by Jim Korkis
Over four and a half decades, countless hardworking and talented men and women made Walt’s final dream come true. During those years, some projects were announced but never completed and others were removed to be replaced by others that became favorites. This section documents some of those stories and is a reminder that the story of Walt Disney World is much larger than just the current parks and resorts.
Men Who Made WDW
Charlie Ridgway
Charlie Ridgway was hired at Disneyland in January 1963 as a publicity man. In 1969 he was offered the job of publicity manager for Walt Disney World and relocated to Florida.
He helped launch the opening of Walt Disney World in 1971 and EPCOT Center in 1982 as well as special projects for celebrations such as Donald Duck’s 50th birthday in 1984. He retired in 1994.
Here are some excerpts from an interview I did with him in 2006:
Well, we had had several “test” groups come through the Magic Kingdom park before opening day and the press was starting to grumble because they wanted to see what was going on. They kept pushing me to see the park and I finally told them we would let them in opening day before we let in the guests and give them a tour and tell them how we were going to pick the first family, etc.
I arranged for the news people to meet me at 6am on Friday, October 1. We took them on a tour of the park including the utilidors with young people rushing past us to get to their location.
Anyway, the only resort that had rooms completed was the Polynesian. It had something like 500 rooms and we had maybe 100 that were ready. We decided to have the press office there. The night of September 30, around ten or eleven o’clock, I was exhausted, but I went over to see the progress on the room since we were expecting maybe 200 reporters. It was horrible. There were bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. No carpeting on the floor. No wallpaper. No phones.
I just lost it. I blew up and told the crew that the reporters were coming the next morning and this room wasn’t even close to being finished. The crew boss told me to calm down and everything would be ready in time.
I was staying at the Hilton Inn South on Sand Lake Road. The Disney company had leased the place to train cast members that were going to work at the Contemporary and the Polynesian and that’s where they put up the Disney executives. I was going to wake up at 5:00 so that I would have plenty of time to be there before the media got to the Polynesian. I overslept.
I woke up about ten minutes before 6:00am. I also had to check out that day so I was rushing to get dressed and pack. As I rushed through the lobby I literally threw my room keys 60 feet to the desk and gave them a piece of my mind for not waking me up on time. I didn’t properly check out and they still send me a bill to this day.
So, I got to the press room and there were these beautiful chandeliers hanging down, and wall paper was up and carpet on the floor and all these tables and chairs and phones ringing off the hook. It was unbelievable. Newsmen were there drinking coffee and eating pastries and waiting for me to brief them. They had no clue what a disaster this area was just hours before.
More than 600 other invited press came in groups of 100 on opening trips during the first three weeks of the Magic Kingdom opening. Planned luaus on the beach were rained out regularly, but we pigged out in the Polynesian lobby and that was almost as much fun. We showed them everything and sent them home tired, happy, and loaded with press kits.
Men Who Made WDW
Bill “Sully” Sullivan
Bill Sullivan, who was always known as “Sully” by everyone including Walt Disney, was hired at Disneyland in July 1955 when he was just nineteen years old. He became a Jungle Cruise skipper, a Main Street, U.S.A. manager, and many other unusual roles.
In Florida, he helped with training the staff of the Polynesian Village Resort and the Contemporary Resort at the Hilton Inn South in Orlando, was a director of PICO (Project Installation and Coordination Office) for EPCOT Center, and became vice president of the Magic Kingdom in 1987. He retired in 1994.
Here are some excerpts from an interview I did with him in 2007:
In 1969, I came out to Walt Disney World. I ran Epcot for two years and then spent another ten at the Magic Kingdom. One time I went on vacation and, as a gag, maintenance came by and pulled off my office door and put in this small door with a lock and handle. They took out my regular desk and put in a kindergarten desk. The gag was because I was so short that there was a “Sully door” and then there would be a normal person’s door.
I taught my son to surf on the wave machine that was at the Polynesian Village Resort when that opened. I remember working early mornings at the Contemporary Hotel to get things ready for opening day. Two weeks of working non-stop around the clock.
Here’s something people don’t know about the opening of Walt Disney World. For the raising of the flag, Bob Matheison got these two ex-military security guards to handle it. But on the day of the opening, they got stage fright and didn’t raise the flag all the way to the top. Matheison had gone up to the top of the railroad platform to check things out and when the crowd came; he was trapped up there and could just watch. Take a look at some of the photos from that opening day. You don’t see the top of the flagpole.
On October 1, 1979, the area for Epcot was all still semi-swamp. A replica of Spaceship Earth hung from cranes. Spaceship Earth was to be the castle for Epcot. Dick Nunis called it the “visual target.” Nunis was hard as nails on the outside, but a big heart on the inside. He took care of his people. We have that lake by the Odyssey restaurant not by choice. The area was practically un-buildable so it had to be a lake.
On October 1, 1982, there was a brief dedication and then every day afterward was a new ceremony to dedicate individual pavilions. It was new ideas and technology. Not just telling the story, but to utilize it in the pavilion. In the Universe of Energy, the concrete floor was too porous to hold up the floor. We had to break it up and put in an entire new floor.
