It's a DISNEY World after all
EDITOR'S NOTE: A SMATTERING OF DISNEY STUFF I'VE HAD WAITING TO BE POSTED -----
WALT AND PIRATES
Walt and a scurvy scalawag destinedfor Pirates of the Caribbean
The Walt Disney Family Museum, curated by Richard and Katherine Greene, is an online treasure trove of information and reminiscences of Walt Disney.
This week the "Insider" brings you a special feature that first appeared in the Museum.
We think you'll love getting the details on Walt Disney's vision for Pirates of the Caribbean, one of the crown jewels of Disneyland park. EDITOR'S NOTE: ARGGGHHH. INDEED.
In 1966, the year of his death, Walt was at a press conference in which a variety of questions were asked. One reporter asked what Walt's favorite attraction was at Disneyland. Would it be one of the originals, like the Jungle Cruise? Or one of the more recent arrivals, like the Matterhorn? Or perhaps one of the attractions that had been brought over from the New York World's Fair? Walt answered without missing a beat. He described the ride. It featured pirate ships and treasure. The crowd couldn't figure out what attraction he was thinking of. Of course, it was Pirates of the Caribbean, which didn't open until March 18, 1967.
Pirates - still a favorite of many Guests at Disneyland and Walt Disney World - may well have been the last major attraction on which Walt worked intensively. His influence shows. As was so often the case with Walt's creations, Pirates of the Caribbean went through many stages before it emerged as a remarkable marriage of story, art, and Audio-Animatronic figures.
In its earliest incarnation, Walt asked master artist Marc Davis to start researching pirates. Not surprisingly, Davis came up with a remarkable gallery of sketches, and the idea of a walk-through attraction, featuring elaborate pirate-themed images, grew.
Designs were drawn and redrawn. Thought was given to the sounds and music that would help draw Guests through this still-life world.
But even as the Pirates attraction moved further along in development, Walt was growing increasingly engaged with the possibilities for Audio-Animatronics.
He had introduced the Enchanted Tiki Room to Disneyland, which gave him confidence that far more could be done with this technology. But his work at the New York World's Fair - featuring the Audio-Animatronic Mr. Lincoln - brought him a full step forward.
Why not apply his new technology to Pirates of the Caribbean?
Typical of Walt, he didn't give a second thought to junking the original plans and work on a whole new Pirates ride began. This one would be at least twice as big as its predecessor.
As months passed, mock-ups were created, and by the fall of 1966, Walt had overseen a number of the scenes. Marc Davis was still involved, and came up with a series of pirate gags that would liven up the show.
A mock-up of the Pirates ride
Walt kept well posted as the ride progressed.
At one point, a mock-up was created, with completed sets, and Walt wanted to get a sense of how the whole thing would feel when it was completed. So his staffers put him on a chair on a dolly and moved it through at about the same speed that the boats would move in the finished attraction.
Recalls long-time artist and writer X. Attencio, "I said, 'Gee Walt, I'm sorry it's so noisy, you can't understand what's going on here.' And he says, 'X, it's going to be like a cocktail party. You listen to a conversation here and you listen to a conversation there. Each time you go through, you'll find something different in there.' And I thought, 'Why didn't I think of that?'" EDITOR'S NOTE: WALT MAY HAVE BEEN A CHAUVENIST AND A NAZI, BUT HE SURE WAS A CREATIVE GENIUS.
Attencio found himself a new skill while working on the attraction.
As he recalls, "Walt called over and he says, 'I want you to do the script for the Pirate Ride.' And I had never done any scripting before. I had done story boarding at the animation end of it, and so I said, 'Well, okay.' And I put on my pirate hat and researched all the pirate stuff I could get a hold of. Marc Davis and Claude Coates had already worked out the ride, so we had all the little miniatures for each scene. So all I had to do was walk through the mock-up there and see what was there and what should be said. "
And then, when we finished with the scripting and everything, I think the last story meeting we had, I said, 'I think I have an idea for a song for this thing. A song'd be real good in this' And I kind of half recited and half - I had a melody in mind - sang it. And it started with a 'Yo Ho, Yo Ho, a pirate's life for me.' "And he says, 'Hey that's fine' ... And I thought he was going to say, 'Get the Sherman brothers to do it,' but he said go ahead, so I became a songwriter then."
