by Martin Sklar
When the speechmaking ended, I followed Carl Hodges toward the entrance of The Land. Suddenly, he stopped with a shudder, and I worried he might have some kind of physical issue.
“Carl, are you all right?” I asked.
“I suddenly realized what this means for me,” he said. “By the end of the day, more people will have seen my work than in the previous thirty years I’ve been doing it!”
The impact of telling your story to fifteen thousand or twenty thousand people a day, and to millions each year, can be frightening to a scientist—imagine inviting thousands of people into your laboratory. Or it can be a giant stimulus, pushing us to explore new frontiers…just as Walt had envisioned the spirit and impact of Epcot.
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From early in the project development, we had an excellent working relationship with Exxon. To test the impact of working together, Disney produced a comic book called Mickey and Goofy Explore Energy. It quickly became the most widely distributed comic book in the history of the medium. Ten million copies were soon in the hands of young readers in schools around the country. A follow-up, Mickey and Goofy Explore the Universe of Energy, promoted our Epcot pavilion with an even larger distribution.
What no one knew was what was happening behind the scenes with the brand-new, then one-of-a-kind ride system we had committed ourselves to develop. Each show begins with ninety-six guests seated in each of six electric-powered passenger vehicles—the largest in the world, other than electric trains. Each of the vehicles, eighteen feet wide and twenty-nine feet long, weighs six and a half tons. And, despite the fact that when they leave the guest loading area, they “break apart” into a single file ride-through, the vehicles are driverless.
The vehicles are guided through the Universe of Energy by a small wire (one-eighth of an inch in diameter) buried in the floor. Sensing units mounted under the ride-through vehicles detect signals from a guide wire, and issue commands to the independent steering units on the front and rear axles to keep the vehicles centered over the wire. Inductive power coupling transfers electric power from a source in the roadbed to vehicles by electromagnetic induction across an air gap. Power is transferred without contact only when the Universe of Energy vehicles are stopped in the theaters. A central computer operates the movement of these “traveling theaters,” with a secondary computer acting as a go-between for the individual vehicles. Significant changes in direction in the attraction are accomplished by giant turntables, which spin the theater cars on a cushion of air. The two turntable systems, eighty and ninety-two feet in diameter, can handle six cars and a load capacity of eighty-five tons.
I was soon to find out why no one had ever attempted a ride system this complicated. Tony Baxter, senior vice president in the Creative Division of Imagineering, recently reminded me of a call I received and put on my speakerphone, as we were reviewing Tony’s design for the ride-through on his imaginative project, Journey into Imagination. The call was from John Zovich, our vice president of engineering, one of the prime people responsible for the ultimate success of Epcot’s technology innovations. But on this occasion, the news was all bad.
“We give up, Marty,” John said. “We cannot make this system work. It’s just too complicated.”
“John,” I responded, “if you can’t make the ride system work, we have no show and therefore no Universe of Energy. We lose our sponsor. If we lose Exxon, it’s a domino effect, and what will happen is, the other sponsors we are soliciting will go away. And at the end of the day, we will lose the project—no more Epcot Center. So, John,” I said, pausing a few seconds for emphasis, “don’t call me again until the ride system is working!” And I hung up on our chief engineer.
I won’t say our Imagineering ride engineers were entirely successful. For a full year after we opened, I received a weekly call from Exxon’s senior vice president, Jack Clarke, pointing out that the ride and show only operated at 80 to 84 percent efficiency, in contrast to the 98 to 100 percent we target. By year two of Epcot’s life, we were in the 90 percentile every week, and Jack Clarke and I could concentrate on an occasional tennis game where, as I pointed out to him, we were both hard-pressed to achieve 50 percent efficiency.
The Epcot advisory boards were absolutely critical to our success. The members were academics and government officials, futurists and history experts, and industry executives and foundation leaders. One of the very best was our advisory group for The Living Seas, which included directors and/or senior scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, National Geographic Society president Gilbert Grosvenor, and Dr. Sylvia Earle, who would later become the chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
I’ll never forget The Living Seas advisory board meeting that took place shortly after life-forms were discovered around heat-emitting vents at ocean depths never before explored. Dr. Robert Ballard, then the senior scientist at Woods Hole, who had led the expedition that discovered the Titanic, approached Gil Grosvenor with this greeting: “You know of course that everything you have printed in National Geographic about the potential of life in the deepest depths of the ocean has been incorrect!”
I don’t recall how National Geographic responded to these new explorations of the deep sea, but for us it meant scrapping a well-defined film show that acted as an introduction to our Sea Base, and starting over to create our scene-setter. And that was just the beginning of our troubles.
Harry Gray, the CEO of United Technologies, let it be known that he wanted the exterior walls of the pavilion to be painted a bright white. John Hench, one of the most knowledgeable designers in the world on the theory and effect of color, visually and emotionally, let Gray know that he did not use a bright white in Florida because the reflection of the sun could be blinding to approaching guests. Gray asked for a demonstration.
While the pavilion was under construction, we erected temporary walls six feet high around the front of the building. On a bright, sunny afternoon, John Hench lined up the painters and, when Harry and Helen Gray arrived, established the parameters of the discussion. “Mr. Gray,” John said, “I use thirty-four shades of white in our parks. Which one would you like to see?”
