Walt Disney World Quotes

Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.

All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.

Disneyland is like Alice stepping through the Looking Glass; to step through the portals of Disneyland will be like entering another world.

That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget.

To all that come to this happy place, welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America... with hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.

Here is the world of imagination, hopes, and dreams. In this timeless land of enchantment, the age of chivalry, magic and make-believe are reborn - and fairy tales come true. Fantasyland is dedicated to the young-in-heart, to those who that when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.

You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.

Landscapes of great wonder and beauty lie under our feet and all around us. They are discovered in tunnels in the ground, the heart of flowers, the hollows of trees, fresh-water ponds, seaweed jungles between tides, and even drops of water. Life in these hidden worlds is more startling in reality than anything we can imagine. How could this earth of ours, which is only a speck in the heavens, have so much variety of life, so many curious and exciting creatures?

Over at our place, we’re sure of just one thing: everybody in the world was once a child. So in planning a new picture, we don’t think of grown-ups, and we don’t think of children. But just of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us, that maybe the world has made us forget.

We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.

Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it, they will want to come back and see you do it again, and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.

Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.

We went to the New York World's Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

Conspiracy theorists like to claim NASA’s moon landing was faked. Well of course it was! But the biggest conspiracy of all is the Columbus landed in the new world in the late 15th century. There is no new world. It simply doesn’t exist. And Amerigo Vespucci? He was a character out of Walt Disney’s diary.


You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

He had passed beyond the afflictions of this world. Walt Disney had at last attained perfection.

I believe in the power of imagination. I believe in the unexplained possibilities of the spirit. And I believe that the heart, like any other muscle, grows stiff if it is not exercised regularly. I believe.

Mr. McMurphy... my friend... I'm not a chicken, I'm a rabbit. The doctor is a rabbit. Cheswick there is a rabbit. Billy Bibbit is a rabbit. All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees, hippity-hopping through our Walt Disney world. Oh, don't misunderstand me, we're not in here because we are rabbitsーwe'd be rabbits wherever we wereーwe're all in here because we can't adjust to our rabbithood. We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place.

It is a curious thing that the more the world shrinks because of electronic communications, the more limitless becomes the province of the storytelling entertainer.

Walt Disney World is nearly 30,000 acres, or 48 square miles. That is more than 80 times the size of Monaco. Grace Kelly would have been queen of a larger and wealthier, kingdom if she'd married Uncle Walt instead of Prince Rainier.

Maybe this is the case for many of us: No matter who we become or what we accomplish, we still feel that we’re essentially the kid we were at some simpler time long ago. Somehow that’s the trick of leadership, too, I think, to hold on to that awareness of yourself even as the world tells you how powerful and important you are. The moment you start to believe it all too much, the moment you look yourself in the mirror and see a title emblazoned on your forehead, you’ve lost your way. That may be the hardest but also the most necessary lesson to keep in mind, that wherever you are along the path, you’re the same person you’ve always been.

You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

Just watch Snow White. Just visit Disneyland or Walt Disney World in Florida—he was laying the plans for the Florida park while he was on his death bed. People kept telling him his dreams were impossible. Walt knew better. He had wished upon a star.

Yet all of these accumulated contributions paled before a larger one: he demonstrated how one could assert one’s will on the world at the very time when everything seemed to be growing beyond control and beyond comprehension.

Enthusiasm and optimism together. He was enthusiastic about everything. He never thought anything would turn out badly. ----Lillian Disney (on Walt)

There is only one name on the door at Walt Disney Imagineering.

A whole new world is a dazzling place

Dream big dreams, and pursue those dreams with courage, optimism and perseverance. Commit yourself to making the world a better place.

But wealth isn’t a magic lamp that suddenly erases all your problems,

Don’t let life’s unfairness, don’t let how poor you are decide who you are. You choose who you will be, Aladdin.

Walt’s grandson, Walter Disney Miller, told me, “EPCOT was my grandfather’s biggest dream—the city of the future that would point the way to a better world. His dream remains unbuilt.