EDITOR'S NOTE: THE DISNEY FAMILY HAS A WHOLE MUSEUM, TOO. FOR MORE ON THIS, HERE'S THE WEB ADDRESS ---
THE WALT DISNEY FAMILY MUSEUM
http://disney.go.com/disneyatoz/familymuseum/index.html
Dogs' fate gnaws at HK Disneyland
The fate of dogs roaming the site of Hong Kong's Disneyland theme park is causing embarrassment to the entertainment group.
Since May, Disney has called in local officials to round up and destroy at least 40 dogs, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported.
Disney, whose cartoons often portray cute animal characters, said the packs of dogs posed a threat to its staff.
"We felt that they posed a safety threat to our staff, so we asked the government to take them away," said Esther Wong, a spokeswoman for Hong Kong Disneyland.
Previously, the theme park operator has dropped shark fin soup from park menus in Hong Kong following pressure from campaigners.
Dangerous
Albert Hui, a spokesman for Hong Kong's agriculture department, said 45 dogs had been rounded up at the Disneyland site since May, the Associated Press reported.
He added that some of the animals had since been destroyed, though there were no records of how many.
"They're unofficial guard dogs," insisted Sally Andersen, of Hong Kong Dog Rescue.
"They are fed and looked after by the workers. They're friendly and used to humans."
Disney has denied that it used the animals as guard dogs at the site that is due to open on 12 September.
Shopping and leisure
Hong Kong Disneyland will be the entertainment group's second theme park in Asia, after Tokyo.
Disney hopes to tap into Hong Kong's appeal to newly-wealthy mainland Chinese and their often-pampered only children as a shopping and leisure centre.
The resort is being built on Hong Kong's outlying Lantau island, where semi-wild dogs are common.
This is the second animal-rights embarrassment Disney has suffered over the $1.8bn (£1bn) theme park.
Last month, it withdrew shark fin soup from planned banquet menus after campaigners criticised the dish - a local luxury - as cruel and destructive. EDITOR'S NOTE: YOU COME OUT OF A RIDE WITH HAPPY, SINGING FAKE DOGS, AND GET MAULED BY THE REAL THING. NOW THAT'S AN ADVENTURE RIDE!!!
AND NOW, BACK TO THE DISNEY VIEW OF THINGS.....
THE DISNEY WILDLIFE CONSERVATION FUND
A trip to Disney's Animal Kingdom® Theme Park or The Living Seas at Epcot® offers a special kind of magic to Guests - a chance not just to enter the world of Disney, but also to see and interact with living creatures.
Wise-eyed elephants, elegantly alarming sharksEDITOR'S NOTE: I LIKE THAT. I THINK I WILL CLAIM THIS AS MY PERSONAL DESCRIPTOR --- "ELEGANTLY ALARMING"! , and gorgeous birds remind Guests of the incredible and beautiful variety of life that surrounds us.
Kim Sams is working hard to ensure that Disney forges a connection between theme park Guests and the natural world that lasts beyond that visit to a Disney park. She's the Manager of Conservation Initiatives for Walt Disney World Resort®, and much of her time and devotion goes to the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund (DWCF).
"The conservation fund was created in 1995, when Disney's Animal Kingdom was in the planning stage, and we began to think about the conservation messages that would be associated with Animal Kingdom," Kim explains. "We hoped that the animals at the Park would be ambassadors for wildlife, and we hoped that our Guests would experience things at Disney's Animal Kingdom that would move them to want to help wildlife. We felt that the DWCF would give them a way to do that." EDITOR'S NOTE: AND OUR LAWYERS TOLD US IT WOULD COVER OUR DERRIERES IF ANYTHING DIED.
Guests can donate funds to help the wild counterparts of the very animals they might see at Disney destinations like Disney's Animal Kingdom, The Living Seas, on the Disney Cruise Line or at the Disney Vacation Club resorts at Hilton Head Island and Vero Beach. When they support the fund, they receive a "Conservation Hero" button designed for that location.
Guests have helped the DWCF support dozens of projects - almost 80 of them in 2005 - that are devoted to studying and protecting wildlife.
