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

JOHN HENCH AND WALT DISNEY WORLD COLOR

By Jim Korkis

In 1990, I got to attend an event in Glendale, California where Imagineer John Hench lectured about color in the Disney theme parks. Hench worked for Disney for 65 years in a variety of capacities, especially when it came to design decisions utilizing color. Here is a short excerpt where he talked about his color choices at Walt Disney World.

“Color is an important part of every environment. Even as a kid, I was always aware that the amount of space occupied by a color was critical, and also the kind of light falling on the color.

“One of my favorite places in any of the theme parks in relation to color would be in Florida at the entrance of Epcot Center. Particularly the way it was when it opened with the marvelous jacaranda trees. Unfortunately, they froze in a big freeze in January 1983. They took out the jacarandas out and they weren’t replanted. The entrance would have been a very special paradise once a year with jacarandas and those beautiful blue-violet colors.

“Spaceship Earth picks everything up. We had a choice about that, and I was almost tempted to use gold but they wouldn’t guarantee the color. I thought it needed pattern but then again, we settled for this light and shadow. We had a difficult time with the night lighting. We couldn’t figure out a way to light the top of the sphere. We finally got two or three light sources high enough so we could put blue near the top. So the darkness seems to blend into the blue, then violet, and so forth – a particular spectrum. It worked.

“Another favorite use of color was for Journey Into Imagination in Future World. There were hard crystalline and geometric forms, and so many of them. I used a color that is associated with something much softer – a blue-violet. And then we concentrated a brighter color at the entrance, close to eye level. A flowering magenta bougainvillea hanging down over the doorway provided a combination of magenta and purple that was very intense. The rest of the pavilion sort of drifted away into paleness. You can do that with a color.

“For example, we used an entirely different color at the top of The American Adventure pavilion to imply that the huge fly-loft roof was located behind the building so you wouldn’t notice this big, awkward mass that fought with the architectural design of the building. It was kind of a greenish-grayish-bluish half tone with very little saturation.

“The American Adventure is quite a bit out of scale with its neighbors. The elaborate stage show demanded an exceptionally large stage, which in turn, called for a matching fly-loft of the roof of such proportion as to violate the classic Georgian-carpenter’s hall-colonial structure. So what to do? We used a wide colonnade at the base of the building, hiding the base line where the building meets the ground, reducing the apparent height of the structure.

“By high contrast, with straight white paint on the colonnade, the eye tends to stay on the lower areas, further reducing the apparent height. By successively lessening the contrast of the white window trim color with a little raw umber for each of the upper floors and topping finial towers, the adjusted contrasts seemed to pull the whole ensemble back in better relationship with the Japan and Germany pavilions.”

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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, The Unofficial Walt Disney World 1971 Companion: Stories of How the World Began, and 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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DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: AUGUST 3 TO AUGUST 11, 2019

The material below details next week’s Disney World operating hours, Extra Magic Hours, parades, and fireworks.

For more August 2019 at Disney World , see this.

OPERATING HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 8/3-8/11/19

The Magic Kingdom will be open from 9a-10p every day

Epcot will be open from 9a-9p every day

Disney’s Hollywood Studios will be open from 9a-9p every day

Disney’s Animal Kingdom will be open from 9a-10p 8/3 and 8/4, 9a-9p 8/5, 9a-10p 8/6 and 8/7, 9a-9p 8/8, 9a-10p 8/9, 8a-10p 8/10, and 9a-10p 8/11

EXTRA MAGIC HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 8/3-8/11/19

Saturday 8/3 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Sunday 8/4  Morning:  Hollywood Studios Evening: none

Monday 8/5 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Tuesday 8/6 Morning: none Evening: Epcot

Wednesday 8/7 Morning:  none Evening: Magic Kingdom

Thursday 8/8 Morning: Epcot Evening: none

Friday 8/9 Morning:  Magic Kingdom Evening: none

Saturday 8/10 Morning: Animal Kingdom  Evening: none

Sunday 8/11 Morning:  Hollywood Studios  Evening: none

PARADES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 8/3-8/11/19

The Magic Kingdom: Afternoon parade: 3p every day

FIREWORKS AND EVENING SHOWS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 8/3-8/11/19

Happily Ever After at Magic Kingdom 9p every night

IllumiNations at Epcot: 9p every night

Fantasmic at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 9p every night

Star Wars Show and Fireworks at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 9.30p every night

Rivers of Light at Disney’s Animal Kingdom: 9 and 10p 8/3 and 8/4, 9p 8/5, 9 and10p 8/6 and 8/7, 9p 8/8, 9 and 10p 8/9 and 8/10, and 8.45 and 10p  8/11

SHOW SCHEDULES FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD 8/3-8/11/19

See Steve Soares’ site here. Click the park names at its top for show schedules.

