The Magic Kingdom may not be the most original area conceived for the Walt Disney World Resort, but it’s unquestionably the most popular of the four existing parks. According to the Theme and Museum Index Report for 2017, the Magic Kingdom drew the highest attendance of any domestic or international theme park in 2017 with an estimated total of 20.4 million guests, with Disneyland a distant second at 18.3 million visitors. (Disney’s Animal Kingdom ranked sixth-highest, Epcot seventh, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios ninth.)
That’s not to say the Magic Kingdom is a brick-for-brick imitation of its sister park on the West Coast. From the sprawling lawns in front of the silver-spired Cinderella Castle to its double-tracked Space Mountain (a Walt Disney World original) and the swinging mine cars on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, the park manages to feel both familiar and revolutionary to those already well-acquainted with the Disney Parks. It’s unmistakably on-brand, right down to the spoke-like pattern of its six distinct lands, but fresh enough that it can stand on its own without drawing negative comparisons to Disneyland.
While there have been various stories about the inspiration behind the Magic Kingdom’s creation, it seems reasonable to say that Walt Disney envisioned a land where he could improve on the design and infrastructure of his first theme park. He died just five years before he could see some of those plans come to fruition, but when the park finally opened on October 1, 1971, his brother Roy ensured that Walt’s legacy would be honored in the Florida kingdom for generations to come.
“Walt Disney World is a tribute to the philosophy and life of Walter Elias Disney,” Roy read from the dedication plaque, “and to the talents, the dedication, and the loyalty of the entire Disney organization that made Walt Disney’s dream come true. May Walt Disney World bring Joy and Inspiration and New Knowledge to all who come to this happy place… a Magic Kingdom where the young at heart of all ages can laugh and play and learn—together.”
In the years following Walt’s death in 1966, Disney Imagineers not only furthered his philosophy of innovation and imagination, but found subtle ways to pay homage to the park’s creator, too. Let’s dive into some little-known facts about the creation of the most popular Disney Park in the world…
One of Walt’s favorite movies inspired an interesting backstory for Main Street, U.S.A.
Image: Michael Gray, Flickr (license)
It would be unfair to describe Main Street, U.S.A. as a snapshot of any one time period in United States history. Main Street is less a historical representation of 19th-century America than it is a rose-colored idea of what small American towns should have looked like: it’s equal parts idyllic childhood memory, Ragtime-era charm, and pure imagination.
So, it makes perfect sense that a small sliver of Main Street was once themed to one of Walt Disney’s (alleged) favorite live-action films. According to Disney historian Jim Korkis, the Chapeau shop in Town Square has a rich backstory involving several characters from the 1963 Hayley Mills flick Summer Magic. The film tells a sweet, sappy story about a young girl, Nancy Carey, who is forced to relocate to the countryside with her mother and brothers and attempts to better their lives through a series of increasingly absurd—if well-intentioned—lies.
When putting the finishing touches on the Magic Kingdom’s hat shop, meanwhile, Imagineers devised a new adventure for the spirited Carey and her city-mouse cousin, Julia. The official backstory for the store described the two women as business partners and “thoroughly modern merchants” committed to outfitting the residents of Main street with the finest bowlers and bonnets money could buy. Prospective customers (often those in search of Minnie ears—not period-specific Easter bonnets) might have spotted traces of the Careys throughout the area, from family photographs hanging in the shop to the ‘No. 63’ address posted outside the entrance to the name “Osh Popham” (the good-natured storeowner whom the Careys befriend, played by Burl Ives) etched in a window of the nearby Emporium.
Today’s guests are likely to miss the shop’s rich history as most (if not all) references to the film have long-since been removed. It’s not certain that Walt had any intention of paying homage to Summer Magic on Main Street, but the Imagineers’ short-lived inclusion of the film served as a heartwarming reminder of his enduring influence on the Disney Parks—both as a family-friendly vacation destination and an amalgamation of his favorite things.
Former NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper consulted on the plans for Space Mountain.
Image: Sonja, Flickr (license)
The concept of ‘Tomorrowland’ has always presented difficult challenges for Disney’s Imagineering department. From its inception at Disneyland in 1955 to its various permutations in overseas parks (like Disneyland Paris’ Discoveryland), the land has struggled to retain a unified theme from decade to decade. It has played host to corporate-sponsored showcases and exhibits, 360-degree films, outer space travel simulations, alien rampages, and much, much more.
By the 1970s, it was clear that Tomorrowland needed a singular E-ticket attraction around which Disney could theme the rest of the area. They eventually settled on Space Mountain, a computer-controlled roller coaster that had been originally slated for Disneyland in the mid-1960s. Walt’s initial vision for the coaster required it to be fully indoors and fully in the dark, so that he could better control guests’ perception of being in outer space.
It was easy enough to dream up an attraction set in a solar field, but as with everything Disney did, they wanted the ride to feel as accurate as possible. To that end, they turned to Vice President of Research and Development for EPCOT and former NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper as they tried to figure out how best to convey the rush of entering space, orbiting satellites, and whizzing by faraway galaxies and nebulae.
Image: Sam Howzit, Flickr (license)
Cooper was uniquely suited to explain the rigors of space travel. In 1963, a full decade before he joined Disney’s team, he headed the final U.S. Mercury mission and became the first U.S.-born astronaut to spend a full 24-hour day in space—alone. Two years later, he served as the command pilot during the third leg of Project Gemini, a failed lunar mission that resulted in Cooper (and pilot Pete Conrad) orbiting the Earth for nearly eight straight days.
