Building A Better Mouse
Steve Alcorn & David Green
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2010 by Steve Alcorn & David Green
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This book is available in print at themeperks.com
* * * * *
Building A Better Mouse
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all of the Imagineers who worked on Epcot and Tokyo Disneyland in the early 1980s. In an era before personal computers and cell phones, they accomplished the not merely difficult, but the truly impossible. Thanks for the memories.
We’ll Always Have Paris
I’m sitting in a room on the ground floor of the Airway Tower in Glendale, California, a bright, white building built in Los Angeles-style pseudo-adobe and red tile. Built in the ’20s, this three-story “skyscraper” was once the command tower for some long-defunct airport, used in the final scene of the movie “Casablanca.”
At the moment, none of that matters to me. I am sitting here, breathing musty air that reeks (I’m sure I can smell it) of doom and angst. I am hostile to the marrow.
Today shows every expectation of becoming one of those dusty, still-life photos that one locks away in one’s memory over the years, occasionally, and most often unexpectedly, uncovering in the recesses of the mind to briefly bring a chuckle or a grimace, or simply to fondle the well-worn edges.
It is the fall of 1983. I have just been laid off after working for over three years at WED Enterprises, the engineering company that does the majority of the electronic, mechanical, architectural, electrical, art and prestidigitation for all of Walt Disney’s theme parks, from Disneyland in California, to Disney World and Epcot in Florida to Tokyo Disneyland. Throughout the past year, hundreds of employees have been laid off, but somehow, I am alone in my grief.
During the time I worked for Disney, I fell in love with the company. When I walked into a room, pride radiated from my big, beautiful mouse ears. But yesterday, my ears were amputated with a slip of pink paper and it still hurts like hell.
So here I am, waiting in this beautiful, anachronistic building. Waiting for a job counselor to plot my future career. But what act can they book to follow Disney?
I am neither the first nor the last employee to get the boot, but I still feel surprised and shocked. Figuratively, there’s been blood all over the floors of the company since the first mass layoffs of December, 1982. Anybody with half a brain knew it was coming. But somehow it’s different when it’s your blood.
Those damned ears – they prevent you from thinking clearly.
So here I am, waiting for an appointment with a job counselor, as the frames of my life roll before my eyes in slow sepia flashbacks, fading from scene to scene. Thinking about Disneyland, Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland. Thinking about mice, ducks and talking animals. Thinking about a man with a mustache and a mouse with a bow tie. But most of all, thinking about EPCOT – the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Walt’s greatest dream they billed it, I guess it was a dream for a lot of us.
I was hired by Disney to help create Epcot, as were hundreds of other young, mostly bright and all embarrassingly idealistic people. I believed in the dream, the company, and most of all, the ideal – that a Disney employee had one goal: to make as many other people happy as humanly possible.
We were there to build castles – castles in a new empire upon which the sun would never set... mice, ducks and talking animals... a man with a mustache and a mouse with a bow tie... and Epcot, Walt’s greatest dream. It was a dream for a lot of us.
But the ideal had failed for me, because the company had failed us – they were laying us off.
Perhaps WED knew that after a project the magnitude of Epcot, no one could be happy with regular work again. Maybe they knew that if they couldn’t provide us with the addictive rush of a deadline, it was foolish to keep our hopes alive with a methadone program of busy work. The company was forcing us to quit cold turkey.
Like reluctant missionaries, Disney was cutting us loose by the thousands to spread and preach the gospel of Epcot. A mad plan, but in my state of cognitive dissonance, it all made sense. The company was doing this to make us happy, or else I’d been fooled for three years and so had all the other Disney employees who had worked on Epcot.
My job counselor arrives.
As we walk through the empty halls to her office, I think about this building just a year ago, bustling with dozens of engineers, technicians, secretaries, clerks, designers and draftsmen. Now, it is almost deserted. The rear offices have been taken over by a group of people from Univance, a placement firm hired by Disney to help people recover from the pain of having their ears amputated.
These Univance people are the cleanup crew. They have to bear the brunt of the ex-employees’ pain and hostility, the blank stares, the inevitable “Why me?” The tears.
When we are both seated, my counselor shuffles through my file, leans back comfortably and smiles. “So,” she says, “what did you do at Epcot?”
I close my eyes. Already, it seems so long ago.
Pixie Dust
Walt Disney stands in front of the giant green map of the recently purchased Central Florida property – over 27,000 acres – pointing out the proposed developments. The daring dreamer speaks:
“Here in Florida we have something special we never enjoyed at Disneyland – the blessing of size. There’s enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.
