July 27 - Bill Sullivan

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On this day, in 1955, William Sullivan began his new job as ticket taker at the Jungle Cruise in Adventureland of Disneyland. Born in 1936, Sully, as most people called him, was studying architecture and working his first job in the aircraft industry when a television show changed his life. Like many people on July 17, 1955, Sully was glued to his television set watching the opening ceremonies of a new kind of entertainment in Anaheim, Disneyland. Unlike most people watching, he was inspired to completely change the course of his life by what he saw. The following Saturday he went down to the park to apply for a job. He was hired on the spot, quit his job at Northrop Aircraft on Monday and two days later was happily taking people’s tickets for the Jungle Cruise.

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A quick detour into the world of tickets at the beginning of Disneyland. For the first three months of operation, it cost guests $1 to get into the park, which included three attractions, and then between 10 and 35 cents more for each additional attraction. In October 1955, ticket books were introduced with A, B and C tickets in them. The best rides, like the Jungle Cruise, required a C ticket while something like the Carousel would be an A ticket ride. In 1957, as more attractions were added to Disneyland, a D ticket was introduced and the ticket tiers were expanded once more in 1959 to include E tickets. Some attractions, like the Matterhorn Bobsleds, debuted at E ticket status while older attractions, like the Jungle Cruise, were promoted to E ticket status, or whatever level was appropriate. The phrase “that’s an E ticket ride” has sort of become synonymous with exciting thrill rides but all it really meant was you were riding one of the best rides. Yes, the Bobsleds were E ticket, but so was the Disneyland Railroad. We now return to you to our regularly scheduled post.

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It didn’t take Sully long to get promoted from Jungle Cruise ticket taker to wisecracking Jungle Cruise skipper. After 2.5 years exclusively in that madcap bubble, Sully got to train on other attractions and move around the park more. He was then promoted to what he called a Yo-Yo Supervisor. Disneyland couldn’t afford to make him a full supervisor just yet, so at high attendance times he’d be wearing a suit and tie and managing things, then when attendance dropped again, he’d be back in costume running an attraction, sometimes going back and forth between the two roles on a day by day basis. In 1959, when the park enjoyed its first expansion with the addition of the Matterhorn Bobsleds and the Nature’s Wonderland section of Frontierland, Sully was made a full supervisor.

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Almost as soon as Sully became full time management, he also became a specials man. When Walt was chosen to be a part of the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, Sully was on the company’s security team. He was part of the team that ran the premier of Mary Poppins at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Sully was then chosen to go to the 1964 World’s Fair as an assistant manager to help facilitate and troubleshoot the four attractions the company built for it. He moved his family to Queens, NY for a year and his daughter even started kindergarten there. When he returned to California in late 1965, he was promoted to manager of all of Fantasyland. And that’s when things got busy.

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While in New York, Sully had heard rumors of something Walt was cooking up called Project X that was going to take place on the East Coast, but no one knew what, when or exactly where. Shortly after becoming the head of Fantasyland, Sully was let in on the secret: another theme park was being planned for Central Florida. It then became Sully’s job, along with the Legendary Rolly Krump, to design the layout of Fantasyland for the new park. When they’d done all they could with that project, Sully was promoted to Senior Staff Assistant to the Vice President of the Florida Project, which basically meant he was now a high priced jack-of-all-trades.

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It might almost be easier to list the things Sully didn’t do in those years just before Walt Disney World opened. He helped design the entrance to the Magic Kingdom and Main Street USA (they made it twelve feet wider than Disneyland’s in order to accommodate bigger parades). He set up a post office to facilitate communication between Burbank and the construction companies. He helped get the Preview Center up and running. He was in charge of most of the promotional materials that were being made available to locals. He ran a legislator’s weekend so Jack Lindquist could convince the Florida state senators and representatives that creating a special economic zone for Disney was a great idea. He helped set up and staff the Preview Center. He was part of the Security and Fire Prevention team and was in charge of hiring the first 75 Security Cast Members for the Florida property. In short, Sully was the grease that kept the whole of Walt Disney World moving forward.

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Sully was also an integral part of the team that was planning and building EPCOT Center. Officially he was the director of PICO, the Project Installation and Coordination Office. Basically what that meant is that, while he didn’t have the authority to approve or disapprove of projects, all of them came through him and his office. With all of his operational experience, Sully could (and did) make improvement suggestions and rework the design of anything he felt needed tweaking. He spent four years perfecting the park and then was in charge of actually running the place for the first two years it was open. During the same period, Sully help train hundreds of cast members for the opening of Disney’s first international park, Tokyo Disneyland.