Of course, a “flight” around Space Mountain is considerably shorter—it clocks in around two-and-a-half minutes, with the rocket-themed ride vehicles chugging along at a brisk 35 m.p.h.—but Cooper’s contributions helped the attraction feel much closer to the authentic experience of spinning in space.* (Perhaps it even triggered unpleasant memories of Gemini V; Cooper reportedly felt too dizzy looking at the stars spinning around the spacecraft and covered the windows to block out the view.) As he told People Magazine after Disneyland opened their own version of the ride in 1977: “Space Mountain is about as close as you can safely get to actually being in space.”
*Conflicting reports describe Cooper consulting on both the Walt Disney World and Disneyland iterations of Space Mountain. It is unclear whether Disney consulted him for one or both projects.
Country Bear Jamboree was first conceived for a ski resort project that was later abandoned.
Image: HarshLight, Flickr (license)
Walt didn’t just have his hands in animation, live-action film, and the development of cutting-edge technology for his existing and planned theme parks and resorts. In 1965, he also a vested interest in ski resorts—well, one ski resort in particular. The ‘Mineral King Ski Resort’ was a $35 million project was planned for the heart of the Mineral King basin in the Sequoia National Forest. The self-contained, Alpine-themed village would have featured 14 year-round ski lifts, an ice-skating rink, restaurants, retail outlets, and hotels, a heliport, a conference center, a public transportation system (like Walt’s EPCOT, cars would not have been permitted in the main resort area), and, of all things, a chapel.
Plans for the resort never came to fruition—development was halted by the lack of viable roads through the park, Walt’s untimely death, and environmental concerns, among other obstacles—but at least in one way, the Mineral King Ski Resort’s loss was the Magic Kingdom’s gain. Before the project ultimately shuttered, Imagineer Marc Davis was working on the concept for a live Audio-Animatronic show at one of the restaurants. Similar to Walt’s unrealized vision for the Enchanted Tiki Room, animatronic animals would have mounted a musical revue to entertain diners—only instead of sharp-witted cockatoos, this show planned to feature an entire band of musically-gifted bears.
It was too good an idea to let go to waste. The revue was soon refitted for the Magic Kingdom’s Frontierland, where it became one of two exclusive-to-Walt-Disney-World attractions to debut with the park in 1971. No longer a dinner show at the Bear Band Restaurant, the 15-minute performance allowed guests to fully appreciate the coordinated talents of 18 animatronic bears, each patterned after a native Floridian species—albeit the kind that could also spout wisecracks and croon a tasteful country-western song or two.
Fantasyland was designed to feature a brand-new slate of dark rides.
Image: Sam Howzit, Flickr (license)
The Imagineers had a tough assignment in the Magic Kingdom. Somehow, they were expected to continue pioneering new, inventive attractions while also retaining the fan favorites that had made Disneyland such an in-demand vacation spot. Walt Disney World couldn’t be a carbon copy of its West Coast sister resort, but it still needed to look, sound, and feel familiar enough that guests recognized the Disney brand throughout the parks.
No one was more aware of the intersecting need for innovation and recognizable branding than Roy. As Korkis told AllEars in 2011, Roy was adamant that Imagineers borrow liberally from Disneyland’s design—particularly when it came to the large swath of (Fantasy)land tucked behind the 189-foot Cinderella Castle. Comments from Imagineer Tony Baxter suggested that Roy did so in order to align the feel of the park with Walt’s original vision for Fantasyland. It didn’t hurt, either, that guests would be naturally drawn to the rides and characters that they first fell in love with in Anaheim.
Image: Josh Hallett, Flickr (license)
Had Roy trusted the Imagineers to steer Fantasyland in a different direction, however, we would have seen some truly unique attractions set up shop under the castle’s shadow. A Sleeping Beauty dark ride was planned in place of Snow White’s Scary Adventures, and would have thrust its young riders into the fray alongside some of Maleficent’s goons before they came face-to-face with the enchantress’s dragon-self for a climactic cliffside battle.
In keeping with the general themes of the existing dark rides, an airborne Mary Poppins attraction was intended to supplant the whimsical Peter Pan’s Flight. It appears that different iterations of the ride were drawn up, including one where riders were lifted into the air by way of magical umbrellas and another where they leapt into animated adventures by way of carousel horses.
A third Fantasyland dark ride would have replaced the frenzied Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, though there are contradictory reports as to the nature of the never-built attraction. Korkis alleges that a Sword in the Stone dark ride was in the works and would have featured the various stages of the wizards’ duel between Merlin and Madam Mim, while fellow Disney historian Stephanie Barczewski describes an intended Legend of Sleepy Hollow ride, presumably one in which the Headless Horseman rode in furious pursuit of the gangly-limbed Ichabod Crane (or an unlucky guest).
Disney’s Imagineers may have been limited in their interpretation of the Magic Kingdom’s most iconic land, but they got another chance to reinvent the wheel several decades later: first, with the construction of the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 1999 (the chosen replacement for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride), then with the full-blown expansion of New Fantasyland from 2010-2014, which introduced a Little Mermaid-based dark ride to the area and saw Snow White’s Scary Adventures retired to make room for the E-ticket Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Whether or not the concepts for their original dark rides will ever be put to use remains to be seen.