Walt Disney’s brother tells an amusing story about Walt’s budding genius as a fifth grader. The teacher assigned the students to color a flower garden. As she walked among the rows examining the student’s work she stopped by young Walt’s desk. Noting that his drawing was quite unusual, she remarked, “Walt, that’s not right. Flowers don’t have faces on them.” Confidently he replied, “Mine do!” and continued his work. And they still do; flowers at Disneyland and Disney World all have faces. An

Cinderella, until lately, has never been a passive dreamer waiting for rescue. The forerunners of the Ash-girl have all been hardy, active heroines who take their lives into their own hands and work out their own salvations .... Cinderella speaks to all of us in whatever skin we inhabit: the child mistreated, a princess or highborn lady in disguise bearing her trials with patience, fortitude, and determination. Cinderella makes intelligent decisions, for she knows that wishing solves nothing without concomitant action. We have each been that child. (Even boys and men share thatdream, as evidenced by the many Ash-boy variants.) It is the longing of any youngster sent supperless to bed or given less than a full share at Christmas. And of course it is the adolescent dream. To make Cinderella less than she is, an ill-treated but passive princess awaiting her rescue, cheapens our most cherished dreams and makes a mockery of the magic inside us all—the ability to change our own lives, the ability to control our own destinies. [The Walt Disney film] set a new pattern for Cinderella: a helpless, hapless, pitiable, useless heroine who has to be saved time and time again by the talking mice and birds because she is “off in a world of dreams.” It is a Cinderella who is not recognized by her prince until she is magically back in her ball gown, beribboned and bejewelled. Poor Cinderella. Poor us.

The real problem with the world, too many people grow up.

I don't want the public to see the world they live in while they're in the Park. I want them to feel they're in another world.

Riley knew that she and Lucas could have a story—a potentially amazing story—ahead of them. But it was never going to be told unless she took that leap and talked to him.

That’s the real trouble with the world. Too many people grow up.

Okay, I know--my superpower--I'd be able to shoot lightening bolts out from my fingertips--great big knowledge network lightening bolts--and when a person was zapped by one of those bolts, they'd fall down on their knees and once on their knees, they'd be under water, in this place I saw once off the east coast of the Bahamas, a place where a billion electric blue fish swam up to me and made me a part of their school--and then they'd be up in the air, up in Manhattan, above the World Trade Center, with a flock of pigeons, flying amid the skyscrapers, and then--then what? And then they'd go blind, and then they'd be taken away--they'd feel homesick--more homesick than they'd felt in their entire life--so homesick they were throwing up--and they'd be abandoned, I don't know...in the middle of a harvested corn field in Missouri. And then they'd be able to see again, and from the edges of the field people would appear--everybody they'd known--and they'd be carrying Black Forest cakes and burning tiki lamps and boom boxes playing the same song, and they sky would turn into a sunset, the way it does in Walt Disney brochure, and the person I zapped would never be alone or isolated again.

As the Christian world is celebrating the Nativity once again, the roar of the guns, the cries of the dying and the wails of innocent people are heard on the battlefields. And an even greater holocaust threatens. Twice before in our time we have seen tyranny and lust for power thwarted by those who believe in the freedom of all mankind, only to see them circumvented in a brief few years. In America, we have only one thought at this Christmastime, to pray that the world again be restored to a sanity that will insure all peoples the right to think and live as they choose, to respect the beliefs of all and to help humanity live a better life in the short span allotted to us on this earth. In this aim we feel we are joined by all peoples who believe in the Divine Spirit. It is my sincere wish, in which I know I am joined by 150,000,000 other Americans, that we will be guided by the Supreme Being in restoring peace to the world, that all may live in hope and happiness.To all peoples of good will, I extend greetings of the Season.

To most people today, the name Snow White evokes visions of dwarfs whistling as they work, and a wide–eyed, fluttery princess singing, "Some day my prince will come." (A friend of mine claims this song is responsible for the problems of a whole generation of American women.) Yet the Snow White theme is one of the darkest and strangest to be found in the fairy tale canon — a chilling tale of murderous rivalry, adolescent sexual ripening, poisoned gifts, blood on snow, witchcraft, and ritual cannibalism. . .in short, not a tale originally intended for children's tender ears. Disney's well–known film version of the story, released in 1937, was ostensibly based on the German tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm. Originally titled "Snow–drop" and published in Kinder–und Hausmarchen in 1812, the Grimms' "Snow White" is a darker, chillier story than the musical Disney cartoon, yet it too had been cleaned up for publication, edited to emphasize the good Protestant values held by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. (...) Variants of Snow White were popular around the world long before the Grimms claimed it for Germany, but their version of the story (along with Walt Disney's) is the one that most people know today. Elements from the story can be traced back to the oldest oral tales of antiquity, but the earliest known written version was published in Italy in 1634.

