A few months back, when Len Testa & I recorded a Bandcamp exclusive podcast – the one where we attempted to walk from the Ticket & Transportation Center at Walt Disney World all the way over to the Magic Kingdom, only to then be stymied by all of the construction at the Grand Floridian.
Anyway … As I was driving over to the Poly to meet Mr. Testa, I made use of that new flyover ramp that now directly connects World Drive with Floridian Way. Which gave me a brief glimpse down into the southeastern corner of the Magic Kingdom Parking Lot. Which – from 1995 – 2015 – was home to the Walt Disney World Speedway. Or – as Indy Car fans used to like to call that one mile long, three turn tri-oval track – the Mickyard.
That name is – of course – a Disney-ified play on the Brickyard, the 2.5 mile-long track which is probably better known as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Which is where the Indy 500 is held every May .
And the Indy 500 actually plays a crucial role in the creation of Walt Disney World Speedway in Orlando. For the seed for this $6 million project was planted just eight months after Michael Eisner first became the CEO of The Walt Disney Company.
“The Wonderful World of Disney” Indy 500
Mind you, this is back when Michael was doing everything he could to get the Disney name & its characters out in front of as many people as possible. Which is why – for the running of the 70th edition of the Indy 500 back in 1985 – Eisner cut a deal with the folks who staged that race to have that year’s Indy 500 Fest themed to “The Wonderful World of Disney.”
As Michael tells this story:
Jeffrey Katzenberg & I flew out to Indianapolis in 1985 to attend that year’s Indy 500. So we’re sitting in the stands with 500,000 people. And there’s this parade that’s held inside of the Speedway before the official start of the race where cars with celebrities and politicians roll by.
So first the governor of Indiana goes by, and there is polite applause. Then Mickey Mouse goes by his car, and there is more applause from the crowd at the Speedway. Which makes me feel good about the Disney characters. But then Jim Varney goes by in a car dressed as Ernest and 500,000 people go berzerk.
That’s when I turn to Jeffrey Katzenberg and say “’We should probably do something about that.’
Right after that race, Disney roped Varney into doing four “Ernest” movies (which were then released under the Walt Disney Pictures banner from 1987 – 1991). Jim also voiced Slinky Dog in the first two “Toy Story” films before we tragically lost Jim in February of 2000. And that was all because Michael Eisner went to the Indianapolis 500 just 8 months after he became Disney’s CEO.
Disney Get’s Into Sports
But what Michael also remembered from that trip in Indiana was those 500,000 people who were seated in the stands at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Now you have to remember that – when the Bass Brothers (Those were those billionaires from Texas who had helped Eisner land his new job at Disney back in late September of 1984) – Michael had been told by Sid Bass that Priority No. One was developing Walt Disney World. Taking those 40 square miles of swampland that the Company owned in Central Florida and finding all sorts of new ways that Disney could then profit off of that property.
And Michael Eisner? He liked sports. Anyone who was paying attention during the 20+ years that Michael ran the Mouse House knows this. After all, on Eisner’s watch, we got:
- The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, a Disney-owned NHL team in 1993
- The Walt Disney World Marathon got underway in 1994
- Later that same year (1994), the All-Star Resort opened at Walt Disney World
- It bought ESPN in 1995 (That was part of Disney’s $19 billion acquisition of ABC / Cap Cities)
- Disney bought the Los Angeles Angels from Gene Autry in 1996 and then renamed this baseball team the Anaheim Angels
- It opened Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Florida in 1997 (That 220-acre facility was rebranded as the Wide World of Sports Complex in 2010)
That’s obviously a lot of sports-related stuff. But today we’re here to talk about the Walt Disney World Speedway.
Why Build the Walt Disney World Speedway?
Eisner first broached the idea of building a race track somewhere on property in Florida with the Imagineers in the mid-to-late 1980s. Mind you, by this time, work was already well underway on the Disney-MGM Studio Tour project. So the thinking back then was “Let’s finish Disney World’s third gate first. Then we can circle back around to that thing that the Boss wants us to do that we’ve never, ever done before.”
The question then became … Well, where would be the very best place to build such an enterprise? And after visiting a number of speedways around the country (Not to mention reviewing the television coverage of the past few Indy 500s), what the Imagineers realized is that … Well, for the two weeks leading up to the actual race (This was when the Indy 500 trials were being held), the Goodyear Blimp would fly back and forth over the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
And since a big part of those marching orders the Bass Brothers gave Michael Eisner back in the Fall of 1984 was “You guys really need to do a better job of promoting Walt Disney World” … Well, here’s the decision tree that eventually led to the Imagineers proposing to Eisner that they place the Walt Disney World Speedway in the lower southeastern corner of the Magic Kingdom’s parking lot.
- Michael wants us to build a raceway in Florida. Something that could then help lure Guests to the Walt Disney World Resort during those times of year when attendance is really soft at the Parks.
- We have the Magic Kingdom’s parking lot. 125 acres of previously prepped, already graded land which has room for 12,000 cars but is rarely if ever full.