“Here in Florida, of course, there will be another amusement theme park similar in size and many other ways to the one in California. We’re now developing a master plan that encompasses the theme park and all the facilities around it that will serve the tourist – hotels, motels, and a variety of recreation activities. In fact, this area alone will be five times the size of Disneyland in California... But the most exciting and by far the most important part of our Florida project – in fact, the heart of everything we’ll be doing in Walt Disney World – will be our Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. We call it EPCOT...
“(EPCOT will) take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise...
“A project like this is so vast in scope it will take the cooperation of many people to make it reality...
“We must have the flexibility in Disney World to keep in pace with tomorrow’s world. We must have the freedom to work in cooperation with American industry, and to make decisions based on standards of performance. If we have this kind of freedom, I’m confident we can create a world showcase for American free enterprise that will bring new industry to the state of Florida from all over the country.
“I believe we can build a community here that more people will talk about and come to look at than any other area in the world. I’m sure this Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow can influence the future of city living for generations to come.”
The lights in the theater came up, to the applause of two dozen new-hires. This film, created in 1966, was the last that Walt Disney ever made. Now, thirteen years later, it is being used to “Pixie Dust” new employees: people hired to make those words come true.
Pixie-dusting is the Disney way of cementing employee relations. It starts with employee orientation, when “new-hires” are led through a fantastic journey of the entire Disney dream factory, the places where the secret stuff of Disneyland and Walt Disney World is designed, tested, and built.
As far as many people are concerned, the Disney magic is just that – magic. It has the power to turn the most cynical engineer into a cheerful Jiminy Cricket in a matter of weeks. Forget bombs and aerospace! Be an engineer who makes happy things! And take lower pay for the privilege. Funny thing is, it works.
New-hires become a part of the practitioners of that magic, Imagineers, an elite group. They get to work for the company many of them dreamed of as kids – the makers of Mickey Mouse and castles and Matterhorns that loom tall over orange groves. And the great magic power of Pixie Dust begins to take hold. At the end of their first day, the new-hires receive Mickey Mouse nametags with their first names on them (“Walt wanted this to be a first-name company” – sprinkle, sprinkle).
The first few days after hiring immerse each employee in a constant sprinkling of Pixie Dust, a never-ending flood of company memos, newsletters and benefits including a set of free tickets to Disneyland, just to prove to your family and friends that you are a true practitioner of the secret Disney magic.
Pixie Dust had a strange, intoxicating effect on those who used it, and it took only a few weeks for the most straight-looking, stable person to begin exhibiting the unpredictable behavior of a Pixie Dust addict.
After the EPCOT film, there was a film of Disneyland in the 1950’s, then excerpts from movies like “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” followed by a videotape of not-yet-released features. Following the theater presentation, the new-hires were led around the Studio backlot, past trailers with stars’ names on the doors and soundstages where films like “The Black Hole” were being made. Then a free lunch, and a tour of the Animation Building. There the tour guide explained how the classic animated features were created, and why it’s too expensive to do it any more.
A man with little horn-rimmed glasses gave them a quick look at the archives. He let them hold one of the thirty Oscars. Much of the gold was worn off from all the people handling it.
Next into the van, for a trip to Glendale, and the WED and MAPO facilities.
WED, which stands for Walter Elias Disney, was created by Walt in 1952, and originally shared the studio lot in Burbank. WED’s charter was to create an amusement park that Walt had conceived – Disneyland. At first, WED was very small, but as time passed the company moved to Glendale, and was divided into different disciplines. At the top of the status ladder are the Art Directors, whose job is to imagine the attractions of the future. Artists turn these concepts into storyboards. Their drawings are then used to create a detailed description of virtually every square inch of the ride. Once it has received approval, architectural drawings are created. Set designers create costumes and props. The engineering departments are responsible for designing the vehicles, drive system, lighting and projection controls, audio and video systems, and animating the figures. They also must control various special effects, such as fog or fire.
In 1965 a sister company, MAPO (short for Mary Poppins) was formed next to WED to do the fabrication of WED’s designs.
Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966. His final legacy was the conception of a massive development in Central Florida. After his death, his dreams and ideas would be carried on by WED, particularly the art directors who had worked with him.
With the coming of the mammoth “Florida Project” in 1971 WED’s size was increased to handle the task of simultaneously designing and installing dozens of new attractions at a park on the other side of the country. The 27,000 acres that WED reshaped into Walt Disney World in Central Florida at a cost of $300 million comprised the largest privately funded construction project of all time – building 44 miles of canals, moving 9 million cubic yards of earth, digging a lagoon from swampland and using the debris to form a platform for the Magic Kingdom. Also, luxury hotels, golf resorts, shopping villages, campgrounds, and transportation systems including a monorail. There were 87 subcontractors.
