Chuck Schmidt

Chuck Schmidt, bitten by the Disney bug at an early age, remembers watching The Mickey Mouse Club after school in the mid-1950s. During his 48-year career in the newspaper business, he channeled that love of Disney as the Sunday News and Travel editor for The Staten Island Advance. Chuck has written or co-authored seven books for Theme Park Press, including Disney's Dream Weavers, On the Disney Beat, An American in Disneyland Paris, Disney's Animal Kingdom: An Unofficial History and The Beat Goes On. Chuck has shared his passion for all things Disney in his Still Goofy About Disney blog on AllEars.Net since 2015. He resides in Beachwood, N.J., with his wife Janet. They have three adult children and seven grandchildren.


With Disney Parks Closed, It’s Time to Remember the Magic

Posted on by Chuck Schmidt
It’s rare when any of Disney’s 12 theme parks around the world have been closed to guests. Up until this year, weather events [hurricanes in Florida or typhoons in Asia], natural disasters [earthquakes in California], national days of mourning [John F. Kennedy’s assassination] or terror attacks [on Sept. 11, 2001 in the United States and 2015 in Paris] were reasons for shutting down any of Disney’s parks and resorts worldwide.
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Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway Fulfills a Years-Long Promise

Posted on by Chuck Schmidt
More than five years ago, Walt Disney Imagineering’s creative director Kevin Rafferty made a promise to Marty Sklar, his former Imagineering boss, mentor and long-time friend. “I promised Marty years ago that I was going to come up with an original attraction with an original song that was centered around Mickey Mouse,” Rafferty said. “And every time I saw Marty after that, he’d always ask me, ‘How’s that new attraction coming?’” On March 4, 2020, Rafferty made good on that promise.
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In Search of Epcot’s Mission: Getting the Ball Rolling in the Mid-1970s

Posted on by Chuck Schmidt
In May of 1974, less than three years after the Magic Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World had opened to resoundingly positive response, then-Disney president Card Walker announced plans for the second phase of the Florida Project. He took the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or Epcot, off the back burner, where it had resided since Walt’s death in 1966, and made it the company’s top priority.
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How Epcot Went from a Napkin Sketch to Entertainment and Educational Beacon

Posted on by Chuck Schmidt
Epcot, the second of four theme parks to be built on Walt Disney World property since 1971, is currently undergoing a major overhaul, with new shows and attractions in the works to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the opening of The Vacation Kingdom of the World in central Florida. But the Epcot that opened on Oct. 1, 1982, was a far cry from the Epcot envisioned by Walt Disney in the 1960s.
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Disney’s New Skyliner Has an Unlikely Height-Challenged Fan

Posted on by Chuck Schmidt
I’ve never been a fan of heights. Put me anywhere that’s 20 feet or more above terra firma and little beads of sweat start forming on my forehead. Unfortunately for me, fear of heights has come into play over the years on a number of popular attractions at Walt Disney World. Imagine how thrilled I was when the Disney Skyliner opened. But after one ride on the transportation system, I'm hooked.
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