The Indiana Jones films have a built in Disney connection, as director Steven Spielberg sent his sound designers down to Disneyland to record Big Thunder Mountain Railroad to provide a soundtrack for the second film's mine chase scene!

To help cement the friendship between Japan and Disney, Emperor Hirohito personally presented to Roy O. Disney, for the dedication of the Magic Kingdom, a stone Japanese lantern known as a Toro to light the way to success and happiness.

His life would become an ongoing effort to devise what psychologists call a “paracosm,” an invented universe, that he could control as he could not control reality. From Mickey Mouse through Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs through Disneyland through EPCOT, he kept attempting to remake the world in the image of his own imagination, to certify his place as a force in that world and keep reality from encroaching upon it, to recapture a sense of childhood power that he either had never felt or had lost long ago.

Horizons opened exactly one year after Epcot Center opened. Amusingly, the phrase in the attraction—“If we can dream it, we can do it”—that is often falsely credited to Walt Disney was in reality the creation of Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald, who modeled for the Audio-Animatronic “young man” character with the solo submarine.

One Disney “urban myth” is that in the event of a hurricane, the castle can be dismantled. That is untrue. The main building has an internal grid of steel framing, secured to a concrete foundation. The turrets and towers also have internal steel framing and were lifted by crane, then bolted permanently to the main structure.

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the *new*. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new: an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto, "Anyone can cook." But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist *can* come from *anywhere*. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more.

It was speculated that a car manufacturing company like Ford, or a space or aircraft project like NASA’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory Project, or millionaires like the Rockefellers or Howard Hughes were secretly purchasing the land. One account even suggested the Mafia was buying land to launder ill-gotten gains or dump bodies in the swamps. However,

The list of names on the windows are taught to cast members as the credits to the beginning or end of a movie, just like showing the actors and film makers who created the film you had just seen. Susan told us that if you’re walking toward the castle, the names on the windows represent the opening credits to your day, and walking away from the castle represented the closing credits.

My former boss Dan Burke once handed me a note that said: “Avoid getting into the business of manufacturing trombone oil. You may become the greatest trombone-oil manufacturer in the world, but in the end, the world only consumes a few quarts of trombone oil a year!” He was telling me not to invest in small projects that would sap my and the company’s resources and not give much back.

I do love Alice in Wonderland though. That’s something I think I could do very well. Don’t you think we ought to do an A.W.? A.W.’s Alice in Wonderland? Andy Warhol’s Alice in Wonderland? A.W. stands for a lot of things, I understand. It would make a fantastic film, so I wanted somebody to write the script for it in a modern sense. I think it would be the most marvelous movie in the world if it could be done, don’t you think? Really, I don’t think they’ve done one since they did a Walt Disney one - which isn’t really doing it. In a sense it is, but not in the way it really should be done. What’s needed right now is a real scene. I mean not just cartoon characters, but the actual character of people because there’s so many fantastic people that you might as well use the people.

The two little girls and I crossed the Delaware River where George Washington had crossed it, the next morning. We went to the New York World’s Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

His (Walt Disney's) favorite song, 'Feed the Birds' from Mary Poppins. The lyrics give insight into Walt's benevolence--his belief that small kindnesses go a long way. Disney Legend and lyricist Robert Sherman once explained the sentiment: ' Doing just a little extra and going just a little bit out of your way to make someone feel special. Sometimes it makes all the difference in the world to a person.' Come feed the little birds, show them you care And you'll be glad if you do Their young ones are hungry, their nest are so bare All it takes is tuppence from you.... When the song was finished, Walt would say under his breath, as an aside to himself, 'Yup, That's what it's all about.' Robert overheard that whisper and concluded, 'I do think this song summed him up. He was a simple man---a simple, wonderful man who understood that the greatest gift life bestows upon a person is the chance to share with others.

