Designer Times
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23. Ford Magic Skyway Test Track - New York World's Fair
Walt was always thinking up new things to try out. He sent a number of Studio and WED Enterprises folks over to see the Brussels World's Fair in1958 . Disneyland was then three years old and looked like it was going to really work out well. By 1961, a number of States and large companies were getting pretty interested in the next World's Fair to be held in New York for two years running, 1964 and 1965.....more than just the usual one year season. Robert Moses, the famed NY go-getter was in charge, and thought that Walt Disney would be interested.
Conversations were soon underway with several potential participants including General Electric and the Ford Motor Company. Later on, the State of Illinois and the UNICEF organization would also approach Walt for help. The buzz around the Walt Disney Studio was getting pretty loud. WED folks were scattered all around the studio lot and it was hard to tell who was working on films, Disneyland, or the New York World's Fair. But Walt knew where everyone was hidden.
I had an office at Disneyland so I could be close to the newest design projects in the park. On July 1st 1961 I was suddenly asked to move up to the Studio the very next morning to get started a hot new assignment. Walt and Henry Ford II had just agreed to start the design of a big new pavilion for the NYWF. Welton Becket, Walt's architect friend, was to design the building, our show guys were to come up with a show, and I was told to design the ride. Walt knew I had started out at age 20 as a car stylist with The Ford Motor Company and could easily "talk cars with the Ford guys.
Some of the ride's features had already been determined; Just as in the Ford Exhibit at the 1940 NYWF, guests would be given rides thru the Ford show. In1940, drivers gave the guests a ride in the new Ford cars, but this time the ride would be automated.....no drivers. Brand new Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln convertibles would be propelled by floor mounted conveyor wheels. Walt knew we used track mounted wheels to control the speeds on the Disneyland Matterhorn this way, so he told Henry Ford we'd move the Ford ride cars using this method.
My boss, Roger Broggie, and I were scheduled to fly to Detroit on July 11th to show the engineers at Ford how we were going to move their new cars on the ride. I had to think and move quickly, figuring out the best way to to this, then call suppliers of electric motors, gearboxes, tires and wheels to get their specifications. In those days, when you called a salesman to come over to Disney, they zoomed right over within the hour. The name Walt Disney was instant magic. Bob DeKlotz of Reliance Electric gave me immediate help on the propulsion system. We figured that we could use a series of 1 HP gearmotors driving 16 inch diameter solid rubber tired wheels pushing against a flat panel attached under each car to drive them.
Within a few days I had made enough drawings of the ride system so that Roger and I could show the Ford guys how we were going run the ride. Walt's chief Studio electrical engineer, Lee Adams was figuring out the basic electrical requirements we would need. But a lot of details had not yet been completely described.....these would come later during the normal prototype development and test work. Boy, did this ever take time! I worked almost continuously from July 1961 to April 1964 to get this monster to work. It eventually took almost twice as long to develop as it took to build all of Disneyland!
Roger and I were very confident of our basic design, and expected to "wow the Ford guys with "Walt's Way of doing things. After all, Walt had told Henry Ford how we were gonna do it. WRONG. As we were introduced to the Ford team, actually the Plant Engineering Division of the Ford Motor Company, we could see the big gap between the movie business and the car business. Ford had the attitude that movie studios knew nothing of moving cars along a factory assembly line. They had their own design to show to us. Thus was launched a clash that would last for months until we demonstrated on an actual test track that our scheme would work. During this period of time Disney and Ford slowly got used to each other's culture, and we all became pretty good friends.
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Posted: 12/4/08