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In 1987, Sully was promoted to Vice President in charge of the Magic Kingdom, the world he had done so much to help create. He spent several years there until one of his old co-workers, Jim Cora, who was now in charge of all international Disney parks, sweet talked him into coming over to Europe to help get Disneyland Paris ready for its opening. So Sully spent the first few months of 1992 opening another Disney theme park. He returned to Florida where he resumed his duties as top man at the Magic Kingdom until his retirement in 1993.

Sully has the distinction of being one of the few people who have their names on not one but two windows on Main Street USA, both in the Magic Kingdom. The first one he received was as part of a group of guys who were instrumental in getting Walt Disney World off the ground. It reads “Windemere Fraternal Hall – Lodge Meetings Every Friday – Charter Members - Bob Allen - Pete Crimmings, Dick Evans, Bill Hoelscher, Bob Mathieson, Bill Sullivan” and can be found on Center Street above Crystal Arts. Sully received his second one for his retirement and it’s a solo act above the ice cream parlor. That one reads “Sully's Safaris & Guide Service - Chief Guide Bill Sullivan.” As impressive as having two windows is, Sully was absolutely floored the day he got his letter inviting him to a ceremony in 2005 where he was officially declared a Disney Legend.

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Sully still resides in Central Florida although he says he doesn’t go to the Disney parks much anymore. He admits that it’s mostly because he’d get too upset about all the changes that have been made since they were “his” parks. They aren’t his anymore but he’s okay with that. For 38 magical years he carried on the Disney tradition and now it is someone else’s turn. When asked about his favorite memory from his career, he gets a twinkle in his eye and mentions meeting the cute blonde who worked across from the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland and has been his wife for over 50 years. I know just how he feels (although my twinkle is brunette).

July 9 - Joe Fowler

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On this day, in 1894, Joseph William Fowler was born in Lewiston, Maine. In 1917, Joe graduated from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland almost at the top of his class (he was a close second). From there, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to become a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology learning the fine art of naval architecture. After earning his master’s degree in 1921, Joe traveled to Shanghai, China where he spent the rest of the decade designing and building gunboats. His later work involved designing and building aircraft carriers including the two biggest carriers used in World War II, the USS Lexington and the USS Saratoga. Actually during his second World War (he was already a veteran of the first one), Joe was in charge of all Navy construction activity in all the shipyards on the West Coast.

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Following the conclusion of the war, Joe stayed with the Navy for a while more, not retiring until he achieved the rank of Rear Admiral and hit 35 years of service in 1948. Four years later, as the Korean War was raging on, President Eisenhower entice him to return to service briefly in an attempt to reduce wasteful military spending. After a few months indulging an old friend, Joe walked away again and assumed his working days were over, for the most part anyways. Then he met a man with a dream.

Late in the summer of 1954, a mutual friend introduced Joe to Walt Disney. At the time, Joe was supervising the construction of some tract homes in San Francisco. Walt was looking for someone with naval expertise to consult on the building of a paddle steamer for his new theme park. The two men hit it off and, after a brief discussion, Joe was hired as a technical consultant on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and to oversee all of Disneyland’s construction. Once the job was finished in July 1955, he stayed on with the company as the park’s General Manager for the next decade. Pretty much anything Walt wanted done, Joe made it happen. One story is told about Walt looking at a stage in Adventureland with a waterfall next to it. He turned to Joe and said wouldn’t it be grand if, when actors came onto the stage, the waterfall parted like curtains and they came through it. Without blinking an eye, Joe said “We can do that” and then somehow worked his magic to actually make it reality. He was famous for doing stuff like that.

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In the mid Sixties, Joe was given the monumental task of bringing what was then known as the Florida Project out of Walt’s dreams and into swampy reality. When Joe visited Walt in the hospital just before his death, Walt was staring at the tiles of his hospital room’s ceiling and using them as an architectural grid to explain his plans for where everything in Disney World was to go. So it wasn’t like there was any pressure on Joe to get things right or anything. As construction progressed, he actually held three different positions, at one point all of them simultaneously: senior vice president, engineering and construction, for Walt Disney Productions; chairman of the board of WED Enterprises, now known as Walt Disney Imagineering; and director of construction for Disney’s Buena Vista Construction Company.

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In the end, Joe got things right. Walt Disney World, consisting of the Magic Kingdom and a few resorts, was built and opened. One of the two riverboats that plied the Rivers of America was named after him (until it was accidentally wrecked beyond repair while in dry dock in 1980). He continued doing various small projects for Disney until retiring a second time in 1978, after more than 24 more years of work. He did a little consulting work for the company after that but mostly actually enjoyed his retirement. In 1990, Joe was declared an official Disney Legend for shepherding the creation of not one but two incredible theme parks. On December 3, 1993, Joe passed away at his home in Orlando, Florida at the age of 99. He was posthumously given another honor. In 1999, the ferryboat that takes guests between the Magic Kingdom and the Transportation and Ticket Center that was formerly known as the Magic Kingdom I was rechristened the Admiral Joe Fowler. And astute Disneyland guests are aware that the dry dock area for the Mark Twain Riverboat has always been referred to as Joe's Ditch (if Walt was in a grumpy mood) or Fowler Harbor (as it is today).

