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By Michael - June 6th, 2014 Like every other website, I am now required to meet a daily quota of posts about Star Wars.
Back in 1987, vacationers looking for a bit of “intergalactic pleasure travel” were able to embark for the first time on Star Tours at Disneyland. But while the attraction’s grand opening was held on January 9th, the evening before the park opened for a special preview event from 7 P.M. until midnight.
The “Interplanetary Launch Premiere Party” was a hard-ticketed event for Disney fans to get an early peek at the new E-ticket attraction. And, of course, it kicked off with a bit of pageantry.
There’s Jack Wagner doing his weird Obi-Wanish Serious Star Wars Voice™! There’s Jack Wagner as Disneyland space traffic control! There’s the exciting sounds of someone’s Casio! There’s banter! There’s… “beaming”?
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By Michael - June 5th, 2014 Heard any Star Wars news lately? Nah, me either.
Considering the recent explosion of all things Star Wars since Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm, it’s interesting to look back at the beginnings of the company’s involvement with the Lucas empire. Overtures between the two parties went back as far as the Ron Miller era, when Imagineer Tony Baxter and others began to conceive ideas based on the Lucas films, but things finally came to a boil after Michael Eisner arrived in Burbank.
Star Tours was one of the very first attractions, alongside Splash Mountain, to be selected for construction by Eisner (or rather, his son) on his early visits to Imagineering. Having no previous theme park experience, Eisner was shocked to discover that it would take a few years to actually complete the attraction after his greenlight; the impulse to get something Lucas-related in the park as soon as possible led to the creation of Captain EO.
On January 9, 1987, Star Tours had its ribbon-cutting ceremony in Disneyland’s Tomorrowland. There was action. There was adventure. There was interpretive dance. Yes, just in case you forget it was the 1980s, the opening ceremony features a somewhat unexpected Star Wars ballet. Then Eisner and Lucas come out to do the ribbon cutting itself, featuring perhaps the world’s only cord-powered lightsaber in existence. I guess this was when they didn’t have cordless lightsabers, or car phones.
There are dignitaries in the audience, too, and they’re a cut above the typical grand opening celebrity list. Mercury astronauts Gordo Cooper and Deke Slayton are in attendance, as is Betty Grissom – wife of Gus Grissom, who died in the Apollo 1 fire. Cooper, Slayton, and Mrs. Grissom had all been in attendance nearly a decade earlier for the Disneyland debut of Space Mountain. Cooper had also previously been on the Disney payroll, as a vice president of research during the early days of planning Epcot Center’s Future World.
Also present were aviators Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, as well as aircraft designer Burt Rutan. The trio were then in the public eye for their achievements with Voyager, the first aircraft to circumnavigate the globe without refueling (Burt Rutan continues to make news today, as the designer of SpaceShipOne and its successors).
Incidentally, you’ll note Eisner looking down as he introduces the guests. That’s because he has a cheat sheet painted onto the stage at his feet. You can read more about that, with pictures, here.
So forget about J.J.’s antics out in the desert, slip on those ballet shoes, and let’s go back to 1987 for some Star Tours pomp and circumstance. Be sure to stick around to the end to catch Jack Wagner’s kinda-sorta impersonation of Alec Guinness.
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By Michael - June 4th, 2014 Here’s something I’ve wanted to share for quite some time now – it’s a video that made the rounds on the Disney fan circuit years ago, and is still some of the best documentation out there of Tokyo DisneySea. This spectacular park – Tokyo Disney Resort’s “second gate” – opened in 2001, and is world-renowned as perhaps the most detailed and elaborate theme park ever made. In this video, you’ll get a sense as to why theme park fans revere its name.
The park overall has a nautical theme, with areas evoking ports of call from around the world as well as from the pages of fiction and fantasy. You can visit Renaissance-era Italy, or Captain Nemo’s mysterious volcanic hideaway. There’s turn-of-the-century New York City, the lost ruins of South America, and the exotic bazaars of Arabia. There’s even an undersea playground for aspiring mermaids. At the park’s entrance is the Hotel Miracosta, Disney’s most ornate and luxurious hotel.