And when all was said and done, there was nothing left for all those extra people at WED to do. So they were laid off.
By the end of the 1970’s, WED had been reduced to close to its former size. Yet now there was talk of the other part of Walt’s legacy, his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Budgeted at $400 million (but destined for $1.2 billion), it was to be the crown jewel of the “Florida Project”.
EPCOT was originally planned as a sort of Utopian Disneyland – a futuristic showcase of America’s best – a place where real families would live and work beneath a Plexiglas dome, under the scrutiny of all Middle America. EPCOT was to be a giant, living laboratory where the biggest and finest American institutions could peddle instant 2001; lifestyles copied right out of 1950’s Mom-and-apple-pie science fiction. A daring, glittering, yet somehow naive dream from America’s most daring, glittering, naive dreamer.
Somehow, it would work. No Disney dream has ever failed.
But after the death of the daring dreamer the corporate hierarchy paused to take note of the naive. Namely, who would buy it? What kind of family wants their home to be part of a great chrome-and-plastic world’s fair, constantly under the gaze of all Middle America?
It was too much of a corporate risk. Even too great for a company that had made its reputation as a taker of corporate risks. So the dream of EPCOT the corporate risk was replaced by the reality of EPCOT Center the corporate compromise, glittering, naive, but somehow not quite as daring a showcase from the disciples of the daring dreamer.
And yet, something of a spark from the original EPCOT survived. In the midst of central Florida, a few miles from Orlando, a new world was growing. Directing the project were a new crop of Imagineers, a group of mostly young, mostly inexperienced engineers who had been, as any veteran Disney employee could tell, thoroughly Pixie-dusted.
* * *
By the middle of 1981, MAPO, the manufacturing area next to WED, was a beehive of activity. MAPO was housed in two large warehouses. The Airway Building was so named because it was located on the site of the runway of the extinct Glendale Airport. It was used for heavy manufacturing, usually involving large pieces of metal cut and welded to form vehicle chassis or fiberglass pieces used to form the bodies.
The other MAPO building, located adjacent to the WED Building was used for most other work. An electrical shop upstairs and downstairs fabricated the electronic equipment designed by the electronics department. There, 19-inch racks or weather-tight metal boxes were machined, parts mounted, point-to-point wiring done, and circuit boards assembled. After a cursory test, the items were then packed and shipped.
This building also housed the area where audio animatronic figures were machined and assembled, joint-by-joint and limb-by-limb. Plastics manufacturing produced anything from a hand to tree leaves. Pelican Alley, so named because it was originally used for building animated birds, was also housed here. Another department of MAPO was called Fur and Feathers.
Throughout MAPO, skilled craftsmen – or new-hires just learning the trade – meticulously applied the detailed finishing touches which distinguish Disney attractions from other theme parks. At one end of the MAPO Building was a loading dock where, for two years, mammoth crates were loaded onto trucks for shipment to Florida. Packed with cartons and crates, they departed several times a week. Some items were so large they were shipped by convoy.
Across the parking lot from the MAPO Building was the WED Building. This building housed the corporate management for WED Enterprises, including the offices of President Carl Bonjiorno, Vice-President of Engineering John Zovich, and the Art Directors.
Down one hall were the conference rooms where Walt conceived Disney World, and where the initial Epcot planning was done. The rear of the building was used for mock-ups of the rides, built to scale. Each scene was about two feet high and four feet wide, and positioned at shoulder height. Walking through them provided a view of each scene as guests would later experience it. In some cases the scenes were such exact replicas of what would later be installed, they created a sense of deja vu.
Another large area was used for Special Effects prototypes – including a complete volcano to be used in the Energy pavilion – and various laser effects. Special Effects was a very large department whose work encompassed electronic, electrical, mechanical, chemical and optical technologies. Most of the Special Effects personnel fell somewhere in between artists and engineers.
Also in the WED Building were the artists who were responsible for the actual look of Epcot. Their work began with storyboards describing the attractions, including detailed sketches and paintings of each view throughout the park. They also produced detailed drawings of each prop and special effect.
The model shop crafted nearly exact scale replicas of every figure to be built. The models were often extremely detailed. The American Adventure model included moving set pieces to simulate the complex workings of the carriage and lifts.
Located farther north in the San Fernando Valley was the Tujunga Building, a mammoth structure where the largest work was done, and also used as a holding area for crates and parts that could not be stored at MAPO. There, the large set pieces, fabricated from wood, were cut, assembled and painted. Some of the sets were the size of small houses, and required special shipping consideration. Another giant building was used to paint the enormous mural backdrop for the Energy Pavilion ride.