Walt Disney bought some orange groves in the middle of Florida and built a tourist town on them. No magic there of any kind, although I think there might be something real in the original Disneyland. There may be some power there, although twisted, and hard to access. There’s definitely nothing out of the ordinary about Disney World. But some parts of Florida are filled with real magic. You just have to keep your eyes open. Ah, for the mermaids of Weeki Wachee…Follow me, this way.

This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak. We must face up to this. No more than right that it should be this way. We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world. The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf as the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn’t challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it?” He lets go McMurphy’s hand and leans back and crosses his legs, takes another long pull off the cigarette. He pulls the cigarette from his thin crack of a smile, and the laugh starts up again—eee-eee-eee, like a nail coming out of a plank. “Mr. McMurphy… my friend… I’m not a chicken, I’m a rabbit. The doctor is a rabbit. Cheswick there is a rabbit. Billy Bibbit is a rabbit. All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees, hippity-hopping through our Walt Disney world. Oh, don’t misunderstand me, we’re not in here because we are rabbits—we’d be rabbits wherever we were—we’re all in here because we can’t adjust to our rabbithood. We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place.

Did you know that Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star because his editor felt he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas”? How about the fact that when Marilyn Monroe was trying to start her career, modeling agencies told her she should consider becoming a secretary? Steve Jobs was pushed out of the company he had co-founded because the board felt he was wasting the company’s resources working on expensive projects that did not have enough potential. In other words, not everyone will understand your value or see your greatness. But here’s the good news: It doesn’t matter. You don’t need everyone to pay attention and you certainly don’t need everyone to like you.

When Disney’s children were very young, he’d tried to take them to places where their imaginations could run wild. But every carnival or fair seemed to be dirty, poorly run, and filled with vice. Walt wanted to create a place where people could take their family and forget the concerns of the everyday world—a place beautiful, safe, and filled with endless wonder. So at about the same time that he had started selling assets and conserving his capital, he pulled aside one of his art directors and had him begin working on concept sketches for a new kind of amusement park. The sketches started to illustrate the vision he had in his head, a utopian world where guests would enter a fairytale world.

Warren Bennis, one of today’s leading thinkers on the art of leadership, spent years studying groundbreaking groups such as the Walt Disney Studios (while Walt was still alive), Xerox PARC, and Lockheed’s Skunk Works. Here are some of the highlights from his study of groups: • Great groups believe they are on a mission from God. Beyond mere financial success, they genuinely believe they will make the world a better place. • Great groups are more optimistic than realistic. They believe they can do what no one else has done before. “And the optimists, even when their good cheer is unwarranted, accomplish more,” says Warren. • Great groups ship. “They are places of action, not think tanks or retreat centers devoted solely to the generation of ideas.” Warren characterized the successful collaborations he studied as “dreams with deadlines.” Part

There is no real reason why Disney should not buy up the human genome, which is currently being sequenced, to turn it into a genetic attraction. Why not cryogenize the whole planet, exactly as Walt Disney had himself cryogenized in liquid nitrogen, with a view to some kind of resurrection or other in the real world? But there no longer is a real world, and there won’t be one – not even for Walt Disney: if he wakes up one day he’ll get the shock of his life. In the meantime, from the depths of his liquid nitrogen he goes on annexing the world – both imaginary and real – subsuming it into the spectral universe of virtual reality in which we have all become extras. The difference is that, as we slip on our data suits or our sensors, or tap away at our keyboards, we are moving into living spectrality, whereas he, the brilliant precursor, has moved into the virtual reality of death.