Just a few of the current projects include sea-turtle tracking, expanding whooping crane population (the chicks must be taught to migrate from new habitats by a human helper in an ultralight aircraft), and providing protected nest boxes for endangered Colombian parrots. EDITOR'S NOTE: WHO KNOWS IF IT'S ALTRUISM OR FANNY-PROTECTION. BUT AS LONG AS GOOD COMES OUT OF IT, IT WORKS, RIGHT?
Many of the projects are right in Disney's own backyard(s), so to speak: from manatee research in the Florida Gulf to California condors in the desert.
Guest contributions are supplemented by contributions from DisneyHand: Worldwide Outreach for The Walt Disney Company.
One hundred percent of every dollar collected is distributed to nonprofit organizations, because Walt Disney World covers all costs of the program.
In the past eight years, the DWCF has supported more than 300 projects, at a total of $8 million.
But, just as Disney's Animal Kingdom represents creatures from all over the world, the DWCF supports programs to help wildlife in every corner of the globe - African gorillas, Indonesian lorikeets, coral reefs in the Bahamas and more.
"If you talk with one of the Animal Kingdom Cast about elephants, they'll say ‘The Disney Wildlife DWCF supports a variety of projects in both Africa and Asia,' and they might name a project or two," Kim explains. "When Guests see the elephants, they understand that they can make a difference to help that species in the wild."
Project applications go through a gauntlet of review to ensure that every penny is put to good use. Says Kim, "We have a rigorous selection process, requiring references and resumes, so we can see that the people we fund actually have a proven track record. And we ask for written reports prior to funding them again. We have a pretty strict reporting process, and I have conversations with them throughout the year, either by phone or e-mail."
Kim got to see the DWCF in action recently, as she traveled with other representatives of Walt Disney World Parks and Resorts to Africa to visit with eight of the organizations receiving financial support. She met with the staff of the Jane Goodall Institute in Uganda, who had received funds to remove poachers' snares from a park in the Kalinzu Forest inhabited by chimpanzees.
In Kenya, she visited with a woman named Cynthia Moss who has been studying elephants in Amboseli National Park, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, for more than 30 years.
"One of the things the DWCF is helping with is assisting people who have been impacted negatively by elephants," says Kim. "Occasionally an elephant will damage a crop or kill local livestock. There is what they call a 'consolation program' in place, to encourage people not to seek retribution against the elephants, but come to the African Elephant Trust and ask for financial assistance to replace the loss." EDITOR'S NOTE: THAT IS TRULY GLOBAL IN THINKING. BRAVO!
What's Kim's favorite project? Pressed, she admits to a special fondness for sea turtles. Thanks to contributions from Disney and Guests, researchers have been able to set up a satellite tracking system for these migratory marine creatures.
According to Kim, the DWCF is not only true to the spirit of Disney's Animal Kingdom and other Disney experiences where Guests interact with nature - it's true to the inspiration of Walt Disney himself. "We have a tremendous legacy with animals at The Walt Disney Company. Walt, in the '50s, was the chairman of National Wildlife Week several times. Around that same time frame, we produced the "True-Life Adventures" series of films, which many people credit with having gotten them involved with conservation. "Now we're taking his legacy with animals further, not only sharing animals with people through our theme park in Florida, but also sharing funds with animals all over the world to make sure they are taken care of, understood to the best of our ability, and protected for the future."
The Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund helps ensure the survival of wildlife and wild places in all their beauty and diversity.
Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund The Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund (DWCF) was established in 1995 as a global awards program for the study and protection of the world's wildlife and ecosystems. It provides annual awards to US nonprofit conservation organizations working alongside their peers in other countries. Many of the recipient organizations concentrate their activities on "biological hotspots" -- areas rich in plant and animal life at risk of imminent destruction. Since its inception, the fund has contributed more than $7 million, distributed among 300 projects in more than 30 countries. Each project is evaluated on specific criteria, including scientific methodologies, magnitude of need, involvement of partner organizations, ability to impact an area in the near-term, and elements of public education and community involvement.
EDITOR'S NOTE: AND A LITTLE BIT OF DISNEYANIMAL TRIVIA ----
What species was the first baby animal born at Disney's Animal Kingdom?