Figure programming took place at Tujunga. As the electronic cabinets used to control the animated figures were completed by the electric shop, they were sent to Tujunga, along with the figures. They were connected, tested and preliminary animation was done to match their movements to the audio track. The animation would later be touched up in the field to allow for variations in the environment and wear and tear on the figures during shipping and installation. Much of the animation programming had to be added in the field because the lighting, lifts, curtains and other major props were not available for programming at Tujunga.
The entire burning town scene from Pirates of the Caribbean at Tokyo Disneyland was set up there for a while. There were also many figures from Country Bear Jamboree… all singing in Japanese.
During their orientation tour, each new employee seemed to share at least one thing: the reverence for the Disney ideal. They were to be the means by which Walt’s greatest dream would be achieved. It would mean nearly inhuman work weeks and unprecedented dedication to the task. This is the story of the creation of Epcot, its engineering, and the people who engineered it.
Welcome to 510
In 1979 WED was just beginning to realize what it was going to take to build Epcot. Or at least they thought they were.
It takes about three years from the conception of a ride through story boards, rework of the story boards, writing and rewriting the scripts, creating the music, lighting effects, costumes, and engineering the ride, show, and audio systems before the attraction opens to the public. At least it takes that long assuming the full attention of the entire staff is concentrated on only one or two new attractions. Yet WED’s aim was to open a theme park with perhaps two dozen attractions in just three years.
Since the opening of Walt Disney World, WED had designed one or two attractions at the same time, but with Epcot on the drawing boards it was apparent that many more people would be needed for this mammoth task. Instead of one or two pavilions at a time the entire company would be working on two dozen shows and rides. Although preliminary storyboard work was complete, the concepts would change many times over that tightly compressed schedule. Every section of the company would be inundated in 10 times the normal workload. So the ranks of every department began to swell.
* * *
It was obvious from the beginning that it would take some unusual, extraordinary people to survive the massive buildup. Nowhere was that more true than in department 510, the group of electronic engineers whose responsibility was to make Epcot work.
With the sophisticated theme of Epcot, sophisticated equipment would be required to control the shows. The electronic engineering department was divided into three engineering sections to support the development. These sections were show, ride and audio. The show section would be responsible for controlling anything that the guests saw: animated figures, lighting, special effects. The ride section would be responsible for control of the vehicles, drive systems and operator consoles. And the audio section would be responsible for the audio, and later video, at Epcot: shows, background music, and vehicle sound. In addition, support sections included secretarial staff, wirelisters, designers, drafters, and technicians.
As if this weren’t enough, department 510 was also assigned the task of engineering a whole new Fantasyland for Disneyland and – incredibly – another new theme park, Tokyo Disneyland!
* * *
In January, 1979, Linda Alcorn was fresh out of school, the ink on her diploma still wet and her mind still ingrained with the layout of the UCLA engineering department. She typified the 510 engineers who were to follow. She was, in her own eyes as well as those of her coworkers, a kid. Linda’s interest in Disneyland began when she was a very small girl, on her first visit. Perhaps she had always thought of herself as an Imagineer, that unique breed of engineer who works for the Disney organization. As early as age 10 she had constructed a cardboard model of Disneyland on her bedroom floor. So it’s not surprising that when she obtained her Bachelor’s of Science in Engineering from UCLA, the place she sought employment was WED Enterprises.
WED was at once wonderful and terrifying. Like the many 510 employees who would follow, Linda felt insecurity as much because she knew some of what they expected of her as she did because she didn’t know all that would be expected. Linda had never had to deal with panic management, office politics, corporate paperwork, union rules, project approvals, art committees, dog and pony shows, and the whole convoluted manner in which things were accomplished at WED; things that could not be prepared for by 25 years of engineering experience, let alone four or five years of, ahem, school. If Linda was lucky in any way, it was that she was one of the first, and would have a head start on those who followed.
Ira Frank started at WED only a week after Linda, with many of the advantages and disadvantages. Ira did have a few years of engineering experience under his belt. In contrast to Linda’s enthusiastic, direct approach to problem solving, Ira liked to really hash things out verbally before taking a course of action. He was known for starting his little speeches on why he was doing something a certain way with the word, “Essentially . . .” Ira was, essentially, messy. His office became a running self-joke with its papers piled upon papers upon books upon drawings upon whatever, trash mixing with vital documents in some sort of running Dadaist commentary on the world of engineering. There was also a live pine tree, a wall-sized map of Tokyo Disneyland and a plastic roast turkey.