- If we were to build this raceway in the lower southwestern corner of the Magic Kingdom parking (the part of that parking lot that only gets used during the busiest times of year, like Fourth of July, Christmas or New Years), if a blimp were to cover a race that were staged at the Walt Disney World Speedway, the WDW Resorts around Seven Seas Lagoon & Bay Lake (not to mention the Magic Kingdom itself) would virtually be guaranteed to be on camera multiple times during the live broadcast of this race. Which would then translate into millions of dollars in free advertising for the WDW Resort.
Let’s also not overlook the fact that – because of the site prep that already been done on this corner of Walt Disney World property / how all of this acreage in the lower southwestern corner of the Magic Kingdom parking lot had been graded back in late 1969 / early 1970 when the WDW Resort was first being built, the Walt Disney World Speedway team could really hit the ground running here. Not to mention save tons when it came to the traditional construction start-up costs.
Building the Walt Disney World Speedway
Initial survey work on the project was done in secret in September of 1994 by Buena Vista Construction. The project was formally announced on January 23, 1995. With the very first race to be held at the venue – the inaugural Indy 200 – being announced at a press conference which was held on April 13th of that same year.
Just to be clear here: The very first race to be held at the Walt Disney World Speedway wouldn’t get underway ‘til January of the following year. January 27, 1996, to be exact. (That’s basically a full year after this project was first announced. And we’ll get to the significance of that January 27th date in a moment).
Anyway … The official groundbreaking on the Walt Disney World Speedway wasn’t held ‘til June 27, 1995. That’s when Mari Hulman George (She was the Chairman of the Board of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway) flew down to Walt Disney World to take part in this ceremony. During which – to make sure that the racing press understood that there was going to be a very strong connection between the Brickyard and the Mickyard – Ms. George presented WDW officials with one of the original paving bricks that was used to create the Brickyard back in Indiana back in 1909.
Weird bit of trivia: It took 3.2 million of these 9 & a half pound bricks to pave the full circuit of that 2.5 mile long, rectangular oval course back in the day. I wonder if Ms. George opted to make that ceremonial brick her carry-on when she flew from Indy down to Disney?
After this groundbreaking ceremony, construction of the Walt Disney World Speedway began in earnest. As pavers laid down 5,200 tons of asphalt to create this race track’s surface, construction crews poured 1,800 yards of concrete to form the Speedway’s outside walls. Which were then strung with 10 miles worth of safety restraint cabling. And a similar amount of effort went into the creation of this Speedway’s pit row area. With an additional 2,300 feet of concrete being poured there.
And did I mention that the Summer of 1995 was one of the soggiest in Central Florida history, with 75 inches of rain falling between the months of June & July of that year alone? Which (as you might guess) really hampered Buena Vista Construction’s effort to keep the Walt Disney World Speedway project on schedule.
But by October 18th of that year, the final bit of paving on this one mile long, three-turn tri-oval (which had been designed by Kevin Forbes, the chief engineer of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Again with the idea of stressing that there was going to be this strong connection between the Mickyard & the Brickyard) was done. This $6 million project was then formally dedicated on November 28, 1995 in an elaborate ceremony which included Indy racing legends forming a five-car “Flying V” formation as they zoomed around this track while fireworks exploded overhead.
Why all this publicity? Because the inaugural Indy 200 was supposed to be the first-ever event staged by the Indy Racing League. More to the point, the date for the televised debut of the Walt Disney World Speedway had been carefully selected by the Mouse’s marketing team & Indy Racing League managers. You see, January 27th wasn’t just any Saturday. It was the day before Super Bowl 1996 was staged.
A New Pre-Super Bowl Tradition
A little background here: Michael Eisner started his career in television in 1966 (he was hired to be Barry Diller’s assistant. Who – at that time, anyway – was ABC’s national programming director). Which meant that Eisner had a front row seat when the very first Super Bowl was broadcast in January of 1967. Over the next two+ decades, Michael watched as the Super Bowl steadily grew in popularity ‘til it then became this broadcasting behemoth.
So Eisner knew – from personal experience – that a televised sporting event that was properly positioned & promoted could eventually become this enormous thing. And as I mentioned earlier into today’s story … The Walt Disney Company had acquired ABC / Cap Cities back in 1995 for $19 billion. Which include ABC Sports & ESPN.
So if Disney (and the folks at the Indy Racing League, of course) handled the televised debut of the inaugural Indy 200 at Walt Disney World just right … Well, the Indy 200 wouldn’t just become the first professional auto race of the year. It could also become a brand-new television tradition. The race that sports fans watched the day before the Super Bowl.
Indy 2000 Failure
Sadly, all the ambitious plans that the Mouse & the Indy Racing League originally had for this corner of the Magic Kingdom parking lot never came to fruition. And by January of 2000, the Indy 200 was pretty much defunct. At least as far as the Walt Disney World Speedway was concerned.
So why did this highly anticipated, seemingly can’t-miss project eventually wind up as the home of the severely under-utilized Richard Petty Driving Experience? Only to finally be shuttered in 2015 and then be turned back into a parking lot?
We’ll get to that part of this story on the second & final installment of this series.
This article is based on research for The Disney Dish Podcast “Episode 433”, published on June 26, 2023. The Disney Dish Podcast is part of the Jim Hill Media Podcast Network.