December 20 - Sam McKim

Photo lifted from filesofjerryblake.com

On this day, in 1924, Sammy McKim was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. During the Great Depression, Sammy and his family moved to Los Angles, California. When he was ten, Sammy was visiting a relative on the MGM movie lot when he caught the eye of a casting director as was almost immediately put to work as an extra. Republic Studios signed him to a contract and he began appearing in Westerns and other B movies, working with the likes of Spencer Tracy, John Wayne and Gene Autry. Throughout this entire period, Sammy was constantly drawing. Many times he’d make caricatures of his fellow actors and have them sign the pieces for him. When he hit high school, Sammy submitted his portfolio to the Walt Disney Studios and… was offered a job in traffic control. He said no thanks and joined the United States Army instead to serve in World War II.

At the conclusion of that conflict, Sam (as he was now called) returned to LA and enrolled in the Art Center College of Design. He graduated in 1950 and the military waited a whole 24 hours before they drafted him back into the Army for the Korean War. Sam served for 14 more months, earning the Distinguished Service Cross in the process, returned stateside again and, this time, enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute. Graduating again in 1953, Sam was faced with a choice: return to a life of acting (he was offered a role in John Ford’s The Long Gray Line) or stay behind the cameras and create storyboards for 20^th Century Fox. He chose the career in drawing and never looked back.

Image copyright Disney

A round of layoffs hit Fox the following year and swept Sam into a new job at the Walt Disney Studios. His first assignments were to draw inspirational sketches of attractions for a little project called Disneyland. It wouldn’t be long before every land in the new park had some sort of influence from the hand of Sam McKim. He contributed to the look of the Golden Horseshoe Revue, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion and many more. Eventually, Sam would touch theme parks in the Florida Project as well. He helped design The Hall of Presidents at the Magic Kingdom, the Universe of Energy at Epcot and made dozens of sketches for the Disney-MGM Studios.

Image copyright Disney

Sam’s biggest contribution to the Disney legacy, however, is easily the souvenir maps he drew of Disneyland between 1958 and 1964. The intricacy of these maps has made them one of the most sought after pieces of memorabilia in all of Disney collecting. Almost thirty years later, Sam would reprise his role of park cartographer when he created one of his detailed masterpieces for the opening of Disneyland Paris.

In 1996, Sam was declared an official Disney Legend for all of his inspiring (and enduring) design work for the company over the years. He would pass away from heart failure at his home in Burbank, California on July 9, 2004. He was 79.

September 15 - Ellen's Energy Adventure

On this day, in 1996, Ellen DeGeneres began having an Energy Crisis in the Universe of Energy pavilion at Epcot.

You heard that right. When the revamped ride reopened that fall, Ellen's energy was in full crisis mode. It didn't last long. Almost immediately, she got her act together and Ellen's Energy Crisis was renamed Ellen's Energy Adventure. No explanation was ever given as to the nature of the crisis, we're just glad it got resolved.

The original Universe of Energy was fairly serious and utilitarian. Educational films informed guests about different kinds of energy and a trip through prehistoric times let everyone know where fossil fuels came from. It even got not one but two songs. Straightforward, not terribly exciting stuff. That all changed in version two, mostly due to a bad wig but I'm getting ahead of myself.

As attraction updates began to focus more on humor and celebrity faces, the Universe of Energy was ripe for an overhaul. And who better to use than folks with current hit projects. Bill Nye, the Science Guy would lend credibility to the presentation and Ellen would provide a perfect comic foil to all the sciency stuff. Add in Alex Trebek and Jamie Lee Curtis for a Jeopardy showdown like no other, and you get the adventure we'd been waiting for. Don't get me wrong, Ellen's Energy Adventure was still quite informative, as Future World pavilions should be.

The ride system itself didn't change from the original. Guests watched a short preshow in which Ellen dreams she's on Jeopardy losing against her old college nemesis and Albert Einstein. That led into a theater with four large ride vehicles. After getting seated, the vehicles rotated for another movie that showed Bill Nye offering to help Ellen learn a few things during the commercial break. The vehicles then moved through the area with dinosaur animatronics, again letting guests know where fossil fuels came from. The experience ended back in the theater it started in with Ellen using all her newfound knowledge to totally kill Final Jeopardy.

It was in the area with the dinosaurs that the real highlight of the attraction was found. No one knows for sure who dressed the Ellen animatronic figure, but it quickly passed into the hall of fame for unintentional guest favorites. Whether it was the absolutely terrible wig or the fact that Ellen was trying to fend off a dinosaur by poking a stick at it, a little part of all of us died when the figure stopped working and was removed from the ride in 2014. The adventure stopped altogether on August 13, 2017 as the Universe of Energy pavilion went dark in anticipation of version three featuring the Guardians of the Galaxy. No word yet if the dinosaurs will still be a part of it, but we can always hope.