Phil Beamish, an engineer who started several months after Ira and Linda, was another youngster. Phil had perhaps the perfect personality for a 510 employee, boasting the body of a body builder, the artistic sensibilities of a pianist, the mind of an engineer and an occasional stubbornness that would put the entire Mule Train through Nature’s Wonderland to shame. In the 1048 building, Phil was two offices from Ira and the contrast was startling. Phil’s office was often neat enough to make one wonder if he was out of town on business; his walls were decorated mainly with schematic diagrams and other such documentation. If nothing else can be said about Pixie Dust, call it the Great Equalizer – as different as they were, both Phil and Ira got their jobs done.
Chris Senchack’s office lay between Ira’s and Phil’s, as was perhaps fitting. Chris’ walls were neither as idiosyncratic as Ira’s nor as stark as Phil’s, and his personality was a fair mid-point between the two. Another engineer, Chris had traveled the world, in the army and out, and it seemed to have prepared him for many of the unusual aspects of 510. Still, he was no doubt the most high-strung of the engineers, and his nasal Texas twang could often be heard swearing “Oh nooooooo” at some engineering setback unseen by others in the building.
Glenn Birket, was 510’s most laid-back engineer. He was the silent Cal of 510, his sturdy frame and dark, often brooding countenance hiding a relaxed, easy-going personality and high sense of professionalism. Stuck away along a back wall of the 1048 building, in an office shared with Linda, they were 510’s junior engineers. The remarkable irony of this was their main office decoration – a huge poster of Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up.
In addition to these show control engineers, there were an equal number of audio and ride engineers.
Lee Frisius was the show section head. He was the man to whom all of the young show engineers reported. Barely older than his charges, Lee was expected to take this raw talent and mold it into a dynamic engineering force, a feat not unlike forming cut gems from diamonds-in-the-rough using your bare hands. Interestingly, at various times, Lee exhibited one or the other of the personality traits of many of his underlings – the enthusiasm of Linda, the solidness of Phil, the “high-strungness” of Chris, the introspective nature of Glenn and the slow approach of Ira. A computer could not have chosen a more fitting match.
Ralph Rosenthal was the original department 510 head. Ralph was one of those people whose good-natured hunch and Groucho-ish walk made him appear shorter and less imposing than he really was. He was not above putting his arm around an engineer with a smart remark and a caring, “Howzit going?” He was also not beneath coming down real hard on anyone whom he felt needed the pressure. Ralph was the number one guy at 510, and everyone knew it. Like many managers, he was equally respected and disliked by the 510 group.
Annette Tedrow was the executive secretary. Annette was one of those Midwest gems that Disney has a reputation for hiring, but are actually quite rare in the company. At times more of a public relation/employee relations director than anything else, Annette had the trying task of attempting to find out the answer to employee questions like why their Mickey Mouse buttons never arrived, how could they get some extra free tickets to Disneyland, how come there were no coffee cups in the break room and where in the hell were the managers when you had something to talk about? Annette handled the job with a certain cheery aplomb, and her constant candy and cookie handouts showed her dedication to her co-workers. Sweet as she was though, Annette had a business side that could snap a drill sergeant to attention, and when she called to “remind” you to get in your time sheet, engineers sometimes dropped the most important projects to get their butts in line.
John Brayman was a sort-of “coordinator.” That’s the kind of job where the actual job title changes two or three times a year, but what needs to be done stays pretty much the same. John was one of the few non-managers in 510 who hadn’t heard a high school bell in the last 10 years. At times he seemed like the stern uncle of the group. Business was business to John, and the atmosphere of the growing department seemed to bewilder him at times. His background in the no-nonsense aerospace industry made it hard for John to accept the silliness, lack of planning and straight-on wrongness of much of 510’s operation. He complained about many of the department’s decisions, mostly to deaf ears, yet often had the smug satisfaction of watching his plans get implemented days, weeks or months later as someone reached the same decision independently. Because of this, he became regarded among some engineers as somewhat of a coot, and by others as a pretty right-on guy. His relationship with management was at times strained, but they did admire his ability to get the job done.
Ray Roberts was another coordinator. Ray had a lot in common with Ralph besides initials. Another wisecracker with a jaunty bounce in his step, Ray didn’t have the stigma of being a manager that Ralph had, nor the aerospace background of John Brayman. This meant Ray usually got along much better with the younger engineers, who playfully teased him about his smoking, his age and his taste in clothes. Ray smart-mouthed with the best of them, exhibiting a salty demeanor developed through his love of the sea and sailing. (He even lived on a boat at one point.) Few 510 people had any reservations about helping Ray out with any favors.
