Chapter 39
I Want Julie Andrews to Narrate My Life
(Originally posted September 2, 2012)
We looped around the Sorcerer’s Hat stopping to take a few pictures.
I think the Sorcerer’s Hat gets kind of a bad rap amongst Disney enthusiasts. Yes, it is a bit intrusive sitting there in the middle of the park, and yes it is the least story-based of any of the park weenies, but it certainly has two things working in its favor. First, it is at least a true “Disney” icon. Harkening back to Fantasia and one of the most famous appearances of Mickey Mouse, it does have plenty of roots in true Disney history. Second, it probably saved the Great Movie Ride. Once the people who own Grauman’s Chinese Theatre soured on the WDW reproduction, it probably would have needed to be torn down if they hadn’t built the Sorcerer’s Hat right in front of it. Now the theatre isn’t allowed in Photopass pictures, but at least it’s allowed to exist!
The attraction we were heading for next was Walt Disney: One Man’s Dream.
This was one that we had always passed by before learning from the podcasts all the cool things that are in there! First I had to take a picture with my pals Walt and Mickey.
I love this miniature version of Disneyland’s Main Street, USA. It’s a little confusing having it in front of the picture of Marceline, Missouri, however, when it’s really based on Fort Collins, Colorado.
We loved sitting on this porch at Disneyland.
I’m glad character plushes don’t look like this anymore… Too creepy…
I can’t believe that Walt’s miniature of Granny’s Cabin was one of the first things that launched the idea of Disneyland.
I don’t know what I was expecting from the Dancing Man, but it wasn’t quite this. Being one of the first audioanimatronics I guess I pictured that it would have been much more basic, but this was pretty fully developed. If only they could have it functioning…
I was also never able to picture Walt’s office, even though I heard the interviews with Dave Smith talking about archiving the whole thing after Walt died. Seeing reproductions like this just makes the person seem so much more real.
Love Sleeping Beauty Castle.
The old Dumbo vehicles were so small!
The life-sized cardboard version of Walt describing Disney World is almost a little disconcerting. It looks like he’s right there!
It’s so cool to see the scale models of all the park icons. I’d kill to have one of these in our house…
The model for New Fantasyland had just been installed into One Man’s Dream a couple weeks before we went.
That model is MASSIVE! And it’s so complete and cool looking. I just can’t wait for it all to be done. The Magic Kingdom exists to me in such a concrete and unchanging form because it has so rarely undergone major changes, so to have it expanding by so much is almost beyond my imagination.
How cool is the Seven Dwarves Mine Coaster going to be? I’m pretty psyched!
Okay, maybe I took a few too many pictures of the model, but it’s just so exciting.
One last one.
At this point, the clock ticking down to the next showing of the One Man’s Dream film was getting close to zero, so we went and took our seats in the theatre. This movie is so well done, and it goes another step further in really humanizing the man behind the Disney brand. My uncle, who was one of the first people to really introduce me to the Disney parks and instill a love for the company within me, has talked about his experiences as a child when they would watch Uncle Walt on TV every week. To that generation, Walt Disney was so obviously a real person, though obviously a larger-than-life figure. The fact that my generation has grown up without ever seeing anything come directly from the mind of Walt Disney probably makes the man seem less real to many people.
That’s why I think it’s so important to step back every once in a while and remember that the Disney magic we know and love was all created by someone with that extremely rare combination of a wild imagination combined with the enterprise to get things done no matter how impossible they may have seemed. He was a trailblazer in the worlds of film, television, and of course the theme parks (a term he coined). We are all DISNEY fans, and it was a little humbling to see what a difference the life of this man made in all of our lives. The combination of that fact and the Julie Andrews narration ensured there were a few moments when I felt myself tearing up.
As we exited the theatre back into the World that Walt Disney dreamed up—one that I would consider to be the place on Earth where I am happiest—it was with a renewed sense of respect for everything that has gone into it over the last 40 years and beyond.
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