August 5 - Adventure Thru Inner Space

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On this day, in 1967, the Adventure Thru Inner Space ride welcomed its first guests in Tomorrowland of Disneyland. A decade earlier, Walt Disney had hinted at creating an atomic themed ride for his theme park on an episode of Disneyland titled “Our Friend the Atom.” It should be noted here that the theme was along the lines of chemistry and the science of atoms rather than atomic energy or weapons. Concepts were sporadically explored and work on the attraction meandered forward until the company’s contracts to build attractions for the 1964 World’s Fair basically put all other projects on hold. Once the fair was over, the atomic ride was dusted off and approved as part of the New Tomorrowland project.

Monsanto (the company that should be reviled for many reasons today but was slightly more innocent forty years ago) already sponsored a chemistry exhibit in Tomorrowland. When they agreed to sponsor the new attraction, their Hall of Chemistry and the adjoining 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Exhibit were slated for the chopping block with that area then becoming Adventure Thru Inner Space. The ride’s name comes from the idea that guests would be shrunk down to a size smaller than an atom and would then be able to travel in the space between atoms, the inner space of everything. The shrinking was accomplished at the beginning of the ride by Monsanto’s Mighty Microscope which then beamed guests into a snowflake. After shrinking to a size which made the nucleus of an oxygen atom seem room sized, guests began growing again until they were back to normal size by the end of the attraction. A post-show area housed an exhibit of Monsanto’s modern fabric and material products (and the cast member costumes for the ride were made from Monsanto fabrics).

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While it might be hard for today’s guests to imagine how atoms and molecules would make a fun ride, people in the late Sixties seemed to enjoy themselves. That enjoyment was helped along by a narration from the Legendary Paul Frees (who was actually kind of doing an impersonation of Orson Welles) and a jaunty tune by the Sherman Brothers, Miracles from Molecules. It also helped that, unlike the rest of Disneyland, Adventure Thru Inner Space was a free attraction, meaning you didn’t have to spend one of the tickets in your ticket book to ride it, for the first five years it was open. In 1972, Adventure was finally designated a C ticket ride and remained at that level until the ticket system disappeared in the early Eighties.

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Another advantage Adventure Thru Inner Space had was that it was the first attraction in Disneyland to use the Omnimover ride system. The Omnimover was similar to the continuous conveyor system that had been used on the Ford’s Magic Skyway Disney built for the World’s Fair with one huge improvement: individual cars could be independently rotated (or vibrated or whatever) from every other car. Attractions could now be designed with specific viewing angles on things that didn’t require major manipulations in the vehicle tracks, just twists and turns of the cars themselves. Omnimover attractions are so commonplace today, that we can no longer see the novelty in them but imagine you’re on a ride and for the first time ever, the car in front of you turns around and you’re briefly looking at the front of another guest before turning around yourself. I’m sure it was a lot more thrilling when you weren’t jaded about it.

As time went on, Adventure Thru Inner Space, like most science based things, began to look more and more dated. Monsanto ended their sponsorship deal in 1977 and all mention of them was scrubbed from the ride (except an audio line at the very end). The attraction would limp along for over eighteen years, finally closing forever on September 2, 1985. But sharp eyed guests can still catch a glimpse of it, or at least a virtual part of it, even today. Adventure was replaced by Star Tours, which opened 1987. When your StarSpeeder on that ride was diverted into a maintenance bay after taking a wrong turn, you could see the Mighty Microscope in the corner of that area. Since 2011, when Star Tours: The Adventure Continues began, you can only see the Mighty Microscope on some of the randomized journeys.  If you happen to be escaping the still-under-construction Death Star floating above Geonosis, it’s been moved there, although for what nefarious purpose we can only imagine.

January 2 - World of Motion

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On this day, in 1996, the last guests rode the World of Motion attraction in Future World at Epcot. Built as one of Epcot's opening day attractions, World of Motion had some heavy hitters behind its development. Animator Ward Kimball, one of Walt's Nine Old Men, actually designed the attraction. If you didn't know that Ward dabbled in ride creation that would be because this was the one and only time he ever did. His brand of humor was evident throughout, from cavemen blowing on their overheated feet to the world's first traffic jam involving a horse and an ice truck.

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Ward got some help from a couple more Disney Legends for the ride's theme song. Buddy Baker composed the music and Imagineer Xavier Atencio wrote the lyrics to It's Fun to Be Free. One of the unique aspects of Free is that unlike most attractions where the same version of a song might get repeated at different points (think about Pirates of the Caribbean), for World of Motion the song kept changing to suit the changing periods in history. It had a ragtime feel for one scene, an Asian sound in another and at one point was played exclusively on a kazoo. All due to the genius of Buddy.