July 1 - WEDWay People Mover

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On this day, in 1975, the WEDWay PeopleMover began giving guests a grand tour of Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom of Walt Disney World. The original PeopleMover attraction opened on July 2, 1967 as part of Disneyland’s new Tomorrowland. It was an update of the ride system that had been used in the Ford pavilion for the 1964 World’s Fair. The term PeopleMover was coined for Disneyland’s ride but has since come to mean a variety of transportation modes. The cars didn’t move on their own but were propelled along the track by rotating wheels placed every nine feet. When Ford declined to sponsor the new attraction (they didn’t care to associate with anything that could supplant cars), Goodyear stepped in and the rotating wheels were replaced with actual Goodyear tires.

Eight years later, the Florida Project got its own version of the PeopleMover with two big differences. First, instead of the cars being propelled along by rotating tires, linear induction motors were used. New decade, new technology, which made sense to everyone except Goodyear. Because the new version didn’t need their tires, they said Disney didn’t need their sponsorship and bowed out. The Edison Electric Institute stepped up in their place. Second, the design of the cars and track were reversed. Disneyland’s ride had an open track with covered cars. Walt Disney World’s ride has open cars that run on a covered track.

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Disneyland’s PeopleMover was deemed hopelessly outdated and closed in 1995, to eventually be replaced by the ill-fated Rocket Rods. Walt Disney World’s attraction keeps chugging along even though it’s had a couple of thematic changes over the years. In 1994, the Magic Kindom’s Tomorrowland underwent a major renovation, becoming a working city of the future rather than a showcase of future technology. The PeopleMover was renamed the Tomorrowland Transit Authority Metroliner, although the Metroliner part was rarely used and the name was generally shortened to the TTA. The track was cosmetically made to look more metallic and the narration was changed to reflect the rides new function as part of the city’s public transportation system. When Space Mountain went down for a major refurbishment in April 2009, the TTA also closed for a while to accommodate the major construction taking place right next to its track. When it reopened in September of that year, it had another new narration and it was announced that it would be called the PeopleMover again. Except the name wasn’t a replacement, it was an add on, making it a mouthful to even mention the ride anymore. The attraction’s full current name is the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover.

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One final note: the Florida version of the PeopleMover is the last attraction in the Magic Kingdom that still retains a corporate sponsor (the nighttime spectacular, Happily Ever After, is sponsored by Pandora, but that’s a show not an attraction). It is currently sponsored by Alamo Rent-A-Car, although you could be forgiven for never knowing that. They aren’t mentioned in any of the narrations, just a few logos on the signs at the ride’s entrance and exit.

June 28 - Herb Ryman

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On this day, in 1910, Herbert Dickens Ryman was born in Vernon, Illinois. When he was 9, Herb's family moved to Decatur. He began following in his father's footsteps as a medical student at the private Millikin University there, until he became deathly ill with scarlet fever. His mother, who had pushed for the medical studies over what Herb wanted to pursue, an artistic career, became concerned for his health and relented, allowing him to enroll in the Art Institute of Chicago. He graduated cum laude and, in 1932, moved out to Los Angeles, California to try his luck at making money with his art. He quickly found a job at the MGM Studio, as a storyboard illustrator. For a while during the studio's Golden Age, Herb was the only illustrator on staff and helped design the looks of such classic films as Mutiny on the Bounty, David Copperfield, the Emerald City portion of The Wizard of Oz and The Good Earth.

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Something about The Good Earth really struck a chord with Herb. He was inspired enough by his work on that film to quit his job and spend a year traveling around China. He made hundreds of sketches and paintings during his Asian tour, publishing many of them in a book when he returned to the states in 1938. As part of his homecoming, Herb had an exhibition of his work at the Chouinard Art Institute which was attended by Walt Disney. Walt was so impressed with Herb's paintings, he asked him if he wanted a job. Herb said sure and became Disney's art director on Fantasia and Dumbo. In the summer of 1941, when Walt and an entourage took a goodwill tour of South America on behalf of the United States government, Herb was one of the artists that went along for the ride. His sketches from the trip influenced the look of both Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros.