Mark Gardner was the senior programmer. Mark was the 510 resident computer hacker, but was unusual in the respect that he had a couple of degrees to back up his wizard’s cap, as opposed to many hackers, who, consumed by computers, barely graduate high school. Mark was unusually clean-cut, even for a Disney employee. He wore a short haircut, conservatively out-of-date clothes and was remarkably clean-shaven. Mark was the kind of guy who would seclude himself in a corner with a computer system (or two or three) and an armload of reference books, only to emerge hours or even days later with some wonderfully useful computer program. Software was The Answer to Mark, and he would write programs to do the simplest things, just because it could be done. Management and engineers alike scoffed at his often roundabout way of getting things done, but there was no denying his efficiency – he didn’t seem to mind working 40 hours a week or 140. Locked in his office with a constant supply of soft drinks and junk food, Mark seemed ready to devote his entire life to the Disney ideal.
One of the signs of growth in a new society is the birth of children. In every corny movie that’s ever been made about the Pilgrims, the West or even space, there’s always a scene where the tough settlers gather about a crib to see the new baby, and we know that somehow, they’re going to survive.
At WED, the society was not quite that primal, nor in a position to regenerate themselves through a new generation (they only had until October 1, 1982), but the engineers were given signs of hope by the infusion of co-op students. Co-ops were the kids among kids, babes among babes. They were college students brought in on work-study programs as a learning experience, and were considered the freshest transfusion in a department already full of new blood.
Actually, a few of the co-ops were older than some of the engineers, but for one reason or another, they were slow in getting their degrees. It was not so much a question of age as of attitude. For many of the co-ops, particularly those from Maine and the Midwest, the freakish pace of life in Los Angeles alone was a culture shock. It’s a wonder they didn’t turn and head for home after one day of being immersed in the insanity of pre-opening day department 510, which was akin to a whole coop of headless, yet still functioning, chickens.
In spite of an inevitable “gee whiz” attitude, most of the co-ops got down to business and began cranking out work as fast as the next chicken. They would never fear finals week again. Department 510 and all of WED were in the midst of one big, two-years-long finals week, and graduation was in October, 1982.
The Imagineers didn’t need coffee for these finals, nor any other artificial stimulant. They were ripping along quite nicely on Pixie Dust, a drug with no side effects other than heavy addiction and a massive crash scheduled for opening day.
1048
Originally squeezed into the crowded loft of the MAPO building, it wasn’t long before department 510 was forced to move into the “1048” building, isolated from the rest of the company by what grew in the minds of the engineers to be the longest city block in the history of city blocks, the quarter-mile stretch of gray, industrial Grand Central Avenue.
Between the chaotic dynamo of WED headquarters and the insecure brain trust of department 510 lay a dull, 10-minute walk along decrepit chain link fence and a motley bunch of bleak, Glendale-standard commercial/industrial complexes. It was a walk often made more distasteful by the tire-screeching, discourteous drivers of a nearby pay-TV firm. The engineers felt like abandoned children.
And rightly so. Isolated as they were from the core of the company corps, it was a difficult task to complete the simplest chores. Extracting a consensus on an engineering proposal might entail phone calls and visits to the main WED building, the Airway building, one of several multi-purpose buildings on Flower Street, the studio and for the truly tortured, the Tujunga building or Disneyland itself.
After a while, however, there was a growing acceptance and even a certain amount of pleasure derived from the 1048 building’s location. After all, if an abandoned child is old enough, mom and dad can be a drag anyway, always looking over your shoulder, checking on what you’re doing; so if they don’t want you around, well hey – it’s a lot more fun this way, anyway.
So the department settled into its new quarters. Everybody was scattered around the building, with management up front (of course), the technicians near the rear loading dock, engineers around the periphery. Wirelisters and word processors lined up along a long wall dividing the rear two-thirds of the building lengthwise, and drafters filled up the immense floor space in the center of the main room.
In short, it was a mess.
Engineers were strewn about the building with no regard to their projects; managers were divided from their teams by a maze of corridors so intimidating that visitors often got lost going from one area to the next, although the total length of hallway was less than 50 feet. In fact, new employees took days to get used to the scheme, and would often wind up in the bathroom when they really wanted a technician.
The bare, off-white uniformity of the building did nothing to help matters. There were no “landmarks” to aid in travels around the building. Something would have to be done before employees began leaving trails of breadcrumbs or tying string to their office doors alongside instructions for the inevitable search teams. Quickly the walls were covered with posters, strange newspaper clippings, cartoons, doctored photographs, Disneyana advertisements and even a fake turkey. And that was outside the offices.
