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By Michael - June 23rd, 2009  IN THE FUTURE, CARS WILL TRAVEL AT SPEEDS OF UP TO SIXTY MILES PER HOUR!!There hasn’t been a lot of real news around here lately, as the parks continue to go without announcement of any new attractions. There have been a couple of interesting stories, though, in the Orlando Sentinel that I thought I’d post in the off chance that anyone had missed them.
Many of us have wondered over the last few months what the General Motors bankruptcy and government bailout would mean for their sponsorship of EPCOT’s Test Track. GM’s ten-year, $100 million contract expired at the end of March, and while Disney had previously admitted that negotiations were taking place, they’ve since clammed up entirely. The Sentinel’s Jason Garcia has been following the story, and wrote an excellent summary yesterday. Garcia reports rumors that GM has been receiving month-to-month extensions since March, and was about to sign a six-month contract before they were forced to declare bankruptcy this month.
Neither party will comment; Toyota and Honda, both previously rumored as possible replacements, deny any interest in the sponsorship. Disney charges mightily for these sponsorships, and such an outlay would be difficult to justify for any car company these days. Add to that the fact that a new sponsor would probably want more than a simple signage change, and one gets the idea that Disney and GM would just like to maintain the status quo.
I’m no fan of Test Track. I enjoy the outside loop, of course, but think that the entire attraction is a magnificent cop-out. It’s true that untold millions went into developing the ride system, but that left nothing to fund an actual show experience. I don’t want to ride through potholes in my regular car, so why would I want to in a fake car in an undecorated warehouse?
 Taft is trimmed down and ready to shine! In happier news, Sentinel blogger Dewayne Bevil has had a sneak preview of the revamped Hall of Presidents and offers several notes from a discussion with Eric Jacobson, senior vice president at Walt Disney Imagineering. The new show, as previously rumored, no longer tries to tell the generalized historical story of America, but instead focuses on the history of the presidency and the presidents themselves. Wisely, I think, it has also tightened the running time of the film segment in favor of expanding the animatronic scene.
The article also mentions the advanced new animatronic of President Obama, which will stand next to Lincoln. President Washington, who will speak for the first time, will surprisingly be voiced by actor David Morse. All the presidents have been reprogrammed, and some have been moved; this is a fantastic idea, and is intended to fix something that’s always bugged me – the “ping pong” effect that occurs at times during the roll call of presidents. Bevil says that the roll call itself will be at a more “leisurely” pace, which floors me. Since when has something at a Disney park been changed to be more “leisurely”? That’s like finding out they’ve closed a gift shop.
One odd thing – the article says that the attraction film “still” will end with a Space Shuttle taking off; this is peculiar as the show has always actually ended with an Saturn V rocket taking off…
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By Michael - June 22nd, 2009 In our recent article about Fantasia Gardens, I brought up the Plaza Swan Boats. If you read the linked articles about the Magic Kingdom attraction, which operated from 1973 to 1983, you might have noticed that while the ride was still in the park, one of the individual ride vehicles had been converted into a maintenance barge to help clean the park’s waterways at night. The so-called “Waterway Vacuum Boat” would do just that – make use of vacuums to clear debris from the water.
By total coincidence, I’ve come across this photo from 1978 that shows the Vacuum Boat in action; this is the first time I’ve seen a picture of it.
 Cast members Chuck Spivey and L.A. Hoitt operate the Waterway Vacuum Boat in front of the Crystal Palace in 1978 I’ve no idea if it’s still operational – do any of our Cast Member readers know?
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By Michael - June 21st, 2009 
In 1941, Walt Disney and fifteen artists from his studio set out on a tour of South America. The trip was part of the U.S. State Department’s Good Neighbor program, intended to foster goodwill in South America to prevent the spread of Nazism in the Western Hemisphere. Walt and his artists visited several countries, finding artistic inspiration that would result in the films Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros.
The above photo was taken in Argentina, where Walt’s group had been treated by local gauchos to an authentic Argentine barbecue. Walt posed for the photo in full gaucho costume, and with six-string in hand looked every bit the part of an Argentine cowboy.
This oft-overlooked time in Disney’s history is about to get some of the attention it deserves; a documentary film entitled Walt & El Grupo, from the Walt Disney Family Foundation and filmmaker Theodore Thomas (Frank and Ollie ), has been making the film festival circuit for the last year. In October of 2009, Disney Editions will release author J.B. Kaufman’s South of the Border With Disney: Walt Disney and the Good Neighbor Program, 1941-1948 , a title for which I am especially excited.
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By Michael - June 20th, 2009 
Some time ago, I mentioned that I was thinking about setting up an eBay account to help divest myself of some of the items I’ve come across in my research that I don’t need anymore. I hate to combine research and commerce, but I need get rid of some of these things to help continue to dig up the random and obscure goodies that I try to post here.
I figure I’ll put up a few of these items every so often; I’m starting off with a handful of Disney magazines, Eyes & Ears and a Disney annual report – you’ll find them here. Happy shopping!
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By Michael - June 19th, 2009 This one’s a bit of a surprise. Most Disney folks, myself included, upon reading that headline would probably think of the fairly well-known but unbuilt Fantasia Gardens – the boat attraction based on the animated film that was intended to be part of Animal Kingdom’s “Beastly Kingdom.”
 Concept art for the Animal Kingdom’s Fantasia Gardens boat ride I was shocked to find out that this wasn’t the first iteration of this concept. The idea of a Fantasia-based boat ride goes back to the 1960s at Disneyland, and was seriously discussed as a replacement for the Magic Kingdom’s defunct Swan Boats attraction in the 1980s. A quick internet search reveals that, not surprisingly, David Koenig had already beat me to this story six years ago, but I have a picture!
First, a bit of history. In the Winter, 1990, issue of WD Eye, Imagineering’s John Hench described an attraction that Marc Davis and Claude Coates had developed to replace Disneyland’s Fantasyland Motor Boats. The ride, tentatively titled Garden of the Gods, would feature music and scenes from Fantasia as well as character-shaped “water sculptures.” According to Hench, the Marc Davis-designed characters would literally be “carved” out of water. This intriguing concept was abandoned because of ambient noise from the adjoining Autopia cars; the noisy motors from guests’ cars would drown out the classical music from the Fantasia soundtrack.
According to Koenig, Claude Coates had considered a walk-through version of the Fantasia Gardens concept, but this idea was adapted when Walt Disney World was looking to replace the Swan Boats after their 1983 closure. The Swan Boats had been a stop-gap measure in 1973 to help ameliorate the lack of ride capacity in the then-new Magic Kingdom, but as the park expanded, their popularity allegedly waned. There was little purpose to the fairly short and uneventful attraction, although it often had a long queue due to its ride system; in many ways the situation presaged that of the similarly-fated Discovery River Boats at Animal Kingdom.
 This 1987 rendering by Guy Vasilovich shows the animated grand finale for the Magic Kingdom’s unbuilt Fantasia GardensCoates conferred with Katy Moss Warner of Walt Disney World’s Parks Horticulture group about crafting the attraction’s characters from topiary bushes, discovering that it was possible to create flowering topiaries. The ride would consist of several separate scenes based on sequences from the film; you can learn more about the attraction and the reason for its demise in Koenig’s article.
The attraction would later be considered for use in Disneyland Paris, and most famously as a key element of the Animal Kingdom’s heavily promoted land of mythical creatures. That’s four parks, at least, that it’s been considered for, so don’t count Fantasia Gardens out. It might just pop up again someday.
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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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