Progress City, U.S.A.

A Trip To The World’s Fair

By Michael - September 12th, 2008

$Disneyland Goes to the World\'s Fair$ There’s been a big surprise for Disney music fans this week – without notice or warning there appeared on Amazon and other online retailers a listing for a 4-CD box set entitled Disneyland Goes to the World’s Fair. The collection is set for release on November 11th, 2008. Far from being unknown to Disney music aficionados, this set has been known to many for years – we just never thought we’d see it!

A musical retrospective based on the Disney pavilions of the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair – the Carousel of Progress, Magic Skyway, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln and it’s a small world – was originally planned in 2001 by former Imagineer and prolific Disney author, Bruce Gordon. When that release ran into rights issues – rumor has it that there were legal hurdles concerning the tracks from Ford’s Magic Skyway attraction – the project was scrapped. The project was revived in 2004 when Gordon and Walt Disney Records park music guru Randy Thornton worked together on the Disneyland 50th anniversary retrospective set, “A Musical History of Disneyland.” But when Gordon left the company and subsequently passed away in 2007, all seemed lost for the World’s Fair compilation.

But this long process, as described in a posting by Thornton himself, has a happy ending for music fans. Thornton has continued the project, restoring and remastering the source elements to provide a set of tracks far clearer than the original temp elements that were leaked onto the web years ago. The set will be accompanied by liner notes based on Gordon’s original work, and all legal hurdles have been cleared which precludes the need for this to be a “limited edition.” The artwork above (which erroneously states “limited edition”) is from Gordon’s original work on the project; Thornton is currently working to clear it for use on the current release.

From the Amazon listing:

DISNEYLAND GOES TO THE WORLD’S FAIR is a rare “behind the scenes” look at Walt Disney’s contribution to the 1964 World’s Fair. It was here where Walt unveiled several unique attractions and exhibits that would forever change not only DISNEYLAND, but greatly influence the future of Disney Theme Parks yet to be imagined.

THIS 4 CD BOX SET includes a 24-page full color booklet and more than 3 HOURS OF RECORDINGS from the classic attractions and exhibits Walt Disney and his team of artists created for the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

The original 2001 release, which has been traded online amongst Disney fans for years, is fantastic, which only makes it more exciting to finally be able to purchase a high-quality version with liner notes. Even if you might already have a version of this sitting on your hard drive, it’s time to step up and buy a real copy to show Walt Disney Record executives that there’s a healthy market for park-related releases. Hopefully this trip to the World’s Fair will only prove that there’s “a great big beautiful tomorrow” for Disney music fans.

Now Featuring: Navelgazing!

By Michael - September 11th, 2008

In preparation for an impending post, I’d first like to have a brief discussion of the policy concerning rumor-mongering here at Progress City. This is something I’ve never addressed before but feel that it’s important as I’m always irritated when rumor dissemination is accompanied by coy allusions and obtuse hedging on where, exactly, the information originates. When we started this site I thought it was always important to document, when available, the origin of rumor-related information. I attempt to not repeat “received wisdom” that circulates in fan communities without attribution, as this would lead to an endless cycle of monorail expansion rumors and “Shadowlands” speculation.

I’ll make this clear – I know no one at WDI or WDC and, as such, have no “inside scoop” on what’s being planned for Disney parks. If anyone wants to sign up as an informant I’d be more than happy to oblige, but for now I depend on things passed on to me by others who do know people “in the know.” I trust these people implicitly to be passing along good information, but occasionally I cannot pass such information along as it’s told to me in confidence. What I can do, however, is observe public message boards and whenever someone posts something I know to be true I can repeat it in confidence while still not betraying sources.

This brings me to message boards. I’ve laughed at myself before for typing the phrase “reliable messageboard sources.” It’s almost an oxymoron, but after a decade of following Disney online one gets a feeling as to who has credibility and who is speculating blindly. Once you see something a number of times in fairly respectable places, the rumor takes on an air of respectability. “You can’t stop the signal.”

The constant and most difficult to avoid foil of good rumors, though, is the fact that nothing is certain until an attraction opens. Disney fans currently know of several projects that I’m 100% sure are being planned at WDI right now, but no matter how certain those plans are they can always change. Even official announcements don’t change that fact – just ask your EPCOT guide where you can find the Equatorial Africa pavilion.

All this being said, there’s a great deal of exciting buzz right now concerning the future of Disney parks. We know some of what’s being planned, and if management sees fit to fund it all there will be guaranteed good times ahead. As someone said on one of those aforementioned message boards, the current question at Imagineering about a certain project is not “how small” but rather “how big.” If the money men are thinking big too, the future is wide open.

