Category — A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis

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

TOY STORY LAND IN DISNEY’S HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS

By Jim Korkis

Variations of Toy Story Land that were inspired by the popular Pixar movie franchise exist at Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris, Hong Kong Disneyland and at Shanghai Disneyland.

In 2015, it was announced that a Toy Story Land would be built on eleven acres at Disney’s Hollywood Studios near the area already designated as Pixar Place, and would open summer of 2018. (It will open June 30–Dave.)

(c) Disney

According to Disney publicity, in addition to Toy Story Midway Mania! that already opened in 2008 and expanded to include a third track in 2016 (and supposedly is under Andy’s bed), the land would feature the following:

“Toy Story Land. In Andy’s backyard, guests are shrunk to the size of their favorite toys and invited to join Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie and the rest of the Toy Story gang for a larger than life adventure among giant building blocks and game board pieces. It’s the perfect setting for toys of all kinds to gather together for an experience that’s more fun than a Barrel of Monkeys.

“Alien Swirling Saucers. Andy has collected enough game tickets at Pizza Planet to get the Alien Swirling Saucers (Home Edition), which has now landed (pun intended) in his backyard. The game features Alien-driven flying saucers whipping rockets around four turntables while “The Claw” looms ominously overhead, seemingly ready to nab those who are ‘chosen’.

“Slinky Dog Dash. Andy built Slinky Dog Dash with his Dodge & Dash Mega Coaster Kit. Instead of using the coaster that came in the box, he decided to put his Slinky toy on the tracks. The result is a family-friendly thrill adventure that whooshes around curves, up hills and down drops as it winds around the backyard.”

According to Imagineer Kathy Mangum, Toy Story Land was inspired by the overwhelming guest response to Cars Land at Disney California Adventure.

“As all of you know, here in Anaheim, we’ve been quite successful with taking immersive experiences to a whole new level as we did with Cars Land. In fact, one of our favorite stories from opening day is that we overheard a little boy asking his mom, ‘Is this where they filmed the Cars movie?’” Magnum said.

“That’s exactly how we want people to feel – like they’ve stepped onto the set of their favorite film … like the quaint town of Radiator Springs or, in the case of ‘Toy Story,’ the wild and adventurous outdoors of Andy’s backyard.”

The idea behind the Slinky Dog Dash was to have a family friendly coaster but also to take advantage of the fact that Andy has a big imagination, so would have incorporated some of his other toys into the standard design, and made the coils stretch to their limits.

For Alien Swirling Saucers, “As you rotate around the toy planets and satellites as part of the game, you’ll swirl to the beat of fun ‘Space Jazz’ music developed just for this experience,” Mangum said. “The music, the lighting, and the sound effects will add to the flurry of your adventure while ‘The Claw’ looms ominously over you.”

The entrance to the new land will be through the area that originally held Soundstage 4, where walk-through experiences like The Making of the Haunted Mansion Movie, a set from the live action version of 101 Dalmatians, two different versions of the Journey into Narnia, and the Legend of Captain Jack Sparrow were presented.

Woody’s Lunch Box is the quick service food and beverage location. Andy has taken a vintage Woody themed lunch box and propped it open with a thermos. Scattered about the area are toys, items from the lunch box, and a book. A green army man keeps a lookout for Andy’s return to grab a snack.

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Thanks, Jim! For more on touring Disney’s Hollywood Studios after Toy Story Land opens, see this.

Lovely wife Amy Girl and I will be seeing Toy Story Land by using the Club Level  extra FastPass+ deal:

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.

Follow yourfirstvisit.net on Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest!!

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

THE EIGHTEEN HOLE VERSES OF FANTASIA GARDENS

By Jim Korkis

For those so engrossed in not exceeding the six-stroke limit per hole, or so entranced by the audio or visual treats that getting the ball in the hole might produce, that you might have missed it, here is the complete verse for each hole at the Walt Disney World Fantasia Gardens mini-golf near the Swan and Dolphin resorts, as written by Imagineer Robert Coltrin, WDI concept designer for the course.

