America on Parade & Bob Jani

Don't you just love an internet adventure? I do, at least when they end up with me learning a little something. This one started with a swing by Daveland blog last night. I love lurking at vintage Disney sites on the web and there's a few I surf on a regular basis. Last night I was looking at Daveland's post with pictures from America on Parade.

During the Bicentennial back in 1976, Disney had a huge parade that was a celebration of 200 years of American popular culture. It was one of the larger parades Disney has put together with a lot of floats and extras dancing down Main Street. What's the thing that made the parade unique?

All the performers wore huge heads.

This was one of those love it or hate it type of gimmicks. I thought they were pretty cool at the time, but now they do seem a little silly and yeah, maybe a little creepy, but no more so than the same type of heads in Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans or Carnival in Brasil. Anyway, the post reminded me I had some pix of the concept models. It's still July, what the heck, be a little patriotic. I found the pictures and went to Dave Smith's Disney A to Z to see what he said about the parade. Smith mentioned the name Bob Jani.

I'm one of those Disney fans who knows just enough to be dangerous. On a good day I can name a half dozen animators and another half dozen Imagineers and some of those names would overlap. Who is Bob Jani?

Google. Google. Google. Wow! This guy had a short but amazing career. Someday I might put together a bio but in a half hour I found a few high points.

Outside of Disney, he produced two Super Bowl half times, the current Rockettes Christmas Show which has been playing since 1979 and Jani was responsible for Traveler, the USC mascot that's been charging down field after every touchdown since 1969.

For the Disney company, he produced and directed Disney on Parade, created the Electric Water Pageant down in WDW, America on Parade and the cherry on top? Main Street's Electrical Parade. Not a bad run at all. If he hadn't lost the battle with Lou Gherig's disease, I can only imagine what kind of high tech stuff Jani would have created.



These photos are small 3-d models of the parade floats and costumes. They were probably built using xerox copies of the original concept art. The models are made to understand just what a float is going to look like and to see if there's going to be any problems with the design when it lumbers down Main Street. Cheaper to fix it here than when it's a big ol' parade float



I especially like this giant turkey, because it's just as scary in the model as it is in the parade photos on Daveland's blog. I can only imagine the screams as kids stare up from their strollers into the long cavernous beak of the turkey from hell. Poor people still don't know why Thanksgiving fills them with a sense of fear and dread.

P.S. The web site Walt Dated World has some cool pix and info on AOP here

40th Anniversary Carousel of Progress - Peoplemover - Rocket Jets

Carousel of Progress, Rocket Jets and the Peoplemover and all opened on July 2, 1967 and outside of premiering on the same day and all being in Tomorrowland, they don't seem to have too much in common. But these three rides do share a common thread. All three attractions started as a sort of round peg in a square hole idea.

Carousel of Progress

When Disneyland opened in 1955 there were hundreds of good ideas that didn't make the final cut. Some were just ahead of their time while others needed more money. One of these ideas waiting for a bigger budget was Edison Square.

Edison Square was originally designed as a separate crossroad adjacent to Main Street that showcased household inventions from the turn of the century to modern times. You know it was an idea Walt truly loved because it appeared on the first Disneyland Souvenir map.

As Edison waited for an influx of cash, the idea kept expanding and Disneyland real estate was shrinking. It wasn't long before the square had outgrown it's intended space and the idea had to be shelved. Fortunately, this was not the kind of idea that goes gently into the night.

The Edison concept was adapted to become General Electrics "Carousel of Progress" introduced at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair. The attraction featured three generations of an animatronic American family showing off the "newest" inventions in their homes. The lifelike animatronic figures coupled with the novel idea of a permanent stage and a rotating audience made the ride one of the top 5 at the fair.

When Carousel was through with it's New York run, Disney packed up his electric puppets and rebuilt the round rotating theater in Disneyland. The show ran until 1973 when it was shipped to WDW to make way for America Sings.

By the way, Carousel of Progress wasn't Walt's only World's Fair ride. He built four different rides for four major sponsors. While on a fact finding mission for Ford's ride, Disney accidentally inspires a new transportation system.

Peoplemover

Walt and Imagineer John Hench are visiting the Ford steel plant in Detroit Michigan. They are there to better understand the company and get ideas for Ford's 1964 World's Fair attraction. The huge ingots of steel are being worked, heated and pressed and it's all moving from station to station on a long track of rollers. Walt turns to John and asks, "Do you think we could put a seat on something like this?"

