Audio-Animatronics can often have more than one life in Disney parks. These geese, originally a quartet in America Sings, are no exception. As their original show was winding down, a new attraction was being created. Splash Mountain. The goose animatronics (along with the other animatronics of America Sings) were repurposed for the newly developed attraction. Their patriotic clothes were traded for a more country look. But two of the geese found themselves in a different type of attraction. These geese would be removed of their synthetic skins and turned into droids named G2-9T and G2-4T in the Star Tours queue.
While Splash Mountain has closed, and we wait to see if some of these animatronics return, you can still see the Star Tours geese, greeting guests in their second life, 50 years after their America Sings debut. In California, after moving from Kansas City, Missouri, Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks were continuing work on a series called Alice's Wonderland. These episodes were of a live-action girl in an animated background full of animated characters. It was a revolutionary process in its day and used well into the future by Disney. Walt knew the series was not destined to last forever, the technological limitations of the time would yield only so many gags and interesting scenarios. In 1927 Charles Mintz, a notable cartoon producer with Winkler Pictures, told Walt he was in negotiations to provide Universal Pictures with a new animated character as long as it wasn't of a cat. (One of Alice's episodes sported Julius the cat.) With the market flooded with cats, Walt had his head animator Ub Iwerks design different sketches of rabbits and sent them to Universal. On March 4th 1927, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was signed on for 26 animated shorts. The first short entitled Poor Papa was finished by the end of April. Completed within a mere two week time frame, Mintz is said to have criticized the design of Oswald and Universal thought the film short lacked a sufficient story. Walt agreed with both of these criticisms and re-imagined Oswald's physical design and character. No animated character anywhere had ever had a set personality, the decision was groundbreaking for its day. The profile and physique Walt wanted was to make "Oswald peculiarly and typically Oswald." Walt believed, at least at the time, that shorts bogged down by story plots were typically the least successful so what he wanted was a personality that could really excite and resonate with audiences. Oswald's second appearance was in Trolley Troubles and performed miles above his initial debut. Some shots were actually from Oswald's point of view, an angle never done before in animation. It made headlines among the film trades, claiming Oswald was destined for stardom! Soon there was merchandise! Chocolate bars and pins were sold across the country and by the end of this first pivotal year, Walt's small two-man company had grown to accommodate 22 employees. Oswald became one of the biggest cartoons of the 1920s! Behind the scenes lay Charles Mintz who was scheming with Walt's animators to start a new studio. Walt was in fact warned this was happening but thought it too ridiculous to be true. However on February 2nd 1928, less than a year from the first Oswald short, Mintz and Universal signed a three-year contract entirely removing Walt from the Oswald shorts. Still Walt did not believe what he was hearing was true, he went to New York to not only negotiate his contract with Charles Mintz, but to negotiate for a bigger budget. He even brought his wife Lillian, considering the trip a second honeymoon. In Mintz's office, Walt expected to hear a counteroffer and he did. Mintz oddly offered Walt roughly 20 percent less money per Oswald short. After this meeting, Walt wired a message to his brother Roy back in California, "Break with Charlie Looming." Realizing the rumors he'd been hearing had been true, Walt also instructed Roy to draft a contract with each of his animators so he wouldn't lose them but none of this was fated to happen. Walt and Mintz were set for a meeting the following day. Walt is said to have wired Roy again, telling him to get the contracts with the animators signed immediately. Walt and Mintz met the following Monday where they negotiated at length getting absolutely nowhere. Walt got a reply from his brother stating that the animators refused to sign the contracts. Now perfectly aware, Walt was wrestling with mutiny and underhanded deals behind the scenes. Walt met with a Universal executive by the name of Manny Goldstein who told Walt that he could work on the Oswald pictures after another year seeing as how Universal just signed a brand new contract with Mintz. Goldstein asked Walt not to mention this to Mintz leaving Walt to believe he would get Oswald back. Mintz offered Walt a weekly stipend if he and his brother Roy agreed to hand over the Disney company. Walt flatly refused! Walt eventually traveled back home to Los Angeles distraught from the knowledge that he had lost the battle for Oswald. In a train car alongside his wife Lillian, Walt began the first sketches of Mickey Mouse. Charles Mintz gets a bad rap from this story, that he was just a producer doing his job when actually he secretly stole an animation staff from a small company, then took the character for himself and Winkler Pictures. And it should be mentioned here that Mintz also married into the Winkler family so their success, was his success. He strategically axed out Disney and the original creators, essentially claiming as much profit as he could for himself. Shameful! Mintz did go on to make more Oswald shorts. The Oswald character lost a lot of his personality of course, the cartoons relied more and more on gags. Most of the Oswald shorts have completely disappeared never to be seen again and perhaps rightfully so! The Disney corporation did regain Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from Universal in 2006 some 79 years later. Overall it may seem like a tragic story, but the lessons Walt learned during this crisis set the amazingly high standards for the character of Mickey Mouse. There would in fact likely never have been a Mickey Mouse if not for Disney losing Oswald. Even Walt had to admit that in spite of everything that Charles Mintz put him and his company through, he learned to set high standards that would grow into the legendary house of Mouse.
