While focused almost exclusively on the man's virtues, the museum deserves a bit more description in its own right than it got in my thematic analysis piece. The museum starts with artifacts from Walt's life, including a childhood desk that he'd carved his initials into, a range of early drawings, a work bench, video of his ride able backyard model train, and the like. At the end of the exhibit, a film covered this territory in greater detail with pictures from his life and narrated by the man himself. Walt Disney had encountered a fair amount of failure in his day, including losing rights to Oswald, his first brand-worthy creation and forerunner to Mickey. Based on the film, it sounded as if his brother Roy had gotten Walt out of jams a fair number of times. Ultimately Walt had passed on before Walt Disney World was completed; Roy had seen the project through but died three months after.
The exhibit spoke some about Disney's inspiration for Disney Land, apparently Walt was waiting while his daughters played at a traditional amusement park and started doodling ideas for attractions that would hold the interest of adults. At first this seems surprising: obviously the Disney parks have a definite orientation towards children; it may be more accurate to say he was trying to expand the appeal of such parks beyond thrill-seeking adolescents. Disney rides tend not to place less emphasis on excitement and more on story and spectacle. I think Disney was the first to really introduce theme parks with their lands inspired by genres, regions, or periods of history. Thus, it isn't surprising that the museum featured models that covered not just rides but also static attractions like the Tree of Life on the left. That's from Animal Kingdom, which I still haven't been to, but now I rather want to go if only to recapture fond memories of Quest for Glory 3. Taken to their logical extreme, these lands actually constitute a mix between a playground and a garden. See for example the Honey I Shrunk the Kids attraction, which I think gets to why they are popular settings for games and films in settings where park rules don't apply.
I doubt it will ever happen, but the models even made me want to see Tokyo Disney. The Age of Discovery land seemed like it would be delightful to wander around even if there weren't any rides of note. This was often the case in the World Showcase at Epcot where the rides and films were of secondary interest to the evocative architecture and streetscapes. While the constraints are different, I suspect level design for video games have a lot in common with designing theme parks. The Square-Enix/Disney Kingdom Hearts games may be the embodiment of this idea; in the best levels fighting enemies was often secondary to jumping, swimming, and flying around to explore the worlds.
Photographs by Greg Sanders and family; available under a creative commons license.
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