(When we last left our intrepid AllEars Team, it was lunch time on Day 1 of Destination D. Our story continues after lunch.)

There were two sessions after lunch that I won’t talk about here – one was on the Making of Star Tours – and that’s really more Lee’s thing than mine (don’t get me wrong, I love Star Wars!), and the second session was on the World’s Fair, but I skipped that one to get checked into our room – Lee has notes on it, though, and found it fascinating, even though the description of it didn’t sound very appealing to him.

But I returned for the 4:00 session: Imagineering the Magic of Disney.

This session was a panel discussion hosted by Marty Sklar, featuring Bob Gurr, X Atencio, Alice Davis, Don Iwerks, Dave Durham, Kathy Mangum, Kevin Rafferty and Tony Baxter.

This was almost one of those “you had to be there” things. It was terrific to see them all together and interacting. Marty Sklar was the moderator, and tried to maintain some semblance of control, but it wasn’t always easy. 🙂

One of the questions he asked everyone was to talk about the favorite Disneyland attraction that they worked on.

X wasn’t exactly sure about the question was, but talked a little bit about how Walt came to him and told him to write the script for Pirates of the Caribbean, even though he’d never written a script before.

Alice Davis showed no hesitation in calling “it’s a small world” her favorite. She designed and made clothes for the “small world” dolls, which was kind of a dream come true for her, since as a child of the depression, she didn’t have dolls as a girl.

Bob Gurr’s favorite was the monorail – he had lots of interesting stories about that. It took only 9 months from the time Walt had the idea to actually having a working monorail on the track. Or a somewhat working monorail…apparently the famous trip it took around Disneyland with Vice President Richard Nixon on board was
only the second complete round trip it had made!

The original 360 degree Circlevision film was called Circarama and was Don Iwerks’ favorite. He was working in the machine shop at the time they built the camera, and then traveled with the camera and kept it working as the film crew went over the western U.S. and shot film.

Tony Baxter’s favorites were Star Tours and Indiana Jones, largely because of the opportunity to work with George Lucas.

Kathy Mangum and Kevin Rafferty both named the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage as their favorite – but it’s also the only Disneyland attraction that they had worked on. Kathy talked about the challenge of taking one of Walt’s attractions and putting a new storyline on top of it.

Dave Durham was actually working in the Entertainment Dept when he submitted an entry to the Sorceror’s Apprentice Workshop, which awarded an Imagineering internship to the winner. He submitted an idea for an Indiana Jones attraction, not realizing that Disney was actually developing that attraction at the time. He won, and ended up doing some work on that attraction – an obvious favorite for him!.

Marty also asked them about attractions that didn’t get built. Dave Durham, who works in the “Blue Sky” area of Imagineering, said that 96% of what they come up with gets shelved – but it doesn’t get discarded, because the ideas can be re-visited and used in the future. (If you read my blog from Saturday afternoon, you know that Dave Fisher talked about several attractions in existence now that had been re-purposed that way.)

Tony Baxter’s attraction was Disney Seas in Long Beach – though there’s another example of something that was built later in Tokyo.

The Creature’s Choice Awards for the Studios was Kevin Rafferty’s selection. There was going to be a “Screamy” award. This was about 1999. (Sounds a bit like the Golden Screams show they did in DCA one Halloween season.)

They also talked about their memories of Walt Disney. It was so wonderful to hear the personal memories of those who knew him.

Friday night’s event was E-ticket – Music From the Disney Parks, which was a Disney Legends Celebration. A number of Disney Legends were in attendance and were introduced, and we all enjoyed an evening of Disney music.

Disney Legend Richard Sherman came out and sat at the piano and played and sang for us for at least 20 minutes – it might have been longer. It was really wonderful – he talked about how Walt came to him and Robert when he wanted them to write certain songs – sometimes without really giving them very much information or direction! Of course the first thing they wrote for the parks was the theme song for the Enchanted Tiki Room. He also played “It’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow”, and then the song
that replaced it, Tomorrow is Now. Miracles from Molecules, the song from Adventures in Inner Space, was theirs, also. He also played some songs from the Imagination pavilion in Epcot: Making Memories, Magic Journeys, and One Little Spark. Another song he played for us was “Meet the World” from Tokyo Disneyland. He closed with medleys from the Winnie the Pooh movies and from Mary Poppins. Not surprisingly, he received a standing ovation. What a charming and talented man!

John Tartaglia, who is a big Disney fan, came out and performed Grim Grinning Ghosts (with the help of a couple of ghost puppets).

Tracie Thoms and John Tartaglia performed Golden Dreams.

Ana Ortiz sang “Two Brothers” – a song she’d never heard until recently but she commented on how appropriate it is even today. (A lot of the singers were big Disney fans, but apparently she isn’t one of them.)

This version had an extra verse about the two brothers’ sweethearts:

Two girls waiting by the railroad track
Two girls waiting by the railroad track
For their darlings to come back
One wore blue, and one wore black

One wore blue, and one wore black
Waiting by the railroad track
For their darlings to come back
All on a beautiful morning

It’s sad, but it’s such a beautiful and poignant song.

Michael Urie performed a Fantasyland medley. He had some fun with audience members – getting several of them up on stage to play “Michael”, “John” and “Wendy”, and help him sing “You Can Fly”. And then he found three people in the audience whose birthday it was, and sang “A Very Merry Unbirthday” to everyone except them. 🙂

Ana Ortiz’s duet partner for “A Whole New World” was quite unexpected – it was D23’s Disney Geek, Jeffery Epstein. Who sang very well! (Does he need a new title now? Disney Singer Geek? Disney Geek Singer?)

Torron Brooks (like Toronto, without the “to”) performed a Splash Mountain medley, including How Do You Do and of course Zip-a-dee-do-dah.

Wilson Cruz sang a beautiful arrangement of “When you Wish Upon a Star” and “Second Star to the Right”.

Michael Urie and Ana Ortiz came back for “A Pirate’s Life for Me”. They dressed up in pirate costumes and it was really a fun number, though Ana had a lot of trouble remembering the lyrics (I can’t blame her – I don’t know them, either!).

Tracie Thoms solo was “Just One Dream”, from the (now closed) Golden Dreams attraction at DCA.

The Melo-D 23 cast choir performed a number of Sherman brothers songs: Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, Magic Journeys, and Miracles from Molecules.

Richard Sherman came out for one last song – which, as you might expect, was *that* song. The Sherman brothers originally wrote it to be sung at a much slower tempo – like a prayer – but Walt wanted it to be more up-tempo and happy. Richard played and sang it for us at the slower tempo, and then it was time for everyone – the choir, the guest singers, and the audience to sing the more familiar version.

It was really a terrific evening, with wonderful music and some interesting stories from Richard Sherman. As I think I said before – one of those “I’m so glad I was able to see this!” events – absolutely the kind of thing we have come to expect from Disney and D23.

By the way…I wanted to say thank you to all of the AllEars fans who have come up and introduced yourselves this weekend – especially those of you who have told us how much you love the site. We love getting feedback like that, which tells us that we’re doing something right!

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