Walt Disney had a track record of introducing new technology to the world’s cinema screens. The studio that Walt had founded with his brother Roy had produced the first animated short to boast synchronized sound, as well as the first to benefit from the use of the innovative Technicolor process. In 1937, it released its first feature-length animation, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Despite running massively over-budget, the film raked in a then-enormous $7.8 million worldwide during its initial theatrical run.
In 1955, Disney introduced another innovative type of movie, which he eventually dubbed Circle-Vision 360. The first screen was installed in Disneyland’s Tomorrowland and opened in 1955. The first movie, A Tour of the West, offered visitors a documentary tour of the western United States, surrounding them completely with a 360-degree image.
But Walt had much grander plans for this technology than simply installing it at a single theme park. He wanted to open a nationwide chain of Circle-Vision 360 cinemas, and to produce a range of different movies to be shown at them. Essentially, he hoped to follow the model that was eventually adopted by IMAX – and had he lived longer, he may just have pulled it off. Let’s take a look at how far he got…
The technology
Walt wanted to place viewers directly into the thick of the on-screen action, but he didn’t want to rely on the flimsy, uncomfortable glasses employed by the 3-D movies that were flooding cinemas during the 1950s. Instead, he wanted to completely surround them with the movies, so that they could look in front of them, to the side and even behind them to get a different viewpoint.
The answer was a system developed in-house, primarily by Disney legend Ub Iwerks – a man who had earlier pioneered 3-D films in the 1930s using a makeshift camera set up in the back of Studebaker vehicle. Iwerks devised a system that employed 11 different screens arrayed in a circle. There was a small gap between each screen, allowing an equal number of projectors to project the images. The system was initially named Circarama.
The Disney system wasn’t the first to try and broaden the viewer’s aspect ratio. In 1952, the feature-length This is Cinerama had pulled off a similar trick – with quite spectacular results. The movie premiered on September 30, 1952 at the New York Broadway Theater. It began in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio, in black-and-white. It then told the story of the evolution of motion pictures, leading up to the introduction of sound and color. Suddenly, the image expanded to cover two further screens, in full color.
The movie was a huge success, pulling in a then-huge $12.5 million at the box office despite requiring specialist technology that had to be moved from city to city. The technology was much less ambitious than Disney’s, but the name chosen for Disney’s version – Circarama – could undeniably be seen as derivative. The producers sued Disney, successfully forcing a name-change to Circle-Vision 360.
The first installations
The first Circle-Vision 360 installation (we’ll use the final name to avoid confusion) was at Disneyland. A Tour of the West was produced using a camera mounted on an American Motors vehicle, with the auto manufacturer taking up sponsorship of the attraction.
Walt, excited by the technology, didn’t stop there. A second theater was built for the United States Pavilion at the the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels, and a new film – America the Beautiful – was produced to show off the wonders of the country. According to one official, it became “the hit not only of the American Pavilion, but of the whole Expo”. The exhibit was transferred to a nylon geodesic dome at the American National Exhibition in Moscow the following year. Queues of up to 100 yards developed, as around 1,000 Russians per hour viewed a film that the US government hoped would convince them of the benefits of capitalism.
Walt recognised the limitations of the “road show” style of distribution employed by “This is Cinerema” and the impracticality of moving Circle-Vision 360 setups from one city to another. He wanted to build a set of permanent Circle-Vision 360 cinemas instead.
By 1961, another movie, Italia ’61, was in the can (the first to use just nine cameras, rather than 11). Discussions over the production of a third, to cover Europe, were already underway. In 1963, Walt had also begun seeking sponsors for a Circle-Vision film about Canada, to be to be showcased at Expo 67 in Montreal.
But just where might have these Circle-Vision theaters have been located? Well, we know of two possible locations. Let’s take a look.
Niagara Falls
Walt had largely banned the sale of alcohol at Disneyland. Despite this, Canadian liquor company Seagram was among those courting Disney following Disneyland’s early success, aiming to convince the company to build a second theme park. It hoped to persuade Walt to develop a tourist attraction at Niagara Falls, the natural wonder that would eventually be surrounded by a host of Las Vegas-style offerings, including casinos, theatres and high-rise hotels.
