Designer Times
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38. Disney Designs - End of An Era

The second half of the 1970's decade found Walt Disney Productions in a massive period of expansion, both within existing business units as well as the creation of new companies. WED designers were busy on multiple projects from Florida to Texas, California to Japan. EPCOT got the go-ahead, WDW had new attractions in work, and Disney had been selected to develop a linear motor peoplemover system for the Houston International Airport. Disneyland always had new attractions to design and existing shows to renew. Tokyo Disneyland would soon be Disney's first off-shore Theme Park. Folks used to joke that if it had wheels, Gurr was going to be involved. A number of the WED projects definitely had wheels:

SPACE MOUNTAIN CAR BODY MAPO mechanical engineer Bill Watkins designed the car chassis and assigned a new engineer, Joel Fritche, to engineer the body as a trainee under my guidance. George McGinnis had styled the car appearance and developed a seating mockup. Our usual practice up to that time with fiberglass designs was to just give the body shape drawings to the plastic shop. The shop supervisor would then instruct the fiberglas layup guys how to build the body. Typically this was done by spraying the mold with chopped glass roving and polyester resin.

Sometimes this resulted in bodies that were heavy and sometimes cracked in service. I felt that maybe we should be very specific as to the exact composition of the fiberglass layup details. The plastics shop supervisors were not happy that engineering would tell them how to do plastic fabrication, but agreed to try this once. Fritche and I reviewed all we could find on fiberglass structures as used in aircraft and race cars. It turned out to be a pretty logical task to place various materials and thickness' into the mold as specified on our production drawings. The shop did a great job and were were all very happy with the results. I think those 1977 Space Mountain car bodies had a very long life before refurbishment was required.

WIDE BODY DUORAIL Following the prior concept designs for EPCOT transportation with the TurboTram and the Omnitram, I was asked to provide an extra high capacity Monorail design. The Boeing 747 does this with a wide body aircraft, so I could do a wide body Monorail. Build a dual track beamway with the beams spaced about 12 feet apart, make a Duorail train about 18 feet wide and you can pile in a ton of guests. We made a lot of drawings of this monster. Imagineer Bill Casey and I had fun doing a probably useless project for EPCOT.

ENERGY RIDE PROPOSAL Famed Las Vegas Show Designer John DeCuir Sr. showed us his concept for the Energy Pavilion on a Saturday morning at WED. He had (76) little cars going every which way on multiple tracks with a bazillion switches. But the show idea was fabulous. Claude Coats was to do the show and I was to do the ride. As John finished, he got up, said OK, you guys got it, and went out the door. I think he picked up his consultant's check on the way out. Experts and consultants are like that; they get to generate crazy ideas for instant money, then leave it to others to make the deal actually work.

Claude and I spent several weeks banging the overall concept around until we had a workable scheme using just (9) big theater-cars and no mechanical switches. The cars would follow their own paths on a flat trackless floor using buried wire guidance. The MAPO engineers then took off and got this thing to work pretty neat several years later.

MONORAIL MK V BODY Disney somehow got the idea that the 1968 Disneyland Mk III Monorail was bit out of date by 1978 and ought look like the Florida Mk IV. They wanted to enclose the bodies and use sliding doors like regular transit cars. Retlaw (the Disney family corporation) owned and operated the Disneyland Monorail System and asked MAPO Mechanical Engineering to make drawings of a new design and submit them for cost estimating to Manufacturing.

I had a team of drafters on this project and we spent close to a year making drawings while Estimating did their job. At the end of all this effort, Retlaw still did not have a workable cost estimate. What a difference between the "good old days" where we had a Walt Disney to lead us in real projects, where we had the Roger Broggies and the Dave Gengenbachs who could execute production with wisdom. Seems that as organizations grow and get "organized", something changes. Folks are still capable, but that's the way it goes.

HOUSTON WEDWAY PROPOSAL Houston International Airport had a number of terminals all layed out in a line with an underground tunnel connecting them. It had a small peoplemover installed but Houston wanted a higher capacity system. I flew to Houston with a small preliminary design team in 1977 to take a look. Our WDW linear motor Peoplemover design would be perfect for Houston. After I did some preliminary designs, the MAPO Mechanical and Electrical Engineering team took over the job and delivered a smooth and silent system. This project seemed ideal for our Community Transportation Systems Division, but was done as a stand alone Houston only job. I still a Mickey Mouse campaign T-shirt....."We Did It in Houston".

EPCOT BODY GROUP SUPERVISION WED assigned me in 1978 to watch over the various teams that were designing the major EPCOT ride vehicles. We had a number of new designers that I was asked mentor. I think I got this assignment since I was known to object to certain vehicle designs if I thought they were going to not be as practical as they might otherwise be. On such design was the EPCOT Spaceship Earth Ride. After a very serious meeting on the subject, I was relieved of all further responsibility on the job. Blessings all around. Several years later I was given a new title "Senior Staff Engineer Tokyo Disneyland Ride and Show Documentation".This signified the shift after (25) years from creating drawings to administrating drawings.

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Next month: Tokyo Disneyland