While Harry Gray pondered his response, Helen Gray gripped my arm and drew me aside. “Marty, why are you asking Harry about color?” she asked. “I pick out his ties every morning because he’s color-blind!”
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Harry Gray may have been color-blind, but those eyes were totally focused on his power, which he demonstrated during our meeting about The Living Seas life-support system in the summer of 1985. That day, he saved the best for last.
Our Disney team knew we were in trouble when, having arrived as instructed at 8:30 A.M., we cooled our heels in the UTC lobby until nearly 10:00 A.M. We later learned that the CEO was conducting a pre-meeting with his staff—preparing the “shark attack” I described earlier. Once the meeting began, the discussion was hot and heavy until Gray left us for a lunch break. Harry returned about 2:30 P.M. to inform us that he was sure that he would have all the information he needed to make a final decision by 4:00 P.M. His next question was a total surprise to all of us who were by then looking for a break in the meeting ourselves, so that we could cancel our flight home to Los Angeles. What time, Harry wanted to know, was our flight? When we responded that we were booked on a 5:30 P.M. American Airlines departure from JFK Airport in New York City, Harry immediately turned to an aide. Here’s the way I remember the conversation—and the events that followed: “Good—American Airlines—they use our Pratt Whitney engines, and we do lots of favors for them when they have an emergency issue with an engine. Tell them,” he instructed his assistant, “that we need a favor in return. There will be five Disney people leaving our headquarters in Hartford [Connecticut] at 4:30 P.M. this afternoon by helicopter. They will not have time to go through the terminal, or security, so what we will need to do is l
and the helicopter as close to their aircraft as possible. American can have their staff meet the Disney people at our helicopter, and take them right on board the Los Angeles flight.”
Today, of course, with airport security being what it is, this scenario would be unthinkable. But on that summer afternoon in 1985, we boarded the UTC helicopter on the roof of their headquarters building in Hartford at precisely 4:30 P.M. Shortly after 5:00, we landed at JFK—no more than one hundred feet from that American Airlines craft that would soon carry us to Los Angeles. Two hosts from the airline emerged from the terminal almost the exact moment the helicopter touched down. They immediately escorted the five Disney passengers, myself included, past others waiting to board our flight, directly onto the aircraft. Meanwhile, our luggage was transferred from the helicopter to the airplane. Right on time, at 5:30 P.M., our American Airlines flight departed for Los Angeles.
As promised, Harry Gray had made his decision by 4:00 P.M. He agreed with the Disney Imagineers that ozone, not chlorine, was the correct choice for the life-support system in The Living Seas pavilion at Epcot. He thanked us for “dropping everything” and coming to Hartford for this important discussion, wished us a pleasant flight home, and said goodbye. Harry Gray was gone from the conference room physically, but we all knew who was still in charge. And it was not American Airlines.
Each of the pavilions in Epcot has its own story. In retrospect, it’s a miracle that almost every one of these stories had a happy ending. As often happens in a creative environment, imaginative thinking trumps negative attitudes and points the way for technical achievement to follow…especially in the World Showcase host pavilion, The American Adventure.
“We never rejected a show concept because someone said it was technically impossible,” WED’s director of scripts and show development, Randy Bright, related—while admitting that it took six different concepts and five years to develop the show.
Making thirty-five Audio-Animatronics figures—from hosts Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain to women’s suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony and Nez Perce Indian Chief Joseph—move and talk within 13 three-dimensional sets that travel back and forth, up and down, meant developing a complex staging system that rivals or exceeds anything ever designed for a Broadway show. The key is a 350,000-pound automated scene changer that looks like a steel skeleton, and is as long as a railroad box car and twice as wide. On the changer are ten different sets. On either side are other sets hidden below stage on elevators awaiting their cues.
Moving onto the 130-by-80-foot stage, the sets are operated by computer. They glide into place horizontally, then rise into audience view using hydraulic telescoping supports.
Special flexible channels were created to carry electronic wire, electrical connections, air, hydraulic fluid, and water lines, which give lifelike movement to the figures and special effects.
“This is the first ‘play’ we ever created in our parks, and certainly the first-ever ‘play’ with Audio-Animatronics actors onstage,” according to Show Director Rick Rothschild. But there’s one thing missing on the stage—there’s no floor. Although the audience cannot see it, “actors” are supported on small platforms surrounded by open space, wires, and pipes. One other thing is missing: although there is a wardrobe room to store standby costumes, there are no dressing rooms. In nearly thirty years, the Audio-Animatronics actors have not complained even once.
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Epcot today presents the entertainment, food, artisans, and products of eleven countries: Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the USA. Imagineering also designed, on spec, or with preliminary agreements that were never formalized, eight more pavilions: an African Nations showcase, Costa Rica, Denmark, Iran, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, and Venezuela.
Because it was so late in coming into the project, the China pavilion was the most difficult to complete. The first sketch of what became China in Epcot was drawn in April 1981—barely twenty months before Opening Day. It features a Disney Circle-Vision 360 theater that’s entered through an elaborate re-creation of Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, a structure that dates back to the mid-1400s.