In August 1963, Walt and wife Lillian travelled together with Roy and his wife Edna to Niagara Falls to discuss the proposal and meet local officials. The trip included a look at the Falls from the Seagram Tower’s observation deck – an appropriate activity, given what Seagram was proposing. The company hoped to partner with Disney to boost the tower, a 325 feet tall creation that opened in 1962 and boasted the observation deck, a restaurant and a hotel. It was located on the Canadian side of the border, and stood some 525 feet above the Horseshoe Falls. It was the first modern observation tower to be built close to the Falls, though it has since been overshadowed by the taller Skylon Tower.
As was the case with a proposed New York theme park, the cold winters in the region ruled out any potential outdoor theme parks. Instead, Walt considered a more modest plan. According to statements from longtime Disney consultant Buzz Price, this would have involved installing a clone of Disneyland’s Rocket to the Moon ride in one of the lower floors of the Seagram Tower.
Despite Price’s apparent claim that a version of Rocket to the Moon was on the cards for the Seagram Tower, his professional notes actually indicate that a 360-degree movie was considered for the site. Price even went as far as completing a financial report to ascertain the potential revenues and costs for such a venture. This could have been the first in Walt’s proposed chain of Circle-Vision 360 theaters.
According to Price, Disney and Seagram failed to agree on an appropriate licensing fee for the Niagara Falls attraction. The project was quietly dropped, with Seagram going on to take over Disney’s rival Universal in 1995, before itself being acquired by French conglomerate Vivendi five years later.
St. Louis
Marceline, where Walt’s family had owned a farm during his happiest childhood years, is located not far from the major city of St. Louis. During the decades following the civil war, the city had grown to become the fourth largest in the US. This boom period culminated with the 1904 World’s Fair and the Summer Olympics, which were hosted concurrently in St. Louis.
By the 1950s, the city’s famous Mississippi riverfront was in a desperate state, having been hit by the dual effects of the Great Depression and migration to outlying suburbs. The condition of the riverfront did not go unnoticed by city authorities. In the 1930s, the city began the acquisition and demolition of a 40-block area, on which it planned to install a memorial to Thomas Jefferson. After the war, Eero Saarinen won a competition to produce a design for the memorial, with what would ultimately become the Gateway Arch. Plans were also put in place to demolish the city’s Chinatown, and replace it with a new stadium for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team.
On a site close to both the Arch and the stadium, the Civic Center Redevelopment Corporation (CCRC) hoped to build a third attraction: Riverfront Square. Featuring a range of shops and restaurants, this would cater for the millions of tourists that were expected to visit the newly-revived area. In 1962, plans were announced for an outdoor mall stretching along a 300-foot strip. This would be themed around 19th century St. Louis, celebrating its history as a vital river gateway.
In early 1963, the CCRC approached Walt Disney with a proposal to produce a short film about the history of St. Louis to be shown in one of Riverfront Square’s theaters. Whereas he rejected most similar proposals out of hand, on this occasion Walt was intrigued – probably due to his affection for the area.
Walt himself visited St. Louis in May 1963, with the CCRC’s president, Raymond Wittcoff, leading the tour. At the time, Disney’s suggested involvement was limited to the production of a Circle-Vision movie, and possibly a second “unusual ride”, that would “have an economic potential as an amusement ride in addition to its primary transportation function” (it is likely that this would have been a version of the Ford Magical Skyway or PeopleMover systems).
Eventually, Disney’s involvement grew significantly beyond this – to the point where the company was proposing to build an enormous indoor theme park on the Riverfront Square site (more on that in a future article). But, ultimately, no agreement on how the project would be financed was reached, and it was dropped altogether.
Walt Disney died in 1966, and his dream of rolling out Circle-Vision 360 across the world largely died with him.
Circle-Vision 360 today
Circle-Vision 360 does still play a role at Disney’s theme parks. The original theater at Disneyland may have shut down, along with others at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, Disneyland Paris and Tokyo Disneyland. But the travelogue-style movies that Walt envisioned are a perfect fit with Epcot’s World Showcase. Reflections of China and O Canada! continue to be presented in the format, playing to millions of guests every year.
Learn more about Disney’s unbuilt attractions
I’m currently working on my third book, Possibilityland: The Disney Theme Parks That Could Have Been. This will include detailed descriptions of many Disney parks and attractions that were designed but never built. It will place these in the context of the overall story of Disney’s theme park business, so that you can learn why they were proposed in the first place, why the projects didn’t go ahead and how they influenced subsequent attractions that really did see the light of day. If you’d like to be notified when the book is released, sign up for the special newsletter.
