A Portrait of Walt Disney World

IT TAKES PEOPLE. . . .

Over the past five decades, guests from almost every corner on the globe have traveled here to have fun and experience joy in the company of family, friends, and colleagues. Their smiles and happiness have contributed to a legacy of joy, inspiration, and new knowledge that will endure as long as people believe in the power of imagination and in celebrating together in its wonder and promise.

Since plans for the Walt Disney World Resort were announced in 1965, cast members and Imagineers have come together as loving caretakers of Walt Disney’s greatest dream. They nurtured the “Florida Project,” from inception to reality, and through their dedication, hard work, and enthusiasm have been the true magic makers behind the perpetual creation of “The Most Magical Place on Earth.”

Our book is dedicated to all of them—guests, cast members, and Imagineers alike.

Together, they have made the dream a reality.
 
CONTENTS
 
8―FOREWORD
10―PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE
12―Destination: Florida: Disney Roots in the Sunshine State
CHAPTER TWO
18―Building the Dream: The Making of the “Florida Project”
56―Why Not Florida? The Inspiration and Optimism of Walt Disney: Looking Back with Disney Legend Dick Nunis
62―From Forest City to the Vacation Kingdom: Looking Back with Debby Dane Browne
70―A Grandson’s Appreciation and Memories: Looking Back with Roy Patrick Disney
CHAPTER THREE
74―Framing Our Portrait: A Thematic Compass
CHAPTER FOUR
80―Nostalgia: An Idealized Yesteryear
CHAPTER FIVE
130―Fantasy: The Art of Make Believe
CHAPTER SIX
176―Discovery: Adventure and Exploration
CHAPTER SEVEN
244―Tomorrow: A Step into the Future
CHAPTER EIGHT
284―Reflections: Looking Back at the World
CHAPTER NINE
298―The World’s Most Magical Celebration: The Fiftieth Anniversary of Walt Disney World
304―INDEX
308―BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ENDNOTES
318―IMAGE CREDITS
319―ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 
PREFACE
 
THERE’S NOTHING SMALL ABOUT UNDERTAKING a portrait of Walt Disney World. It’s twenty-seven thousand acres in size, spreads out forty square miles, and has been five decades in the making. It’s a gargantuan narrative endeavor that encompasses the resort’s storied inception through its now worldwide reputation as a global travel institution. It’s at the crossroads of escapism, reassurance, recreation, innovation, artistry, craftsmanship, and ingenuity.
 
When Walt Disney passed away in 1966, six months prior to breaking ground on the “Florida Project,” esteemed TV news journalist and author Eric Sevareid eulogized the master showman by stating that he “was an original” and a once-in-a-lifetime “happy accident.” The sprawling resort that now bears Walt Disney’s name was obviously no “happy accident.” Like its famous namesake, Walt Disney World is an original. Nothing like it existed before its opening in 1971, and nothing has since been created that can match the ambitiousness of its concept, the impressiveness of its realization, and the endurance of its appeal and legacy. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of this most unique of international landmarks, we felt it was important to chronicle its first half century with a commemorative book. Such a book is warranted—if only for the positive effect the resort has had on so many lives through the years, plus its undeniable impact on our collective consciousness and the international family travel dynamic.
 
Prior to The Walt Disney Company’s arrival in Florida there were few true multiday resorts catering to families, with the possible exception of the U.S. national parks. With its debut, Walt Disney World invented anew the family-vacation experience and created a fresh travel, destination, and hospitality paradigm. It has also grown to represent the power of a singular imaginative vision that has been carefully nurtured, expanded upon, and realized by Walt’s creative heirs.
 
Aside from its status as an internationally recognized travel destination, to many people around the globe a visit to Walt Disney World transcends the notion of just a vacation. It has come to be a rite of passage, an essential escape, and a source of comfort, delight, and rejuvenation. Visitors from every hemisphere, and of every conceivable background and origin, have shared the unmistakable feeling of youthful excitement as they arrive at the resort’s gates, knowing “magic” awaits in any direction.
 
Disney Legend John Hench, former senior vice president, Walt Disney Imagineering, once noted, “[w]hether we go to a Disney park or a ball game, there is always the excitement of deciding to go and planning what to take and to wear, the anticipation of arrival, and the pure pleasure of walking through the entrance with the intention to play.” Although referencing the Disney parks experience overall, Hench could have easily been describing Walt Disney World, especially when he adds that the experience provides “the opportunity to feel more alive.”
 
With this book, our goal is to provide a finely nuanced portrait utilizing rarely seen artwork and photos, plus newly uncovered historical material and updated information that captures the milestones and essence of the resort throughout its first fifty years. We aim to highlight many fine details in the Walt Disney World story, providing a narrative thread that showcases its constant “state of becoming”—always informed by positive emotional connections and past achievements—while glimpsing at today and to what lies ahead and culminating in “The World’s Most Magical Celebration.” (We should also mention that our book has a companion publication, a cookbook and culinary history of the resort by Pam Brandon and Marcy Carriker Smothers, called Delicious Disney: Walt Disney World.)
 
All three of us have had the good fortune to work for The Walt Disney Company in different capacities and in a variety of areas through the decades, including Walt Disney World. But most importantly, like many of you, we have shared in laughter and play with family, friends, and colleagues many times over in what was initially dubbed “The Vacation Kingdom of the World.”
 
