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Glenn's design called for four high windows in the spaceport load/unload area. The queue line wrapped past one window and the others were "star fields" or views into space. Glenn (or maybe George) planned a control room scene, like Mission to Mars. As you waited in line, you'd see the mission controllers looking into this huge hangar, then you'd walk into the hangar and look back to see the controllers looking at you. As we were doing the drawings, budget overruns forced the scene to be cut. Glenn was stoic, but there were signs he was bummed. This 19-year-old kid (me) comes into his office with a sketch on tracing paper. I suggested that the queue line enter a hexagonal room with doors in six directions, implying that the spaceport had six hangars. The queue only goes into one spaceport, but the illusion... He liked it, and they built it that way. My claim to fame as an imagineer--big deal, I know, but I spent six years at Disney drawing other people's designs and I have this one little bit of creativity to show. (Actually, I added a few details to EPCOT, too, but nothing very important.)

When Space Mountain opened, kids immediately began shoveling quarters into the machines at the Starcade, which made everyone happy. The rest rooms were a help. But no one found the burger joint, so most of its capacious serving windows were kept shuttered. In time, they stopped bothering to even open the kitchen, and people would lounge around on the uncomfortable chairs like it was a train station or something. The ampitheater was too cramped. If you didn't get a seat, you had to peer around the plants in tall planters and you couldn't see the stage from any distance. But Disneyland operations immediately began getting complaints from guests who rode the speedramp up only to find a sea of people on the promenade. They judged the line to be short (ignoring the Wait Time 60 minutes signs), and then saw an hour's wait at the top. They wanted to bolt at that point, but there were few exits. Their indecision created a dangerous crowding at the top of the speedramp. Ops' "solution" was to add speedramp monitors--employees that held people at the bottom until the coast was clear at the top. This additional labor meant that Space Mountain was a Bad Design and WED was a Useless Division and there was more tension than usual between the designers and the operators. Once it had been established that WED didn't know what they were doing, Ops could get approval to ignore the promenade queue line altogether and run the line for Space Mountain, single file, out onto Main Street. I hope you can imagine my frustration: I "knew" it wasn't what Walt would have wanted.

The Starcade continues to bring in money, but they never built the Phase II shooting gallery we had in mind at the south end of the second floor. The restaurant seating area is now a pizza joint, and of course the ampitheater died a quick death and came back as Captain EO, Magic Journeys and Honey I Shrunk the Audience. Glenn's control room idea was later used in Star Tours, only with alien controllers. No idea is ever forgotten at Disney. The main building still looks good, and it is not visually jarring from elsewhere in the park. I would have done it differently, of course. I would simply have told Disneyland Operations that...well, maybe not.

•  •  •

I saw an address for Walt Disney's first Kingswell Avenue studio recently, and it inspired me to figure out where Walt spent his time in the 1920s and 1930s. I discovered that he stuck to a single neighborhood around his Uncle Robert's house, so I made a map to share what I had learned: http://www.infospect.com/disney/WaltInHollywood.html. Enjoy.

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-- Alastair Dallas

-- Posted March 27, 2001