Designer Times
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Designer Times is a continuing column by legendary Imagineer Bob Gurr on his experiences in the early days of Disneyland. If you missed any previous columns, click here for the list.
5. Opening Day
July 17, 1955 Autopia Day of Infamy! About half the Autopia cars were taken from the ride and moved to an offstage area next to the Main Street Town Square for the Opening Day Parade. The first sign of trouble appeared as I started the cars using a kick starter on the engine while holding the rear engine hood open. The day was getting hotter and hotter, and the cars began to vapor lock and stall after idling in the heat for 15 minutes or so.
Just as the cars were to join the parade, I ran madly from car to car to restart the stalled engines as the drivers were itching to go. I had two small boys with me who were excited to ride Autopia in the parade. Walt had introduced me to a gorgeous red-headed movie star, and told her “Bobby will mind your boys for the day”, and off they went. Now I’m to baby sit two kids in addition to herding (39) hot sick cars.
The drivers drove the cars after the parade to the Autopia Ride where we got them all back on the track to await the official Autopia Ride opening later in the day. I was delighted to watch the happy faces on the little guests as they finally got to drive a “real gasoline car” at Disneyland. But my delight turned to dismay as car after car suffered a variety of failures.
The two little boys clung to me where ever I had to rush around to, helping the ride operators to rescue dying cars. Of course, we did a lot of driving trips on the ride ourselves.....I wasn’t gonna miss having some fun too. The boys pointed out a short black guy with an eye patch and hollered “git’im”.....obviously a friend of theirs. We whacked the guy clear off the track and up into the weeds. He gave us a startled look. I found out the next day it was Sammy Davis Jr. I wanted to apologize to him till the day he died.
As the number of functioning cars dwindled, the guest line got longer and longer. Soon, some guests were jumping the fence, running up the track and commandeering the returning cars. The ride operators were outnumbered to try and stop this Autopia feeding frenzy.
As some cars were suffering faulty speed governors, drivers could go fast enough to jump curbs, spin out, and drive back down the track where head-on collisions took place. The original cars did not have padded steering wheels. I took a couple of kids to first aid, one with his hand full of teeth! It was quite late in the evening when I finally caught up with Walt and his actress friend and gave her boys back.
Returning to the Autopia Ride, I found it shut down and the ride operators nursing bloody shins from kick starting dead cars all day. A few said they had been run down by wild drivers.
Now I had a chance to survey the mess the Autopia cars were in; distorted bumpers, rear wheel bearings shot, axle and brake damage, and so on. Starting out with (40) original cars, one was Walt’s special car, two were rigged up as police cars. They were black and white with red lights and siren. I loved driving them because we kept the speed governor disconnected and I could go real fast. But many of the remaining (37) cars were in sad shape......just after only one day! The real testing had started.
I had a long hot sad drive home that night, only to return to Disneyland early the next morning to face the regular public, after enduring the invited guests. My memory of the following week has faded (thankfully), but I remember we had only two cars left running, and the line was so long, filled with patient kids who were not going to miss their one chance to drive Autopia.
I had been repairing the cars with my own tools since Disneyland repair folks were fixing all the more important rides. Rather than test a couple of cars to destruction ourselves before finalizing the design, we now had (37) test cars in various states of ruin. This meant that when I determined the cause for a failure and designed a fix, We had to repeat it (37) times! Not until Walt arranged for some mechanics to come help me every day, could I focus on the re-engineering of Autopia. Boy, this was gonna be a loooong summer.
Next month: Autopia Busted.....Disneyland Learns Real Engineering
Related Links
- Interview with Bob Gurr on the Autopia
- Space Mountain's 25th
Anniversary
Includes comments from Bob Gurr - Flight of the Imagineer
Guest column by Bob Gurr
Bob Gurr began working with Disney in 1954. He retired in 1981 but occassionally consults for the Company. Since Disney he's worked on the sinking ship at Las Vegas' Treasure Island, Universal Studios' King Kong, Godzilla for the film by the same name and much more. Among his proudest accomplishments he lists "making Walt tickled pink that some of the things he wanted to build actually worked. You could tell how proud he was when he would show off things to his friends and the press. Lincoln and the Monorail were two big ones for him."
Designer Times is normally posted the second Wednesday of each month.
The opinions expressed by Bob Gurr, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future of Disneyland and the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted September 13, 2000
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