Following the end of World War II, Herb got word that 20th Century Fox was developing a film based on the novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon. He had actually become an acquaintance of Margaret during his time in China and was interested in working on the film. He amiably resigned his position at Disney and changed studios again. Over the next several years, Herb worked on Fox films including Forever Amber, David and Bathsheba and The Robe.

For two summers, in 1949 and 1950, Herb took leaves of absence from Fox and literally joined the circus. He traveled with the performers of Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey, preserving their way of life through his paintings. During his time with the circus, he became good friends with Emmett Kelly, one of the greatest clowns of all time.

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On September 26, 1953, Herb received a desperate call from another old friend, Walt Disney, asking for an immediate meeting. Intrigued, Herb agreed. When they came face to face, Walt began describing all his ideas for a new theme park and asked if Herb could produce some drawings bringing those ideas to life. Herb said sure, when do you want them? Walt said how about right now? The two men worked pretty much non stop throughout the weekend to finish several detailed sketches. It wasn't long after that when Roy Disney took those sketches and showed them to the investors who would agree to finance Walt's latest dream. Without them, Disneyland might never have become reality.

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Once the plans for his theme park were securely in place, Walt asked Herb to come back to work at Disney. This time around, Herb worked mainly with WED Enterprises, designing and creating concept images for theme park attractions. For Disneyland, he helped design Sleeping Beauty Castle, Main Street USA, New Orleans Square, the Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean. He was integral to the development of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln for the 1964 World's Fair. He was the chief designer of Cinderella Castle when the Florida Project was taking shape.

In 1971, Herb officially retired from Disney, but like most old timers of the era, he never completely walked away. By 1976, he was back consulting with the company on plans for EPCOT Center, giving style to the American Adventure and the China pavilion. He then helped design a history of Japan show for the opening of Tokyo Disneyland called Meet the World. His last project with Disney was creating concepts for the version of Main Street USA that would eventually debut at Euro Disneyland.

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Outside of his work with various Hollywood studios, Herb was a prolific artist. In addition to his paintings with the circus, he created watercolors of the California coastline and portraits of various celebrities. He was a member of the American Institute of Fine Arts, the Society of Illustrators and the California Art Club. His paintings were collected by the Guggenheims, the Barrymores and Cecil B. DeMille among others.

In late 1988, Herb became ill and he passed away on February 10, 1989 at the age of 78. In 1990, he was officially declared a Disney Legend for all his work shaping the beloved Disney theme parks. That same year, his sister Lucille, along with Marty Sklar, Sharon Disney and Buzz Price, created the Ryman-Carroll Foundation in Herb's honor. The Foundation's main purpose is running Ryman Arts, an organization that provides free art classes with master teachers to Los Angeles area high school students. You can find out more about their work, and the man that inspired them, at rymanarts.org.

June 24 - Roy Oliver Disney

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On this day, in 1893, Roy Oliver Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois. The third son (behind Herb and Ray) of Elias and Flora Disney, Roy experienced much of the same childhood his younger brother Walt did, just as someone eight years older. After Walt was also born in Chicago, the family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri, where they welcomed the only sister in the bunch, Ruth. After struggling with farm life for a while (though the impact those years would have on Walt were incalculable), Elias moved the family again, this time to Kansas City, and started his two younger sons on the journey of a lifetime.

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One of the shared experiences Roy and Walt got to have together was providing the labor on a paper route their father managed to buy for the Kansas City Star in 1911. Roy was eighteen at the time and, twice a day, he and his ten year old brother delivered papers to nearly 2000 customers. Two hours in the morning, two more in the evening, no matter the season, no matter the weather. The work was miserably tiresome for the brothers, although it did seem to create a work ethic within them and a bond between them that lasted for the rest of their lives. Needless to say, once Roy graduated from Manual Training High School in 1912, he stopped slinging papers for a living and joined his older brother Ray at the First National Bank of Kansas City as a clerk.

 In 1917, when the United States was finally pulled into World War I, Roy signed up for the Navy and shipped out to win one for democracy. Unfortunately, he caught tuberculosis along the way and was discharged in 1919 to come home and recuperate. For health reasons, Roy relocated to a hospital in Los Angeles, California. He was now in the perfect place to help his little brother pick up the pieces when his bottom fell out just a few years later.

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When Laugh-O-Gram Studios, Walt's first business in Kansas City, went bankrupt in 1923, he took all his worldly possessions with him to live with an uncle in Southern California to regroup. After making a few brash claims, he was able to sell his idea for a series mixing animation and live action to an actual distributor, but he had a problem. Walt knew that he didn't have much of a head (or interest) in the day to day running of a business, hence having to declare bankruptcy. He also knew someone who did. With his new contract in hand, Walt visited Roy in the hospital and convinced him to become the money man in a new joint venture between the brothers. Still fairly weak, Roy checked himself out of the hospital the very next day and the Walt Disney Studio was born.

