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The Carsland Conundrum

For Disney fans of a critical bent, it used to be easy knowing where to channel one’s rage. Disneyland falling apart from neglect and mismanagement? Blame Paul Pressler and his gang of idiots. Key elements of Animal Kingdom’s master plan left out on opening day? Blame Eisner, or the “pencil pushers”. California Adventure? Blame everyone […]

They’re Watching You

A subject that comes up often when discussing EPCOT of old is the strange giant dolls that used to roam the promenade around World Showcase before characters were allowed in the parks. Disney wanted to offer a completely different theme park experience at EPCOT; if people wanted characters, went the thinking, they could go […]

Neverworlds – The Lost Mediterranean Campground Of Euro Disney In Orlando

This is a strange one.

In 1987 The Walt Disney Company released a brochure to promote “Euro Disneyland”, their newly-planned resort complex near Paris. Since the design of the project itself was still in its early phases, a simple conceptual layout was the only piece of original artwork contained in the publication. The rest of […]

Hench On Hench

In a speech during the 1970s, author Ray Bradbury famously referred to Imagineering as a “Renaissance organization.” That was an apt metaphor; that first generation of Imagineers contained a remarkable collection of what could legitimately be called Renaissance men (and a handful of Renaissance women as well). These artists, many of whom had been […]

Watercrafting – Layin’ Keel, 1975

One of the many operational issues facing Walt Disney World when it opened in 1971 was inadequate transportation capacity. Walt Disney Productions simply ran out of time before the resort’s debut, and so the Magic Kingdom opened without enough operational monorails and watercraft to bring visitors in from the Transportation and Ticket Center. Every moving […]