Walt Disney: Marceline to Magic Kingdom Tour

Main Street, U.S.A.

Along Main Street, U.S.A. the tour focused on what Walt’s childhood had been like. Despite Walt having passed away before Magic Kingdom was built, there are still many significant ties to his life in the park. Many of the lands and attractions that are in both Magic Kingdom and Disneyland were used as a basis for our tour.

Walt based Main Street, U.S.A. on not what his hometown of Marceline was like in actuality but more of what he felt Marceline had been like from nostalgia. Here is where Walt’s love for steam trains first started which was a very important part of his building of Disneyland.

When Walt was a child, he would get up to all sorts of mischief. One day he was left alone with his sister Ruth and they painted the side of their white farmhouse with tar that had been in barrels by the barn. Their neighbour Doc Sherwood wanted to encourage Walt’s love for drawing in a more appropriate outlet and gave the young boy a nickel to draw his horse Rupert. But the horse was so restless that the drawing ended up being a bit of a mess with the horse having three heads and six legs.

In Marceline was also where Walt saw his first play which was Peter Pan. This was the start of a trend in Walt’s life where he would bring back these events from his childhood but make them bigger and better.

The Disney family moved to Kansas City after being unsuccessful at farming in Marceline.

In Kansas City, Walt would often peer through the fences of Electric Park. He later cited this amusement park as being an inspiration for Disneyland, though again he took an idea and made it bigger and better. One thing about Electric Park that really stuck out to him was the beautiful popcorn lights, which are donned on every building along Main Street.

As a child, Walt did not show a lot of interest in school work, but he did surprise his teachers when he came to school on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday dressed as his favourite president and had memorized the entire Gettysburg address. The principal walked him around to each class to recite the speech. This became an annual tradition throughout all of Walt’s time in school.

When the first World War came, Walt’s older brothers enlisted. At 16, Walt was too young to join, but when he and a friend saw Roy off, they talked about what great adventures Roy would have while in the Navy. A commanding office mistook the two boys as sailors and told them to “fall in.” This got Walt thinking that maybe he could forge his way into the military. He would have to be 18 to enlist, but he only needed to be 17 to join the Red Cross and this seemed easier to fake. He just needed his parents’ signatures and an altered birth certificate. He was able to get both signatures, though apparently they both look quite similar.

Walt became an ambulance driver in France and it was very easy to tell which ambulance was his as it was covered in cartoon sketches. He arrived near the end of the war so was soon sent back home to the U.S.

Liberty Square

The tour then entered into Liberty Square, before the land was even open I might add! We were the only ones there. Here the tour gave a brief overview of Walt’s move to California, the foundation of the company, and the Golden Age of animation. The main focus was the beginnings of Disneyland and the constant creation of new technology for all of Walt’s ideas.

When World War II hit, Walt felt honoured to be able to do more for his country now than in the 1910s. His animators designed thousands of military insignia and produced training videos featuring his beloved characters. Walt compared his giving of Donald Duck to MGM giving Clark Garble.

Disneyland is often affectionately known as Walt’s Park. However, when he was creating it, Walt had such tunnel vision and laser focus for his new project that it was also known as Walt’s third daughter. And because he refused to leave Disneyland in its infancy, it took a long time for his wife Lillian to convince him to take her on a vacation. Once they finally did, they spent some time in New Orleans. This trip just gave Walt many new ideas for Disneyland! He came across a mechanical bird in an antique store and brought it back to his Imagineers at WED Enterprises. These Imagineers were mostly made up of former animators who just moved over from the studios with little to no formal training. Walt wanted them to basically animate this bird into three dimensions instead of just two. The team was very proud when they were able to bring this bird to life, but Walt wanted more. He wanted the bird to breathe. The Imagineers had to try again and this time they fit a bellow system into the bird. Finally Walt was happy with the result, so he told his team to now create thirty more! And the Enchanted Tiki Room was born.

Just a year later was the 1964/1965 New York World’s Fair. One of the four attractions that Walt was commissioned to create was Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, sponsored by the state of Illinois. Now in a single year, his Imagineers had to go from creating audio-animatronic birds to audio-animatronic humans! Imagineer Bob Gurr helped with the creation of this elaborate audio-animatronic. He joked that Walt really wanted Grover Cleveland, but it was easy to make a tall, thin man. This audio-animatronic was so lifelike that it could apparently pick up an egg. One night, a custodian was sweeping around the stage and he found ball bearings underneath the robot. He told the Imagineers about it and they checked it out, but everything appeared to be fine. The next day, there were more ball bearings. It turned out that audiences were convinced Abraham Lincoln was an actor and were throwing the ball bearings at him to get him to flinch.