One look at the video and you’ll understand why stateside fans clamor for a trip to Tokyo. It’s a shame so little documentation of the park is available here in America – the park’s many DVD and CD releases are only available for exorbitant prices on the secondary market, and there are no books or magazines available in English. An “art of” book for the park would surely do well sales-wise among fans worldwide.
This video was made in the park’s early years, so later additions like the park’s magnificent version of the Tower of Terror are missing. Of note is ride Sindbad’s Seven Voyages, which would go on to be completely reimagined in 2007 as Sindbad’s Storybook Voyage. The attraction’s overhaul saw it transformed into a more whimsical musical adventure, made much more “cute” to appeal to local sensibilities.
Hopefully the park will see some equally impressive expansions in the future, but for now sit back and enjoy the unparalleled beauty of Tokyo DisneySea.
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By Michael - April 22nd, 2014 
Fifty years ago, in Flushing Meadows, Queens, the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair opened its doors. This grand exposition featured exhibits from around the world in massive mid-century structures; it also included four marquee attractions developed by the Imagineers at WED Enterprises – General Electric’s Progressland, Ford’s Magic Skyway, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, and it’s a small world. This, perhaps, has proved to be the Fair’s greatest legacy. Five decades later – hard to believe, but true – those four attractions have paved the way for the modern Disney theme park experience. They each pioneered technologies that came to define what we think of as a “Disney” attraction; before the Fair, Disneyland was a very different park than the one it would be afterwards.
The Fair itself seems to have been the last great American expo to have a major cultural impact. There have been fairs since, true, but none have left the kind of lasting iconography of the 1964 Fair. I was born more than a decade after the Fair ended, but even in my childhood so many of the elements of the Fair – the Unisphere, the Disney shows, key elements of the architecture, and even the general attitude of bygone futurism – remained in the cultural currency. Perhaps it is the idealistic futurism that people still find appealing about the Fair; certainly, the event remains popular today with generations born long after most of the exhibits were bulldozed. The 1964 Fair occurred just as the mid-century shine started to wear off of America; while President Kennedy had already been lost, the country had yet to have its innocence ended with Vietnam, more assassinations, Nixon, the dominance of corporate greed, and everything that has followed. It was a time when even major corporations were still portrayed as innovative, benevolent forces, guaranteeing a “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow”.
We’ll be talking about each of these four masterpieces in the days and weeks to come, but I wanted to start with a reminder of this musical treasure which is a must-buy for any fan of the Fair, the Disney attractions it inspired, or just of Walt and the Sherman Brothers. It’s been out for several years now, but I’d advise picking one up before they become difficult to find. It’s a great set of music.
I also wanted to link to this old article of mine, which is my favorite story about the Fair and a fun look at all the logistics that had to go in to operating four major shows on the other side of the continent from Disneyland.
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By Michael - April 6th, 2014 
As if their current Mary Blair retrospective wasn’t enough to get you to the Walt Disney Family Museum this year, the museum has just announced a second exhibition that will debut later this year. Leading Ladies And Femmes Fatales: The Art Of Marc Davis will go on display in the museum’s Theater Gallery from April 30 to November 3, 2014. It will feature around 70 pieces ranging from pencil animation drawings to Imagineering concept art, and is co-curated by Michael Labrie, the museum’s director of collections and exhibitions, and animation legend Andreas Deja.
If you’re a reader of this blog then Davis is probably a household name; his long and varied career spanned the fields of animation, Imagineering, and fine art. He was the lead animator for iconic characters such as Tinker Bell, Malificent, and Cruella de Vil, and his inspirational drawings and gags led to the creation of a slew of signature Disney attractions such as Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, the Country Bear Jamboree, America Sings, and unbuilt masterpieces like Western River Expedition and the Enchanted Snow Palace. He was one of Walt’s Nine Old Men, and a true master among masters.
It’s a bit of a banner year for Davis; a glaring gap in Disney literature will be filled this fall when Disney Editions releases Marc Davis: Walt Disney’s Renaissance Man.
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The Progress City Primer
 From the Progress City archives comes this collection of 33 tall tales and true from Disney history. Available in paperback, hardback, and ebook formats. |
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