Being normal was NOT normal in department 510 and new-hires learned quickly to unleash their personas if they didn’t want to get lost in the woodwork. It wasn’t that the WED engineers were any stranger than people in the outside world, it was just that the inherent dichotomy of engineering in an artistic company encouraged unrestrained non-conformance.
Inside, one could find almost anything stuck to the walls, from floppy disks to cheesecake (or beefcake) photos (and worse). The offices quickly became bizarre outcroppings of personalities, where people hung not dirty laundry, but their minds, souls, political and sexual persuasions, senses of humor – almost their entire beings – out for display. It was unusual for an engineering department, where often the most exciting decoration in an office is a poster for a new microchip and an ASCII code table.
Adding to the carnival atmosphere was the constant ringing of telephones, which, unshielded by walls that failed to reach the ceiling, echoed across the engineering floor with constant intensity, surpassed at times only by the nasal tones of the operators calling for various lost souls over the paging system. At times, the resultant atmosphere resembled the floor of the New York stock exchange during a crash: engineers rushing to answer the phone ringing in their offices, engineers rushing to answer a phone that wasn’t ringing in their offices, (a maddening illusion conjured up by the malicious properties of the wall construction), operators paging employees who were out to lunch, fired or completely bogus (as in, “Let’s call the operator and have her page Kenny Rogers, heh heh.”) and the ever-continual noises of computer printers, air conditioning, typewriters, phone conversations, guffawing, cussing at Things That Don’t Work, electric erasers, radios, humming, pounding on desks (usually induced by Sony Walkmen), loud music from the audio lab and any number of minor and major sounds, some annoying, some pleasant, all indicating that things were being done.
Most of the time, the engineers just wanted silence, which meant that Real Work was being done. Most of the time, they didn’t get anything approaching silence. If they were lucky, they were at least left alone. Everybody in the 1048 building simply learned to grin (or at least grimace) and bear it. After a while, only new-hires noticed the true insanity of the environment. And those few times when the building fell silent for whatever reason, there was a sort of cosmic eeriness that implied the immense unlikelihood of everything falling quiet at once, and people would pick up their phones to make sure the circuits weren’t dead.
* * *
It was in this wonderfully relaxed, stressful atmosphere that nearly all of the electronic engineering for the most expensive theme park in the world took place.
Each engineer, technician, drafter, clerk and manager built a protective cocoon out of their personality, hunkered down in it, and prepared to do some kick-ass work for the duration of a project that everybody knew, from the outset, would never, ever finish on time.
And, despite their conflicting personalities, pathetic collective lack of experience (professionally or socially), and a near-complete dearth of any idea of what anyone was doing or was going to do, this strange slice of social strata would someday grow together, into a unit that would become a family as much for its closeness as its squabbles.
In this family was a core of siblings, completely indistinguishable from everyone else in the group, who possessed, planted somewhere in the fertile loam of their fates, a seed that would germinate and root them inextricably to one thing – building Epcot.
Club 33
Behind the gentle tinkling of fine china and crystal, the soft patter of rain could be heard outside the elegant dining room. The room gave off the impression of graceful elegance without flamboyance. Freshly polished furniture and floors reflected the subdued candlelight, investing the room and its occupants with a warm and comfortable glow. A murmur of conversation and gentle laughter carried across the setting as patrons dined on imported cheeses, lobster tail, and crepes.
In marked contrast to this comfortable atmosphere, below the windows an occasional figure darted from one awning to the next across the rained drenched square. Some carried small children, others the paraphernalia of a family outing to Disneyland: Mickey Mouse balloons, guidebooks and packages laden with candies and curios. Yet despite of the weather, these visitors could enjoy that rare commodity: an uncrowded day in Disneyland. They were boarding boats in a sleepy bayou filled with electronic fireflies, to be entertained by a raucous band of carousing pirates, amidst cellophane fire, and a catchy soundtrack that repeats every 30 seconds.
Upstairs, Linda and her guests sat at a table near the window in the dining room of Disneyland's private club, the officially secret Club 33, watching the brightly colored tourists dart through the gray day, and drinking in all of the warmth the club offered. She had only worked for WED about six months, but as one of their few electronic engineers, she could enjoy the full benefits of a unique company’s generosity through the club membership of the Vice President of Engineering, John Zovich. His standing offer to make reservations for all engineers on his club membership was a unique benefit afforded the tiny engineering staff.
Other unique benefits included admission of oneself and guests to Disneyland, free rental of any of the company’s films from the film library and, perhaps most importantly, the opportunity to work with the most unusual electronic control systems in the world.
American Adventure
In 1979 the electronic engineering department was comprised of barely two dozen persons, very few of whom had been with the company long enough to remember construction of Walt Disney World. And so hiring commenced. Little did 510 realize that this hiring was only the tip of the iceberg and that far more complex requirements would soon expand the job.
