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Now In Print… Four Decades of Magic

Word has arrived that Four Decades of Magic, the collection of essays we recently discussed and to which I contributed two essays, is now available. It’s currently available in print and for Kindle; the print version will be available at Amazon in about a week. Other authors in the collection include Foxx from Passport to Dreams old and New, Didier Ghez, Sam Gennaway, George from Imaginerding, and Mike Lee from Widen Your World. It should be worth a look!

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Destination D: Walt Disney World 40th

A good sign...

D23 has announced schedule and ticketing information for its upcoming Destination D: Walt Disney World event in May. Tickets will go on sale online at 1 PM EST on February 24th; the somewhat startling price for the two-day event is $175, or $215 for a ticket and registration of one Great Disney Scavenger Hunt team. The Scavenger Hunt will be held May 12-13, with Destination D following from May 14-15. The convention will be held at the Contemporary Resort’s Fantasia Ballroom. Last year’s Destination D at Disneyland sold out fairly quickly, so one expects that the pent-up demand that Walt Disney World fans have for attention will lead to another packed event this year.

The details for the event mirror closely the lineup of last year’s gathering at Disneyland. Remember that Destination D is on a much smaller scale than the D23 Expo, and the events are limited to a single room and a single slate of speakers and presentations. There’s no exhibit floor or anything like that, and the discussion is more narrowly focused.

Continue reading Destination D: Walt Disney World 40th

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Future Fantasias, 1940

“Maybe we ought to open up on those things instead of playing down to our medium or our public. That’s the very thing we like to have, a challenge.”
– Walt Disney

This single quote speaks volumes to explain the devout admiration and fascination so many hold for the works of Walt Disney. It also explains my great love of Fantasia, his studio’s 1940 masterpiece. My interest stems not only from the film itself, but from the underlying concept of the entire project; Fantasia was not meant to be a film unto itself, but rather a constantly renewing experiment in animation and music that would blur the lines between art forms and between what was considered “high” and “low” art. To prepare for this, the Disney studio was planning a stream of exciting new animation to be added to the Fantasia repertoire.

Continue reading Future Fantasias, 1940

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Walt Disney Vs. The Air Pirates

Walt 'Nickels' Disney's Gulfstream 1, preparing for combat. Not pictures: Nickels!

During the 1970s, Frank Stanek lead planning efforts at WED Enterprises and headed the development of Tokyo Disneyland, but back in 1964 he was a young cast member managing the business affairs of Disney’s “it’s a small world” attraction at the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair. Walt Disney had visited the fair several times, but Stanek wouldn’t have his first real conversation with Walt until an coincidental encounter on the tarmac at LaGuardia resulting from – of all things – a shortage of nickels.

In the early 1960s the nation was experiencing a coin shortage. Depending on region, various denominations of coinage became difficult to obtain in bulk, making things hard for operations like Disneyland that required lots of cash-on-hand on a daily basis. In California, nickels in particular became scarce. This wasn’t an issue in New York, and Roy Disney had befriended the manager of a bank near the fairgrounds who made sure Stanek had everything he needed.

Carl Freeberg, who ran the cash control department at Disneyland, grew tired of the situation and made a call to New York. “We’re having trouble getting nickels,” Freeberg told Stanek. “If you can get me nickels, I talked to the company aviation department, and they will fly the nickels back to me in California.”

Walt never flew himself, but was an aviation buff and had been an early adopter of planes for corporate purposes. The studio had been operating a Beechcraft Queen Air, which Walt had used to scout sites for “Disneyland East,” but before the fair opened in 1964 Disney upgraded to a Grumman Gulfstream 1 twin-engine turboprop.

Recalls Stanek, “He set up a shuttle system, and every week or thereabouts he would fly a load of Disney executives, creative people, whatever, sometimes with their wives, and he would fly them to New York for the fair.” Landing at LaGuardia Airport, Walt and his guests would be just a short drive from the fairground in Queens.

With Disney’s jet shuttling back and forth almost weekly, it gave Stanek an easy way to supply Disneyland with nickels. Carl Freeberg consulted with the aviation department, who said that there was room on the airplane to carry an additional 200 pounds of weight, and Stanek became, in his words, “the logistics expert on shipping nickels to California.” A bag of nickels straight from the bank is $200, and weighs forty pounds. Five bags of nickels, worth $1,000, weighs 200 pounds and was therefore equal to one passenger on the Disney aircraft.

So, Stanek put in an order for extra nickels from the bank and drove them to the airfield. The pilot said that they needed to distribute the weight throughout the craft, so, says Stanek, “we would stick them underneath the seats and spread them all throughout the aircraft.” The system worked well; Disneyland got their nickels, and everyone was happy. Every now and then a call would come in from California, and another batch of nickels was sent westward.

“One day,” recalls Stanek, “I get a call and Carl needs the nickels again and he says the plane’s in town. It was, I don’t know, Saturday morning or Sunday morning.” The plane was to take off early – 7:30 or 8 in the morning – so Stanek picked up the nickels at the bank the night before and, before the fair opened the next morning, took them in the company station wagon down to LaGuardia. The Disney craft was parked in the section of the airport devoted to private planes, separate from commercial aviation operations.

The pilot was there preparing for the flight, but, says Stanek, “What am I? I’m 24 years old. I say to myself, ‘I’m not leaving this money – it’s my money until that plane gets in the air.'” The nickels were loaded on the plane, but Stanek lingered on the tarmac waiting for it to depart. “And the next thing I know,” recalls Stanek, “Walt Disney is standing next to me.”