One of the unrealized lands in Disneyland that Walt wanted was called Liberty Street. It was going to be a small side section off of Main Street and would feature the Hall of Presidents. This idea was then dusted off when Magic Kingdom opened and it debuted with the park in 1971. The attraction was so popular that what is now the Liberty Square Market was an extended queue for the crowds of guests.

Haunted Mansion

In the Magic Kingdom, the Haunted Mansion was originally going to be on Main Street where Casey’s Corner is now. Both the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland were going to be walkthrough wax museums, but Walt and his team decided that guests would be more likely to ride an attraction multiple times than walk through it. Imagineer Harper Goff created concept art for the Haunted Mansion which was a rundown house on a hill. But as talked about in my Tony Baxter post, Walt did not want a decrepit looking building in his beautiful park. Which has stayed true to this day as Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion is a gorgeous antebellum mansion. However, in Magic Kingdom, the Haunted Mansion was built in a gothic revival look. It is still well-maintained, but has a bit more spookiness to it than Disneyland’s. The archway to the front door is made of coffins, there is a bat weather vane on the roof, and a spooky wind howls softly around the mansion.

In the queue of the Haunted Mansion is a murder mystery party. Busts of members of the Dread Family each hold a clue as to who murdered who. Uncle Jacob has lots of money and the other members of the family are trying to get it. His inscription reads “Greed was the poison he has swallowed. He went first. The others followed. His killer’s face he surely knew. Now try to discover who killed who.” Bertie has a bottle of poison on his tomb and his inscription reads “Avid hunter and expert shot. In the end that’s what he got.” Aunt Florence has a gun on her tomb and her inscription reads “Never did a dishonorable deed, yet found her face down in canary seed.” The twins Wellington and Forsythia have a dead bird on their tomb. Their inscription reads “Departed life while in their beds with identical bumps on identical heads.” Cousin Maude has a mallet on her tomb and her inscription reads “Our sleeping beauty who never woke the night her dreams went up in smoke.” Now Cousin Maude has a matchstick in her hair to keep it in a bun and had used kerosene to keep her updo. In her fitted sleep, the match might have struck and set the whole house on fire. But on the attraction, the three hitch hiking ghosts seem to be pointing at some luggage and a portrait of Cousin Maude, indicating that she could have staged her own death and got away with the money. There are some other clues that are red herrings of the murder mystery such as Bertie’s serpent and puncture wounds on some of the family members’ shoulders.

There are many other little details throughout the Haunted Mansion queue such as a tombstone dedicated to Harriet Burns, one of WED Enterprises first female Imagineers. It reads “First lady of the opera, our haunting Harriet. Searched for a tune but never could carry it.” There is also a reference to Harper Goff on the crypt of Prudence Pock. Guests can speak into the SpectreCom so Prudence can hear them. The inscription reads that it was patented by R.H. Goff.

The Haunted Mansion features many special effects; the majority of them are done with the use of scrims. This is a very simple lighting trick where when light is shone in front of a piece of cloth, what is painted on it is seen, but when light shines from behind it, what is behind the cloth is seen. A great example of this is the hanging body in the stretching room. The body is there the entire time; it’s just behind a piece of cloth. Until the lightning flashes from behind the cloth revealing the body, the cloth just looks like it is the ceiling. Another example of this is in the portrait gallery. One picture is shown as the doombuggies go by, but when the lightning flashes from behind, another picture is seen in the frame instead. The disappearing grooms in all of the portraits of the bride are done by using the exact same trick.

Some other little features in the Haunted Mansion include the chair that has an abstract Donald Duck painted on it. Originally it was just a coincidence, but after guests were insisting that the design was supposed to be Donald Duck, Imagineers went back and added some features. This chair is to the left of the endless hallway with the floating candelabra. A small detail to notice in the staircase room is the footsteps that lead to the candles. Once the footsteps reach a candle, the candle is blown out. After the attic scene, the doombuggies rotate backwards and descend down to the graveyard scene, symbolizing the guests being thrown out of the window and falling to their deaths. In the graveyard, an orange light is shone on the caretaker and his dog because they are living, but white light is on the ghosts.

The next part of the tour took us backstage to take a close look at how the effects of the Haunted Mansion’s ballroom work. There was glow-in-the dark tape that lined our paths through the Haunted Mansion. We had to stay exactly along that path so as not to be reflected as a ghost in the ballroom since guests riding the attraction would then see an extra happy haunt!