The logistics of shooting a film in China in 1980—just four years after the Cultural Revolution had ended—were incredibly complex, made even more difficult by the fact that our crews, directed by Jeff Blyth, were photographing with the Disney-originated nine-camera rig used to shoot Circle-Vision 360 shows—films that place the audience in the center of each scene. There were only two of these rigs in the world, both built by Disney (until the Chinese copied ours!), utilizing a system originally created by the technical genius of the Disney Studios, Ub Iwerks. The rig weighs in at 396 pounds, and, according to Blyth, at first it “petrified” the Chinese.
“Our Disney shoot was the first coproduction [with a Chinese film company] after the ‘Gang of Four’ were gone,” Blyth recalls. “We had to get permission to film site by site. We started out with 150 potential locations; I spent ten weeks scouting; then our crew—four Americans and eight Chinese, including two translators—spent four and a half months in actual shooting. We filmed the Great Wall in three places, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, the Potala Palace, the Gobi Desert, Shanghai, Guilin, Yangtze River gorges, the Harbin Ice Festival in Manchuria, and a performance by the Peking Opera. We even filmed in Tibet—at sixteen thousand feet!”
Eventually, the U.S. and Chinese crews became one, except for the aerial scenes. “They let me go up in the air for a pre-scout,” Blyth says, “but when the nine-camera rig was mounted on our Messerschmitt helicopter, my Chinese assistant had to handle the shoot. I still have no idea what they didn’t want us to see.”
Wonders of China was such a big hit that twelve years later, in 1993, Blyth returned for new scenes and updated the film to the present new version, now called Reflections of China.
Two other features, consistent with a world’s fair context, helped to set Epcot apart from any amusement park. One was Epcot’s fine art program, begun with the display of more than $25 million in original art—Mayan artifacts in Mexico, Chinese textiles, Japanese crafts—and later items from the Moroccan royal family, art and artifacts by American artists, and a historical exhibit inside a traditional stave church in Norway. “Art continues to give Epcot a great balance, where you can enjoy high technology and prospects for the future alongside priceless treasures of ancient civilizations,” says Van Romans, who has moved on from WED’s director of exhibits for Epcot to become president of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.
The second world’s fair context was Epcot’s World Showcase Fellowship Program. Annually, it brought nearly eight hundred representatives from the ten foreign countries showcased in Epcot to work in their homeland’s pavilion. They each wore a costume typical of their native land and welcomed Epcot guests on behalf of their countrymen back home. They also lived together in a kind of “world village” a few miles from Epcot.
“We imagined,” Dick Nunis said of the program, “that in fifteen or twenty years, these former students would become leaders of their nations and be able to discuss potential ventures or challenges in a friendly way, based on having lived and learned together while working in Epcot.” And indeed, even today the European participants in the World Showcase Fellowship Program hold an annual reunion somewhere in Europe, maintaining their fellowship and their connection to Epcot and Walt Disney World.
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During the eight years of our development of the Epcot Center that opened in October 1982, we met and discussed the concept with many world-renowned people: Buckminster Fuller, whose design and words inspired our Spaceship Earth; Roots author, Alex Haley, who worked with us in our unsuccessful attempts to produce an African nations pavilion; the great French chefs Paul Bocuse, Gaston Lenôtre, and Roger Vergé, who brought their gastronomic wonders to the French restaurants; Don Hewitt, producer and creator of CBS’s 60 Minutes, who attende
d the opening with former New York mayor Robert Wagner and John Tishman, and reminded us of his favorite four words: “Tell me a story!”; and Walter Cronkite, who sent us this note on Epcot’s opening:
This universality of Disney carries on after his death, and continues in projects that he had put on the drawing board before he died. Epcot Center in Florida is a case in point—bringing together representatives of international industry, international commerce, and the governments of other countries in a permanent world’s fair. It perpetuates that theme of his that we are indeed one people.
We also received this letter from the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan:
Nancy and I are delighted to extend our warmest congratulations and best wishes to everyone gathered for the Grand Opening of Disney World’s Epcot Center.
This historical moment marks the realization of a singular vision of the future by a great man and an outstanding organization. Epcot Center stands as a tribute to the technical know-how of American industry and the inventiveness of the human mind. There is far more here than the thrills and delights of amusement, for Epcot is truly a doorway to the twenty-first century and destined to become an integral part of the American experience. In presenting solutions to problems faced by communities and nations around the globe, it will be a showcase for the free enterprise system and optimism of the American spirit.
Walt Disney’s achievements brought happiness to the hearts of young and old alike. He once referred to his own work as “imagineering,” and he was quick to utilize the talents and creativity of others to take us to a place no one else had ever been, where we would leave the comfort of the familiar and enter the world of the pioneer, and where imagination and dedication combined to make dreams a reality.
Epcot Center is the product of a man who dared to dream and had the courage and drive to accomplish that dream. When asked for the secret of his success, Walt replied, “I simply wished upon a star.” That star will now illuminate the lives of youngsters, Americans, and people from around the world who enter here and experience the ingenuity, history, showmanship, and hope of Epcot Center.
