The Tinker Bell drone that Disneyland almost got

Over the past week or so, there have been a number of stories out
there about media companies and drone technology. With TMZ insisting
that it wasn’t really in the market
for a celebrity-seeking missile, Mid-Missouri NPR affiliate KBIA revealed
that it had in fact launched its own drone program. Which Scott Pham,
KBIA’s content director said that he hoped to ” … use this technology
to tell stories.”

Well, as it turns out Pham wasn’t the only one who saw the dramatic
possibilities in remotely controlled aircraft. Back in the early 1980s,
Walt Disney Imagineering actually test flew a drone-like device that —
if the company’s lawyers had actually allowed this thing to take to the
air nightly over Disneyland Park — would have brought Peter Pan’s pixie pal Tinker Bell to life in a whole new way.

Tiny Kline, Disneyland’s first Tinker Bell. This 71
year-old circus vet flew over the Happiest
Place on Earth from 1959 through 1963.
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc.
All rights reserved

You see, ever since June of 1961, the nightly fireworks display at
the Happiest Place on Earth has been kicked off by Tink dramatically
appearing high in the sky above Disneyland. Only that’s not really a
fairy flitting around Sleeping Beauty Castle, but, rather, an undersized
stuntwoman dressed in a Tinker Bell costume who’s sliding down this
cable that’s been strung from the top of Matterhorn Mountain to a backstage area
between Fantasyland and Frontierland. This brave woman’s nightly
“flight” ends as she smashes into this full-sized mattress that’s being
held up by two burly Disneyland cast members who are just out of sight
of the thousands of tourists below.

Well, after 20 years of having a smallish stuntperson try and pass
herself off as a petit pixie in this nighttime show, the Imagineers
began looking for other ways to send Tinker Bell soaring through the
skies over Disneyland; some other sort of technology that would then
allow this Disney Fairy to look as though she really was flying around
and above Sleeping Beauty Castle rather than sliding down a pretty
obvious piece of wire.

One of Disneyland’s early Tinker Bell holding the piece of wire that connects the Matterhorn
to the place where this human-sized pixie will eventually come in for a landing between
Fantasyland & Frontierland. Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved

And what with all of those small gas-powered helicopters that came on
the marketplace in the early 1980s, the Imagineers got an idea. They
then hot-glued one of these remote controlled flying machines to the
back of an acrylic shell that had been previously used in a small female
Audio Animatronic. (To be specific, the Imagineers had taken the
diminutive Alice in Wonderland AA figure which used to appear
in the “Mickey Mouse Revue” attraction at WDW‘s Magic Kingdom. And then
— after pulling out all of her high-tech inner workings — they also
removed Alice’s classic costume, long blonde hair and flesh-colored
outer covering, leaving only this Audio Animatronic’s empty, hard clear
plastic shell).

The Imagineers now filled the body cavity of this see-through plastic
female form with Christmas twinkle lights. They then turned all of
those lights on, powered up the remote control helicopter which had been
glued to this AA figure’s back and sent this crudely crafted faux
Disney Fairy aloft.

The Alice in Wonderland AA figure as she appeared in the “All in a Golden Afternoon”
number in the Mickey Mouse Revue attraction at WDW’s Magic Kingdom.
Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved

If you want to learn more about what happened once this Tinker Bell drone took to the skies over Disneyland,
you’re either going to have to click on the headline above or go straight to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-hill/the-tinker-bell-drone-tha_b_2234136.html.