The Astounding Disney Career of Tony Baxter: From Ice Cream Scooper to Imagineering Icon

Over the history of Walt Disney Imagineering – – which began life in the early 1950s as Walt Disney himself handpicked artists and craftsmen from inside and outside of his animation studio to bring his vision to life – – there have been many legendary names including Marc Davis, Alice Davis, Rolly Crump, Bob Gurr, Mary Blair, Joe Rohde, and our focus today, Tony Baxter.

Retired Walt Disney Imagineer Tony Baxter played a significant role in the design and development of Disneyland Paris. [The Walt Disney Company]

Hailed by many as the most influential Imagineer of the post-Walt Disney era, Baxter’s story is one that Disney fans dreams are made of. He grew from fan, to Cast Member, to apprentice, to leading Imagineer, to official Disney Legend, all-the-while creating legendary attractions, parks, and characters all from (one little spark of) his imagination.

Tony Baxter was born in Southern California in 1947, and by his own accord, he was fascinated by Disneyland when the park opened when he was 8 years old. Over the next decade, Baxter’s interest in the park continued to grow, including touring Imagineering.

In the mid-1960s, Baxter started working at Disneyland. At first he was an ice cream scooper – – a role Baxter has long relished, occasionally stepping back behind the counter for various press events and etc. over the years – – before eventually moving on to working as a ride operator.

During a 2023 interview, Baxter reminisced about his time at the park, and how it would come to influence his career choice. He explained that his favorite ride to work was Adventure Through Inner Space, “because it was a sci-fi thing where I was escorting people into an atom inside a snowflake. During my last two years of doing that, I was in college taking courses that could lead to a career as an urban planner. The idea of someday working at Imagineering was kind of a dream that, at that time, wasn’t practical. My parents weren’t supportive of me working in a job that existed only in one company.”

©Disney

As Baxter finished his education, some of his work caught the attention of Disney’s first generation of Imagineers, who by that point were working on the concepts for what would become Walt Disney World. Among these was a model of a potential Mary Poppins dark ride that Baxter had completed as a school project.

Following Baxter’s graduation from college, he was brought on at Imagineering and immediately became involved in the final construction push of Walt Disney World. The company sent Baxter to Florida, where he played a role in the completion of several opening day Magic Kingdom attractions.

D23

Following his return to California, Baxter began contemplating new attraction ideas, later reminiscing about this period by explaining how the 1966 death of Walt Disney was hovering Imagineering. According to him, “they were running out of Walt Disney dreams. I hadn’t yet realized, there weren’t too many dreamers there.  They were all talented artists and engineers—people who Walt had hired to make his dreams come true. But Walt was gone, and they didn’t yet know if the Magic Kingdom in Florida would be successful, so the big question was: What are we going to do?”

That’s Disney Legend Tony Baxter standing on top of one of the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea submarines during installation at Walt Disney World. [The Walt Disney Company]

Baxter began working with the legendary Marc Davis on his at-the-time scheduled to be built Western River Attraction. The massive dark ride was to be located in the Magic Kingdom’s Frontierland, as part of a larger complex called Thunder Mesa that was also scheduled to house a pack mule ride and a runaway train roller coaster. That’s where Baxter comes in.

Thunder Mesa Model – Disney

Baxter would later explain, “I built a little model of a roller coaster. I used the wooden sticks that came on Q-tips to make the ups and downs of the roller coaster tracks and then just sculpted clay for the undulations of the ride. My boss came out and looked at it and said, ‘that’s kind of interesting.’ And all of a sudden, an engineer was out here so he could do some preliminary drawings. My little idea started to gain some momentum.”

Disney Legend Tony Baxter was mentored by Claude Coats early in his career. [The Walt Disney Company]

Eventually, this coaster would morph into Big Thunder Mountain, which would open at Disneyland in 1979, and the Magic Kingdom in 1980. Davis allegedly felt betrayed by Baxter, feeling that he had usurped the area where Thunder Mesa was to have been built and supposedly held a grudge for the rest of his life.

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

Despite these auspicious events, the opening of Big Thunder – – which would go on to become one of Disney’s most beloved attractions, and Baxter’s vissage would eventually be used as the visual inspirtion for SEA member and Thunder Mountain owner Barnabas T. Bullion – – proved to be a boon for Baxter’s career. Over the course of the 1980s, he would spearhead countless Disney projects. Some became beloved staples of the company’s parks, while others remained unbuilt yet legendary among Disney fans.

Hi, Tony!

Baxter led the team that reinvented the original Disneyland version of Fantasyland, dubbed the New Fantasyland project. The entire land was changed from its original Renaissance Fair motif to a “fantasy mock-up” of a Bavarian village similar to the environments seen in many Disney films. The project also saw renovations to several of the existing Fantasyland rides, as well as the opening of the Pinocchio’s Daring Journey dark ride.

On the other coast, Baxter was integral to the development of EPCOT, contributing greatly to The Land and The Living Seas, and – – in perhaps his best-known work for Disney – – introduced the characters of Dreamfinder and Figment to the Journey into Imagination attraction.

