An Interview with Tony Baxter
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LP: The cars are the most obvious change. Can you talk about some of the other changes throughout the attraction?
TB: Well all of you that are into theme parks know there were two rides - there were two tracks over in Fantasyland and two tracks in Tomorrowland. Now all four tracks board here in Tomorrowland and travel all the way over to the Fantasyland side, so in terms of the travel distance you cover, the area that both those rides used to cover and at the midpoint we travel to where the old Fantasyland station used to be, and that is now an off-road experience to kind of match the terrain of the Matterhorn. It needs to grow in, all the trees are way to little, but someday we hope that'll become an Alpine meadow and kind of compliment the scenery and environment there. And it already, even with the small trees, it's very pretty compared to how that kind of contemporary Fantasyland station used to look. And it's a lot of fun to watch the kids - we have a sign there that says "Road Ends 5 Feet" and I've literally seen people take their foot off the pedal going "What do I do? What do I do?" And watching these kids tip and turn and bump across the off-road thing there - it's right where you can stand and watch - that's turned out to be a real highlight of the ride.
The off-road section
But we also have a park, a park that's very much as though the cars created it. So instead of the great legends of the past being bronzed in a human park we have cars that have been a part of Disneyland's history over the last 45 years. Our pride and joy is that we worked with the city of Marceline, Missouri who'd been given the Midget Autopia [a Disneyland attraction from 57-66] when Small World was put in. And we asked them if we could have one of those cars back, so those of you who are into this, look off to your right, we have one of the original Midget Autopia cars there on display. So it's one of the great legends of Disney myth and it's honored in our park.
The Midget Autopia car
A statue in the park
LP: Where there any parts of the make-over that were especially difficult?
TB: Well two things. Because we have so many repeat visitors we wanted to make sure all four tracks were equally as exciting even though they do different things, and that one wasn't longer or shorter than the other, and for Doug Hartwell that was the task. I was really on him. I said that if one of these is better then the kids are going to find it out and the lines will always be misadjusted. So he did a great job on that and I think that was difficult because when he does it effortlessly, you don't know that that much effort went into trying all the variations that you could try in getting it to work.
Doug Hartwell
The second thing was the cars themselves and Jason Hulst who was the car designer had to fit these three distinct personality styles on one Bob Gurr chassis. And the way cars give you a sense of personality is they're long and sleek or tall and bulky or rounded or squared-up and to not have the ability to do any of the changes to that chassis, to have the seat at the same level and the tires the same and yet convey all these different personality types was an unbelievable challenge. And I think - as you can see - they really do reflect those feelings that we wanted them to. So Jason really put a lot into this.
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Posted: 9/7/08