Walt and the world's fair: dreaming up a Disney delight

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts are known the world over for exciting children and adults alike, providing a backdrop for new technology, unparalleled entertainment and constant innovation. Sounds familiar? Ever since the Great Exhibition in 1851, world’s fairs have inspired others, and in the twentieth century the marriage of Walt Disney’s mind to the splendor of the fairs was to prove a winning combination.

It’s believed that Disney visited at least four fairs during his lifetime, and contributed, too, to the New York fair of 1939-1940 without ever visiting it. In 1955 he founded the Disneyland Resort in California and by the 1960s he was ready to take an active part in the New York fair of 1964-1965, having contributed to four attractions. Disney used this as an opportunity to show off his Audio-Animatronics system, creating figures that could move and perform and talk or sing: he created an Abraham Lincoln who recited his most famous speeches for the Illinois pavilion. He also put this innovation to the test when he dreamt up the “It’s a small world” attraction for the Pepsi / UNICEF pavilion; this was the attraction’s first outing, with Disney originally envisaging a ride where the fairgoers would see animatronic children representing all nations of the world singing their national anthem in succession. This was scrapped in favour of the now-famous song; if Scar’s reaction to Zazu singing a line in The Lion King is anything to go by, this is a world’s fair legacy that is something of a mixed blessing!

Walt Disney and Imagineer Rolly Crump, with a model of the Tower of the Four Winds designed for It's a Small World. Image @ Special Collections Research Center, Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Disney also teamed up with both Ford and General Electric, masterminding The Magic Skyway and Progressland respectively. The Magic Skyway was the star of the Disney-designed Ford pavilion: it invited fairgoers to sit in an open-top Ford car as it was moved along by a track, giving visitors a panoramic view of the Flushing Meadow site before taking them back in time. Here they would be surrounded by cavemen, dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts. This would then contrast with the Space City that followed, where Disney imagined towering structures and hovering cars. 

The Magic Skyway. Image @ Special Collections Research Center, Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Progressland followed in a similar vein as Disney once again imagined a future where electricity was used in all aspects of daily life, and atomic fusion was demonstrated as a potential “man-made sun” that could take care of our energy needs in the future.

Amidst all this high-tech frivolity, Disney’s much-loved characters also made an appearance, from Mickey Mouse to his dog Pluto, enchanting children in much the same way then as they do today.

Mickey Mouse greets young visitors at the fair. Image @ Special Collections Research Center, Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

The New York fair gained much from Disney’s input, though he in turn was also inspired. Although he died in in 1966, Epcot was opened in 1982. Epcot (derived from ‘Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow’) was intended to be a city of progress, where new technologies would be showcased and global unity would be encouraged. Epcot is therefore often described as a “permanent world’s fair”— and as if to show that the world’s fairs still provided the company with creative influence, Epcot’s Spaceship Earth structure was designed by Buckminster Fuller, who was also behind the Montreal Biosphere at Montreal 1967.

Disney’s vision was very much in line with that of the world’s fairs and was in turn the backbone of his own creations, such as Epcot, which told the world: “If you can dream it, you can do it”.