At the opening of WDW in 1971 there was a lot of emphasis on the features WDW would have that Disneyland did not. Remember those pre opening cards ? The only things that were featured prominently that are at Disneyland were the monorail, and the castle, and both are shown in ways that play up their differences. The monorail is shown emerging from the Contemporary Resort Hotel, and the caste is shown with a Royal procession in front of it accentuating the Regal nature of its sweeping curves (The castle forecourt), and Skyward reaching spires. Add to that the fact that of all the cards in the pre-opening series only three of them are dedicated to the park solely and two of those are to features not at Disneyland at all (Liberty Square and Western River Expedition). This promotion of what was different about WDW extended far beyond the pre-opening cards though. In anticipation of the opening of WDW a TV special was produced on the new resort complex and of the items on the Magic Kingdom. I remember that the first time I saw it (on Vault Disney) I was surprised at how much of the Jamboree was shown. A fair number of minutes were devoted to this show on that special. Knowing all that, it should not be a big surprise that one of the most promoted attractions, and one of the biggest hits of Walt Disney World, was the Country Bear Jamboree. It was so popular in it's early years that long lines often formed for it outside the large interior corral which hold enough people for the next show. Disney even closed a shop to provide greater indoor queue space for the lines, theres a great article giving details on that at Mike Lees Widen Your World web site at http://home.cfl.rr.com/omniluxe/westho.htm. Of course there weren't anywhere near as many other attractions on that side of the park to swallow guests up in their queues, not only was there no Splash Mountain or Big Thunder Mountain, the Pirates of the Caribbean had yet to open that's three of the highest capacity rides in the park! No wonder the lines for the bears are shorter today! In fact on opening day there was not even any Frontirland Railroad station nor Tom sawyer Island Rafts. The only other Frontierland attraction was the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes.
The first MKMany long time Disney parks fans may read the initials MK and
automatically translate those two letters to the phrase "Magic
Kingdom" but if Walt had gotten his way with one project he was
working on in the 1960's there might be another connotation to
those initials today "Mineral King" and that is where the Country
bears story began. The bears show had actually been in
development for several years before WDW opened. It was started
as a part of Disney's plan to build a new a different type of ski
resort. The "Mineral King" project was to have featured the bears
show, and I think more importantly that some of Walt's Ideas for
WDW and to a Lesser extent EPCOT would have been tested out here.
Don't believe me? Well here's my thinking. The whole idea of
having the Bears show, and any other non traditional Ski resort
activities planned (I wish I knew how far along other plans might
have gotten for the project) was to create an immersive resort
experience, so folks wouldn't need to "head into town" for
something to do after a day spent on the slopes, that is the part
I think of as being a pre-cursor to the WDW resort.
As to the rest of those ten guide lines here they are:
 click here for a much larger version of this map In the end though, opposition from the Sierra Club lead to the eventual annexation by the park service into Sequoia national park. I wonder if though in the end this might have been a plus for Disney. How, you might ask? Well, perhaps the loss of that project to environmental concerns made Disney and his planners even more aware than they might already have been. A guy who thinks that there are enough problems with the cities of today to want to try to build a whole new type of city from the ground up, almost certainly aware that we did need to be more careful with the environment that we had been in the past, but still, I think this must only have added to the determination to make sure environmental concerns were handled up front in project Florida. It may be hard for folks today to realize that there was a time when a project being built in a lowland area in Florida would have almost certainly have had as it's first step draining the swamps. Disney's first steps on the other hand were to build a system of canals to maintain the level of the water throughout the property. |
On the subject of the cards on this page. I have heard that
they were sold from a vending machine in the waiting area/lobby
of Grizzley Hall. I remember buying my sets from a similar
machine at Disneyland. I think I even remember that the numbering
of the cards in the two sets seemed jumbled to me, in other words
not sequential, so some higher number cards were in the first
set, and some lower numbered cards were mixed into the second
set. I think that perhaps I now understand why. It may be that
they wanted the sets to have the same images in the "A" sets at
Disneyland as in the "A" sets at WDW and of course the same
(remaining eight) cards would be in the "B" sets too but since
the cards at Disneyland were numbered differently , both in using
a different set of numbers, and in a different sequence,
Disneyland numbers hopped all around in each set. If that is the
case then I am betting that not only did the Magic Kingdom have
these cards first but that 0110400 through 0110407 is set "A" and
cards 0110408 to 0110415 set "B".
set "A"
set "B"
acknowledgments for this page: I got the phrase "Silly singin country bears" stuck in my head from a recorded spiel on the WDWRR and have used it off and on ever since. I reread the page on the bears planned use for Mineral King in Disneyland: the nickel tour before writing this page but mainly in a search for a few details (like the name of the national park that annexed the property.) The opinions about the loss of that project are solely my own and I realize that even if I am partially correct it would be easy to make more of it's impact than I intend. And there are probably others out there with better perspective on this subject, especially anyone who knew more of Walt's plans for the project .