August 9 - The Haunted Mansion

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On this day, in 1969, a swinging wake began in New Orleans Square in Disneyland as the Haunted Mansion welcomed its first happy haunts… er, guests. Walt Disney had always envisioned that a spooky attraction would be part of his theme park. Even in the early days, when he was only thinking about filling a couple of acres right across the street from the studio, one of the buildings was going to be a walk-through haunted house. As the plans for the Mickey Mouse Park grew and morphed into Disneyland and specifically themed areas of the park came into being, the spook-house ended up getting shelved. Ghosts just didn’t fit in on Main Street USA or in the jungles of Adventureland. The idea wasn’t forgotten though. When Disneyland was slated to get its first new land, the theme of the area was antebellum New Orleans, a perfect venue for pirates and ghosts alike.

Both Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion were originally conceived of as much smaller walkthrough attractions. As plans began to move forward on New Orleans Square, Walt assigned Legendary Imagineer Ken Anderson to develop the haunted house. One of the first designs Ken came up with was a dilapidated manor, overgrown with weeds and boarded up windows. Walt took one look at the drawing and said there was no way he was going to allow a run-down building in his theme park. After a visit to the famous (some would say infamous) Winchester House in San Jose, Walt’s haunted plan, of course, grew much bigger and the building evolved into a stately mansion.

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Ken then began writing all sorts of spooky little stories that could be played out in the individual rooms of the mansion. One involved a sea captain who ends up killing his bride then hanging himself. Another showcased a ghostly wedding party. There was even a tale about a cursed family who lived out their unfortunate lives (and deaths) in the house. Two more Legendary Imagineers, Rolly Crump and Yale Gracey, were put in charge of creating special effects based on each of the stories. And if parts of these grisly sagas seem familiar, it’s because elements from all of them made it into the final attraction. But there are several roadblocks to get around before we get to that point.

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In 1961, Disneyland began handing out flyers to entering guests announcing that the Haunted Mansion would be opening in 1963. Construction on the building, though, didn’t begin until 1962 and the only thing that was actually finished by the next year was the exterior of the building. This first delay can be directly blamed on the company’s involvement with the 1964 World’s Fair. Every available bit of Imagineering man (and woman) power was diverted into the four attractions Disney had been contracted to build for the New York extravaganza. Because of the success of the boat system of it’s a small world, the decision was made to use it on Pirates of the Caribbean. That resulted in a major overhaul of that attraction and the construction of another building to put it in. The Haunted Mansion was delayed again.

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Following the Fair, Ken Anderson had moved on to other projects but several more Legendary Imagineers came on board including Marc Davis, Xavier Atencio and Claude Coats. In the intervening years, Rolly Crump had developed several ideas centering on weird objects like coffin clocks and man-eating plants that were going to be placed in a Museum of the Weird themed restaurant. Meanwhile the two guys who were doing the main designing of the attraction as a whole, Marc and Claude, were at odds with each other over the Mansion’s tone. Marc wanted it to be silly and light while Claude wanted it to be actually scary. Then, in the midst of all this activity, Walt died and his death would cause another delay.

In the aftermath of Walt’s passing, the Disney company did everything it could to keep from descending into chaos. Projects that had already gotten the green light, continued on as best they could, even if there was now some confusion as to who had the final say on any design plans. The team working on the Haunted Mansion used this uncertainty to their advantage. Walt was really the only one who had been pushing for a walk-through attraction. Imagineers wanted a ride, even going so far as to say that they would need to build two identical walk-throughs to combat the loss in capacity that sort of attraction brought on. They were helped by the development of the Omnimover ride system that was first introduced in the summer of 1967 on Adventure Thru Inner Space.

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By modifying the ride vehicles from Inner Space (mostly making them black instead of blue but also implementing mechanical improvements they’d already learned from the systems practical debut), the Haunted Mansion would be a high capacity ride that also gave Imagineers precise control on how the effects would play to guests. Of course this meant that the attraction would need a complete design overhaul, but after Pirates, everyone was used to that. X Atencio solved the dispute on tone between Marc and Claude by melding the two views into the show that we know and love today and construction on the interior of the Mansion finally began.