Being raised evangelical in the Midwest gave me a personal experience of the phenomenon called “religious fundamentalism.” A story illustrates. When I was a boy in high school, I was interested in a girl from our church. It was an evangelical church, although some might have called it a bit fundamentalist—taking a hard line on cultural issues. But I took a chance and invited her to a movie, which was certainly frowned upon back then in our church culture (though my own parents snuck us out to Walt Disney movies at the drive-in, where we were unlikely to be spotted). I chose The Sound of Music, thinking it was “safe.” Who could object to Julie Andrews, I confidently thought? I was wrong. As we left the house, my girlfriend’s father stood in the doorway, blocking our exit, and said to his daughter, “If you go to this film, you’ll be trampling on everything that we’ve taught you to believe.” She fled downstairs to her bedroom in tears. We missed the movie, and the evening was a disaster. A year later, the fundamentalist father watched The Sound of Music on his television—and liked it. Fundamentalism is essentially a revolt against modernity. It is a reaction usually based on profound fear and defensiveness against “losing the faith.” My girlfriend’s father instinctively knew that his religion should make him different than the world. That is a fair religious point, and to be honest, there is much about modernity that deserves some revolting against. But I wish he had chosen to break with America at the point of its materialism, racism, poverty, or violence. Instead, he chose Julie Andrews.

If a man jumped as high as a louse (lice), he would jump over a football field. In Ancient Egypt, the average life expectancy was 19 years, but for those who survived childhood, the average life expectancy was 30 years for women and 34 years for men. The volume of the moon is equivalent to the volume of the water in the Pacific Ocean. After the 9/11 incident, the Queen of England authorized the guards to break their vow and sing America’s national anthem for Americans living in London. In 1985, lifeguards of New Orleans threw a pool party to celebrate zero drownings, however, a man drowned in that party. Men and women have different dreams. 70 percent of characters in men’s dreams are other men, whereas in women its 50 percent men and 50 percent women. Men also act more aggressively in dreams than women. A polar bear has a black skin. 2.84 percent of deaths are caused by intentional injuries (suicides, violence, war) while 3.15 percent are caused by diarrhea. On average people are more afraid of spiders than they are afraid of death. A bumblebee has hairs on its eyes, helping it collect the pollen. Mickey Mouse’s creator, Walt Disney feared mice. Citarum river in Indonesia is the dirtiest and most polluted river in the world. When George R R Martin saw Breaking Bad’s episode called “Ozymandias”, he called Walter White and said that he’d write up a character more monstrous than him. Maria Sharapova’s grunt is the loudest in the Tennis game and is often criticized for being a distraction. In Mandarin Chinese, the word for “kangaroo” translates literally to “bag rat”. The first product to have a barcode was a chewing gum Wrigley. Chambarakat dam in Iraq is considered the most dangerous dam in the world as it is built upon uneven base of gypsum that can cause more than 500,000 casualties, if broken. Matt Urban was an American Lieutenant Colonel who was nicknamed “The Ghost” by Germans because he always used to come back from wounds that would kill normal people.

Using the castle to transition between lands was a visual trick Walt called a weenie. According to Disney historian Jim Korkis, during the development of Disneyland, Walt would come home late at night and usually enter his house through the kitchen, which was closer to the garage. He would walk into the kitchen and grab two uncooked hot dogs, or wieners, one for himself and one for his dog. Korkis said, "By wiggling the treat, Walt could get his dog to go from side to side, around in a circle, jump up and more. Both Walt and the dog loved the game and she was finally rewarded with the tasty and satisfying treat." "Each of the gateways into the lands offered weenies. The spinning carousel through the portal leading through Sleeping Beauty Castle called guests into Fantasyland. The stockade gates, the steam bellowing from the Mark Twain stern-wheeler, and the seeming infinite horizon beckoned guests to visit Frontierland. Over in Tomorrowland was the clock of the World and the TWA Moonliner ready for launch. Only Adventureland lacked a weenie. It was thought that if guests knew too much, it would not be much of an adventure.

JimHillMedia.com

In the early 1990s, Target adopted some of Walt Disney’s staff training and customer service initiatives. It has since developed a variety of methods—from hiring to coaching to grading performance—to ensure “team members” embody the motto “fast, fun and friendly.” (See Chapter 5.)

As conceived here, EPCOT will be a “Showcase for prototype concepts”, demonstrating practical applications of new ideas and systems from creative centers everywhere. It will provide an “on-going forum of the future”, where the best thinking of industry, government, and academia is exchanged to communicate practical solutions to the needs of the world community. It will be a “communicator to the world”, utilizing the growing spectrum of information transfer to bring new knowledge to the public. Finally, EPCOT will be a permanent “international people-to-people exchange”, advancing the cause of world understanding.