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE CHANGES AT CORONADO SPRINGS

Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort has always had—thanks to the demands of its convention and meetings guests—the best amenities among the Disney moderate resorts.

It has been the only moderate with concierge rooms, the only moderate with suites, the only moderate with a spa, the only moderate with workout facilities, the only moderate with a lap pool, and the moderate with the most extensive set of dining options and bars.

Appetizers at Toledo

With the opening in July 2019 of the new Gran Destino tower, its restaurant Toledo and two bars Dahlia Lounge and Barcelona Lounge (both serving appetizers and the Barcelona Lounge also functioning as a coffee shop in the mornings), and, in a different area, the Three Bridges Bar and Grill on Villa Del Lago, Coronado Springs has upped its game even more, and its level of amenities now far outpaces the other moderate options.

Appetizers at Three Bridges/Villa Del Lago

I stayed here in late July. While I will publish more about this stay later—updating my overall review of Coronado Springs, and including a photo tour of a Gran Destino standard room—I can affirm the quality of the new Toledo, Dahlia Lounge, and The Three Bridges/Villa Del Lago at Coronado Springs in particular. The Port Orleans resorts are now substantially outclassed in terms of amenities, and Caribbean Beach–which is closer to the new Coronado Springs than the Port Orleans resorts in dining and bar quality, and will become even better (in the totality of its amenities) after the Skyliner opens—is also behind Coronado Springs.

THE ROOMS AT GRAND DESTINO

I have more mixed feelings about the rooms at Gran Destino—in particular for family visitors.

At about 400 square feet, Gran Destino standard rooms have more square feet than any other traditional moderate rooms—and more, in fact than the majority of the deluxes.

Some of the hall in a Gran Destino room

However, compared to standard rooms elsewhere in Coronado Springs, much of this extra space is wasted from the point of view of livability, in the entry hall—about 76 of the extra 86 square feet.

(I’ve written elsewhere about how you need to incorporate this adjustment to your thinking about square feet when comparing rooms with outside entrances and baths in the back,to rooms with inside entrances and baths at the front—baths at the front require a hall area that baths in the back don’t need.)

The Gran Destino bath is both nicer and about 20 square feet larger than the baths in rooms elsewhere in Coronado Springs.

But it is less livable for families, being divided less well (instead of the tub/shower and toilet in one space, and the sinks in another, it has a glass walled shower and sinks in one space, and the toilet in its own space—leave the sliding barn door to the bath open while showering in the glass-walled shower, and if someone enters the room from outside, all will get a surprise) and offering—so far as I can tell–only showers, not a tub/shower combo that offers folks a choice.

Gran Destino Standard Room

If you are tracking with the math, you can tell that the living area in Gran Destino rooms is about 10 square feet smaller than the living space in regular Coronado Springs rooms—this is mostly not noticeable in livability.

While rooms elsewhere in the resort have a bit of Three-Caballeros-styled Disney theming, these rooms have no Disney theming that I noted. I do quite like the overall look and feel of the complete set of spaces of Gran Destino—but I don’t see much here that visually appeals to kids.

The easy access to Toledo, Dahlia Lounge, and Barcelona Lounge is a win, as is the room access from interior corridors, as is the location—the best at Coronado Springs—and the temperature-controlled enclosed walkway from the tower to the shops and dining at El Centro.

But on balance, for the typical premium of 18% more (on average over 2020, more than $50 a night) than standard rooms elsewhere at Coronado Springs, I’m still noodling over whether these rooms are the best choice for family visitors.

The long-time travel agent partner of this site, Kelly, can help you book–or avoid!–one of these Gran Destino rooms. Contact her using the form below.

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I’ve been curious as to what the premium might be for the Skyliner resorts in 2020–partly as a guide to what Disney sees the incremental value of the Skyliner to be, and partly to illuminate the question about whether bus service will continue at these resorts.