By August 1969, well over a decade and a half after becoming a glitter in Walt’s eye, the Haunted Mansion was ready. From August 6-8, Disneyland cast members were invited to step into a Doom-buggy (as the ride vehicles are known) to experience the Mansion’s hot and cold running chills. Then, on the morning of August 9, the first guests got to see what they years of hype were all about. Things didn’t run perfectly at first, especially an effect known as the hatbox ghost. While the figure’s head had disappeared from its neck and reappeared in the box it was carrying perfectly in the warehouse where all these things were tested, Imagineers couldn’t get the lighting just right in the attraction to pull it off. After just a few days, the hatbox ghost was removed (he would reappear in the Disneyland version of the ride in 2015 when new technology made him much more possible; here in Florida we’re still waiting…). Other than that, though, the ride was a hit and really helped prove to the world that the Disney magic could continue even after the man was no longer among us. Disneyland attendance, which had seriously flagged since Walt’s death, surged once again.

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The Haunted Mansion was so popular at Disneyland, that it was included in the design of the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World which opened just two years later. You can also ride it in Tokyo Disneyland and there is a very similar attraction in Disneyland Paris called Phantom Manor (think of that one like a Western themed Mansion). Incidentally, those four versions of the Haunted Mansion, located in four different Disney theme parks, are also in four different lands within those parks. Mansion’s address is in New Orleans Square in Disneyland, Liberty Square in the Magic Kingdom, Fantasyland in Tokyo and Frontierland in Paris. No other multi-park attraction can boast the same thing. There is a Mansion inspired attraction in Hong Kong Disneyland as well, Mystic Manor, but because the Chinese people have vastly different views of the afterlife from other cultures, there is no mention of spirits or the departed in it. Instead inanimate objects come spookily to life. Still creepy, just different.

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For those of you who noticed how often I used the word Legendary when talking about the people who worked on the Haunted Mansion, that wasn’t even a tiny bit of overkill. The number of people who worked on this attraction and went on to become official Disney Legends is almost mind blowing. And I didn’t even mention half of them. There is a place you can find references to most of them though. The next time you’re waiting in line for the ride and you’re reading all the silly tombstones and monuments scattered about the queue, every one of those names you see honors someone who made a contribution to the Mansion. And since all but one of them (Rolly Crump is still kicking at 89) have passed away since the doors first creaked open, I’m sure they can now be found among its 999 residents. Which really, in my opinion, only makes it more enticing to volunteer to be the thousandth…

July 17 - Disneyland

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On this day, in 1955, Disneyland welcomed its first official guests in Anaheim, California. To be fair, the first people to walk through the front gates on that July morning were not the first guests to visit Disneyland. Some press had already been given a tour and Walt and Lilian had celebrated their wedding anniversary at the Golden Horseshoe Saloon a couple of days before. They weren't even the first paying guests as everyone who came that first day were supposed to be invited. I say supposed to be, because about half of the 28,000 people in the park for the opening ceremonies either had fake tickets or no tickets at all, they just hopped the fence. Needless to say, the park that had once been declared by potential investors to be just as much a folly as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was initially called caused quite a stir right from the get go.

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Everyone has probably heard the story of how Walt was standing around watching his daughters, Dianne and Sharon, riding the merry-go-round at an amusement park and got the idea of building a place where adults and kids could have fun together. It's a cute story but only part of the reason the idea of Disneyland wormed its way into Walt's brain. The other part was the letters. Every year, the Walt Disney Studio got hundreds, if not thousands, of letters from people who wanted to come visit the studio, see how movies are made and see their favorite characters. Walt knew that if the average person actually showed up at the studio, they'd be bored out of their minds within ten minutes. Not only was there nothing for people to do there but the reality of making animation (and even live action) is a long, slow, tedious process. And everyone's favorite characters were nothing more than drawings, not the walking, talking beings that people believed they saw in the theaters. Walt began to envision a place that tourists could come visit.

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The first actual mention of his idea in memo form came in 1948. He talked about turning an eight acre plot of land across the street from the studio into a Mickey Mouse Park. Except Walt's idea kept growing and quickly outgrew the spot he had in mind. He hired a consultant, the Legendary Harrison Price of the Stanford Research Institute, to help him figure out how much land he would need. Harrison did his best, trying to anticipate future expansions, and came up with 160 acres. Walt thought it sounded good, looked around and bought some orange groves in the city of Anaheim. That original eight acre plot didn't go to waste however. It's still part of the company and currently houses Walt Disney Animation and the ABC Studios.