Soon the show section would find itself responsible for monitoring items throughout Epcot, including air and hydraulic levels, electrical panels, and projectors. The ride section would be called upon to perform such complex tasks as guiding mammoth vehicles along a wire through a maze of doors. And the audio section would find itself responsible for speaker sequencing around one mile of parade route, and other complex signal processing tasks.
As these requirements became known, it seemed like a logical time to redesign the systems by which attractions were controlled, upgrading them from l960’s technology to new systems better suited to handing the complicated tasks demanded of them. So each section undertook the design of new systems that could be used throughout Epcot. At the same time that these general-purpose tools were being designed, the attractions that required them were being defined, and so it was often necessary to begin the design of the attraction’s controls before the tools were ready.
Glenn Birket describes those days:
I hired on with WED on November 5, 1979. I was assigned to American Adventure on that day. It sounded like an interesting pavilion. I knew it was one of the largest, and I knew that Jane, an ex-supervisor of mine from Operations in the Magic Kingdom was assigned as a coordinator to the pavilion. It would be fine working with her again.
There was very little information as to what the pavilion was all about. There were almost three years to complete the design and build it. That seemed like a lot of time then. I had no idea that the design wouldn’t actually start for quite some time, and that there wouldn’t be nearly enough time to do it. There wouldn’t have been nearly enough time to do the design if I’d been able to start in November of 1979. I had no idea of the size of the task, no idea what I was up against. But I had a lot of optimism about it. It seemed a little odd to me that they would take a person right in the door, right out of school and assign them to what appeared to be a pretty big task without any experience to go on.
I didn’t realize that I was going to have to design a system that had such great potential for doing harm to itself and other people. Nor did I realize there were almost no guidelines to go on. Even the control systems that existed at that point, which were few and far between, were very poorly documented.
When I expressed concern I was told ‘There are experienced people around here who can give you some insight into this.’ I found out later that all those experienced people where spread too thin and overworked. And not too long after that they started dropping by the wayside, one by one.
There was so little to do on American Adventure for the longest time, that it didn’t concern me. I was put on a project to redesign the cards used to control the animated figures. I soon found out that what they really meant was ‘Make these cards work with components that are on the market today but change them as little as possible.’ They wanted complete retrofitability into their old systems. This often got me into awkward situations where minor redesign could vastly improve the cards. There was unbelievable resistance from management outside our department because of distrust. There had never been an electronic engineering department before, and they didn’t trust our motives.
A lot of effort was expended to keep those cards from being changed in any way. So I dutifully went along trying to modify the cards as little as possible. There were some good people in the department later on like Mark and Marty to draw technical advice from. I learned a lot from those guys.
As American Adventure began to pick up speed I wasn’t able to devote my full attention to the cards. There were many people who had their hand in it, and I don’t think anyone ever had a clear and continuous impact. So the design came out haphazard at best. Most frustrating of all, it turned out that the cards wouldn’t be retrofitable, for reasons beyond our control. Several redesigns were needed because of changes to other systems. Everyone right up the line to the vice-president now acknowledges that they made a mistake, and that they should have done a new design. But it was a very educational experience. It acquainted me with the old and the new, and the personalities and politics involved.
For a while I was assigned to the Seas pavilion, but I decided to hand it off to someone else because American Adventure was becoming one of the biggest and most difficult pavilions, and it was obvious that one would be enough. Some people took two or more of the smaller ones.
At first, American Adventure was very low priority. I received information on figures, and how many movements there would be per figure, the layout of the show, and so forth. I developed some ideas about how I would control the figures, the cabling, and the location of equipment. I couldn’t get too particular at this point because the show was changing fairly often: how many figures, their functions, and the like. The special effects were very poorly defined in the beginning. Lighting was also very sketchy.
The show control system seemed very straightforward, although there was a lot of it. It was one of the biggest shows ever. I left lots of room available for lighting and special effects because there was so much definition left to be done in the show.
But the sketchiest area of all were the lifts and carriages that would position the figures on the stage. How were they going to be moved and controlled? I went to Wayne in the animation group. He said that the lifts didn’t need to be treated any differently than a function in a figure. So I added those up and put them into the animation cabinets.
The movement of the carriages was being done by Ed Feuer, in the mechanical group. For the longest time it had been assumed that the carriages would be moved by Linear Induction Motors, using magnetism. But the details were very vague in the beginning, so I didn’t do a lot of analyzing and commenting, just mostly watching. Perhaps if I had been more experienced I could have effected the design earlier in the project. But I wasn’t confident enough.