-blowing symphony. We are so
lucky that, due to the foreverness of the theme park, we can experience the
artistic brilliance of Pirates over and over again, year after year. We can
experience it in person, live, every time, not on a recording or a facsimile.
The world should be so lucky. Pirates opened in 1967, only a few months after
New Orleans Square itself and Walt’s passing, and is probably the most visited
and successful theme park attraction in history. It is little wonder why many
fans consider Pirates of the Caribbean to be the greatest attraction of all
time.
Haunted Mansion Finalization, 1965-1969
The Mansion, like its previous history, had a slightly more
convoluted path to realization once the Imagineers returned from the World’s
Fair. Since Ken Anderson had gone back to animation, Marc Davis and Claude
Coats were chosen to be the artistic leads, with the help of Rolly Crump and
Yale Gracey (still working on those effects). They would eventually be joined
by X. Atencio after his work on Pirates, who was recruited to write the script.
The new Imagineering team set to work to revamp the Mansion idea.
The problem was, they were all pushing and pulling in
different directions. Claude Coats predominantly created background art for the
walk-through, scarier Mansion experience, with dark scenes and creepy horror
movie atmosphere. Yale Gracey, taking a cue from Pirates and the Operations
team that kept pushing for more capacity, started working on plans for a boat
ride through a submerged and flooded Mansion, which was sinking into the bayou
due to the curses of Captain Blood. Marc Davis ditched the tour guide idea
(similar to what he did on Pirates) and instead came up with the “Ghost Host”
concept, where a disembodied ghost voice would take Guests around the house and
set up the story for each scene. Marc also gave the Mansion a much lighter
tone. He drew an endless amount of humorous ghost scenes that were far closer
to the Mickey, Donald, and Goofy Lonesome
Ghosts cartoon than they were to Ken Anderson’s haunted horror house.
After a while, Walt was fed up with the time being wasted on
making so many versions of the Mansion and challenged the Mansion’s lead
artists to pitch their best ideas for what should be included. The best ideas
would stay in, the others would be tossed out. But from that day on, the entire
team would have to work together toward making the Mansion a reality, like they
did on Pirates. Walt liked Marc’s Ghost Host idea, as well as Yale’s effects.
But the team couldn’t decide on whether the Mansion should be more of a spoof,
as Marc Davis championed (which he said would make the ride “more Disney,” like
Jungle Book or Winnie the Pooh), or more like the iconic “dark house,” the one
glimpsed in the Hollywood horror movies, which Claude Coats supported and that
Ken Anderson had developed. And then came Rolly Crump’s idea. Which came out of
absolute nowhere.
Rolly didn’t think the Mansion should be funny, or scary.
No, he said, there was a third option. He thought it should be…strange. Just
flat-out strange. Like Salvador Dali/Pink Elephants on Parade strange. He
wanted the Mansion to be different. He thought the funny Mansion would be too
similar to the Marc Davis-inspired Disney attractions and the Mickey Mouse
cartoons. He thought Guests would have seen 1,001 haunted house movies and
didn’t want to see another. He told Walt Disney right in front of the entire
team, “if we don’t do something different, then Haunted Mansion is just going
to be the same old thing.”
So Walt asked what exactly he had in mind. That’s when Rolly
came up with his weird designs. His REALLY weird designs. Like to the point
where I can’t even describe the designs, they’re so weird.
So this one is like…a mirror fish with a…okay, you know
what, screw it. I’m not even going to try.
So they were out there. REALLY, REALLY out there. Walt
absolutely loved the designs, but didn’t know what to do with them. He didn’t
want the attraction to be covered with these sorts of designs, yet he wanted
them SOMEWHERE. Walt went home that night, and stayed up most of the night
thinking about it. He roared into Rolly’s office the next day. “You son of a
gun, that stuff drove me crazy all night long, but I finally know what to do
with it!”
Thus was born Rolly Crump’s Museum of the Weird. Walt
explained to Rolly that the Museum would be a pre-show area for the Mansion
walk-through experience, sort of Adventurer’s Club on steroids. It would be the
first room Guests encountered when they walked through the entrance, before
they were led on the tour. Guests could spend as much time as they wanted in
the Museum (someone even took the concept into overdrive and suggested, similar
to Pirates, that there could be a restaurant experience attached before Guests
entered the attraction, sort of a haunted Blue Bayou). Some of the figures
would come to life and talk to the Guests, or just be static effects. For
example, Rolly had a concept for a gypsy wagon that would spring to life every
few minutes, and various heads and miniature figures on the wagon would move
and talk.