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Now that he had a site, Walt just needed some money to build his dream. Naturally he turned to his financial guru of a brother, Roy, who immediately tried to talk him out of the whole thing. That pep talk, as usual, yielded no results so, Roy rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Asking current Disney employees to support the boss's craziness raised a few dollars but nowhere near the $17 million it was going to take to build Disneyland. One of the more genius ideas was a partnership between the fledgling ABC television network and Disney. ABC needed content to broadcast, Walt needed money and thus the Disneyland television series was born. ABC a top quality show to boost their ratings, Walt got ABC to invest in his park and Walt got something even better: advertising. Not only did he name the show after the new venture but he came into people's homes every week and told them all about the wonderful things they would experience when they came to visit. He was able to build anticipation to a frenzy.

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Construction on Disneyland actually began on July 16, 1954. Walt had all sorts of Legendary people in place to make his dream come true. Old timers like Marc Davis, who helped design the place, and new hires like retired Rear Admiral Joe Fowler, who oversaw the construction process. One year and one day later, Disneyland was ready to open. Sort of. Like most major projects with deadlines, things got a little crazy near the end. There are plenty of famous stories about people's shoes getting stuck in asphalt that wasn't quite set yet and all sorts of other mishaps that first day. But none of that matters. People were enchanted by what they saw and have kept coming back for more. There are now a dozen Disney parks scattered around the world, but Disneyland boasts the most visits of any of them (mainly because it was the only one for sixteen years, but still). History was made on July 17, 1955 and theme parks have never been the same since.

July 2 - Rainbow Carverns Mine Train

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On this day, in 1956, the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train took its first guests through the Living Desert of Frontierland in Disneyland. The Living Desert area of Disneyland, named after the Tru-Life Adventure film of the same name, was a happening place in the late Fifties. Guests could ride in stagecoaches and Conestoga wagons, opt to straddle a pack mule to tour the area or take one of two trains. The larger train was the Sante Fe and Disneyland Railroad (nowadays just the Disneyland Railroad). The smaller train was the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train and was the only way guests could see the beautiful Rainbow Caverns.

The Mine Train was a narrow gauge train that rain on a track 2 feet 7 inches wide, making it a little bigger than the Casey Jr. Circus Train over in Fantasyland, which runs on a 2 foot wide track, and a little smaller than the Disneyland Railroad which runs on a 3 foot track. All three trains are considered narrow gauge (a standard gauge train, such as Amtrak, is about 4 feet 8 inches).

In 1960, Walt decided that Disneyland’s attractions needed more humor in them (although the Living Desert always had cacti that look suspiciously like people we know) and put Marc Davis on the problem. Marc designed a major redo of the Living Desert area. The Conestoga wagons and stagecoaches disappeared and the desert area was reduced in size. The freed up space became several different ecosystems, encompassing everything from mountain peaks to valleys full of beavers to forests teeming with bears. The area was now called Nature’s Wonderland and only a few things remained untouched: the pack mules, Rainbow Caverns and the mine train.

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Now called the Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland, guests boarded the train in the fictional town of Rainbow Ridge before traveling past replicas of over 200 North American animals. A recorded narration was provided by Dallas McKennon (who can still be heard giving the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad safety spiel). The ride was topped off with a trip through the Caverns before returning to Rainbow Ridge for disembarking.

And so it went for the next seventeen years. As the world lurched into the latter part of the Seventies, the public’s appetite grew for thrill rides and the shelf life of attractions like the Mine Train grew short. In 1973, Disneyland finally pulled the plug on the pack mules and the last visit to Rainbow Caverns happened in 1977. The Nature’s Wonderland area was completely transformed and became one of the parks most popular attractions today, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which opened in 1979. Eagle-eyed guests can still spot some remnants of the Mine Train in Big Thunder, though. In the queue near the loading station, there is a scaled down set up of an old mining town named Rainbow Ridge. Several of the animatronic animals throughout the ride first appeared in Nature’s Wonderland. The colorful, glowing pools of water near the first lift hill are in homage to Rainbow Caverns. And, until 2010, one of the Mine Train engines and two cars could be seen along the Rivers of America.

June 29 - America Sings

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On this day, in 1974, Disneyland’s salute to the United States’ 200^th birthday, America Sings, opened in Tomorrowland. As Bicentennial Fever began sweeping the nation in the early Seventies, Disneyland naturally wanted to get in on the action. It was decided to create a new show to go in the space occupied by the Carousel of Progress. That classic show, one of the holdovers from the 1964 World’s Fair, was packed up and, in 1973, relocated to the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, where it still runs today. Imagineers, led by the Legendary Marc Davis, then got to work on an all new attraction.