Epcot was the birth of electronic journalism to cover the opening. People could come to Epcot and see a way of life they couldn’t see anywhere else. Over the years, it had changed from working area to demonstration area. Walt wanted to have ideas come to life. We had to differentiate Epcot the working community from EPCOT Center, the core of the idea.
You know, I never heard Walt use the term “theme park.” What makes Disney special? It’s the quality of people, quality of training, quality of construction, and quality of design. It is just quality, quality, quality. It’s all put together.
Men Who Made WDW
Bill Evans
In 1952, Bill Evans and his brother Jack landscaped the grounds of Walt Disney’s Holmby Hills home. Walt then asked them in 1954 to landscape Disneyland.
Bill stayed on as a consultant, drawing landscape plans, installing materials, and supervising maintenance of the park. He was hired as the director of landscape design and was responsible for that aspect of Walt Disney World.
Although he officially retired in 1975, Bill consulted with Imagineering on the landscaping for every other Walt Disney theme park until his death. Today, his methods of plant propagation, plant relocation, and recycling are widely used everywhere.
Here are some excerpts from an interview I did with him in 1985:
In Florida we had a perfectly miserable experience in the theme park area down there because of the Florida terrain. The site of Disney World is a big piece of real estate, almost fifty square miles. Walt wanted that kind of dimension in order to separate himself very thoroughly from the neon jungles that surrounded Disneyland. That was the plus side.
The minus side was most of that site had an elevation of, I think, the fall in ten miles was only ten feet. There weren’t any hills on the property although they were described as hills by the local surveyors.
As an example, I wanted to start a tree farm to start producing some of the material we needed. A surveyor said, “There is just the place for it. There is a hill over on the west
side that would be just fine. Not that many trees on it.” He drove me over. There wasn’t a bit of road. It was all pasture land and swamp, and exceedingly poor pasture land at that. We finally arrived at the spot and he said, “What do you think of that? It’s a hill.”
Boy, you could have fooled me. There was a place out there about maybe six or eight feet of freeboard before you ran into the water table.
“I’ll walk up there but catch me if I fall. I don’t want to roll all the way to the bottom.”
That’s where we put the tree farm.
When we built the theme park, we had to lift the elevation of a hundred acres a maximum of 15 feet and a minimum of 10 feet. In order to get some freeboard to build the biggest basement in Florida, you had to raise the elevation. The process was to dig a 250-acre lagoon and the yield from that soil is what built that site.
If you look at the soil profile in that part of Florida, it is kind of like a Danish pastry. There is a skinny layer of sand on top and then there’s some peat muck, maybe something else, and underneath all of that some blue clay and underneath that pink clay and then brown clay and gray clay. All the colors of the rainbow, but all clay.
When you move the earth you take off this layer and put that over somewhere else and this layer on top of that. All of this abominable soil. You could dig a hole in that and it would fill with water. You’d drain it and you had just as much water in there a week later.
When we built Epcot, we were able to convince the engineers that no matter what it cost it would be a great economy to ignore that kind of source and go find a sandy source for soil. We have a very congenial environment for the landscaping at Epcot. No clay.
Men who Made WDW
Don “Ducky” Williams
Don “Ducky” Williams is the senior character artist for Walt Disney World. He has contributed artwork for signage, merchandise, brochures, advertisements, billboards, lithographs, and limited-edition items for the Disney Cruise Line and the Disney Vacation Club.
At the age of ten, he wrote to Walt Disney requesting a job and was told to keep drawing. His love for drawing and Disney continued, and he eventually left his job as a bank manager in Massachusetts and moved to Florida to pursue his dream. Finally, Don got his first Disney art opportunity by doing chalk portraits for guests in the park.
In an interview I did with him in 2012, Don said:
It was four dollars a portrait and the artist got to keep a dollar. The more portraits you did, the more money you earned. I was there for six weeks and then they closed down the Fantasyland Art Festival to put in an orange juice bar.
He was moved to the WDW art department that was then located in the Magic Kingdom utilidors. He recalled:
Of course, things changed over the years. Ralph Kent was in charge and he was connected with WED Imagineering. Then it was moved to Resort Design and Advertising and there were sixteen artists. Half did realistic art, like buildings, and the other half just did the characters. Fortunately, I was able to do both.
Today, I am part of Yellow Shoes Marketing, and with some artists going over to Disney Design Group, some being laid off, some moving over to animation when Disney-MGM Studios opened, etc., I am now just a department of one. I do all the Disney Cruise Line brochures, mailers, billboards, lithographs, and pretty much the same for Disney Vacation Club, as well.
Tony’s Town Square Restaurant on Main Street, U.S.A. at the Magic Kingdom is an unknown artistic tribute to Don “Ducky” Williams:
I did the artwork for all the china, signage, menus, etc. In fact, when it first opened, it had plates, saucers, creamers and more with my Lady and the Tramp artwork on it. They found the guests loved it so much that they kept stealing it so they replaced them with regular china. The remainder they had they sold at Disneyana conventions. Do you see all those framed paintings on the wall? There are twelve of them and I did them all. Those are the original paintings framed under glass, not prints or reproductions. If they ever change out that place, I would love to have those back to put up in my house.