This is what EPCOT Center and its two major themes, Future World and the World Showcase, will be devoted to: the advancement of international understanding and the solution of the problems of people everywhere – through the communication of ideas.

Certainly no corporation in the world is better than Nick-believe then the Walt Disney Company, which had built this town of celebration in large part as a way to sell off nearly 5000 acres deemed unsuitable for yet another addition to its nearby theme parks. The company is made attractions, Disneyland and what Disney World or marvels of escapism.

Obviamente, o tema do Walt Disney World de criar felicidade não pode ser simplesmente adotado e imitado: é fundamental criar o seu próprio tema de atendimento.

Na verdade, é fácil ver os efeitos da magia nos negócios, particularmente em um lugar como o Walt Disney World. Basta observar os convidados. A criança que vê o Mickey pela primeira vez, em tamanho natural e pessoalmente; o adolescente que acaba de sair da queda livre de 13 andares do The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror; ou os pais que voltam ao hotel depois de um longo dia e encontram um Ursinho Puff de pelúcia com biscoitos e leite esperando pacientemente na cama pelos filhos. Cada um desses é um momento mágico no qual o vínculo entre o cliente e a empresa é forjado e fortalecido.

The Haunted Mansion is modeled after houses where the Headless Horseman story was set. Houses built in the 18th century in the picturesque Hudson River Valley, now a National Heritage area and home to well-preserved dwellings from several different epochs in American history, provided the thematic inspiration for the general look of the Haunted Mansion. The Hudson River Valley is also the setting for the legend of Sleepy Hollow and the Headless Horseman—a perfect thematic fit for the Haunted Mansion.

Then it would come time for Walt to tell his favorite joke: 'What's a four letter word for what's at the bottom of (his) bird cage?' Everyone would look at each other, wondering if Walt Disney was going to say 'that.' And just when the tension was getting thick, Walt the on-color jokester would say, 'Grit, Grit!

The Hall of Presidents is host to the Great Seal of the United States, which is used with permission granted by an Act of Congress. Out of respect for this symbol, the seal must never be walked upon. Its placement on the floor of the Hall of Presidents makes this nearly impossible to avoid, so a fence was placed around it. However, there are parents who simply lift their children over the fence for a “priceless” photo. Take your photo of this great icon, but don’t be that person! It’s the real deal, deserving of respect.

The façade was based on Grauman’s Chinese Theatre’s actual blueprints and is the only building in the park that was built to full scale.

Has anyone who won a Dream Ticket actually made it to the finals on American Idol? Then seventeen-year-old Aaron Kelly won his Dream Ticket just four days after the American Idol Experience opened, and he made it to fifth place on the television show.

if you need some time away from the crowds, take a short stroll and enjoy the solitude along the walkway between Tomorrowland (to the left of Space Mountain's gift shop) and Mickey's Toontown Fair (to the right of the train station). Most guests never find this pathway, so it remains quiet all day.

In the deep forest of eastern Volusia County alongside the dark waters of Spruce Creek is a charming cottage of fantasy architecture known as the Snow White House that is virtually unknown to Disney fans. It is located off Taylor Road, roughly two miles west of I-95.

Except for special events open to the public, tours of Gamble Place are arranged by appointment only through the Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Sciences.

At the dedication, Walt’s older brother Roy O. Disney was asked by reporters why a grandfather had felt the obligation to tackle this impossible project at this point in his life. He told them: I didn’t want to have to explain to Walt when I saw him again why the dream didn’t come true. Later, Roy spent time in a boat on the Seven Seas Lagoon in front of the Magic Kingdom and when asked why he wasn’t in the park to handle all the media attention, he said: Today is my brother’s day. I want them to remember my brother today.

Disney and His Worlds,

Walt Disney World on October 1, 1971.

Walt Disney once said, “if you can dream it, you can do it.’ And he was right. The world is our playground. We can either stand on the sideline and watch everybody else play. Or we can join in. Be a child again and dream that you can conquer the world. Let’s

The hitchhiking ghosts at the end now get to interact with guests in a more technologically advanced way, especially if you are wearing a MagicBand. For example, if the information embedded in your MagicBand states that you live in Maine, the ghosts will hold up a sign next to your vehicle that reads, “Maine, here we come!