America Sings was structured similar to Carousel of Progress (kind of a necessity since it used the same space). A total of six theatres rotated around a central cluster of stages, each theater moving to the next stage every four minutes. Guests entered the show in stage one, saw a brief introduction, rotated through four eras of American musical history, then saw a brief conclusion and exited from stage six. For the show’s narrators, Marc created Eagle Sam, voiced by Burl Ives, and Ollie Owl, voiced by Sam Edwards. While Eagle Sam is sometimes referred to as Sam the Eagle, he shouldn’t be confused with our Muppet friend of the same name or the 1984 Olympic Mascot, Sam the Olympic Eagle; those are three distinct characters. In a nod to taking over Carousel’s space, Rex Allen, who played the narrator of Carousel, has a small part in America Sings as Sombrero, a dog.

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On a tragic note, America Sings was responsible for the death of a cast member shortly after it opened. On July 8, 1974, just nine days after its debut, Deborah Stone was caught between the stationary outer wall of the attraction and one of the inner moving walls. The 18 year old was crushed to death but her body wasn't discovered for nearly twenty minutes. Guests had actually heard her screams but thought it was part of the show. As a result of the accident, America Sings was closed for three days while safety lights were installed and the moving walls were redesigned to include breakaway panels. Thankfully, no further incidents were recorded.

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It might seem ridiculously out of place to plunk a historical show down in Tomorrowland, but Bicentennial Fever was a powerful thing in the mid Seventies and no one really minded. Until after the reasonable time that bicentennial celebrations could go on, of course. By the early Eighties, America Sings not only didn’t fit into a land that claimed to have its eyes set on the future, but it was getting long in the tooth as a concept as well. The show persisted almost to the end of the decade, however. In 1986, it was slight victim of recycling when two geese Audio-Animatronics were removed, stripped of their skin and installed as baggage droids in the queue of Star Tours. The rest of America Sings kept on singing until April 10, 1988. At that point, most of the remaining 113 Audio-Animatronic figures found a new home in Splash Mountain, which opened the following year. The Stork figure from the show’s finale is used as a training tool to teach and test new Imagineers on how to program Animatronics.

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Plans were made to install a third show in the rotating theaters and a “coming soon” sign was placed in front of the attraction. That sign stood there for almost ten years, as the remaining sets of America Sings slowly deteriorated and the building was used as office and storage space, the new attraction a victim of Euro Disneyland’s financial shortcomings. Finally, in 1998, the building was completely renovated and became Innoventions, Disneyland’s version of the Epcot area. In 2015, the space was further updated and became the West Coast’s Star Wars Launch Bay, a walkthrough attraction highlighting all things Star Wars related.

May 28 - it's a small world

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On this day, in 1966, it’s a small world began sending guests on a whimsical journey of international goodwill in Disneyland’s Fantasyland in Anaheim, California. Walt was already under contract for three attractions for the 1964 World’s Fair, when he was approached by Pepsi to create a fourth one. The board of directors at Pepsi knew they were going to have a pavilion at the fair (it would be commercial suicide to not have a presence) but had procrastinated over what they wanted in their pavilion. Hollywood legend Joan Crawford was a member of that board by way of her marriage to the late Pepsi CEO Alfred Steele. She got fed up with the rest of the board’s dithering, asked her friend Walt Disney to come up with something and basically browbeat everyone into accepting whatever was presented, in spite of the fact that Walt would have less than eleven months to produce. Because Walt knew how to bring out the best in people (and had the best people to work with), everything worked out just fine.

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It was decided that the proceeds from the ride would benefit the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) so the basic theme was “Children of the World” and that became its working title as well. Because of the recent international tensions over missiles in Cuba, the theme was expanded to include brotherhood and peace (which may seem like it’s implied in an endeavor based on kids, but it really isn’t). The overall design of the attraction fell to the Legendary Mary Blair, who had already lent her considerable talents to shaping the look of films like Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. Unlike those projects where she merely influenced things, this overall look would be pure Mary. The simple clean shapes used in deceptively complex ways and the cheerful color palate combined to make a classic ride that endures and delights right up to today.

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Not that Mary didn’t have help along the way. The Legendary Marc Davis, as he did on so many Disneyland attractions, designed the scenes guests would travel through and many of the characters in them. His wife, the Legendary Alice Davis, designed the costumes the dolls wear and the Legendary Rolly Crump took care of the rest of the props and figures. The Legendary Blaine Gibson designed and sculpted the dolls with input from Walt himself, who insisted that every doll, no matter what country it represented, had an identically shaped face. It’s no coincidence that so many of the people who worked on this particular ride have gone on to achieve Disney Legend status (except for Walt himself, who has never been given the award; I know that it would be a fairly redundant gesture, it’s just something that makes me smile when I think about it), they are all that good.