(The Skyliner resorts are Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort, Pop Century Resort, and Art of Animation Resort. These will all be served by a new gondola system that will connect them to two of Disney World’s theme parks, Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Epcot. The formal opening of the Skyliner has been announced to be September 29. Disney’s new DVC offering, Disney’s Riviera Resort, will also be on the Skyliner when it opens in later December, but is has no material 2019 prices for comparison.)

I’ve heard glib lines about this on podcasts, e.g. that “the Skyliner resorts will be $10 to $20 more,” but no percentage increases, nor comparisons of the full year of 2020 vs 2019.

Because every year I do charts like the below (from 2020 Disney World Resort Hotel Price Seasons) I have daily price data for 2020 vs 2019 for standard view rooms at all the Skyliner resorts.

So from this data I can calculate what it would cost to stay every night of 2019 and 2020 in one of these rooms, and from that (adjusting for the 2020 leap year) figure average nightly costs over the year, and changes year to year in that number. (I’ve also checked most or all of the higher priced room options at these resorts (see the note at the bottom of the page) and they all follow the same pattern).

So here’s the basics:

• Skyliner value resort Pop Century standard room average 2020 prices are up 20.1% compared to 2019, and increases at Skyliner value resort Art of Animation spaces are similar–Art of Animation Little Mermaid rooms are up 19.6%, and Art of Animation Family Suites are up 18.9% for Lion King and Cars suites, and 19.2% for Nemo suites. Meanwhile, prices at the non-Skyliner All-Star value resorts are up “just” 6.5%. There was already a substantial price gap among these resorts, and after the disparate price increases, Little Mermaid rooms are now ~$80 more, on average, than All-Star rooms, and $40 more on average than Pop rooms.
• Skyliner moderate resort Caribbean Beach standard rooms went up on average 20.7% for 2020 compared to 2019. Other room types had similar increases. Non-Skyliner moderates Coronado Springs, Port Orleans Riverside, and Port Orleans French Quarter went up 9.4%, 8.4% and 8.4% respectively. The price premium between the Port Orleans resorts and Caribbean Beach on average over 2020 has almost disappeared, and Coronado Springs is now on average about $20/night less than the other three traditional moderate resorts.

The total 365 day price increase for 2020 for the three Skyliner resorts at 100% occupancy is about 19.7% compared to 365 days in 2019, which translates into more* than $117 million.

If you just use the $117 million figure, and then deduct from it what the other values and moderates went up in total for 2020 (about 6.5% and 8.6%, respectively)—on the premise that without the Skyliner, the Skyliner resorts would have gone up about this much—then you get about $75.5 million.

If you take 15% of this off for occupancy being below 100%, then you get to about $64 million. If you take 10% more off for various discounts and deals across the year, then you get to $58 million. For the reasons explained in the note at the bottom of the page, I know I am actually low in my numbers at Caribbean Beach and Pop Century, so I round this up to $60 million.

So that’s my answer for the value Disney World will gain from the Skyliner resorts–about $60 million a year in new top line revenue.

You will find online a vast number of claims that “the Skyliner is being done to reduce bus costs, so don’t expect buses on these routes at these resorts after it opens.” Well, the revenue premium for the Skyliner would pay for on the order of 1,200 full time bus drivers. Since it takes by my back of the envelope estimates about 20 full time equivalent bus drivers to cover each of the three resorts’ Epcot and Hollywood Studios routes, I’m not entirely sure that the ROI of this project depends on eliminating bus service and 60 jobs.

But I suppose we will see. Disney World has shown remarkable propensity to nickel and dime on costs while implementing  vast price increases.

*At Art of Animation, I modeled all three bookable types, so my number here—just over $50 million–is pretty exact. At both Pop Century and Caribbean Beach, I multiplied the price increase for lowest cost rooms across all rooms of every bookable type. I did this because I don’t have a good source for the number of rooms in each class, especially for Caribbean Beach, which has eight bookable room types. (I did check cross a sample of price seasons for all bookable Pop rooms, and most bookable Caribbean Beach rooms, to confirm that they also saw a comparable ~20% price increase—they did.) The numbers for Pop (~$38 million) and Caribbean Beach (~$29 million) are thus low.

The long-time travel agent partner of this site, Kelly, can help you book–or avoid!–one of these Skyliner resorts. Contact her using the form below.

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.

YOUR PERSONAL DISNEY LIBRARY (19)

By Jim Korkis

• Extinct Attractions at Disney Theme Parks by Chris Ware

Things at Disney theme parks are constantly changing. Sometimes things disappear quietly in piecemeal fashion over a period of time. Other times things seem to vanish overnight as if they were never there in the first place, like the Metrophone booth in Walt Disney World’s Tomorrowland.