The ghosts in the ballroom are not projections of any sort but are actually reflections. This is done by the old magician’s trick of Pepper’s Ghost. This trick was popularized by scientist John Henry Pepper in the 1860s and Disney’s use of it in the ballroom is the largest example of this illusion. Magicians were brought into the Haunted Mansion after it was completed, though before open to guests, to give all the illusions a look over to make sure they were working properly. The magicians could not figure out the technique of the ballroom and were very surprised that it was simply Pepper’s Ghost because of its scale. There are actually three ballrooms: the main one guests see on the ride, and then one above and one below the doombuggy track that house the actual audio-animatronics. The above room is where the audio-animatronics of the ghosts in the top half of the ballroom are, such as those swinging from the chandeliers. The bottom one is where the audio-animatronics of the ghosts of the bottom half are, such as those at the dining table or the ones dancing. These audio-animatronics were only built to have what is seen. For example, the ones behind the dining room table do not have legs since the legs are not seen. There is also furniture in these other rooms, but here it is all painted black so only the ghosts are reflected; the black furniture is just for reference. Large panes of glass, invisible to the guests, are then used with some light trickery to reflect these audio-animatronics as ghosts. A helicopter was needed to insert the glass and there is even a spare pane hidden behind the fireplace which has thankfully never needed to be used. The audio-animatronics of the dancers have the ladies leading because their reflection is opposite so it looks to guests like the men are leading. The dancers are all barefoot and over the years stories have started as to why that might be. The real reason is very simple; it is because their shoes kept flying off. Many of the audio-animatronics’ faces have been reused. Caesar has the same face as one of the elderly women, Madam Tangerine (who is the lady blowing out the birthday candles) has the same face as the lady from Pirates of the Caribbean telling Carlos not to give in to the water torture, and the grandma in the rocking chair is the same grandma in Carousel of Progress.

The plates on the dining table sometimes show a hidden Mickey and sometimes they don’t. Officially, this is not a hidden Mickey. Underneath the plates is a photo of how the place setting should go and there is no Mickey in the photo. Imagineers wanted guests to focus on the effects and the story instead of being distracted by hidden Mickeys. However, sometimes the maids and butlers of the Haunted Mansion push the plates together to form a hidden Mickey in jest.

Rolly Crump and Yale Gracey, two Imagineers who worked on the Haunted Mansion, kept many of the ghosts and other spooky props in their office. They were asked to leave the lights on at night because the cleaning staff found it too eerie to walk into their dark office. They agreed. They left the lights on but also rigged up a trip wire that would turn the lights off when someone walked into their office. This would also bring the props to life and a ghost would drop down into the room from the ceiling. The next morning after they set up their prank, they found an abandoned broom and dustpan in the middle of their office. Shortly after, Rolly and Yale received a message from HR that they were to clean their own office from then on.

Fantasyland

The tour then moved into Fantasyland and we went through the Fastpass line of It’s a Small World. Our tour guide had previously worked as an attraction attendant for It’s a Small World and was very enthusiastic about this classic attraction.

It’s a Small World

It’s a Small World was another attraction created for the 1964/1965 New York World’s Fair. It was sponsored by Unicef and Pepsi at the fair. Walt’s original vision for this attraction was to have the Children of the World, as it was going to be called, sing their own nation’s anthem. After doing some testing with this, the mashup of the different anthems was not very pleasant to listen to so the Sherman Brothers were brought in. They wrote the classic song “It’s a Small World” and Walt liked it so much that he even changed the name of the attraction.

Rolly Crump worked closely with artist Mary Blair to lead the building of this attraction. He designed the façade based on Mary’s design of the dolls and interior. He made a model and painted the façade in colourful pastels. A member of the maintenance team saw this model and was worried about this design. He told Rolly that it would be a lot of work to maintain the colouful façade so Rolly decided to keep the façade white and add some gold accents. Harriet Burns then stuck her earrings on top of the model for some extra dazzle and the little flowers and flags at the tops of the spires were added because of this. Another great Harriet Burns story is that when she made the model of the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, Walt was not convinced that it would work. She then pushed him on a rolling desk chair beside the model so he could experience it at eye level and he changed his mind.