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Which brings us to the music (I can hear some of you groaning already because, let’s be honest, the song has probably been playing in your head since you started reading this article). In its original form, Children of the World was going to have snippets of each country’s national anthem playing near the dolls from that country. It  was a plan that only sounded good on paper. In real life, it was a jumbled up, headache inducing wall of noise. So Walt brought his resident songwriters, the Legendary Sherman Brothers, into the project. He gave them just two guidelines: the song they wrote had to able to be done in a round (so it was infinitely repeatable without a beak) and it had to be easily translated into many different languages. They came back with It’s a Small World, a slow ballad about the universal theme of friendship. Walt said bring me something more cheerful. So they sped their song up considerably and replayed it for the boss. Walt liked the second version so much, he renamed the entire attraction after it. Love it or hate it, the Sherman Brothers’ ultimate ear worm has easily been played over 50 million times over the years making it the most played piece of music ever created, beating out the number two song by over 40 million plays. Of course, the fact that it is playing somewhere in the world at literally any moment of the day helps.

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The success of it’s a small world (and, yes, writing it without capital letters is the proper way to refer to the attraction) at the World’s Fair cannot be undersold. The ride’s high capacity (especially compared to other Fair attractions) meant that there was rarely a line, in spite of the overwhelming number of people who experienced it. Over the course of the two and a half years the Fair ran, over 10 million tickets were sold for small world resulting in over $8 million dollars being raised for UNICEF. At the Fair’s end, it was dismantled, transported back to Southern California and installed in its permanent home. When the Magic Kingdom opened five years later, it included a version of the ride, with the queue area moved indoors. Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris and Hong Kong Disneyland each have their own versions as well, so it’s fairly accurate when Disney claims that the sun never sets on cheerful children of it’s a small world.

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In 1997, Disneyland began a new holiday tradition with their version of it’s a small world. At the end of October, they add in almost a million twinkling lights as well as various Christmas decorations and costumes for the dolls. The soundtrack also gets changed to include international versions of Jingle Bells and Deck the Halls. The holiday version has proven so popular that it’s spread to every other park around the world except one. The Magic Kingdom ride stays unaltered (mainly to keep the change as something unique in the United States to its sister park).

May 20 - Tom Sawyer Island

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On this day, in 1973, Tom Sawyer Island opened in Frontierland of the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. The 19^th century, small town existence portrayed in Mark Twain’s classic story of Tom Sawyer, would seem to be a perfect vehicle for Walt Disney to have explored at some point. Given his own childhood in Mareceline, Missouri and the entrance to his theme park that was modeled after his boyhood home, it might come as a surprise that Walt never produced a film version of Tom Sawyer. In fact, Disney wouldn’t make a film featuring Tom and his friend Huckleberry Finn until nearly three decades after Walt’s death, the 1995 clunker Tom and Huck. That doesn’t mean Walt couldn’t find a use for the classic idealization of Middle America; he just chose to include it in his living movie instead.

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The original Tom Sawyer Island opened in Disneyland on June 16, 1956, one month and one day before the park’s first anniversary. Walt had considered several different themes for the large island in the middle of the Rivers of America before settling on the Twain tale. He asked the legendary Marc Davis to design an area especially for kids to enjoy some unstructured play (that of course wasn’t the phrase they used back then; they just called it having fun). Supposedly, none of Marc’s plans wowed Walt enough, so the Boss took the task upon himself and cranked out his own final design in one late night session. That makes Tom Sawyer Island the only attraction completely designed by Walt himself (in macro of course, Imagineers still took care of all the details).

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Guests had to board free floating rafts to get between the island and Disneyland proper. Once on the island, they could freely roam the paths, exploring caves, discovering forts and generally whooping it up in the ‘wilderness’. At one time, cast members would even leave large paintbrushes hidden around the island, evoking a sense that Tom had left it behind after doing some chores for Aunt Polly. If guests found one and turned it in, they received a small prize (and no it wasn’t getting to white wash a fence for the rest of the afternoon). Guests could also experience Tom Sawyer Island from afar by riding the Riverboat, the Mike Fink Keelboats or using their own power on the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes to glide along the Rivers of America and circumnavigate the island.