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The ride itself took guests on a tour through the history of transportation narrated by Gary Owens, best known as the announcer on Laugh-In. World of Motion boasted on of the largest casts of Audio-Animatronic figures ever assembled with a total of 188 characters. At the end of the line, literally taking a page from the Haunted Mansion, guests saw their Omnimover vehicles transformed into cars of the future through a Pepper's Ghost illusion. After disembarking, guests moved into a mini Innoventions type area dedicated almost exclusively to cars. Exhibits spanned topics on everything from how wind tunnels help make cars more fuel efficient to an Audio-Animatronic show about assembly lines. The most popular part was, as always, the concept cars on display.

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The whole shebang was sponsored by General Motors from its opening to its closing. After Ford's successful sponsorship of the Disney produced Magic Skyway ride at the 1964 World's Fair, GM wasn't about to miss out again. They signed a 10 year deal just to begin with, renewed several times and still sponsor the replacement attraction today.

Speaking of the replacement attraction, it was GM who would ultimately spell out the demise of World of Motion. In the early Nineties, sales began to slump for them and they felt a new attraction devoted to cars and cars only, not the whole of transportation, would be a better use of their sponsorship money. Since World of Motion was beginning to show its age at that point, Disney agreed and Test Track was created. Even though I personally miss the charm of the old ride, it was ultimately a smart move. While Test Track was plagued with problems and delays in its early days, it is now one of the most popular rides in all of the Florida Project, although the concept cars at the end are still, arguably, the best part.

October 22 - Roger E. Broggie

On this day, in 1908, mechanical engineer Roger Edward Broggie was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. By 1927, he'd moved to a little town just west of Chicago and attended from Mooseheart High School. Roger had taken some machine shop courses while in school and was, quite frankly, a genius when it came to tools and mechanical objects. He moved further west after graduation, landing in  Los Angeles. Roger almost immediately got into the motion picture business, working for companies like Technicolor and Bell and Howell, a company that built things like movie cameras. He soon found himself on the lots of General Service Studios working with such legends as David O. Selznick and Charlie Chaplin.

In 1939, Roger found a position at the Walt Disney Studio, working closely with Ub Iwerks, installing the companies multiplane camera at their new Burbank location. While his official title may have been precision machinist, Roger spent a great deal of his time whipping up special effects with Ub. By 1949, Walt tapped Roger for a special project of his. Both men were avid train enthusiasts and, together, they would create the train for Walt's personal railroad, the Carolwood Pacific, famously located through Lillian's flower beds. Roger is credited with building the Lilly Belle, a 1/8th scale working steam engine for the backyard attraction.

Walt promoted Roger to the Head of the studio's Machine Shop in 1950. He was instrumental in creating the special effects for the epic movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In 1952, Walt created a new division to oversee the mechanical aspects of Disneyland. Called WED Enterprises at the time, it's been known as Walt Disney Imagineering since 1986. The very first employee hand picked to be a part of this new endeavor? Rogie E. Broggie.  As plans for Disneyland developed, Roger personally oversaw the creation of the Railroad, the Monorail and the Matterhorn Bobsleds.

One of the best innovations that Roger came up with was the one he created with Bert Brundage: the Omnimover ride system. First used in 1967 for Adventure Thru Inner Space, the Endless Transit System, as it's known outside of Disney, is a fairly ubiquitous sight in Disney parks. It transformed the concept of the Haunted Mansion away from a walk-through attraction and can be seen in various forms in everything from Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin at the Magic Kingdom to The Great American Chocolate Tour in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The main difference between the Omnimover system and mere continuous ride systems is that the individual cars in the Omnimover system can rotate and tilt as needed.

The other innovation that Roger helped develop were Audio-Animatronics. Roger and his co-workers in the machine shop were the ones who created the figure of Abraham Lincoln for the 1964 World's Fair. In the years that followed, he helped create countless refinements to that initial design that continue to amaze and delight guests to this very day.

As the company marched into the Seventies, Roger was as integral a part of making the Florida Project work as he was for Disneyland. Even after he finally retired in 1975, Roger would still lend his expertise to his Imagineering friends for pretty much the rest of his life. For his 36 years spent making so much of the magic possible, Roger was honored in several ways. First, Engine No. 3 of the Walt Disney World Railroad is the Roger E. Broggie. Second, he was given one of the most deserved titles of Disney Legend in 1991. Third, Roger was posthumously given his own window on Main Street, USA in Disneyland that reads "Can Do Machine Works, Mechanical Wonders, Live Steam Engines, Magical Illusions, Cameras, Roger E. Broggie Shopmaster, Advisor to the Magic Makers."

On November 4, 1991, the man about whom Michael Eisner once declared "Without him, Disneyland wouldn't have happened" quietly passed away in his Carmel, California home. He was 83.

Also on this day, in American history: Pretty Boy Floyd