A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis: Walt Disney World Hidden History

By Dave Shute

Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.

YOUR PERSONAL DISNEY LIBRARY (6)

By Jim Korkis

• Walt Disney World Hidden History Second Edition by Kevin Yee (2014)

When I bought the first volume of this book in 2010, I immediately wrote to Kevin to tell him how jealous I was over the title which I thought was a perfect way to describe some of the details that could be found at Walt Disney World. I wish I had thought of it for one of my own books.

This second edition contains all the gems from the first printing but with additional treasures as well. More importantly, it is better laid out and contains several color photos on each of the 135 or so pages to better illustrate the details being discussed.

It is important to realize that this is not a cohesive narrative but a scattering of nuggets that can be read in any order. He has a general chapter on Walt Disney World and then individual chapters devoted to each of the four theme parks.

Each detail is one paragraph long but some of those paragraphs are fairly lengthy. The end of the book includes several extras: A listing of the opening and closing dates of WDW attractions, a complete listing of the names on the Main Street U.S.A. windows (but no description of who these people are), and a four page chapter on the some of the hidden history details of Universal Studios Florida.

Kevin Yee is a former Disneyland cast member (for over ten years), author and blogger who writes about travel, tourism, and theme parks in Central Florida. He is a founding member of MiceAge (where his columns still sometime appear) and has written numerous articles and books about Disney parks since 1997.

He is also a faculty administrator at the University of South Florida and holds a Ph.D. in German Literature from UC Irvine and for years has kept his two worlds separate. His students are often unaware of his long interest in Disney and his Disney fans are sometimes clueless about his academic background.

I am particularly fond of his 2013 book The Original Grimms: Highlights of the 1810 Manuscript, where he translated the original manuscript of well known fairy tales before they got watered down and edited in the more commonly known versions. Of course, many of these tales later got translated into Disney animated feature films so there is a sort of “cross-over” that may entertain Disney fans as well. Yee teaches a popular Honors Seminar entitled Fairy Tales From Disney to Grimms and Beyond.

There are hundreds of fascinating entries in the WDW Hidden History book with three or four appearing on each page. Whether tribute or remnant, each item discussed starts with something visible in today’s parks. Yee’s idea is that this is something you could visit and see with your own eyes today, and then appreciate the historical thinking behind it being there. He captured several things I had never noticed which once again proves that no one can know everything about Disney.

Other books by Kevin you might explore include Magic Quizdom and 101 Things You Never Knew About Disneyland (both focused solely on Disneyland), Mouse Trap: Memoir of a Disneyland Cast Member, and the Unofficial WDW Earbook series.

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

In the meantime, check out his books, including his latest, Call Me Walt, and his Secret Stories of Walt Disney World: Things You Never You Never Knew, which reprints much material first written for this site, all published by Theme Park Press.

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