Designer Times
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35. WDW 20,000 Leagues Submarine

The WED mechanical engineering team at the MAPO facilities in Glendale California began an expansion in the late 1960's to handle all the new attractions planned for the upcoming Walt Disney World. Up to that time, I pretty much concentrated on several projects at once, usually as the main designer. But during this time frame, we added a lot of licensed engineers as well as drafters. Most of us early Disney guys were told to apply for a state engineer's license. Being a boring engineer did not appeal to me, so I let this opportunity slip by.

I had been in charge of the detail design of the Florida Mk IV Monorail while doing some other project work; Mineral King WED ski lift design, DL Moon Ride Animated Seats, WDW Main Street Vehicles, etc. Then a new kind of assignment came my way......factory representative. Disney had contracts with a number of companies around the US to build our ride vehicles. Tampa Shipyard in Florida was rebuilding existing old steam engines for the WDW Railroad and had been contracted for final assembly of the WDW 20,000 Leagues Submarines, as well as a lot of WDW watercraft.

Many of our folks were assigned to follow the contractor's Disney jobs all over the country. So I wound up assigned to the Subs at Tampa Ship. Disney had rented some condos on a beautiful bay in Tampa, Florida to house the permanent and visiting Disney folks. I was no longer a designer (no license), but was now a team member fulfilling the task of a customers representative handling all the WED-Tampa-Submarine matters. A whole new experience.

George McGinnis styled the WDW 20,000 Leagues Submarine design after the Jules Verne sub in the movie of the same name. Morgan Yacht in Clearwater, Florida started building the basic hulls. Somewhere in the middle of the work, the job was transferred to Tampa Ship. I found myself in a nautical dispute among naval architects, Admirals, railroad guys, and testy shop folks.

McGinnis was making drawings, MAPO electrical drafters were pumping out wiring diagrams, and supplier equipment was arriving daily at the Submarine shop. The Tampa guys had to put all this stuff together and I was point guy. Now Tampa ship was not a movie studio. It was a big naval shipyard full of fascinating stuff. We had a big open tin shed to work in. I had a small un-airconditioned office with a tall stool on a dirt floor. The Tampa supervisor I was to work with drove a blue "Chivvy" truck with a .45 automatic alway layin' on the seat.....told me it helped manage production in the yard. It was summer....every day about 2pm, a big thunderstorm blew up, the first lightning hit was on the tall crane outside, the next hit on the shed roof. The water always rose, forcing me to decide where to stay the next few hours.....office or sub work scaffold.

I had a major problem. New drawings arrived from WED each morning, I had to get them to the sub guys, explain the work before the daily storm. The drawings were filled with inaccuracies and the printed images dissolved in the rain. We worked fast since the rainy windstorm blew the drawings off the scaffold across the yard to oblivion. I was never so hot and sweaty in my life.....weeks at a time of this work during the hot Florida summer months. But there was a camaderie with all the Tampa guys.....I was finally tought how to speak correctly in a very special Southern Language. Highlight of the day; leave the tin shed and head for ABC liquor to get the six pack.

Whenever we received bad drawings, we figured out on the spot what to fix.....never time to call home. Just do it and keep goin'. We were starting to get conflicting electrical diagrams from MAPO. Wires would carry maybe 12 volts DC on one side of the diagram, but end up with 115 volt AC on the other side of the diagram. Parts were specified that had never arrived. We had received equipment for the sub that was not on the diagrams. One Friday afternoon the Tampa supervisor showed me some big coils of navy electrical cable left over from WWII. He said this was going into the subs first thing Monday morning, diagrams or not. He handed me a listing of the wire sizes and colors in each cable for reference. After getting my six pack, I bought a book "Electricity Made Simple $1.25" and settled into the condo for the weekend......to get my new electrical engineering degree!

Son of a gun.....This electrical stuff is kinda simple after all. Electrical devices are interconnected by terminal strips using multi-conductor cable containing colored insulated individual wires of appropiate sizes. You only need to know where each multi-conductor cable goes in the boat, and refer only to a wire list to make the connections. Monday morning I handed the guys the cable pull list of how many cables went from where to where in the boat. They could leave long lengths coiled up at each location to be served out later following the wire lists. This bought me time to make up the wire lists in time for them to start the terminations. The next thing was to test the connections. The guys used a dry cell battery and a loud ringing bell to prove out every circuit. Gad, how ship-yard simple. They did this following my test procedure write up, starting with the lowest voltage equipment first. I was kinda chicken to subject workers to electrocution after following the instructions from an unlicensed mechanical designer. It all worked....not even one blue flash. We wired and tested the first sub in less than a week.

Meantime all the fancy interior trim parts began to arrive so I could work out the installation procedures. Big problem. Seems that Morgan Yacht was a bit loose with the fabrication dimensional tolerances in the hull, and McGinnis drew his stuff to fit his design mock up back at the Studio in Burbank. Tampa Ship had to fit the whole deal together no matter what didn't fit right. By using the "hack 'n fit" method, the guys built a pretty good looking Submarine. It's just that the drawings and the subs were not in agreement. So be it.....the first sub was due tomorrow, August 13, 1971 way up in Orlando.

It took a whole day to make the drive up there with this spectacular Jules Verne creation weaving it's way thru small towns trying to find a route to miss all the overhead power lines and such. We had put the sub on the biggest trailer we could find. By the end of the day I pulled into the Walt Disney World Central Shop area a few minutes ahead of the sub. WDW Shop Manager Arnold Lindberg was waiting for me. We stood smiling as this great green monster rolled in with most of the overloaded trailer tires blown out, trailing a thick cloud of burning tire smoke. I wanted to go home to California, but Arnold said...."Oh Bob, we have this Tram Tractor problem".....

oOo

Next month: Five Years of Various Vehicles