Postscript – Requiem for a Toad

By Michael - September 9th, 2008

I somehow forgot to include this in the previous story – almost as if my subconscious was blocking it out. This was the sight in Fantasyland on the morning of September 8, 1998. They didn’t waste any time – it was almost as if they’d been planning to close it or something, eh?

Semper Absurda, 1971-1998

By Michael - September 8th, 2008

$Save Mr. Toad\'s Wild Ride$

Hey now, be fair. Everyone wants Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

– Jason Lee, Mallrats (1995)

$Toad\'s last day, 7 September 1998$ Ten years ago yesterday, on a drizzly and humid Orlando morning, Disney fans gathered in Florida’s Magic Kingdom to bid farewell to one of the park’s original and most beloved attractions. Scores of fans and protesters, many with matching t-shirts, buttons and posters, took their last opportunity to see a favorite attraction and to voice their displeasure with the park’s management. On September 7, 1998, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride took its last daredevil excursion to nowhere in particular, and I was there.

The events leading up to and surrounding the demise of J. Thaddeus Toad and his adventures were a bellwether event for Disney fans; for many, they were the “shot heard ’round the world” that signaled the declaration of a war between fans and management that, in many ways, continues to this day. While the changes in corporate management that began with the ouster of Michael Eisner in 2005 have gone a long way towards healing this deep rift, many fans still harbor a deep level of distrust for management born of the Toad era and cemented by many even greater missteps to follow.

On the heels of Walt Disney World’s 25th anniversary in 1996, fan-management relations were still fairly cheery. There had been missteps – the grating new Enchanted Tiki Room: Under New Management show was looming on the horizon – but the property as a whole was still growing in fairly exciting ways. Yet, at the Magic Kingdom, there were areas of concern for long-term fans. Many of the out-of-the-way shops and attractions that gave the Magic Kingdom its unique texture were slowly disappearing in favor of more marketing-driven concepts. The park was slowly growing more homogenized, and guests were far less likely to discover the exotic hidden away in some unseen corner.

$Mr. Toad\'s Wild Ride wait sign$ Main Street was hit hard by these changes; in 1995, guests lost the fan-favorite Magic Shop and Penny Arcade along with the Main Street Bookstore in order to make way for the generic athletic apparel of the Main Street Athletic Company. The Main Street Cinema followed in 1998, becoming another run-of-the-mill merchandise location. Perhaps the first salvo in this battle was not recognized for what it was until much later; in 1994, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea went down for a rehab from which it never returned. One of the flagship attractions of Walt Disney World’s debut, and still very popular in 1994, the submarines were closed as a cost-cutting measure that was at the time unacknowledged by the Magic Kingdom management. The ride was “on hiatus” for years, as its once-scenic lagoon filled with garbage and decay.

It was in this uncertain atmosphere that rumors began to emerge in the fall of 1997 that Disney would be closing Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride in order to add an attraction featuring Winnie the Pooh. Those who were not Disney fans at that time might not be aware how ubiquitous Pooh had become at the time; a huge marketing crush had made the portly bear more popular than ever and Disney didn’t miss a chance to cram him and his neurotic backwoods pals down the throats of consumers. One could easily compare the Pooh marketing of the era to today’s High School Musical overkill, and it only made it more maddening to fans to have the marketing darling of the day sweep in to replace a popular existing attraction.

While the reach of the internet was far less vast in those days than it is today, the nascent Disney online fandom rallied to the cause and the centerpiece of fan efforts was Save Toad. The Save Toad movement, spearheaded by Miami-based Disney fan Jef Moscot, began a year of protest, distributing pins and t-shirts and mailing hundreds of postcards to Disney management. Press coverage followed, but as time passed Disney continued to maintain that no decision had been made to the fate of Mr. Toad.

The crowd gathers for the final Toad-In

Despite these evasions, Disney finally revealed that Toad would close on Labor Day, 2008. The announcement, which came only a week before the closing, was designed to give fans only a short time to respond. But respond they did, gathering for a final Toad In on September 7th. To say the occasion was bittersweet was an understatement; fans gathered to discuss Toad memories and ride one last time under the constant oversight of a cadre of Magic Kingdom managers. Cast Members were stationed throughout the ride, hiding in the corners to ostensibly prevent crazed Toad fans from doing anything untowards. In the end, fans were ushered out of the park at closing time by cast members – some sympathetic and some oblivious – and Mr. Toad was no more.