Oh, for badness’ sake!” said Evil Queen. “World domination can wait another thirty seconds!

To the youngsters of today, I say believe in the future, the world is getting better; there still is plenty of opportunity

The Disney trademark is all over it: the businesslike use of fantasy, the no-nonsense approach to nonsense.

Like everything else at the Amazing Kingdom, the Vole Project had begun as a scheme to compete with Walt Disney World. Years earlier, Disney had tried to save the dusky seaside sparrow, a small marsh bird whose habitat was being wiped out by overdevelopment along Florida's coastline. With much fanfare, Disney had unveiled a captive-breeding program for the last two surviving specimens of the dusky. Unfortunately, the last two surviving specimens were both males, and even the wizards of Disney could not induce the scientific miracle of homosexual procreation. Eventually the sparrow fell to extinction, but the Disney organization won gobs of fawning publicity for its conservation efforts.

Walt Disney became very rich by making millions of people happy. And Henry Ford became very rich by making the automobile affordable for the working class.

stand up straight. Don’t lean or sit or cross your arms. Keep your hands off your hips and make eye contact with the guest at all times. A Walt Disney World Cast Member never points with a single finger—and he never uses a thumb.* Instead, use two fingers.” Orville held out his index and middle fingers together. “Or, to be on the safe side, the whole hand in the style of a karate chop.

The name for that kind of system in Europe was corporatism, fascism, or national socialism. But the World of Tomorrow Roosevelt would design, Walt Disney would promote, and Superman would personify was to be a friendly fascism securing truth, justice, and the American way, freedom in abundance and abundance in freedom, ultimately for the whole human race.

build the house you want to live in You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world . . . but it requires people to make the dream a reality. —Walt Disney

the most powerful source of his appeal as well as his greatest legacy may be that Walt Disney, more than any other American artist, defined the terms of wish fulfillment and demonstrated on a grand scale to his fellow Americans, and ultimately to the entire world, how one could be empowered by fantasy—how one could learn, in effect, to live within one’s own illusions and even to transform the world into those illusions.

It was as if everything Lucas had been, everything she wanted him to be, had been erased as easily as “BELGIUM, 1831” on the chalkboard.

In numerous ways Disney struck what may be the very fundament of entertainment: the promise of a perfect world that conforms to our wishes.

We shot the film, almost all of it, in a small studio close by the Oakwood Apartments. Burbank, often considered the media capital of the world, is home to Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Nickelodeon Animation Studio, and a massive porn industry.

People can easily become unsettled as their traditional way of doing business begins to erode and a new model emerges. It’s a lot to manage, from a personnel perspective, and the need to be present for your people—which is a vital leadership quality under any circumstances—is heightened even more. It’s easy for leaders to send a signal that their schedules are too full, their time too valuable, to be dealing with individual problems and concerns. But being present for your people—and making sure they know that you’re available to them—is so important for the morale and effectiveness of a company. With a company the size of Disney, this can mean traveling around the world and holding regular town hall–style meetings with our various business units, communicating my thinking and responding to concerns, but it also means responding in a timely way and being thoughtful about any issues brought to me by my direct reports—returning phone calls and replying to emails, making the time to talk through specific problems, being sensitive to the pressures people are feeling. All of this became an even more significant part of the job as we embarked on this new, uncertain path.

Mr. Matthews told the class. “No matter what I teach you in here, learning from the people you care about is more important than the words on any page.

Colonel Sanders, who made Kentucky Fried Chicken famous, pitched his idea more than 80 times before anyone bought the concept. It took Stallone only three days to write the script for Rocky, and the movie grossed $200 million, but when he wrote it, he had no money to his name, couldn't afford to heat his apartment, and even had to sell his dog for $50 just to be able to buy food. Walt Disney was laughed at for his idea of an amusement park, and yet now people all over the world spend $100 a ticket and save up their whole lives just to have a family vacation at Disney World.

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Disneyland hugs you but Walt Disney World swallows you.

We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.” WALT DISNEY Katherine