When it came time to build Mickey Mouse’s house in Mickey’s Birthday Land, they came to Don and Russell Schroeder:
We were amazed that they knew nothing about Mickey. “What does his house look like inside?” Just look at the cartoons. That’s what the inside of Mickey’s house looks like. Russell and I designed all the furniture. We went to Home Depot to pick out carpeting and wallpaper. Mickey had a den and they had no props so I brought in my own: a snow globe of WDW, my Disneyland records, Disney books, etc. When they changed it over to sports stuff, they removed all that stuff and I never got it back. I wonder where it is today?
They always gave me oddball special projects. Singer Michael Jackson wanted to learn how to draw Mickey Mouse. So we were together in a room for a half hour with me teaching him how to draw Mickey. He was the nicest person. The next time I met him, I had drawn him a Peter Pan. He loved that character.
Men Who Made WDW
Bob Gurr
Bob Gurr joined the Disney company in 1954 working on just about anything with wheels including the Autopia and the Main Street, U.S.A. vehicles for the new Disneyland theme park.
He became director of Special Vehicle Development and like many Imagineers came out to Florida to help with the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. He retired from Disney in 1981, although he occasionally came back to consult, as well as working on projects for other companies, including Universal Studios’ original King Kong attraction.
At a March 2015 event, I got a chance to spend some time with Bob and ask a few questions about working at Walt Disney World:
Florida was definitely different. It was hot and humid with daily heavy rainstorms so one of the first things I had to do was re-design the Disneyland version of the monorail so it was enclosed which also meant air conditioning and water proofing. I had seen a Learjet at an airport and I wanted that same design and feeling for the Walt Disney World monorail: so simple and sleek that it just seemed to glide.
It had to be able to carry more guests and to carry them over a longer distance and for a longer period of time. The Florida Mark IV later inspired the chassis for the Mark V at Disneyland.
I had fun designing every part inside and out on the Mark IV. The components were manufactured in different parts of the country, but were all put together by the Martin-Marrieta plant in Orlando and then moved by truck to WDW. Those beams were made in Tacoma, Washington, and shipped to Florida.
I guess the Mark IV was built pretty well because they lasted for twenty years until they were replaced in the 1990s by the new Mark VI Bombardier monorails.
Like everyone else, I found myself doing several jobs at once. I was the guy they assigned to shepherd the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea submarines that were being built at the Tampa Shipyard. It was Imagineer George McGinnis who came up with the design to look like the ones in the Disney movie.
I was the guy who had to physically be there on site to make adjustments on the spot because the drawings and diagrams weren’t always as accurate as they needed to be for these guys.
We received equipment that weren’t in the diagrams. Other times, some things we expected never arrived. I had to learn electrical engineering one weekend because these big coils of old electric cable were going into the subs on Monday. We had to do a lot of what is called “hack and fit” to put the things together since the first sub was due on site August 13, 1971.
It took an entire day to drive it up to Orlando on this big trailer and going through all these small towns to avoid overhead power cables. We got it there on time and it worked and people loved it.
That was more than enough, but then they dropped the parking lot tram problem in my lap. Not only did they have to carry the guests through the parking lot, but it quickly became apparent they would have to carry the guests to the park itself, especially when there were thunderstorms shutting down the monorails. That’s a whole other story in itself and very complicated.
I fi
gured out that between 1954–1981, I worked on 126 different projects for Disney, but after Walt and Roy were gone, it was quite a different situation and not one I would have been happy continuing.
Things That Never Were
Beastly Kingdom
The original concept for Disney’s Animal Kingdom was based on animals real, imaginary, and extinct. Extinct animals would be represented in a section devoted to dinosaurs. Real animals would be represented throughout the park and include attractions showcasing them.
Mythical creatures like unicorns, dragons, and sea monsters were to be housed in an area known as the Beastly Kingdom (in some planning documents, the “Beastlie Kingdomme”).
The marketing material stated:
Beastly Kingdom is the realm of make-believe animals, animals that don’t really exist, out of legends, out of fairy tales, out of storybooks. Like our legends and fairy tales about imaginary animals, this land is divided into realms of good and realms of evil.
The silhouette of a winged dragon appears in the center the Animal Kingdom’s logo that also features real and extinct animals. Unfortunately, time and budget constraints did not allow the development of the land.
Camp Minnie-Mickey was quickly built instead as a temporary placeholder until spring 2003, when the Beastly Kingdom would be finally built, so that young guests could interact with the traditional Disney animated characters.
After the opening of the park, while surveys showed that guests enthusiastically supported a Beastly Kingdom, financial reports indicated that attendance would not grow enough to justify the expense of its construction. In fact, the opening of Animal Kingdom dropped the attendance nearly ten percent at the other three WDW parks