The Park's first baby was a kudu calf.
WALT AND PIRATES
Walt and a scurvy scalawag destinedfor Pirates of the Caribbean
The Walt Disney Family Museum, curated by Richard and Katherine Greene, is an online treasure trove of information and reminiscences of Walt Disney.
This week the "Insider" brings you a special feature that first appeared in the Museum.
We think you'll love getting the details on Walt Disney's vision for Pirates of the Caribbean, one of the crown jewels of Disneyland park. EDITOR'S NOTE: ARGGGHHH. INDEED.
In 1966, the year of his death, Walt was at a press conference in which a variety of questions were asked. One reporter asked what Walt's favorite attraction was at Disneyland. Would it be one of the originals, like the Jungle Cruise? Or one of the more recent arrivals, like the Matterhorn? Or perhaps one of the attractions that had been brought over from the New York World's Fair? Walt answered without missing a beat. He described the ride. It featured pirate ships and treasure. The crowd couldn't figure out what attraction he was thinking of. Of course, it was Pirates of the Caribbean, which didn't open until March 18, 1967.
Pirates - still a favorite of many Guests at Disneyland and Walt Disney World - may well have been the last major attraction on which Walt worked intensively. His influence shows. As was so often the case with Walt's creations, Pirates of the Caribbean went through many stages before it emerged as a remarkable marriage of story, art, and Audio-Animatronic figures.
In its earliest incarnation, Walt asked master artist Marc Davis to start researching pirates. Not surprisingly, Davis came up with a remarkable gallery of sketches, and the idea of a walk-through attraction, featuring elaborate pirate-themed images, grew.
Designs were drawn and redrawn. Thought was given to the sounds and music that would help draw Guests through this still-life world.
But even as the Pirates attraction moved further along in development, Walt was growing increasingly engaged with the possibilities for Audio-Animatronics.
He had introduced the Enchanted Tiki Room to Disneyland, which gave him confidence that far more could be done with this technology. But his work at the New York World's Fair - featuring the Audio-Animatronic Mr. Lincoln - brought him a full step forward.
Why not apply his new technology to Pirates of the Caribbean?
Typical of Walt, he didn't give a second thought to junking the original plans and work on a whole new Pirates ride began. This one would be at least twice as big as its predecessor.
As months passed, mock-ups were created, and by the fall of 1966, Walt had overseen a number of the scenes. Marc Davis was still involved, and came up with a series of pirate gags that would liven up the show.
A mock-up of the Pirates ride
Walt kept well posted as the ride progressed.
At one point, a mock-up was created, with completed sets, and Walt wanted to get a sense of how the whole thing would feel when it was completed. So his staffers put him on a chair on a dolly and moved it through at about the same speed that the boats would move in the finished attraction.
Recalls long-time artist and writer X. Attencio, "I said, 'Gee Walt, I'm sorry it's so noisy, you can't understand what's going on here.' And he says, 'X, it's going to be like a cocktail party. You listen to a conversation here and you listen to a conversation there. Each time you go through, you'll find something different in there.' And I thought, 'Why didn't I think of that?'" EDITOR'S NOTE: WALT MAY HAVE BEEN A CHAUVENIST AND A NAZI, BUT HE SURE WAS A CREATIVE GENIUS.
Attencio found himself a new skill while working on the attraction.
As he recalls, "Walt called over and he says, 'I want you to do the script for the Pirate Ride.' And I had never done any scripting before. I had done story boarding at the animation end of it, and so I said, 'Well, okay.' And I put on my pirate hat and researched all the pirate stuff I could get a hold of. Marc Davis and Claude Coates had already worked out the ride, so we had all the little miniatures for each scene. So all I had to do was walk through the mock-up there and see what was there and what should be said. "
And then, when we finished with the scripting and everything, I think the last story meeting we had, I said, 'I think I have an idea for a song for this thing. A song'd be real good in this' And I kind of half recited and half - I had a melody in mind - sang it. And it started with a 'Yo Ho, Yo Ho, a pirate's life for me.' "And he says, 'Hey that's fine' ... And I thought he was going to say, 'Get the Sherman brothers to do it,' but he said go ahead, so I became a songwriter then."
