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 to benefit the Ryman-Carroll Foundation. If you missed any previous columns, click here for the list.
9. Things don’t always work - Disney learns to redesign them
As the hot summer of 1955 wore on, Disneyland steadily improved everything. Since we really did not quite know what to expect of the guests, and the guests did not quite know what Disneyland was, we all learned together. All kinds of things that people do and don’t do gave us a big education in refining a multitude of operational details.
Some of these refinements were easy to implement, like where shade is needed, how queue lines should work, and how ride operators can be trained to handle almost any human situation. But training machinery to behave was a whole ‘nother deal.
There’s three kinds machines. One is near perfect right out of the box and only needs minor tuning to work great. The next starts as a neat idea, but gives a lot of trouble and needs a lot of repair. The tough one also started as a neat idea, but is just miserable to keep running and no amount of repair is ever going to make it right. I got to learn from all three.
So, our 1955 summer of mechanical reality lessons were the basis for all future Disney ride and show design expertise. A designer can get a college degree and be qualified to engineer most any machine. But a ride designer needs far more than college.....live thru a tough summer hand-holding temperamental new machines. Especially ones getting tested to death by enthusiastic young Disneyland guests. The lessons to be learned are far more valuable than going to the greatest college on the planet!
Disneyland’s maintenance department built up an enviable expertise in keeping troublesome rides in operation. There really was no way to stop and rebuild things during that first summer season.....just weld and fix, weld and fix. Long term improvements would have to wait until fall when all our young guests were back in school and we could catch our breath.
Besides the Autopia situation, several other attractions gave us fits. The Casey Junior locomotive had a tendency to rear over backwards going up impossible hill (well named). Upstop rails had to added to the tracks right away. Every morning the welding crews were ordered to spend their first two hours welding cracks in the Tea Cup Ride, then go weld up other rides.
Some of the Jungle Cruise underwater animations were wearing out as fast as we could fix them. We found that water and a bit of sand would literally erase lots of steel parts out of existence. Even when the machines worked well, the whole show had unpredictable results. The stagecoaches worked fine, but the horses would sometimes run away and we’d have a big wreck. The engines in the Phantom Boats would just burn up......this attraction was the first to simply die before summer’s end.
My boss, Roger Broggie sent me down to Disneyland from the Studio almost every week to look into machines which were not responding to repair with the idea of some effort towards redesign. The education that I was to get that summer has lasted me a lifetime. Poking my nose into broken and worn parts revealed way more about machine design than any formal education would have. I never did get a degree in engineering, but I sure learned a lot about how things need to be in order to work well and live long.
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