(c) Disney

Tocatta and Fugue

1.  Our musical game has just begun/And here comes treble for everyone/Up to the top the ball must run/For any hope of a hole-in-one.

2.  The notes upon the staff you see/May seem quite lovely musically/But now as you begin to play/You’ll see they may get in your way.

3.  Before our little fugue concludes/The music swells and changes mood/Avoid the rests and you will hear/Chimes a-ringing sweet and clear.

Nutcracker Suite

4.  Spring is here and just beyond/Blossoms float upon the pond/The open bud should be your goal/Its dainty petals surround the hole.

5.  These lively mushrooms circle ‘round/While one is hopping up and down/At the feet little Hop Low/Is where you want the ball to go.

6.  As Winter arrives, the fairies create/A frost-covered pond where they can skate/Their path on the left is where it should roll/Then watch as it waltzes down to the hole.

7.  And so this musical suite we close/Amidst the flurry of winter snows/Weather the storm where snowflakes fall/Or easily putt around them all.

Pastoral Symphony

8.  Within Mount Olympus this opus unfolds/And what mythological creatures it holds!/When putting the ball, be careful to go/Straight through the pillars to the caverns below.

9.  The impish faun loves to tease/As he plays his pipes with ease/So if you putt straight and true/Perhaps he’ll play a tune for you.

10.  In all of the land there’s no one more raucous/Than this fellow here, the infamous Bacchus/He’s poured you a path that you simply putt up/Hit it just right and it spills to the cup.

Dance of the Hours

11.  You will notice in a glance/These graceful ladies love to dance/This bird ballet is lovely, but/They may distract you as you putt.

12.  And there, the dance grows even greater/Enter now: Ben Ali Gator/With hippo high, he strains beneath/Now simply putt between his teeth.

13.  After they dance their amusing duet/Hyacinth Hippo will now pirouette/Carefully watch as she spins here for you/Time it just right and the ball will go through.

14.  Twilight brings a mood of romance/The perfect time for an elephant dance/So while she strikes this beautiful pose/Aim for the path beneath her toes.

15.  Before we can finish this silly ballet/This fanciful fountain is ready to spray/So keep an eye out for each little jet/They’re hopping and hoping to get the ball wet.

Sorcerer’s Apprentice

16.  Mickey’s in trouble for casting a spell/Meant to assist him in filling the well/Now armies of brooms with a water supply/Are ready to douse anything that goes by.

17.  When Mickey is dreaming, he’s brave and he’s brash/Conducting the stars and creating a splash/From high on a cliff, he’s on top of it all/He’ll show you his stuff when you’re putting the ball.

18.  The wave has grown bigger, with magic it stirs/When up from the bottom, a whirlpool occurs/A putt to the left will spin it, and then/We hope you’ll return here again and again!

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Thanks, Jim! For more from Jim on Fantasia Gardens, see this. 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.

Follow yourfirstvisit.net on Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest!!

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

ARTISTIC INFLUENCES OF DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM

By Jim Korkis

On August 3, 2017, the Orlando Museum of Art presented “Pandora: Celebrating the Beauty of the Natural World” featuring two similar forty minute, capacity-crowd presentations by Imagineer Joe Rohde, entitled “Animal Kingdom, Pandora and the Great Masters.”

Rohde spoke about some of the major artistic influences on the design of all of Disney’s Animal Kingdom but in particular on Pandora –The World of Avatar. He made clear that while he studied the works of previous Imagineers when he was doing his design work that he also studied just as intently the great painters and sculptors of past centuries.

Rohde quoted Victorian era English art critic John Ruskin, “There are many beautiful things to see in the world if you stop and you look at them.” His point was that Disney guests at Disney Animal Kingdom would be rewarded if they slowed down to discover some of the details.

One of the major influences Rohde cited was mid-Nineteenth Century American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church.

“Church’s paintings were the IMAX movies of the mid-19th century. These paintings did not hang in a museum [or] church, they traveled the country. … In the paintings were thousands of teensy-weensy details … so people spent an hour that they paid for in an artificial space, wandering in a painting. That sounds remarkably familiar to me.”