The Tivoli Gardens in Denmark were a large inspiration for It’s a Small World. When Mary was designing the attraction, she wanted it to look like it had been created by a bunch of children who had sat down at an arts and craft table. Alice Davis made the costumes for all the dolls and this was her first job in Imagineering. She had come from a very low-income family and was naturally very cautious with her budget to create the costumes. But Walt gave her an unlimited budget and told her that he wanted everyone who rode It’s a Small World to wish they could have a doll like those ones. Rolly created all of the toys in the attraction, which are the extra characters and props. He made the Mary Blair doll in tribute to Mary, though it is technically considered a toy and not a doll. This doll is located on top of the Eiffel Tower in the Disneyland version and underneath the Eiffel Tower in the Magic Kingdom version. He was also in charge of bringing the attraction from the World’s Fair to Disneyland and then recreating it in Walt Disney World when it opened. One unique scene to the Walt Disney World version is the Polynesian scene which drew inspiration from the Enchanted Tiki Room. There is no singing in this room, only background music since there was no original recording to use.

Some other fun facts about It’s a Small World is that each scene has its own unique sun. The money thrown into the water goes to Florida’s Helping Hands charity. And that there are hidden Mickeys in the vines behind the monkeys in the Jungle scene.

After It’s a Small World we walked through the rest of Fantasyland.

Each Magic Kingdom style park has a carrousel near the castle. It was while Walt’s daughters were riding a carrousel in Griffith Park in Los Angeles that he thought up the idea for Disneyland. This carrousel had a gold ring that hung from the top. If someone was able to grab the ring, they would be eligible for a free ride on the carrousel. This ring seemed impossible to grab, but one day Walt’s daughter Diane was able to grab it three times in a row. She was very pleased with herself, though later as an adult started to suspect that perhaps her father tipped the operator. He did all sorts of extravagant things for his daughters including giving them a dollhouse that had actual running water and electricity. Walt really hid the fact that he was the Walt Disney from his daughters so that they would only know him as their dad. It wasn’t until children at school told Sharon and Diane that their father was a celebrity did they realize who he was.

On the backside of the castle is a Disney Family Crest. This crest was designed for the parks and has three lions representing that Walt had three times the courage.

Inside Cinderella Castle are beautiful mosaics depicting the story of Cinderella. These mosaics were designed by Dorothea Redmond. This work is one of very few displays in Walt Disney World that is signed by the artist because it is so beautiful. Two Imagineers who designed Cinderella Castle were included in the mosaic: John Hench and Herb Ryman. John, the Royal Archduke, is known as Disney’s icon man as he helped designed not only many of the central park icons, but other attractions with iconic showbuildings such as Space Mountain. Disney named a shade of purple after him so the famous Purple Wall in Tomorrowland is actually John Hench Purple. Herb, the Royal Footman, was a concept artist. He was asked by Walt to draw the entire design of Disneyland to show the bank when he went to ask for a loan. Herd agreed, only to find out that Walt needed that artwork very quickly so Herb had to complete it in a single weekend. His only requirement was that Walt needed to help out! They called it “the lost weekend.”

Tomorrowland

In Tomorrowland, our tour guide talked about the monorail in Disneyland’s Tomorrowland, as well as the last two New York World’s Fair attractions Ford’s Magic Skyway and the Carousel of Progress, with a large emphasis on the latter.

The Disneyland Monorail was originally sponsored by the German company Alweg and opened in 1959. Construction was handed over to a third party but was not going very well and as the re-opening of Tomorrowland was nearing, it was looking unlikely that the monorail would be able to even do a full lap. Alweg wanted to abandon sponsorship so Bob Gurr took over to try to salvage the project. I have heard different versions of this story before, but this is the one that our tour guide told. Up to the night before the grand reveal, the monorail was still not working so Bob decided to just leave the monorail in the station so the press could still get a good photo op and hopefully the monorail would at least be able to pull out from the station a short distance.

However, the guest of honour that day was vice-president Richard Nixon, a huge Disneyland fan. He, his wife, and his two young daughters were asked by Walt to cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony for the monorail. Richard Nixon and his family were very excited to ride the monorail. Bob was very nervous that the monorail would not be able to do a full lap, but it did. The monorail was able to do a full lap and no one was the wiser that it had not been working just the day before. Once they reached the station, the vice-president’s daughters wanted to go again so Walt and Bob started it up again. However, the secret service had already disembarked from the monorail and did not get back inside in time for the second ride. The monorail took off and the secret service did their very best to keep up with this new highway in the sky. They ended up cutting off the power to the monorail, thinking that Walt Disney was trying to kidnap the vice-president. So in the end, the monorail was still only able to do one full lap though for a different reason then it malfunctioning on its own.