EDITOR'S NOTE: THE DISNEY FAMILY HAS A WHOLE MUSEUM, TOO. FOR MORE ON THIS, HERE'S THE WEB ADDRESS ---
THE WALT DISNEY FAMILY MUSEUM
http://disney.go.com/disneyatoz/familymuseum/index.html
Dogs' fate gnaws at HK Disneyland
The fate of dogs roaming the site of Hong Kong's Disneyland theme park is causing embarrassment to the entertainment group.
Since May, Disney has called in local officials to round up and destroy at least 40 dogs, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported.
Disney, whose cartoons often portray cute animal characters, said the packs of dogs posed a threat to its staff.
"We felt that they posed a safety threat to our staff, so we asked the government to take them away," said Esther Wong, a spokeswoman for Hong Kong Disneyland.
Previously, the theme park operator has dropped shark fin soup from park menus in Hong Kong following pressure from campaigners.
Dangerous
Albert Hui, a spokesman for Hong Kong's agriculture department, said 45 dogs had been rounded up at the Disneyland site since May, the Associated Press reported.
He added that some of the animals had since been destroyed, though there were no records of how many.
"They're unofficial guard dogs," insisted Sally Andersen, of Hong Kong Dog Rescue.
"They are fed and looked after by the workers. They're friendly and used to humans."
Disney has denied that it used the animals as guard dogs at the site that is due to open on 12 September.
Shopping and leisure
Hong Kong Disneyland will be the entertainment group's second theme park in Asia, after Tokyo.
Disney hopes to tap into Hong Kong's appeal to newly-wealthy mainland Chinese and their often-pampered only children as a shopping and leisure centre.
The resort is being built on Hong Kong's outlying Lantau island, where semi-wild dogs are common.
This is the second animal-rights embarrassment Disney has suffered over the $1.8bn (£1bn) theme park.
Last month, it withdrew shark fin soup from planned banquet menus after campaigners criticised the dish - a local luxury - as cruel and destructive. EDITOR'S NOTE: YOU COME OUT OF A RIDE WITH HAPPY, SINGING FAKE DOGS, AND GET MAULED BY THE REAL THING. NOW THAT'S AN ADVENTURE RIDE!!!
AND NOW, BACK TO THE DISNEY VIEW OF THINGS.....
THE DISNEY WILDLIFE CONSERVATION FUND
A trip to Disney's Animal Kingdom® Theme Park or The Living Seas at Epcot® offers a special kind of magic to Guests - a chance not just to enter the world of Disney, but also to see and interact with living creatures.
Wise-eyed elephants, elegantly alarming sharksEDITOR'S NOTE: I LIKE THAT. I THINK I WILL CLAIM THIS AS MY PERSONAL DESCRIPTOR --- "ELEGANTLY ALARMING"! , and gorgeous birds remind Guests of the incredible and beautiful variety of life that surrounds us.
Kim Sams is working hard to ensure that Disney forges a connection between theme park Guests and the natural world that lasts beyond that visit to a Disney park. She's the Manager of Conservation Initiatives for Walt Disney World Resort®, and much of her time and devotion goes to the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund (DWCF).
"The conservation fund was created in 1995, when Disney's Animal Kingdom was in the planning stage, and we began to think about the conservation messages that would be associated with Animal Kingdom," Kim explains. "We hoped that the animals at the Park would be ambassadors for wildlife, and we hoped that our Guests would experience things at Disney's Animal Kingdom that would move them to want to help wildlife. We felt that the DWCF would give them a way to do that." EDITOR'S NOTE: AND OUR LAWYERS TOLD US IT WOULD COVER OUR DERRIERES IF ANYTHING DIED.
Guests can donate funds to help the wild counterparts of the very animals they might see at Disney destinations like Disney's Animal Kingdom, The Living Seas, on the Disney Cruise Line or at the Disney Vacation Club resorts at Hilton Head Island and Vero Beach. When they support the fund, they receive a "Conservation Hero" button designed for that location.
Guests have helped the DWCF support dozens of projects - almost 80 of them in 2005 - that are devoted to studying and protecting wildlife.