A lot of fingers point in many directions over the closure of Disneyland's Skyway. The first understandably points to the April 17, 1994 story about a man who purposely jumped out of his sky bucket 20 feet above the ground, to land in a tree by the Alice in Wonderland attraction. His claim was that he fell and afterward sued Disney for $25,000. The Wiley Simeon's case was dismissed before reaching trial after he admitted to jumping out on purpose. This supposedly got the ball rolling and for Disney to start thinking about closing their Skyway. The ride did close later on that same year on November 9th. The main factor for the closure was the metal fatigue taking place within the Skyway tower inside of the Matterhorn. Apparently small stress fissures had started to form that of course would only worsen with time. To fix this would have meant dismantling large sections of the Matterhorn in order to completely replace the tower within. An extremely costly endeavor involving a long temporary closure of the Matterhorn. If Disney had viewed the Skyway more favorably, they could have of course done what was necessary but the Skyway was apparently being viewed as an old attraction at this point rather than a classic. It's been said that the low number of riders on a given day was one of the reasons for the closure, which makes some sense. The relaxing pace and diminutive size of the sky buckets made it seem quite slow. It's plausible that at least one of the real reasons for the closure was the fact that teenagers were known to occasionally toss things from overhead or spit. Whatever the case, the Skyway's budget was transferred to the Temple of the Forbidden eye and the holes in the Matterhorn were filled. Mickey and Minnie waved down to fans as they made the final voyage before the Disneyland Skyway was permanently closed. Many believe that the attraction closed because of the death that occurred earlier that same year in February. An older cast member was cleaning the takeoff platform early one morning when another cast member started up the Skyway. Without realizing someone was on the platform, not having much recourse, the cast member grabbed hold of the gondola and tried to climb inside. The photo above isn't from the same incident. This woman was very fortunately rescued. The cast memeber we're talking about fell from 40 feet. OSHA hit Disney with a fine over the issue and just like that several months later the Skyway was permanently closed. This was the only case of anyone dying on any of the Skyways. They were remarkably safe. When you look at this 30-year history and the one tragedy (is labeled as human error rather than a machine malfunction) the person responsible for starting that system that day in 1999 must still feel horrible. Though Disneyland did handle the Skyway's departure with some humor by displaying sky buckets inside the Matterhorn in 2015 which was a nice touch. They didn't entirely move on with grace while the Tomorrowland Skyway station was quickly demolished, the Fantasyland Chalet was left dormant, collecting dust for 22 years. Disneyland allowed nature to reclaim their Chalet area discreetly and gradually shrouding it from view even adding some fake overgrowth to further hide it. However the Disneyland Chalet was literally wiped off the map to make way for Galaxy's Edge.
The round buckets that could only hold two guests in fiberglass chairs, with a pole running down the center were sturdy and functional; capable of handling a 700 pound load. They were fun but they weren't the greatest, so when Disney finally re-themed the Sky buckets in 1965, for Disneyland's 10th Anniversary celebration, they turned to Bob Gurr. Bob was a man who could make any conveyance look both striking and exciting. He was making more futuristic, iconic, fun looking vehicles decades before anyone at Disney had even uttered test tracks. He did an exquisite job on redesigning and adding more safety features to the Skyway's sky buckets. Bob was able to double the capacity from two guests to four, he got rid of the unsightly center post and squared off the round bucket look of the gondolas. He did it all with only increasing the weight of the gondola by a few mere pounds! This was accomplished by switching the fully metal sky buckets to mostly plastic with a sturdy metal frame. Some believe Walt actually conjured the idea for Disney World while riding over Disneyland in a sky bucket. Gliding over he supposedly couldn't help but see the busy streets and touristy stuff piling up around his park, leading him of course to the decision to buy new land to protect a new park from such infringements. There are some people who confuse an issue regarding the Skyway in the '64 World's Fair, which was a monumental moment in Disney history. Disney released the magic Skyway attraction at the '64 World's Fair and people and some websites apparently get it mixed up with the Skyway at the park. Some even believe the Skyway was invented for the world's fair but there's no correlation between the attractions other than the strikingly similar name. The Ford cars riding through this window tunnel was supposed to be a trip through the past and future in an automobile. Some referred to the Skyway as two rides. Skyway to Fantasyland and Skyway to Tomorrowland. Disneyland took things up a notch in 1978 and added a glimpse of Harold the abominable snowman. Guests got to see him from the Skyway and this was another huge crowd pleaser reinvigorating interest in an already popular ride that had been around for more than two decades by this point. Stay close for part 4.
The single cable Gondola concept can easily be taken for granted today, but at the time in the United States, the Skyway was a first of its kind spectacle. The system conveyed passengers on a 4MPH clip at heights as high as 60 feet over the park, for a breezy three and a half minutes. There's some discrepancy whether they were 42 or 44 of the metal gondolas taking off every 9 to 20 seconds. And because there were people gracefully gliding overhead, it eased congestion for those walking below. As years went on it also served as a great way to get around parades. The highest riding point was originally the tower on Holiday Hill which was really the excavation remains from the construction of Sleeping Beauty Castle's moat. Afterward landscaped and set with paths and benches to form a nice picnic setting which made for great views from the gondolas. The Skyway opened in Disneyland in 1956 and temporarily closed in 1957 in order to make way for the second most massive expansion any Disney park has ever undergone. It reopened in 1959 along with the Motorboat Cruise, the Submarine Voyage, the first ever Disney Monorail and the enormous Matterhorn Bobsled attraction. It was a great big day again fulfilling the promise that Disney made, and setting a precedent for the future. They built the Matterhorn right on the site of Holiday Hill, the Skyway's tallest tower was in the middle of Holiday Hill. The Matterhorn is in Switzerland the Skyway is a Swiss design bought from a Swiss company it probably took imagineers all of a minute maybe two if that to come up with the idea of having the gondolas go through the mountain. While the '59 expansion wasn't exactly planned for the Skyway, Disney did capitalize on its shutdown to strengthen the towers with extra supports apparently from much urging from Von roll the grips to the cables were also changed.
Stay close for Part 3. |
Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
|