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Tom Sawyer Island proved pretty popular through the years, so when Walt Disney World opened, it was decided to replicate the area. The Florida version opened about 20 months after the park. Ten years later, when the theme parks went international for the first time, Tokyo Disneyland got its own version that opened with the park. Disneyland Paris has an island in the middle of its River but theirs is occupied by Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

While Walt Disney World’s version of Tom Sawyer Island is still operating (albeit on a more seasonal basis; if it is open when you go, the snack bar is killer) and is virtually unchanged from when it opened, the same cannot be said of Disneyland’s. In 2007, the theme of the original Island was pretty much completely changed over to Pirates of the Caribbean. A thin link was kept to the story of Tom and Huck by claiming that now, since the boys loved to pretend they were pirates, the island is an extension of their imaginative playtime. The only non-pirate themed structure is Tom and Huck’s tree fort, but even that has some pirate elements in it to tie everything together. The guest accessible area of the island has also shrunk over the years, as most of the technical equipment for Fantasmic! now takes up one end of it (for those of you only familiar with that show at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, the Disneyland show takes place on the Rivers of America). So if you're looking for the original experience, head to Florida or Japan. If you want to do Tom Sawyer Island 2.0, head on over to Anaheim. Either way, be prepared to slow down a little bit and let your sense of adventure take over for an hour or so. You'll be glad did.

February 5 - Peter Pan

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On this day, in 1953, Walt Disney Productions 14th animated feature, Peter Pan, debuted in theaters. Peter Pan is notable for being the last Disney film in a couple of categories. First, it's the last movie that RKO Radio Pictures distributed. A few months later, Walt created his own distribution company, Buena Vista Distribution. Pan is also the last picture that all of Walt's Nine Old Men would work on together as directing animators.

As early as 1935, Walt wanted to make Peter Pan as his second animated feature. Unfortunately, Paramount owned the film rights at the time and was unwilling to cut a deal. He was able to get the rights in 1939 and began production. By mid-1940, the story had been pretty well decided on and characters were being assigned to animators. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, starting World War II, work on both Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, also in production, ground to a halt. The government had the Disney Studio working on propaganda and training films for the duration of the war and then the studio struggled through its financial problems immediately following. It wouldn't be until May 1949 that production on Pan started again in earnest.

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Not only was Peter Pan released in theaters in 1953, but it was also entered in the 1953 Cannes Film Festival. The film itself didn't win any awards in Cannes, but Walt was honored twice during the festival. During the opening ceremony, the French Minister of Information awarded him the Legion of Honour (he'd also been given one in 1936) and he was awarded the Jury Special Prize for "his contributions to the prestige of the festival."

The critical reception for Peter Pan was fairly positive. Several critics didn't think much of the film's music, but since it had been written over a period of 14 years by several different people, that's not surprising. It retains a decent score even today, although the movie's handling of Native Americans is justly panned. Even Disney Legend Marc Davis admitted years later that he didn't know if the Indians would have made it into the picture if done today, and if they did, they certainly wouldn't have been portrayed the same way. And who can forget that Michael Jackson called Peter Pan his favorite movie, going so far as to name his estate the Neverland Ranch (which brings up a whole other set of controversies we won't discuss here).

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Although it took so long to get the silver screen, Peter Pan manages to enjoy a healthy legacy. Peter Pan's Flight is easily one of the most popular rides at Disney Parks around the world. Peter, Wendy, Captain Hook and Mr. Smee all make appearances in parades daily. And the movie has spawned several sequels. Could you argue that all of this attention really belongs to the original play's creative author, JM Barrie? You could (and probably should). But you can't deny that Disney not only keeps Mr. Barrie's vision alive, but helps us all forget that Mary Martin fiasco (don't even get me started).

January 12 - Marc Davis

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On this day, in 2000, Marc Fraser Davis passed away in Glendale, California. Marc began life about a hundred miles north of the place he ended it. Born on March 30, 1913 in Bakersfield, California, he was a Californian through and through. Well, mostly. While he attended art classes at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, he actually graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri. Needless to say, he didn’t spend much more time in Middle America than his schooling took but his presence there at all probably helped start his career working under one of the area’s most famous sons.

Coming on board the Disney juggernaut in 1935, Marc quickly earned the admiration of his fellow animators. Ollie Johnston recalled that, while several people contributed to the design of Snow White, it was Marc who made her walk in grace and beauty.

