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A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis: Disney’s Dinosaurs



By Dave Shute

Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians and author of Jim’s Gems in The easy Guide, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.

DISNEY’S DINOSAURS

By Jim Korkis

Disney has been bringing audio-animatronics dinosaurs to startling, realistic life since the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair and the primeval world there that Imagineers like Claude Coats created for the Ford Motor Skyway pavilion.

Those prehistoric re-creations were so impressive that they were brought back to Disneyland and installed in 1966 as the finale of the Grand Canyon Diorama tunnel on the Santa Fe & Disneyland Railroad.

However, with new advances in technology, Imagineers wanted to experiment with pushing the boundaries.

While the Animal Kingdom attraction Countdown to Extinction (later renamed DINOSAUR) was loosely inspired by the in-development at the time Walt Disney Feature Animation computer animated feature Dinosaur (2000), the Imagineers had great leeway in developing the time traveling experience and the twenty-one dinosaurs that guests would encounter on the ride.

“We cast it the way, we would cast a movie,” said WDI show producer Anne Malmlund. “You need a hero and you need a villain.”

The villain was the same villain from the movie, a terrifying Carnotaurus which was thirty-three feet long when finally built. A complete skeleton of the prehistoric monster had recently been uncovered in Argentina giving show designer Paul Torrigino a good reference model. However, he was faced with the challenges of what the skin texture might be like or even the color of that skin.

He chose a dusty red, the color of clay, in order to make the animal seem more menacing as well as to contrast it with the lush green Cretaceous forest. A partial skin impression found with the fossil bones showed that the skin seemed to be a rough hide covered with bumps and knobs.

So Torrigino made them bumpier and knobbier because he needed exaggerated features since the vehicles would be moving by so quickly that guests wouldn’t be able to discern any texture at all unless it was highly prominent.

“We wanted to use science and art and drama to create a world our guests could believe in,” Torrigino said.

Imagineers consulted paleontologists, studied countless books and more to make sure the shapes, sizes, movement, skin texture and coloration were as authentic, and dramatic, as possible. Even Imagineer Joe Rohde would drop by to offer his suggestions.

Tujunga’s Plastic shop in California developed a new combination of silicone and spandex that enhanced the lifelike look and movement of the dinosaurs for the attraction.

The new system of skin-on-plates, modeled on human ribs, made the dinosaur movement more fluid and believable. The industrial strength snaps on the skin hook onto bands of metal that are the foundational structure of the animal which included a new underlying armature. The heavy skin could weigh up to 500 pounds.

The Imagineers first mocked up the movement on computers. A small model raptor was then built to test these ideas and it contained powerful new chips to control a range of subtle movements.

These figures included some of the largest audio-animatronics figures ever produced. The heads of the Iguanodon and Saltasaurus were so huge that they scraped the tops of the ceiling of the cavernous warehouse in Tujunga, California where they were built.

It took eight to ten hours of programming for every second of animation per dinosaur. Each dinosaur represented about 14,000 hours of effort by WDI or roughly seven years.

At the first formal review and with appropriate dramatic lighting, CEO Michael Eisner who worried about the investment of time and money was visibly moved. “It’s the first time I’ve been sorry they are extinct,” he said.

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Thanks, Jim! And come back next Friday for more from Jim Korkis!

In the meantime, check out his books, including Secret Stories of Walt Disney World: Things You Never You Never Knew, which reprints much material first written for this site, and The Vault of Walt: Volume 4, and his contributions to The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit, all published by Theme Park Press.
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