These paintings were exhibited in theaters. Audiences would buy a ticket and fill an auditorium. The proscenium of a theater stage before them was covered by a curtain. Sometimes accompanied by music, the curtain would be opened to reveal the massive 18-wheeler-sized painting by Church.

El Rio De Luz (The River of Light), Frederic Edwin Church 1877

When audiences looked into the painting, they would discover another, smaller painting, and another, and another, all the way down to the size of a nickel. Audiences would look into the painting for an hour or more at a time discovering new secrets and images all the time.

“The word picturesque refers to [late Baroque artist] Claude Lorrain, who invented the romantic idea of the landscape,” remarked Rohde. “Without Lorrain, you don’t have the picturesque tradition, and without the picturesque tradition, you really don’t have the arts at all.

“When you ride through [Kilimanjaro Safaris], you do not realize the degree to which this is a manipulated landscape. The height of the little hummocks and rises in the hills just happen to be slightly higher than the sightline of a person in a vehicle, so even though there are unimaginable numbers of those trucks driving around, you are [only] aware of six.

“Landscape was considered the highest form of art in the 18th century, because it combined all the appeal of sculpture, all the color of painting, with the process of movement through space. So when you ride on a vehicle through our lovely crafted landscape, you are in fact experiencing what the great philosophers of the 18th century considered to be the highest form of art.

“[We] continually talked about Giovanni Bernini, because who in the history of the world has taken absolutely rigid, inflexible material – marble! – and rendered it in such a way that it appears to be weightless?” revealed Rohde. “To get the sense of uplift, the sense of swirl, the sense of suspension that makes [Pandora’s floating] mountains not hang over you, but lift above you, rise above you? That’s not easy.

“We even talked about commissioning Dale Chihuly [glass sculptor—Dave] at one point [to help in] solving this problem of these organic soft glowing plants that embody the entire nature of this palace. It’s simply not enough to go look at natural bioluminescence, because natural bioluminescence isn’t this psychedelic.”

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Thanks, Jim! Co-author Josh of easyWDW.com recently has the chance to hear Joe Rohde speak at Tiffins–see this for more. 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.

Follow yourfirstvisit.net on Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest!!

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

STAR WARS: SECRETS OF THE EMPIRE AT DISNEY SPRINGS

By Jim Korkis

Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire, a multi-sensory environment that combines groundbreaking technology, virtual reality and the art of illusion, opened at the Marketplace section of Disney Springs on December 16, 2017.

The Disney Accelerator program that started in 2014 backs around ten companies every year providing financial investment and a three month mentorship program providing access to the Disney creative campus based in Los Angeles.

(c) Disney

In 2017, The Void was one of the companies selected for the accelerator. The Void is a location-based entertainment company that combines interactive sets, virtual reality, real-time effects and state-of-the-art technology to bring guests into their experiences.

“There’s a lot we’ve learned working closely with the Walt Disney company,” The Void’s CEO Cliff Plumer said. “It’s not just what happens in the virtual world; it’s that whole journey that we’ve worked really hard on.”

For the attraction, The Void also collaborated with Lucasfilm and ILMxLab, which is the collaboration between Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Skywalker Sound that’s solely dedicated to creating “immersive experiences.” [Read more →]

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 DISNEY LIBRARY: LOU MONGELLO’S WALT DISNEY WORLD TRIVIA BOOK SERIES

By Jim Korkis

• The Walt Disney World Trivia Book: Secrets, History & Fun Facts Behind the Magic by Lou Mongello (Volume 1) (2004)
• The Walt Disney World Trivia Book: More Secrets, History & Fun Facts Behind the Magic by Lou Mongello (Volume 2) (2006)

I decided to write about these books because I know Lou is finishing up the third and final promised volume in this series. I am a friend of Lou’s and a frequent guest on his popular podcast, but I don’t think that disqualifies me from writing about these books.

On the contrary, I think my connection has given me a better perspective on exactly how much work he had to do to write these books and the validity of his sources. I bought both of these books. They were not gifts. And I look forward to the final volume. I have not read his 2014 book 102 Ways to Save Money For and At Walt Disney World.