The only attraction from the New York World’s Fair that was not moved to any Disney park was Ford’s Magic Skyway. Guests would sit in a Ford convertible and travel through time, passing audio-animatronics dinosaurs and caveman all the way to the future of space travel. Ford was very insistent on using real vehicles so that the “drivers” would know how great it felt to be behind the steering wheel. The Imagineers were able to retrofit the Ford cars onto a track.

Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress

The Carousel of Progress was the third attraction our tour experienced; we even had our own theatre. The Carousel of Progress in Magic Kingdom is the same one that was debuted at the World’s Fair in 1964. Walt personally chose the voice actors for the original attraction and picked those with southern roots to reflect his childhood in Marceline, including Rex Allen who voiced John the father.

The preshows that play in the queue were never meant to be seen by the public but were made for the executives of General Electric when they were considering sponsorship of the attraction. There are two clips, one with the Sherman Brothers and one with the model of the attraction. The clip with the Sherman Brothers had to be edited because the backs of their jackets had advertising for G.E. This was cut since G.E. no longer sponsors the Carousel of Progress. The model had been created by Harriet Burns. The rolling theatre idea was inspired by a railroad roundhouse. This attraction also uses many scrims similar to the Haunted Mansion to add to the scenes. The 1960s was big on surround sound so the theatre makes good use of that feature.

In the original version, the last scene had the family living in the 1960s and in the planned community Walt had for Florida. This E.P.C.O.T. could be seen through the windows of their home. When this attraction was in Disneyland, guests would exit the theatre and head upstairs to view the model of E.P.C.O.T. Parts of this model is now featured on the PeopleMover in Magic Kingdom. It contained over 4000 buildings and over 20 000 trees.

The current narrator playing John is Jean Shepherd, who is well-known for his role in A Christmas Story. The first scene, which takes place at the turn of the 20^th century, features no G.E. appliances since the company was brand new at the time and it was not common for homes to have them. It is thought that this scene is representative of Marceline. The audio-animatronic robin is the same one that was used in Mary Poppins. Walt loved this bird and would often show it off to his guests. This scene has a reference to the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. After his father was a contractor for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, Elisa Disney took his family to the St. Louis Fair over a decade later. The grandmother in this scene is the one that was duplicated for the Haunted Mansion.

A subtle detail of the music on Carousel of Progress is that the music changes slightly between the scenes. There are many banjos in the first scene but has a jazz feel for the 1920s scene. This scene features many G.E. appliances. On one window is a painted sign that reads “Herb Ryman: Attorney at Law” which is a reference back to “the lost weekend.” The radio announcer in this scene is voiced by Noel Blanc, the son of Mel Blanc. Mel Blanc voices the parrot in the 1900s scene and also Uncle Orville.

As the theatre rotates to the 1940s scene, the jazz music changes to have more piano in it, almost like elevator music. This scene features even more G.E. and at the New York World’s Fair, people could buy these appliances. Rex Allen makes an appearance in a photo on the wall of Patty’s bedroom. There is a story that Walt liked the grandma audio-animatronic from this scene so much that after the fair, he purchased as extra first class plane ticket and had one of his tour guides push her in a wheelchair all throughout the airport and onto the plane to see if anyone would notice that the grandma was not real. His little prank worked and the grandma was flown home to Disneyland first class.

The last scene features many hidden Mickeys including the abstract Sorcerer Mickey painting on the wall, one of the nutcrackers, the salt and pepper shakers on the counter, on the spaceship on the TV, a plush Mickey under the Christmas tree, and on the wrapping paper of one of the gifts. Originally when this scene showed E.P.C.O.T. outside, it was New Year’s Eve instead of Christmas. In the last update in 1993, Rex Allen was brought back to voice the grandpa in this scene. There are many other familiar voices including the voice of Patricia who is Debi Derryberry (the voice of Jimmy Neutron), the voice of Grandma is Janet Waldo (the voice of Judy Jetson), and Sarah is voiced by B. J. Ward (who does the safety narration for many Disney attractions.) A small sign on the bulletin board reads “Marty called, wants changes.” This is in reference to the fact that Marty Sklar did call and thought the script needed to be updated.

The Sherman Brothers wrote the song “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” as an anthem for Walt because he would always follow his dreams.

That brought us to the end of our fantastic tour! I learnt so much on this Marceline to Magic Kingdom tour and am so thankful for experience!

Check out my other posts about Disney tours including Behind the Seeds in Epcot and the Art of the Craft tour at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel!

Have you tried any of the Disney tours? Which one is your favourite?

Skyway to Wonderland

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