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It truly was the partnership of Roy and Walt that turned the studio from a dream into a multi-million dollar company. The two brothers were each other's opposite and compliment at the same time. Over the decades, a pattern formed. Walt would get some crazy idea in his head, like a feature length animated movie or a theme park, and dive headlong into it. Roy would try to reign Walt in, actually discourage him from following some scheme, do a lot of yelling and ultimately find a way to pay for everything. The arguments between them sometimes reached legendary proportions. But, in the end, they wholly trusted each other.

Not that there weren't a lot of really great times. In 1928, they bought adjacent lots and built houses together. They witnessed each other's weddings, went on vacation together, celebrated the birth of children (Roy E. Disney came along in 1930) and grieved together (like when their mother, Flora, passed away in 1938). By 1929, Walt had bought out Roy's share in the studio, so while they weren't technically partners anymore, they were lifelong equals. Roy was the company's first CEO, long before he was officially given that title in 1968. And when Walt passed away in December 1966, Roy was left to grieve alone for the first time in six and a half decades.

The irony of the last several years of Roy's life, is that he meant to spend them enjoying retirement. After all the hard work he'd put in keeping the Walt Disney Company financially solvent, he certainly deserved it. But after Walt's death, Roy felt an obligation to finish what the brothers had started in Florida. Roy had been there for the big press conference announcing Disney World just a few months earlier after all.  So he delayed his retirement and oversaw the biggest building project the company had ever undertaken. He insisted on one seemingly small change however. The Florida Project would officially be called Walt Disney World, a final tribute to his younger sibling. 

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When the dust had finally settled and the Magic Kingdom, complete with a handful of hotels, opened on October 1, 1971, Roy was on hand to officially dedicate everything, just as Walt had done at Disneyland sixteen years before. When all the pomp and ceremony was over, he quietly retired, handing the reigns of the company he'd help found over to the next generation of leadership. Unfortunately, he didn't get to enjoy his twilight years for very long. Whether the stress of building another theme park used up the last bit of life in him, or just the fact that he was eight years older than his little brother and had outlived him by several years, Roy passed away from an intracranial  hemorrhage on December 20, 1971. He was 78.

Roy is enshrined on windows on Main Street USA in both Disneyland and Walt Disney World for obvious reasons. A less well known tribute to him comes in the form of a stone lantern, currently part of the Japan pavilion at Epcot. When Walt Disney World opened, the company was starting negotiations to build a park in Japan. Emperor Hirohito personally presented Roy with the lantern as a symbol of future prosperity. It was on display at the Polynesian Resort for a decade before being relocated when Epcot opened. There isn't a plaque commemorating it that I know of, you just have to know what it is (and now you do). You can also find a life size statue of him, sitting on a bench with Minnie Mouse, in the Magic Kingdom's Town Square, at the opposite end of Main Street from the statue of Walt. Both men were responsible for making the magic happen. Without either one, the studio would have failed. Thankfully, they had each other and it didn't have to.

June 15 - Bill Martin

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On this day, in 1917, Wilson E. Martin was born in Marshalltown, Iowa. Bill, as he was known, and his family moved to Los Angeles, California when he was still pretty young. After high school, he went to Los Angeles Junior College and then on to the Chouinard Art Institute to study architecture. Following his graduation from Chouinard, Bill got a job as a set designer for 20^th Century Fox in 1940. His career was interrupted by World War II, which he spent in the United States Air Force as a bombardier trainer. Following the war, Bill worked for a company called Panoramic Productions before returning to Fox, this time as an assistant art director. Then, in 1953, he got an offer he couldn’t refuse.

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While working at Fox, Bill got a phone call. Someone from the Walt Disney Studio was wondering if he would like to switch companies. Disney was looking for new talent to become part of a group of employees referred to as Imagineers, was he interested? Bill jumped at the chance and became part of the team working to make Walt’s Disneyland dreams come true. One of his first assignments was to travel around to existing amusement parks to study existing systems and figure out what was working and, more importantly, what wasn’t. Then it was back to Burbank for massive brainstorming sessions.

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Bill would be the first to admit that not all of his ideas were great ones. Take, for example, the corset shop he dreamed up for Main Street USA called The Wizard of Bras. Obviously that particular shop never made it past the idea phase, but it was that kind of creative thinking that convinced Walt to make Bill the art director for Fantasyland. As a result, he was integral in shaping the design of everything in the area, attractions like Sleeping Beauty’s Castle and Peter Pan’s Flight, as well as the land’s general layout and look. Once Disneyland was opened, Bill would move on to other projects in the ever expanding park. He helped design the Autopias, Bear Country, the monorail system and New Orleans Square including both its signature attractions, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion.

