You all know about Epcot, right? That futuristic city that Walt Disney hoped to build?
Copyright Bonaventure Press
That’s the real reason that Walt bought all of that swampland in Central Florida in the early 1960s, you know. Not because the Old Mousetro really felt the need to build Disneyland East. But — rather — because Disney wanted to try his hand at urban planning.
Photo courtesy of Valerie Curry, from Marvin Davis
But then Walt died in December of 1966. And while Roy O. Disney did push forward with the theme-park-and-resorts portion of the “Florida Project,” the futuristic city was set aside. Mostly because no one within the Disney organization knew quite how to make Walt’s last dream a reality.
“So how did we wind up with Epcot, the theme park?,” you ask. Well, would you believe that an article in “Playboy” magazine actually played an important part in the revival of this project? As David Koenig recounts in his excellent new book, “Realityland : True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World” (Bonaventure Press, October 2007), then-Walt Disney Productions president Card Walker was so embarrassed by an exposé that this men’s magazine printed in its December 1973 issue (Which basically claimed that “EPCOT died about three minutes after Walt stopped breathing”) that he ordered that dead-in-the-water project back into development.
Copyright Bonaventure Press
That’s the beauty of “Realityland.” Koenig cuts through decades of carefully prepared PR stories, all of the myths that currently surround Disney World‘s origins and brings you the real story. David talks with genuine WDW pioneers like company attorney Phil Smith and his wife, Gwen. Who actually lived out at the work site back in 1966 and spent their days shooing water moccasins out of their garage and their nights listening to panthers yowling in the darkness.
Obviously, this was long before there was a World Drive. Or even a Seven Seas Lagoon. When the only way to get around this 27,000-acre piece of property was to take a jeep down a muddy, deeply rutted road or by taking a boat across a smelly backwater swamp.
Photo courtesy of State Archives of Florida
Koenig does a great job of recounting all of the challenges that Roy O. & his team of executives faced during the construction phase of Walt Disney World. Not just the herculean tasks of taming Central Florida’s wilderness but also the problems involved with riding herd on the 10,000 construction workers who had access to the site.
In one particularly funny passage of the book, David talks about how …
“Disney also discovered that entire truckloads of materials were disappearing. A truck filled with lumber, plywood or other building materials would check in as it entered the property through the North Gate — and then keep right on driving out the South Gate. One construction manager had been diverting supplies to his own housing project a few miles away.”
Photo courtesy of John Curry
Mind you, it wasn’t just the construction workers who were helping themselves to supplies. Koenig also recounts how Keith Kambak (i.e. The Disneyland employee who’d been placed in charge of the Fort Wilderness portion of “Project Florida”) was forced to scavenge for supplies:
Hidden in the forest, the campground was easy to forget about and became low priority for management and construction. As Kambak slowly built up his staff, he found it difficult to get any supplies. He would have to get creative. If someone left the keys in a company pickup over night, “Kambak’s Raiders,” as his crew became known, would sneak off with the vehicle and hide it in their secluded spot in the woods. When the requisitioned vehicles needed refueling, the Raiders would venture out with five-gallon gasoline cans and return for secret fill-ups.
“We were on a shoestring budget,” Kambak recalled. “So we went around the property and acquired equipment. We had no office furniture, so late one night I drove up to the legal department, because we knew that Phil Smith could get whatever he needed. We took his desk, credenza, all his furniture and loaded it onto a truck and took it back to our office. We took the stuff out of his cabinets and left it on the floor. I don’t know if Phil ever found out what happened.”
Koenig does a very thorough job with “Realityland.” He hits upon all of the classics (Like the infamous meeting where Dick Nunis‘s staff all showed up in pajamas to protest their boss’s tendency to schedule meetings far too early in the morning) …
Photo courtesy of John Curry
… plus a few stories that Disney World management would just as soon forget. Like that time back in June of 1985 when Monorail Silver caught fire. And with the train stopped dead a half mile south of the Ticket & Transportation Center, it was only the resourcefulness of two WDW visitors (Who first pulled open the doors of the car they were trapped in. Then — after climbing up on the roof of their monorail — they pulled all of the other passengers in their compartment up onto the top of the train. Everyone then walked along the top of the monorail and — after sliding down the windshield to the two-foot-wide beam — walked the rest of the way to the TTC) that saved those 240 passengers after the last two cars of Monorail Silver were entirely engulfed in flames.
Photo by Victor Junco, reprinted courtesy of Orlando Sentinel
You’ve got the gritty seldom-told-tales like the Monorail fire. Plus the fun little factoids like how the Imagineers tried to persuade Dick Van Dyke to reprise his performance as Bert from “Mary Poppins” for a new show that they were creating for EPCOT Center. Which was — via the magic of the Pepper’s Ghost effect — supposed to have had that chimney sweep character dancing across the tops of all of the computers that were used to control the attractions in the Future World section of that theme park.
Regrettably, Van Dyke resisted the Imagineers’ invitation. But I don’t see how any die-hard Disney fan could resist picking up a copy of David Koenig’s newest book.
Copyright 2007 Bonaventure Press
Speaking of which … Though “Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World” isn’t officially supposed to go on sale ’til October of this year, Koenig is bringing a bunch of advance copies of his book to the N.F.F.C. Show & Sale. Which is being held this coming Sunday at the Crown Plaza Resort in Garden Grove, CA. from Noon to 5 p.m.
So if you really can’t wait to get your dose of “Realityland,” be sure and drop by the Cabo San Lucas & Mazatlan function rooms on Sunday and pick yourself up a signed advance copy of this very entertaining Disney World exposé.