“He’s an early riser, so he got there with his wife before anybody else did. He had three or four other executives and their wives with him. I said, ‘Good morning, Walt,’ and he said, ‘Good Morning.’ He says to me, ‘What model aircraft is that over there?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ And then he says to me, ‘Who owns that aircraft? Is that Frank Sinatra’s aircraft?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know.'”

Stanek was starting to get worried. “Now I’m thinking to myself, he’s going to ask me another question and it’s going to be three strikes and I’m out. And so I said to Walt, ‘I’m sorry Walt, I don’t really work here and I know nothing about aircraft – I work for you!’ He said, ‘Oh! You work for me!’ I said, ‘Yep, I’m out at Small World and here’s what I do,’ you know. I introduced myself of course, and he said, ‘Well what are you doing here?'”

Stanek filled Walt in on the situation with the nickels, and his unique way of keeping Disneyland stocked with coins. “Of course he knew Carl Freeberg,” says Stanek, “because everybody at Disney knew everybody at that time. I said, ‘I’m sending Carl some nickels.'”

Most of us, at that point, would probably not have a lot to say about the nickel situation. That’s why we’re not Walt Disney.

“He listens to this story,” remembers Stanek, “and he called his wife over. He said, ‘Lilly, come over here. This is Frank Stanek, and guess what he’s doing? He just put $200,000 dollars worth of coins on the airplane!'”

So, $2,000 had become $200,000 dollars. Just a little exaggeration, right? Hardly.

“Now we’re going to fly off with this money on our airplane,” said Walt. “Can you imagine if we’re over Las Vegas and we get attacked by air pirates?”

Stanek laughs as he remembers Walt’s excitement. “He’s spinning this story right there to both of us, but he’s really addressing his wife. It was the most interesting, tremendous experience – you saw how Walt was thinking all the time about some kind of a storyline, about some creative thing.”

At eight in the morning, even. Inspired by a story about currency shortages.

“He had this whole plane attack,” says Stanek, “and they were under attack by air pirates and he was developing this whole storyline.” Eventually the rest of Walt’s party arrived, everyone said their goodbyes, and the plane departed. It was, no doubt, an interesting flight. Says Stanek, “I’m sure he spent the rest of the flight back thinking about that story and telling everybody on the plane about it.”

Walt Disney Versus the Air Pirates – that’s a movie I would watch.

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Soon In Print… Essays!

A month from today, I will return to the world of legitimate printed material for the first time since my days at the Daily Tar Heel when Four Decades of Magic: Celebrating the First Forty Years of Disney World is released. Published by Ayefour, who also released Project Future and Jim Korkis’s The Vault of Walt, this new volume contains twenty-eight essays written to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Walt Disney World.

A number of Disney writers, bloggers, and commentators have contributed to the project, including several good friends of Progress City. I contributed two essays – one, an extended look at the creation of the classic EPCOT attraction Horizons, and the other a brief look at the development of the EPCOT concept from 1971-78. It’s far from comprehensive, but I hope people enjoy it.

The book will be available soon on Amazon, and you can always get the latest news on Ayefour’s website.

Here’s the rest of the lineup from the book:

Foreword by Jim Hill

Introduction by Chad Emerson

The Sunset Boulevard that Was, Is, and Never Will Be – Tom Corless

When is the 3 O’Clock Parade? Then, Now, and Forever – Tom Corless

Tomorrow’s Windows: Looking Back at Horizons – Michael Crawford

A Brief History of the Future: From EPCOT to EPCOT Center – Michael Crawford

The Walt Disney World Monorail System – Jason Diffendal

Spaceship Earth – Jason Diffendal

Much Ado About Hoop-Dee-Doo – Greg Ehrbar

The 65th Year for Mickey, the Very First Visit for Kids – Greg Ehrbar

Walt Disney’s EPCOT and the Heart of Our Cities – Sam Gennawey

Joe & Carl: Two Men Who Built the World – Didier Ghez

Disney Brings Sports to the World – Adam Goswick

Whatever Happened to Beastly Kingdom? – Scott and Carol Holmes

Magic of the Night: The Evolution of Walt Disney World’s Nighttime Fireworks Displays – Debra Martin Koma

Meeting Mickey: Remembering Mickey’s Toontown Fair – Jim Korkis

For Your Pleasure: The Mythology and Reality of Pleasure Island – Jim Korkis

The Relative Truth About If You Had Wings – Mike Lee

Thunder Mesa & the Western River Expedition: A Neverending Story – Mike Lee

History of the Hoop Dee Doo Musical Revue – Chuck Mirarchi

History of the Main Street Electrical Parade – Chuck Mirarchi

History of the Contemporary & Polynesian Resort Hotels – Chuck Mirarchi

Walt Disney World Resorts That Never Were – Lou Mongello

Goodnight, George: A Ghost Story – Foxx Nolte

Another Magic Corner of the World – Foxx Nolte

EPCOT 1939 – Jeffrey Pepper

The Carousel of Progress: What Would Walt Think? – Michael Scopa

An Island Filled with Tropic Beauty, Colorful Birds, and the Mystery of Ben Gunn’s Buried Treasure! – George Taylor

Honoring the Cast: Insider Tributes & Homages – Kevin Yee

Theme Park Archaeology – Kevin Yee

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