That simple question evolves into the Wedway Peoplemover; a low maintenance continually moving transportation system that uses magnets to propel the cars. The concept is so successful, it's offered to communities and industries outside of Disneyland. Sadly, very few ever take Imagineering up on the offer but the Disney version still lives at WDW and the Orlando Airport.

Rocket Jets

The Astro Jets first opened at Disneyland in 1956. When Walt decides to redesign Tomorrow-land in the 60's, he wants to keep the popular little ride, but finding a place for it in the new expansion is problematic.

In 1965, while four of Walt Disney's new rides are wowing audiences at the World's Fair, Walt and his band of merry men are secretly criss-crossing the United States looking for a site for a bigger better Disneyland. This is giving much of Disney's top staff a lot of air time aboard the company plane. It also means a lot of impromptu strategy sessions are happening in the friendly skies.

In one of these meetings, Walt gets the idea to move the AstroJets to the top of the new Peoplemover. He's so excited he actually gets out pen & paper and sketches the thing himself. If I'm not mistaken [and I usually am; I know just enough to be dangerous], Walt's sketch included the 3 story gantry guests used to board the three story rockets.

The new design now makes the ride even more popular than before with both adults and kids waiting to see a new Tomorrowland from 30 feet up. It also creates a ride loading nightmare and three hour lines but that's a tale for another time.

So what's the moral to the three little stories Kids? [I know nobody asked for a moral to the stories but it's my blog not yours. Sit down and stop complaining.]

The moral here kids is to always remember that the best ideas are made of clay, not chiseled in stone. No. I didn't say stoned, I said stone. You know, like a rock.

Jeez people, stay focused. This is a family blog.

America Sings Art

America Sings or Carousel of Progress? It was a tough call. I liked America Sings, but I missed the corny "Carousel." I especially missed Walt's "Progress City" the model you saw after the show. I've seen the parts of the model on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority but it's not the same as the full presentation that came with the model when it was at Disneyland.

Now, I have neither ride. Carousel is on the other coast at WDW and America Sings has been closed since 1988. Some of the characters in the sketches above now populate Splash Mountain. The moving building that was once Carousel of Progress and America Sings now houses an uninspired electronic abomination sponsored with dirty money from insipid corporate sponsors that wouldn't know a good concept if it unzipped their... I'm sorry, I must have lost track of what I was saying. Where were we?

In honor of America Sings 33rd birthday [yesterday], I thought you might enjoy a few of Marc Davis's original sketches for the ride. These concept sketches were used for the 11 page booklet attached to the America Sings album.

Enjoy

Disneyland's Viewliner is 50 Years Old Today

In 1955, Walt Disney had decided that a circus would be a cool addition to Disneyland so he bought a huge tent and created a circus using the original Mouseketeers as the main participants. (It wasn't really that simple but let's roll with the short answer for the sake of brevity shall we?)

The circus flopped like a fat guy from the high dive and Uncle Walt was left with a big dirt field. Since he abhorred a vacuum as much as mother nature, he asked Imagineer Bob Gurr to design a modern train to fill the space.

Bob was Disneyland's mechanical Magiver. If Walt had given Gurr an old sewing machine, a couple dill pickles and asked for a nuclear reactor, Disneyland may have never needed electricity. You'd have to wear lead underpants to ride the rides and the warm glow of main street would make your hair fall out in clumps, but there would have been a reactor.

Gurr sketches out an engine design loosly based on GM's new Aerotrain. The streamlined Aerotrain was designed by Harley Earl's infamous General Motors design team and released in 1955. Bob modified the Viewliners front end a little by intersecting two ovals to house the headlights [The Aerotrain had all it's lights in a single oval] and streamlined the sides of the passenger cars with channeled chrome that runs the length of the train. The engine & the top of the passenger cars are painted in matching colors Disney decides he wants two of the cool trains. One in red, one in blue.

To speed the process, the Viewliner's passenger cars are built by outside vendors while Gurr builds the engines starting with stock V-8 motors and the parts from two 1954 Oldsmobiles.

The whole train is built in a screaming hurry and Gurr is still putting out electrical fires the morning of the Viewliner premiere.[June 26, 1957] When it's time for the inaugural trip, the band begins to play, Walt jumps in the engine and off they go with Bob in a new uniform that had been sewn together just the night before.

Amazingly, the opening was a success without any real problems and the little Viewliner that could chugged around Tomorrowland until Sept of 1958. Why did it have such a short life? The land the Viewliner was sitting on became part of the Disneyland expansion of 1959 which included the Submarine ride, the Matterhorn & the Monorail.