For those unfamiliar with Lou Mongello, here is his short biography from his website WDWRadio.com:

“Lou Mongello is former attorney and owner of an IT consulting firm who left the practice of law to move with his family to Florida, pursue his passion, and share his love for Disney with others. He launched WDWRadio.com in 2003 and has been awarded Best Travel Podcast for nine consecutive years. He is also the author of several books and seven audio tours of Walt Disney World.”

A social media pioneer and one of the leading authorities on Disney, Lou has been featured on numerous television shows and quoted in magazine articles as a Disney expert.

[Read more →]

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

THE ABC STUDIO COMMISSARY

By Jim Korkis

Imagineer Eric Jacobson explained, “A commissary is really just a studio cafeteria, a place on the lot where everybody involved in making movies has their meals, but it has become glamorized in the public mind because of that association and the possibility of meeting movie stars.

“We wanted to give guests a commissary that would fulfill those expectations. We wanted to play on the enduring myth of the glamour and excitement of a Hollywood movie studio.

“However, there was also a more operational need for the restaurant. Disney MGM Studios [now Disney’s Hollywood Studios—Dave] was originally designed for five million guests per year but we were amazed at how many came just that first year. We were insufficient in facilities almost right away. In food alone, we needed another thousand meals per hour so we had to make that happen quickly.”

The ABC Studio Commissary opened under budget December 1990, roughly a year and a half after the theme park itself, after an aggressive design phase of two and half months.

The concept was to use classic, sleek Art Deco stylings popular in the 1930s to create a timeless sense of classic Hollywood where guests might reasonably expect that a movie star could nonchalantly stroll in during a break in filming. The building was located on a newly created street dubbed Commissary Lane.

“One of the biggest challenges was the site,” said Imagineering architect Joe Kilanowski. “It had to be a long horizontal building with the center in the middle of the mass. Our design solution came from a beautiful old hotel in Miami that breaks up its entrance with a tower and receding tiers. The large, soaring marquee is a bit overstated for a working commissary but it gives a feeling of excitement.”

The building is decorated with film posters from the past and present, props and autographed photos and television monitors that promote the latest ABC television shows since the 1996 merger with that company.

On its opening, both Michael Eisner and Frank Wells proclaimed it “the best we’ve ever seen” although it probably never matched Paramount’s Café Continental or MGM’s Lion Den commissaries in their heyday.

(c) easyWDW. Used without permission but it’s ok.

The marquee was designed by Jim Bockstall, juts thirty-five feet into the air, and is polished stainless steel to echo the Art Deco condensed-type style.

Once past the faux palm-tree lined atrium entrance, there is always plenty of seating and air conditioning. The palms are ten feet tall and are meant to frame the ordering counter. There is a fifty foot long mural that features many of the major landmarks of the original Disney MGM Studios designed by Han Woo Lee. It was painted by Bill Anderson to look like copper bas-relief, a popular Deco design motif.

“We envisioned this as a place where we could focus on the company’s movie and television divisions,” said Barbara Dietzel who was the principal interior designer. “We placed etched glass panels featuring the logos of those divisions along the entryway and posters on the walls feature our latest movies and television shows.”

For the interior, landscape designer Joe Parinella brought in palms and added planters with a variety of seasonal plants to establish a “garden-like” atmosphere that would seem more inviting than the stark, functional interiors of some traditional studio commissaries.

“I think this project is a great showcase of the Imagineering team process,” said Jacobson. “Even though it’s not a high-profile, marketing-driven attraction, the entire team gave it every bit of the same attention to detail. In this restaurant, we’ve created an experience we can all be proud of.”

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Thanks, Jim! Menus are here. My co-author Josh has reviews of lunch at ABC Commissary (at the end of the post) and dinner at ABC Commissary (keep going through the “it used to be terrible” section).

And here’s the note on ABC Commissary from the mighty-fine The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit:

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.

Follow yourfirstvisit.net on Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest!!