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By 1971, Bill had become the Vice President of Design at WED Enterprises (now called Walt Disney Imagineering). He was the man in charge of the master layout for the company’s newest theme park endeavor, the Magic Kingdom of Walt Disney World. Bill’s personal design projects included the famous utilidors (the ‘tunnels’ underneath most of the Magic Kingdom’s guest areas), Cinderella Castle, Main Street USA (still no corset shop though) and the system of canals which connect various areas of the entire Florida property. As if that wasn’t enough, he also designed a wide array of watercraft that was going to be used in those canals, including the large ferry boats that run between the Magic Kingdom and the Transportation and Ticket Center and various smaller steam launches and side wheelers.

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Bill officially retired from Disney in 1977, but, like so many of the influencers of that era, he didn’t simply walk away. He continued to keep his hand in the theme park creation business, just on a consultation only basis. His influence can be experienced in the Mexico and Italy pavilions at Epcot and the master layout for Tokyo Disneyland. Bill was, naturally, declared an official Disney Legend in 1994 for taking the theme park design torch from Walt himself and carrying it right on into the future. He has also been honored with not one but two mentions on Main Street USA windows. If you are in Disneyland, look above the Main Street Bank and you’ll see a window with his given name, Wilson Martin, right over the name Gabriel Scognamillo, who was the art director for Tomorrowland during Disneyland’s creation. If you find yourself in the Magic Kingdom, Bill is named as part of a larger group of Walt Disney World’s original designers on a window above the Plaza Restaurant. That window reads “Walter E. Disney - Graduate School of Design & Master Planning - Instructors, Howard Brummitt, Marvin Davis, Fred Hope - Headmaster, Richard Irvine - Dean of Design, John Hench - Instructors, Vic Greene, Bill Martin, Chuck Myall.” Bill passed away on August 2, 2010. He was 93.

June 3 - Wally Boag and Betty Taylor

On this day, in 2011, Wallace Vincent Boag passed away in Santa Monica, California. Born on September 13, 1920 in Portland, Oregon, Wally was a professional dancer by the age of nine. By the time he was 16, he ran his own dance school. When he turned 19, Wally added comedy to his resume and his career was off and running. Like many performers of the time, he became part of the vaudeville circuit, honing his act on the tough crowds of Poughkeepsie and other Peoria. But Wally had that certain something that tends to be elusive in show business (I like to call it talent) and he not only played the smaller venues of America but he was invited to places like Radio City Music Hall in New York City and the Palladium in London, England. During a show at the London Hippodrome, Starlight Roof, he brought a 12 year old girl onstage to assist with his balloon act. Part of the act involved a little singing and the young lady’s voice wowed the audience so much she became a regular part of the show (her name, by the way, was Julie Andrews).

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In 1945, Wally’s talents brought him to the attention of Messrs. Metro, Goldwyn and Mayer. They offered him a contract and he began a brief career in movies. He appeared in exactly two for MGM and went uncredited in both: as a soldier in Without Love with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy and as a Canadian flier in Thrill of a Romance with Esther Williams. While his turn on the Silver Screen didn’t exactly pan out, Wally didn’t stop performing. He continued to appear on stages across America and around the world. In the early Fifties, Wally was in a musical revue in Australia when he met a tenor by the name of Donald Novis. A couple of years later, Donald convinced Walt Disney to give Wally an audition for a new show that was being developed for his soon to be open theme park. Walt loved him and that’s how Wally signed a two week contract to open The Golden Horseshoe Revue at the Golden Horseshoe Saloon in Frontierland of Disneyland.

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I think it’s probably unnecessary to say that Wally’s Horseshoe contract was renewed and for a little bit longer than just two weeks at a time. Wally’s character of a travelling salesman eventually morphed into Pecos Bill which he would perform three times a day. Over the course of the next 27 years, Wally logged almost 40,000 performances. His routines included songs, dancing, the ability to spit out a seemingly endless amount of teeth, rapid fire jokes and balloon creations he called Boagaloons. In 1963, he was joined onstage by an old co-star, Julie Andrews, for a press event for Mary Poppins. The duo recreated their first meeting by singing By the Light of the Silvery Moon together.

In 1971, Wally travelled to Central Florida to help get the Diamond Horseshoe Saloon up and running for the opening of the Magic Kingdom. He spent three years performing Pecos Bill for Walt Disney World guests before returning to California to finish out his career. He finally retired in 1982, quipping that before his contract with Disney, the longest he’d ever worked a gig was 54 weeks, who knew two weeks was going to last so long?