An unknown Toadite and myself on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. We were the second-to-last car ever to witness the antics of Toad on that side of the attraction.

Why did the loss of this attraction strike such a chord with fans? Why did people travel from across the country to bid farewell to a rather simple and technologically outdated dark ride?

The original iteration of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride opened at Disneyland in 1955, only six years after Disney’s animated retelling of Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 children’s classic, The Wind in the Willows, debuted in theaters. The film adaptation, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, never became a particularly beloved entry in the Disney canon, which makes it all the more peculiar that when building Walt Disney World sixteen years later the Imagineers decided to revisit Mr. Toad. This was not always the plan; originally the “funny ride” slot in the Fantasyland lineup was intended to feature a ride based on the story of Ichabod Crane and the legend of Sleepy Hollow. In the end, it was decided that Disneyland’s dark rides would be re-created in Florida to save some development money and thus Toad came to Walt Disney World.

$The Town Square scene in Mr. Toad\'s Wild Ride$ Orlando’s version of Toad was expansive; it was far larger than its counterpart at Disneyland. In fact, the attraction was built with two tracks that, unlike any other ride in Disney history, presented completely different show experiences. And what experiences – Toad presented a psychedelic melange of scenes that took us from Toad Hall to gypsy camps, from prison to Hell itself! It was inhabited by a motley crew of woodland creatures, villainous weasels, gunslinging British bobbies and buxom barmaids. The beer flowed, the bullets flew, and the portrait of Rapunzel hung on the wall, her modesty barely concealed by her flowing locks. It was quite a ride.

And yes, the ride ended with guests being struck by an oncoming locomotive and being sent to Hell, where a brightly painted Satan loomed overhead. What other ride at Disney could claim such a dramatic finale?

You don’t see that in Toy Story Mania

It made little to no sense, even if you had seen the film on which it was based, and it was magnificent. There was a sense of reckless insanity and borderline seediness to it, and as a child one wavered between horror and bewilderment. Where will modern children gain knowledge of Edwardian barrooms and the perils of the horseless carriage? What ride contains anything approaching Rolly Crump’s unhinged color scheme or character design as distinct as the oddball denizens of Toad’s London – the sneering weasels and sleazy mustachioed barman Winky?

Without Toad, Fantasyland is far less exciting and the Magic Kingdom is poorer for it. The ride had an edge without trying to be “edgy” – as a child you had a feeling you were seeing something a bit over your head. Surely you weren’t meant to sneak a peek at that buxom barmaid – yet there she was!

As stated, the demise of Toad began the long war between Disney fans and management. Soon after came the arrival of Journey into YOUR Imagination, something that even those fans who refused to lament Toad’s departure could not countenance. Horizons, a masterpiece of epic Imagineering, closed soon after and began its slow decay. The real megaton blast in this conflict came when Eisner and acolyte Paul Pressler opened their “masterpiece”, California Adventure, in 2001. This time not only did fans stay away, but the general public did too. The ill will engendered over the previous several years finally came home to roost for Eisner, who was pushed out of office in 2005 partially by a fan and stockholder revolt led by Roy Disney.

While it remains to be seen whether current management will truly rebuild the burnt bridges with fans, it seems unlikely that we’ll ever see another attraction as unique as Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Its sheer madcap atmosphere and bizarre design sensibilities seem unique to its era, and it’s definitely not something that would make it through the gauntlet of focus groups and marketing flacks that new attractions must survive. Here’s to you, J. Thaddeus – you are missed.

The best online history of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride can be found, not surprisingly, at Mike Lee’s Widen Your World. Revisit the ride at YouTube. Finally, be sure to visit what must be the most impressive Disney fan project on the entire internet – the Virtual Toad project. It’s absolutely amazing.

What Do We Have To Do To Put You In A New Monorail Today?

By Michael - September 7th, 2008

Monorail Cityscape

No self-respecting city of the future would be caught dead without a thoroughly modern method of mass transportation. This was the thinking of Walt Disney Productions when they were creating Walt Disney World, and part of Disney’s vision for future cities was the sleek and efficient monorail. We’ve already discussed Community Transportation Services, the division of Walt Disney Productions set up to develop transportation systems for Disney’s Florida property and to then market them to cities and communities around the country. And what better way to market yourself than a colorful brochure?

Below are the scanned pages from a 1979 brochure intended to market the Mark IV monorail which was then in service at Walt Disney World. Sadly, they didn’t succeed in flooding our nation with monorails, but they’re a nice reminder of an era when big ideas were still in fashion.