Just a few of the current projects include sea-turtle tracking, expanding whooping crane population (the chicks must be taught to migrate from new habitats by a human helper in an ultralight aircraft), and providing protected nest boxes for endangered Colombian parrots. EDITOR'S NOTE: WHO KNOWS IF IT'S ALTRUISM OR FANNY-PROTECTION. BUT AS LONG AS GOOD COMES OUT OF IT, IT WORKS, RIGHT?
Many of the projects are right in Disney's own backyard(s), so to speak: from manatee research in the Florida Gulf to California condors in the desert.
Guest contributions are supplemented by contributions from DisneyHand: Worldwide Outreach for The Walt Disney Company.
One hundred percent of every dollar collected is distributed to nonprofit organizations, because Walt Disney World covers all costs of the program.
In the past eight years, the DWCF has supported more than 300 projects, at a total of $8 million.
But, just as Disney's Animal Kingdom represents creatures from all over the world, the DWCF supports programs to help wildlife in every corner of the globe - African gorillas, Indonesian lorikeets, coral reefs in the Bahamas and more.
"If you talk with one of the Animal Kingdom Cast about elephants, they'll say ‘The Disney Wildlife DWCF supports a variety of projects in both Africa and Asia,' and they might name a project or two," Kim explains. "When Guests see the elephants, they understand that they can make a difference to help that species in the wild."
Project applications go through a gauntlet of review to ensure that every penny is put to good use. Says Kim, "We have a rigorous selection process, requiring references and resumes, so we can see that the people we fund actually have a proven track record. And we ask for written reports prior to funding them again. We have a pretty strict reporting process, and I have conversations with them throughout the year, either by phone or e-mail."
Kim got to see the DWCF in action recently, as she traveled with other representatives of Walt Disney World Parks and Resorts to Africa to visit with eight of the organizations receiving financial support. She met with the staff of the Jane Goodall Institute in Uganda, who had received funds to remove poachers' snares from a park in the Kalinzu Forest inhabited by chimpanzees.
In Kenya, she visited with a woman named Cynthia Moss who has been studying elephants in Amboseli National Park, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, for more than 30 years.
"One of the things the DWCF is helping with is assisting people who have been impacted negatively by elephants," says Kim. "Occasionally an elephant will damage a crop or kill local livestock. There is what they call a 'consolation program' in place, to encourage people not to seek retribution against the elephants, but come to the African Elephant Trust and ask for financial assistance to replace the loss." EDITOR'S NOTE: THAT IS TRULY GLOBAL IN THINKING. BRAVO!
What's Kim's favorite project? Pressed, she admits to a special fondness for sea turtles. Thanks to contributions from Disney and Guests, researchers have been able to set up a satellite tracking system for these migratory marine creatures.
According to Kim, the DWCF is not only true to the spirit of Disney's Animal Kingdom and other Disney experiences where Guests interact with nature - it's true to the inspiration of Walt Disney himself. "We have a tremendous legacy with animals at The Walt Disney Company. Walt, in the '50s, was the chairman of National Wildlife Week several times. Around that same time frame, we produced the "True-Life Adventures" series of films, which many people credit with having gotten them involved with conservation. "Now we're taking his legacy with animals further, not only sharing animals with people through our theme park in Florida, but also sharing funds with animals all over the world to make sure they are taken care of, understood to the best of our ability, and protected for the future."
The Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund helps ensure the survival of wildlife and wild places in all their beauty and diversity.
Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund The Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund (DWCF) was established in 1995 as a global awards program for the study and protection of the world's wildlife and ecosystems. It provides annual awards to US nonprofit conservation organizations working alongside their peers in other countries. Many of the recipient organizations concentrate their activities on "biological hotspots" -- areas rich in plant and animal life at risk of imminent destruction. Since its inception, the fund has contributed more than $7 million, distributed among 300 projects in more than 30 countries. Each project is evaluated on specific criteria, including scientific methodologies, magnitude of need, involvement of partner organizations, ability to impact an area in the near-term, and elements of public education and community involvement.
EDITOR'S NOTE: AND A LITTLE BIT OF DISNEYANIMAL TRIVIA ----
What species was the first baby animal born at Disney's Animal Kingdom?
The Park's first baby was a kudu calf.
posted by QOTD (the Queen of the Dweebs) at 1:32 PM
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