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In the Sixties, while Walt was still alive, Wally also did a handful of other projects for the company. He had small roles in The Absent Minded Professor (as a television newsman), Son of Flubber (the father in a television commercial) and The Love Bug (a flabbergasted driver). His second biggest contribution to Disneyana (yet, ironically, his longest lasting) is as the voice of Jose in The Enchanted Tiki Room, for which he also wrote a big chunk of the script. Walt was reportedly considering Wally for the voice of Tigger in the Winnie the Pooh shorts, but the role ultimately went to Paul Winchell. After Walt’s death, with his biggest cheerleader no longer championing him, Wally’s involvement outside of the Saloon dried up. Until 1981, that is, when he was the special guest star on an episode of The Muppet Show, bringing bits from his Pecos Bill persona to a worldwide audience.

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In 1995, Wally was declared an official Disney Legend for his decades of thrilling audiences in the Horseshoe Saloons and leading the show in the Tiki Room. As a deeper honor, he also received his own window on Main Street USA in Disneyland that reads “Theatrical Agency – Golden Vaudeville Routines – Wally Boag, Prop.” In 2009, he published his autobiography, Wally Boag, Clown Prince of Disneyland and lived out the rest of his life in Santa Monica with Ellen, his wife of 68 years, until he succumbed to Alzheimer’s in June of 2011. He was 90.

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Coincidentally, on June 4, 2011, the day after Wally died, his longtime costar at the Diamond Horseshoe Revue, Betty Taylor, also passed away in Coupesville, Washington. Born in Seattle, Washington on October 7, 1919, Betty began her professional singing career at the age of 12. Over the first twenty four years of her career, she shared the stage with folks like Les Brown, Red Nichols and Frank Sinatra. In 1956, a year after the Golden Horseshoe Revue opened, it became necessary to recast the Saloon’s feisty female proprietor (and Pecos Bill’s sweetheart), Sluefoot Sue. Betty auditioned for and got a four week contract to play the character (twice as long as Wally’s); she spent the next thirty years working through it.

One of the highlights of Betty’s years with the Golden Horseshoe came in the mid Sixties. Walt had decided to mark the 10,000 performance of the Revue as an episode of The Wonderful World of Color and asked Betty to not only play Sue but to emcee the program as well. She initially demurred but Walt insisted and the episode remains one of the classics. Betty remained with the Revue all the way until it closed on October 12, 1986, making her the longest continuous cast member (beating out Wally by a little more than three years) and logging in over 45,000 performances. She was declared an official Disney Legend right along with her perennial beau in 1995. She continued to enjoy singing for the rest of her days and would frequently serenade visitors, even after she moved into a nursing home. When her last note finally faded away, she was 91.

June 4 - The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Ride

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On this day, in 1999, the first dark ride to feature the creations of AA Milne, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, began bouncing guests through the Hundred Acre Wood in Fantasyland of the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. As the popularity of the Winnie the Pooh characters continued to grow throughout the Seventies, plans were made to create a ride at Disneyland that featured them.  However, when a newly rejuvenated Fantasyland opened in 1983, the tubby little cubby was conspicuously absent. So were any explanations. A few years later, when the new area of Mickey’s Toontown was being mapped out, plans were again made for a Pooh ride. Guests would sit in honeypots they could spin like teacups as they travelled through scenes from the films. Toontown opened in 1988 and, once again, Pooh and friends were nowhere to be found. The area allotted for the attraction (as well as the ride vehicle design) morphed into Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin, which opened in 1994. It would be another five years before Pooh received his due and it would happen in Florida, not California.

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In order to make room for the Pooh ride in the Magic Kingdom's Fantasyland, something else had to go. That something turned out to be Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. The removal of Mr. Toad also meant that cast members could no longer backhandedly tell guests to go to hell by suggesting they experience the Wild Ride (in one of the final scenes of that attraction, Mr. Toad did indeed descend into Hades). Both the ride and the insult can be considered minor losses. The Pooh ride does pay tribute to Mr. Toad however. Eagle eyed riders can spot a portrait of him in the attraction handing a deed to Owl (in other words, passing the proverbial torch in a legal and aboveboard manner). All that doesn't mean there wasn't plenty of controversy over closing the classic attraction at the time, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find terribly many people who wouldn't agree that the new ride is an improvement.