At Walt Disney World, Disney learned never to announce too far in advance that something like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride will be removed, because it will spark protests and attempts to stop it from happening.

Extinct Attractions at Disney Theme Parks is a 172 page book that attempts to list some of the major attractions at Disney theme parks worldwide that have gone to the figurative Imagineering graveyard. While the book covers Disneyland, Disney California Adventure, Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, Hong Kong Disney and even Shanghai Disneyland, roughly 56 pages are devoted to Walt Disney World, which is a sizable chunk of the book.

One of the reasons for that length is that Ware doesn’t just list Mickey’s Toontown Fair or the Wonders of Life pavilion at Epcot, but each individual element of those locations. So Cranium Command, Coach’s Corner, Goofy About Health, Sensory Funhouse, Wonder Cycles, Body Wars and Making of Me each receive their own entry.

However none of the entries in the book are highly detailed. Some are barely three sentences in length (Flight to the Moon, Skyway, etc.) while others might run two pages (Horizons, ExtraTerrorestrial Alien Encounter, etc). Basically, it is very much a quick snapshot comparable to a casual dinner conversation that might go “Gee, do you remember when such and such was at the park? I used to go there as a kid and I remember….”

So for scholars or those looking for definitive dates, names of people involved, quotes, material from press releases or newspapers, full description of the attraction, statistics or other hard facts, this book will be disappointing. However as a memory jogger, or a springboard to do further research on something that catches your fancy, the book is a nice addition to your personal library.

The Walt Disney World section is divided into Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Since the focus is on attractions, there is no coverage of things that went missing from the resorts or other areas of the property like the water parks. However, there are brief entries for Disney’s River Country, Discovery Island (the one that used to be near Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground) and Pleasure Island.

The book describes Ware’s credentials to write about these things as “Chris Ware has been a writer for over a decade and contributes to his local newspaper. He grew up ten minutes from Disneyland. In addition to his writing career, he has built a successful business buying and selling Disneyana collectibles.”

There is also a Chris Ware who is a popular cartoonist and no relation to the writer of this book. This Chris Ware hasn’t done any original research or interviews to perk up the material or provide a different perspective but where else can you find a book listing the attractions that went extinct at the Disney theme parks?

So if your expectations are not too high, this book may provide an enjoyable way to spend a few minutes of your time.

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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, The Unofficial Walt Disney World 1971 Companion: Stories of How the World Began, and 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!!

DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: JULY 27 TO AUGUST 4, 2019

The material below details next week’s Disney World operating hours, Extra Magic Hours, parades, and fireworks.

For more on July 2019 at Disney World, see this, and for more on August, see this.

OPERATING HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/27-8/4/19

The Magic Kingdom will be open from 9a-10p every day

Epcot will be open from 9a-9p every day

Disney’s Hollywood Studios will be open from 9a-9p every day

Disney’s Animal Kingdom will be open from 9a-10p 7/27 and 7/28, 9a-9p 7/92 and 7/30, and 9a-10p 7/31 through 8/4

EXTRA MAGIC HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/27-8/4/19

Saturday 7/27 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Sunday 7/28  Morning:  Hollywood Studios Evening: none

Monday 7/29 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Tuesday 7/30 Morning: none Evening: Epcot

Wednesday 7/31 Morning:  none Evening: Magic Kingdom

Thursday 8/1 Morning: Epcot Evening: none

Friday 8/2 Morning:  Magic Kingdom Evening: none

Saturday 8/3 Morning: Animal Kingdom  Evening: none

Sunday 8/4 Morning:  Hollywood Studios  Evening: none

PARADES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/27-8/4/19

The Magic Kingdom: Afternoon parade: 3p every day

FIREWORKS AND EVENING SHOWS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/27-8/4/19

Happily Ever After at Magic Kingdom 9.15p 7/27 through 8/1; 9p 8/2 through 8/4

IllumiNations at Epcot: 9p every night

Fantasmic at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 9p every night

Star Wars Show and Fireworks at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 9.30p every night

Rivers of Light at Disney’s Animal Kingdom: 9 and 10p 7/27 and 7/28; 9p 7/29 and 7/30; 9 and 10p 7/31 through 8/4

SHOW SCHEDULES FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD 7/27-8/4/19

See Steve Soares’ site here. Click the park names at its top for show schedules.

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