"What's that, mommy?"
"Nothing honey, probably just another pointless prop for Goofy's Candy Company"
Unfortunately, the creative momentum of these meetings would
not last. Walt passed away soon after. Now that the orchestra had lost its
conductor, there was a great deal of uncertainty as to how to proceed, until
Roy Disney got Imagineering back on track and focused on the Florida Project.
At Disneyland, their main priorities were to finish Pirates and NOS proper, as
well as the Tomorrowland renovation. Haunted Mansion was put on hold once more.
But once these attractions were completed, the Mansion began
life again. And this time, it came with a unique (and very lucky) spark of
inspiration. While the Mansion was in a holding pattern, the Imagineers had
designed the Adventure Thru Inner Space attraction in Tomorrowland. Taking a
cue from the Ford Magic Skyway/Peoplemover means of conveyance, mechanical
genius Bob Gurr invented the Omnimover system, where an unbroken chain of ride
vehicles would be linked together and constantly moving in unison throughout
the attraction. The omnimover cabs were like shells, framing the action in
front of the Guests, and the mechanical stand underneath the vehicles could
swivel the Guests a full 360 degrees to view different show scenes, allowing
for a full panoramic yet still cinematic experience. The idea was perfect for
the Mansion. The shells were painted black and the Doom Buggy was born.
In an incredible lightning in a bottle sequence of events,
all of the opposing factions of the Mansion’s design not only worked together,
but somehow ludicrously managed to fit in segments of everyone’s design ideas into the finished product! The fact that
the Mansion still works brilliantly as a singular product is a testament that
the Imagineers were all geniuses, not just Walt Disney. Despite their different
opinions, everyone worked together to make what they considered to be the best
Mansion possible. Claude Coats’s horror house atmosphere dominates the first
half of the attraction, with horror movie images such as the hanged man above
the Stretch Room, the floating candelabra, and the corridor of (knocking)
doors. Marc Davis includes many of his designs in the second half of the
attraction, where the ghosts come out to play. Marc’s sequences also make it
appropriate to introduce X. Atencio’s ghostly theme song, “Grim Grinning Ghosts.”
(One of the unsung heroes of the Mansion was composer Buddy Baker, who not only
composed the theme song but the background music throughout the entire
attraction. Buddy at the time was composing music for Winnie the Pooh, and
would eventually compose the music on many classic Disney attractions,
including If You Had Wings and much of EPCOT Center. Buddy’s music somehow fit
in to both Claude’s dark Mansion and Marc’s lighter Mansion. The guy was
brilliant)
Ken Anderson’s elevator platform preshow was brilliantly
resurrected to become the Stretch Rooms, the ingenious way the Imagineers get
the Guests underneath the Disneyland Railroad tracks and into the show building
beyond the berm (the hitchhiking ghosts sequence gets them back into the park
proper). Ken Anderson’s Séance Room and Graveyard ideas were also kept in the
final product (though with many Marc Davis changes).
And, last but not least, even Rolly Crump’s Museum of the
Weird made appearances throughout the attraction, as hard as it is to believe.
Whenever you see a surreal item in the Mansion, such as the “Donald Duck” chair
in the candelabra sequence, the disembodied arms as torch-holders in the Unload
area, or the demon clock perpetually striking midnight, these are Rolly Crump
originals inspired by similar designs for Museum of the Weird.
A Rolly Crump addition to the Unload area
And so the two most mind-blowing attractions in theme park
history were born, thanks to the brilliance of Walt Disney and his Imagineers.
It just goes to show their eternal respect for artistic inspiration: both of
these attraction ideas were conceived before Disneyland even opened. Yet Walt
and his artists continued to pick at them, a little at a time, because they
knew the concepts were right, and were just waiting on the proper execution. It
is so satisfying to study them today, because they were true artists,
unhindered by real-world problems, like a team of world-class chefs preparing
an ultimate feast with all the ingredients in the world at their disposal. And
yet, because of the nature of the theme park, we can devour these artistic
expressions right now, again, and the experience is almost exactly the same as
when the attractions opened 50 years ago. Here’s to 50 years of thrills from
these two monoliths of artistic expression. And here’s to 50 more.
**Send Jeff a line at HamGamgee@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter @Parkscopejeff.