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The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh has several design elements that make it a unique dark ride. First is the inclusion of actual pages from the original A.A. Milne stories. Some are painted on the walls and some are projections. It's the ones that are projections that make for some cool effects. For instance, in the Blustery Day section, it appears that the words are being blown right off the page as each individual ride vehicle goes by. The ride vehicles themselves are probably the best innovation, though. In most dark rides, you sit in a honeypot (or mine car or caterpillar) and get ferried past sets and moving figures and the like. There might be some quick turns, but it's essentially a flat ride. In the Pooh dark ride, you get immersed in the story a whole lot more than that. Each individual vehicle is set up so that, say, when Tigger starts bouncing alongside you, your honeypot starts bouncing along the track. And when the river creeps out of its bed and floods everything, your honeypot starts rocking like it was caught up in the current.

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In 2003, Disneyland finally got their own version of the Pooh ride, but again it came with controversy. Real estate in the California park is at a premium and, once again, park officials knew that something was going to have to disappear to make room for the new attraction. Fantasyland didn't offer any options but there was a potential space over in Critter Country. This time the classic attraction that was doomed to be sacrificed was the Country Bear Jamboree. Even though a group of guests tried to band together to save the Bears, the shows low attendance figures doomed it to extinction. Just like Mr. Toad, though, the Jamboree isn't completely gone. Eagle eyed guest can spot the mounted heads of Melvin the Moose, Buff the Buffalo and Max the Buck in the ride (although they are technically the non-Animatronic heads that used to sit in the Mile Long Bar, not the heads from the actual show). Also note that the same mechanism that was used to lower Teddi Barra from the ceiling in Jamboree now bobs Pooh up and down over a whirlpool of honey. Besides some of the scenes being in a different order from the Magic Kingdom version (and stage a little differently), the ride vehicles in California are shaped like beehives rather than honeypots.

Hong Kong Disneyland and Shanghai Disneyland also have their own Pooh rides, opening in 2005 and 2016 respectively. They are essentially the same as the Magic Kingdom attraction. No controversy was connected with either of the Asian versions since they opened with their parks and therefore didn't need to displace anything else.

May 31 - Snow White's Scary Adventures

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On this day, in 2012, the Snow White’s Scary Adventures ride terrified its last child in the Magic Kingdom of Walt Disney World. When Disneyland was under construction in the mid Fifties, plans were naturally made to include rides based on popular Disney characters. When the park opened on July 17, 1955, guests could experience attractions based on Peter Pan, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (at least the Mr. Toad part), Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Some of the rides just featured characters or elements of the films they were based on, like the flying elephants of Dumbo or the teacups of Alice. Other rides, like Peter Pan’s Flight or Snow White’s Scary Adventures, took guests right into the stories they were pulled from. Except they didn’t do it in a way that people expected.

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It didn’t take long for guests to notice that when they rode Snow White’s Scary Adventures, the attraction seemed to be missing something. Snow White was nowhere to be found. The Evil Queen/Hag made several appearances and the dwarfs were there, but where was the princess the ride was named after? The thing is, she wasn’t supposed to be there. The Imagineers had designed a ride concept that proved to be a little higher brow than it needed to be. You, as the rider, were literally stepping into Snow White’s shoes (or Peter Pan’s or Mr. Toad’s) and experiencing what she would have experienced, something the Imagineers felt was implied by the possessiveness of the attraction’s name. It was a nuance that was lost on the general public. For years, the number one complaint about Snow White’s Scary Adventures was a twofold statement, rarely uttered one part without the other: it’s too scary and where is Snow White?

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The concerns guests had about Snow White’s Scary Adventures went largely ignored for years. When the Magic Kingdom of Walt Disney World opened sixteen years later, it included a version of the ride. Arguably, the Florida ride was made even scarier. Instead of the three times guests encountered the Evil Queen in the original version, they encountered her seven times, apparently being crushed by a giant jewel she topples on to them to end the ride. In 1983, the Disneyland version would be modified to include Snow White and lighten the tone, but children in Orlando would continue to be scared for eleven more years. In 1994, the Magic Kingdom version was toned way down with most of the witch figures being removed, Snow White finally made an appearance and the ride ended with the witch’s demise. The word scary was also dropped from the attraction’s name. That’s how it stood for the next eighteen years, eventually closing to make way for Princess Fairytale Hall, where guests can meet a princess rather than wonder why she isn’t in her own attraction.

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The Disneyland version (really version 2.0) is still operating today making it one of the longest running rides in Disney history. The 1983 revamp didn’t just happen to Snow White’s Scary Adventures, all the dark rides were updated to actually include their namesakes at some point. An additional modification happened at the same time. When the figure of the witch offers the poisoned apple to guests outside of the dwarfs’ house, ride vehicles come close enough that people stole the apple a number of times over the years. Now if they try, their hand will pass right through it. It’s a projection. Additional versions of the ride are also operating in Tokyo Disneyland, a mix of the California and Florida rides, and Disneyland Paris, essentially the same as Disneyland’s current version.