Today, each visit to Walt Disney World still brings us joy, inspiration, new knowledge, and appreciation. We hope this honorific portrait, in book form, does the same for you, providing an enhanced admiration for the remarkable achievement that was, is, and always will be “The Most Magical Place on Earth.”
 
—Kevin M. Kern | Tim O’Day | Steven Vagnini
June 2021
 
CHAPTER ONE
Destination: Florida
Disney Roots in the Sunshine State

THE FLORIDA DREAM
Over five hundred years ago, the first explorers from Europe charted a course across the Atlantic in search of a New World. Reaching terra firma along a breezy subtropical landscape they called Florida—a name inspired partially by its lush, verdant terrain—these early adventurers designated the peninsula as a destination for those seeking opportunity and enchantment. Here, age-old myths abounded. The most famous legend told of a mystical spring whose rejuvenating waters could restore one’s youth. There were more conspicuous allurements to Florida, too, including a favorable year-round climate and stunning vistas of wetlands, islands, and bays. No doubt the many indigenous peoples of North America, who initially inhabited the region’s vast wilderness, took similar delight in its abundance of forests, sparkling waters, and lustrous deep blue skies.
 
Throughout the subsequent centuries, this was the dream of Florida: a land of promise and renewal aptly characterized by pioneer Miami photographer J. N. Chamberlain as the place where “health, happiness, and opportunity await you . . . Nowhere else may one find the joy of relaxation, rest, or recreation so fully satisfied as in Florida.”
 
The Disney family ventured to this land as well in pursuit of their own dreams. It wasn’t Walt or Roy O. Disney who took these early ambitious steps, but rather their parents and grandparents who ventured to Central Florida, planting familial roots within the woodlands and wonders of the Sunshine State.
 
TRUE KISMET
In the mid-1800s, with expanded rail and steamship travel opening access to the central parts of Florida, clusters of small camps and settlements sprung up along the St. Johns River in what turned into a moderate boom. Hardy homesteaders, surviving off of sheer perseverance, started new lives among the slash pine flatwoods and scrubs, where citrus crops and cattle farms soon provided hard yet promising livelihoods.
 
Among the region’s early settlers during this “golden era” were Charles and Henrietta Call, who arrived in the autumn of 1884 with their five youngest children (Jessie, Flora, Grace Lila, Julia, and Charles, Jr.). “The severe winters in [Ellis,] Kansas, were too much for our parents,” Jessie later wrote. “Especially after they had experienced one of those terrible blizzards . . . when the furniture in the house was used for wood to keep from freezing, and the clothes line [sic] connected house and barn to guide them in order to care for the stock.” Following the Calls on their journey southeast was their neighbor Kepple Disney and his son Elias, who had become smitten with Flora.
 
The Calls settled on a plot of rolling pineland near a town appropriately named Kismet—a Turkish word meaning “destiny”—where life centered around the local sawmill, vegetable farms, a gristmill, and hotel. After helping with his neighbors’ move, Kepple Disney returned home to Kansas. But Elias decided to remain in Florida to court Flora, purchasing his own acreage south of the Calls and finding work as a rural mail carrier. Charles Call and his children served as local schoolteachers.
 
Elias and Flora married on New Year’s Day 1888 and honeymooned in Daytona Beach. “No more rising before dawn to face a fierce, bone-numbing winter,” observed biographer and legendary entertainment reporter Bob Thomas when describing this stage of the young couple’s life years later. “All around them was luxuriant greenery they had never seen before: palms, ferns, orange groves, grass that remained green the year ’round.” Enamored with the Atlantic coast, Elias sold his farm and bought a hotel in Daytona. It was here that the couple welcomed their first son, Herbert, in December.
 
“They were delighted with the climate. The country at that time was beautiful. Dotted with orange groves and homes, and everything looked promising.”
—Jessie Call Perkins, Walt Disney’s aunt
 
A slump in tourism, however, forced the Disneys to end their brief stint in the hospitality field, so Elias turned instead to raising oranges. But then came a big freeze, which destroyed his crop. Unsuccessful with their early business ventures, Elias and Flora pulled up stakes and left their “Florida paradise” for Chicago, where an upcoming world’s fair seemed to promise new jobs and opportunities. Once in the Windy City, the Disneys would welcome their other four children, including Roy O. in 1893 and Walt, the youngest brother, in 1901.
 
As for Kismet, the town vanished long ago . . . and cannot even be found on any present-day state map. After a drought and freeze devastated the area in the early 1890s, the early settlements disappeared as quickly they had sprang up. Residents left with what they could carry on their backs, in many cases leaving behind their homes, intact. The abandoned town and its neighboring settlements would eventually be overtaken by the impenetrable scrub of what later became the Ocala National Forest.
 
But while this pastoral landscape may not have been the Disney family’s ultimate destiny, Central Florida certainly would be—eventually. For little could the early settlers of Kismet predict that just some fifty miles due south of their land, Walt Disney would find the ideal spot for his new “world.” It would be a place of enchantment and opportunity, of myth and legend, and one that would again attract people from all over the world; a place where the long-fabled source of eternal youth would at last be untapped.