Marc wasn’t just good at bringing women to life. The consummate draftsman also made animals more believable. It started with his work on Bambi, Faline and Thumper in Bambi. He then gave us Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear in Song of the South. Bongo in Fun and Fancy Free and Mr. Toad in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad round out his furry contributions to the Disney family.  

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But truth be told, it really was drawing women where Marc excelled the most. He was so good at grace and beauty, he would often be given the difficult task of animating either the heroine or the villainess in a picture. Over the years, not only did he join Ollie as one of Walt’s Nine Old Men, he earned himself the nickname of Disney’s Ladies Man. Name a major female character from the Fifties and it’s almost a guarantee that Marc animated her. Cinderella, Alice, Tinkerbell, Aurora and Maleficent, and, lastly, Cruella de Vil (who technically didn’t appear until the early Sixties), were all created under Marc’s steady hand. Then, when One Hundred and One Dalmatians wrapped up production, he gave up animation forever.

As the Sixties began, Disneyland was almost constantly being updated and expanded and a huge amount of effort was being put into several projects for the upcoming World's Fair. WED Enterprises (the precursor to Imagineering) was designing and building almost more attractions than they could handle. Marc had made some contributions during the late Fifties to Adventureland's Jungle Cruise and the Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland. As the excitement in the department continued into the new decade, he decided to devote the rest of his career to designing characters and writing stories for the theme park instead of the silver screen.

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Marc still applied the same techniques in his new role. He still spent hours developing characters for an attraction and would use storyboards to plan out what guests would experience. His dedication payed off. As the technology behind Audio-Animatronics developed and matured, Marc would become a master at using them to tell stories. His first big project to open after his career shift was the classic show found in The Enchanted Tiki Room. For the 1964 World's Fair, he had a hand in all four of the attractions that Disney built: Ford's Magic Skyway, Great Moment's With Mr. Lincoln, It's a Small World and The Carousel of Progress.

When the World's Fair was safely behind them, Imagineers returned to creating new experiences for Disneyland. Marc's designs can be seen throughout both Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, both of which opened in New Orleans Square. He then lent his style to the Country Bear Jamboree and America Sings, which was the replacement attraction for his earlier work Carousel of Progress.

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The last several years of Marc's career were spent developing an attraction that was never quite built. It was to occupy a massive area in Frontierland at the Magic Kingdom in Florida. Known as the Western River Expedition, it was supposed to be Florida's answer to Pirates of the Caribbean since, Disney executives reasoned, Floridians wouldn't be interested in pirates because the state was practically built by them. Instead, Marc designed a Western themed ride that would involve buffalo, a stagecoach robbery, a Native American adobe village, and a show with saloon girls, a bank robbery and plenty of cowboys. A mine train roller coaster would be housed in the same show building (yes, it would be the largest one Disney had ever built). From the outside, the building would look like and be called Thunder Mesa Mountain. From all accounts, it would have been a spectacular thing to see. So what happened?

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Guests to the Florida Project had one complaint they could all agree on, that's what happened. The question "Where are the pirates?" became the one most asked after the Magic Kingdom opened. So Disney hastily built a version of Pirates of the Caribbean, using a large chunk of the money allocated for Marc's Expedition. Then an economic downturn hit the country. Then Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (part of the plans for the attraction from the beginning) was built using most of the land that was to go to Expedition. And that was basically it. All the sketches and models that Marc slaved over were relegated to the research vault. Not to despair too much, though. Plenty of Imagineers have snuck elements of Marc's designs into other attractions including Splash Mountain and Expedition Everest, and I'm sure will continue to do so as often as they can.

In 1978, Marc retired after an incredible 43 year career with the Walt Disney Company.  He was named an official Disney Legend in 1989 for all of his iconic contributions to both the world of animation and beloved attractions that endure to this day. Shortly after he passed away, he was honored once more when CalArts established the Marc Fraser Davis Scholarship Fund, ensuring that creative genius will be able to flourish far into the future.

September 3 - Eric Larson

On this day, in 1905, Eric Cleon Larson was born in Cleveland, Utah. 

Eric attended the University of Utah as a journalism major. While studying as a Ute, he became editor of the campus magazine and was known for his wit, both in written articles and cartoons. He even got a few into the local newspaper. After graduation, Eric hit the road as a freelancer, ending up in Los Angeles in 1933. One of the first things he did in town was develop a radio serial named "The Trail of the Viking" for KHJ Radio. That same year, a friend witnessed Eric's drawing skills and suggested he apply at the Disney Studio.