Discovery Bay’s proto-Dreamfinder and Figment – Disney

The initial ideas for those characters actually came from a previous concept Baxter had created for Disneyland known as Discovery Bay. The steampunk/Jules Verne-inspired land would have sat where Galaxy’s Edge was eventually built, and according to Baxter would have “been a continuation of the story of Frontierland. People would go into this mythical place where a tycoon had gathered all the gold transported by Big Thunder—and built a reclusive society where they were exploring the oceans and the air, back in the dirigible days.” Though the land went unbuilt, Baxter would resurrect elements of it a decade later, but we’ll get there.

Discovery Bay concept art – Disney

Also during the mid-80s, Baxter and a team of Imagineers began working with filmmaker George Lucas on initial concepts for a massive attraction based on the director’s mega-successful Star Wars films. While this LucasPort would never be built, the relationship eventually led to the Michael Jackson-starring Captain EO and the revolutionary simulator attraction Star Tours, which opened in 1986 and 1987 respectively.

Captain EO

Around the same time, Baxter also successfully pitched the concept of Splash Mountain to then-new CEO Michael Eisner. According to Baxter, he was trying to solve 3 problems: How to salvage the Animatronics from the once-popular but waning show America Sings, how to get Disneyland guests to visit the area then known as Bear Country, and how to sensually add a log flume to the park. Eventually, Baxter hit on the idea of adding the flume to Bear Country, and theming it to the animated sequences from the controversial (yes, even then) film Song of the South, since the animals of America Sings matched the film’s style well enough to be reused.

Splash Mountain

Splash Mountain opened to massive success at Disneyland in 1989, and was added to Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland in 1992.

Speaking of 1992, that year would see the opening of what many Disney fans consider Baxter’s magnum opus. He served as the Executive Producer of Disneyland Paris, and much of the park bears trademarks of Baxter’s work. These include the ornate thumbing of Main Street, the massive version of Big Thunder Mountain (which sits on an island in the middle of the park’s Rivers of America) that ties all of Frontierland – – including Phantom Manor – – together under an over arching story, and the park’s Tomorrowland equivalent Discoveryland.

Disneyland Paris’ Sleeping Beauty Castle, also known as Chateau de la Belle au Bois Dormant. [Chuck Schmidt]

Instead of being set in the future, the land was based on the work of early science fiction authors like Jules Verne. Like the aforementioned unbuilt Discovery Bay, the land was loaded with Baxter’s preferred steam punk aesthetics, including a highly unique version of Space Mountain initially themed to Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon. The land even features an airship hanger!

Space Mountain in Disneyland Paris

Baxter’s next major 1990s project was the Indiana Jones adventure. The E-Ticket reunited Imagineering with George Lucas, and brought his gruff adventure star to the park’s Adventureland. Initially, plans called for the ride to intertwine with the Disneyland Railroad and the Jungle Cruise similar to Disneyland Paris’s aforementioned Frontierland. However, this idea was eventually abandoned.

Tony Baxter

That said, the E-Ticket was still a MASSIVE project, with Baxter serving as one of the executive producers. He led a team of 100 Imagineers who were “responsible for designing the half-mile-long track that was built over the previous Eeyore parking lot as well as the different concepts for each room in the ride.”

Indiana Jones Adventure

By the 2000s, Baxter – – who held the title of Senior Vice President, Creative Development at Walt Disney Imagineering – – seemingly shifted focus to legacy projects. In 2007, he led a team of Imagineers that teams with Pixar to re-theme Disney’s at-that-point shuttered Submarine Voyage attraction to the studio’s Finding Nemo. Baxter expressed that part of the project’s motivation was to ensure the survival of the original Submarine Voyage and its ride system, which had first opened as part of Disneyland’s “second grand opening” in 1959.

Opening day for the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage saw Imagineers Tony Baxter, John Gizienski, Kevin Rafferty and Skip Lange posing for a photo near the attraction’s entrance. [The Walt Disney Company]

The following year, Baxter was part of the Imagineering team that refurbished the Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough attraction at Disneyland, which had been closed since 2001.

Baxter, his legacy long-since secure – – one of his many accolades was being named an official Disney Legend in 2001 – – retired from the Walt Disney Company in 2016 after 50 years. However, he returned in 2020 to consult on Splash Mountain’s transformation into Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.

Long-time Disney Imagineer Tony Baxter, left, with Mickey Mouse and then-Disney Parks and Resorts chairman Tom Staggs at Baxter’s retirement ceremonies. [The Walt Disney Company]

He said of the change, “When Splash Mountain came to life over 30 years ago, the wave of Disney Animation that started with The Little Mermaid had not yet begun. New stories would give us characters, music and wonderful places that now reside in the hearts of audiences everywhere. Following conversations with Imagineering’s leaders about the new attraction’s scope and resources, I had a great sense of reassurance — the attraction will be one to be proud of … bringing to life places, characters and music from the animated classic The Princess and the Frog.”

Tiana’s Bayou Adventure

Tony Baxter is inarguably one of the most legendary names in the annals of Disney Imagineering, with his exceptional eye for design and whimsy leading to the creation of some of the company’s most famous and enduring characters and attractions. Stay tuned to AllEars for more deep dives into Disney history.

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2 Replies to “The Astounding Disney Career of Tony Baxter: From Ice Cream Scooper to Imagineering Icon”

  1. I sold Mr.Baxter furniture for his new home in SoCa Mountains. He is such a nice man and every time we saw each other at Disneyana shows he always went out of his way to greet me and say “See You At The Lake”