Almost immediately hired on as an assistant animator, Eric would be instrumental in developing, and later maintaining, the high artistic quality the Disney Studio became known for. He also solidly earned his place as one of Walt's Nine Old Men.

 The list of characters Eric created is extensive:

 As an animator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he was responsible for the woodland creatures that follow Snow White around.

As an animation director for Pinocchio, he created Figaro, a character he would frequently claim as his favorite.

He was in charge of the centaurs and horses in the "Pastoral Symphony segment of Fantasia.

He became a supervising animator by Bambi, creating Friend Owl.

His next two movies also involved birds: the Aracuan bird in The Three Caballeros and Sasha the Bird for Make Mine Music.

He was a directing animator on Song of the South, Melody Time and So Dear to My Heart.

He co-animated the title character in Cinderella with fellow Old Man, Marc Davis.

For 1951's Alice in Wonderland, he brought the caterpillar to life, which is a bit of a self portrait.

He flew everyone to Neverland in Peter Pan.

Peg, the Pekingese leader of the pound, was his contribution to Lady and the Tramp.

He was a Sequence Director on Sleeping Beauty.

He assisted in creating several of the puppies for 101 Dalmatians.

Eric also contributed to The Sword in the Stone, Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Robin Hood and dozens of shorts.

One of the last pieces of actual animation Eric did for the studio was the title sequence for The Rescuers in 1977.

After Walt's death in 1965, it became more and more apparent with each passing year that the talent pool the studio had enjoyed for decades was steadily shrinking. In 1973, Eric began ramping up the Talent Program to usher in the next generation of animators. He became a devoted mentor to such newcomers as Andreas Deja, who created Jafar for Aladdin and Scar for The Lion King, and a laundry list of others: Glen Keane, Gary Goldman, and Betsy Baytos to name a few. Deja once said that "no one was more concerned with passing on the Disney legacy than Eric."

By 1981, the rest of the Nine Old Men had either retired or passed away. As the last representative of the old school, Eric spent his final years with the company as an animation consultant, gently shepherding the new kids who'd come into their own on films like The Fox and the Hound. After watching over The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective, Eric retired in September of 1986 after more than 52 years spent creating Disney magic. Two years later, he would pass away in La Canada Flintridge, California, near Glendale, on October 25, 1988.

Eric was posthumously made a Disney Legend, along with his fellow Old Men, in 1989.

September 2 - Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

September 2 - Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

On this day, in 1979, guests in Disneyland's Frontierland began boarding the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

When Walt Disney World opened in Florida in 1971, it did not include a Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. Imagineers felt it would be more exciting for Floridian guests to experience a cowboy theme because evidence of real pirates was all over the state. They proposed an area in Frontierland called the Western River Expedition that would have a river boat ride and a mine train roller coaster, with extensive plans and concepts committed to paper by Marc Davis. The fact that it would have been the most expensive attraction to date, coupled with the number one complaint of guests being "Where are the pirates?", meant it never got built.

After a Pirates ride opened in Florida in 1973, an Imagineer by the name of Tony Baxter proposed building just the mine train portion of the WRE. That plan got approval but it would be pushed back by the development of Space Mountain, a delay that would benefit the attraction. By the time Big Thunder went into actual production, computers were starting to be used in ride design and this probably gave the coaster a smoother ride.

Although it came from a plan meant for the Florida project, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was first built in California. Built on the land previously occupied by the Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland, there are all kinds of homages to it predecessor incorporated into the attraction.  The coaster itself is named after the waterfall the older mine train traveled by. Several of the animatronic animals from the previous ride can be seen along Big Thunder's track. The Rainbow Caverns on the first lift hill echo an old area and the mini Western town in the queue area should look familiar as well.

There are two major differences between the attractions in American parks. One, the track used in Disneyland's version is a mirror image of that used in Florida. Two, the landscape in California is rounder while Disney World's is much more angular.

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad would make its way around the world. The Florida version would open in 1982. A version that is kind of a hybrid between California and Florida would open in Tokyo Disneyland in 1987. Disneyland Paris' version, basically a copy of Florida's, would be the only one that existed on its park's opening day in 1992. Both the Tokyo and Paris rides do not officially have the word Railroad in their name.

The last thing to note about Big Thunder is its medical benefits. A study came out in 2016 showing that riding the mine train coaster could help someone pass a kidney stone nearly 70% of the time. The study also noted that riding Space Mountain or Rock 'n' Roller Coaster did not have the same benefits, so if you're suffering from stones, head over to the Railroad first.