West of WEDWay
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I’m very proud to consider myself an ex-Imagineer because I had the privilege of working at WED Enterprises for a total of about six years. But who am I kidding? A capital-I Imagineer is someone like Bill Martin, Herb Ryman, Rolly Crump, or Harper Goff. I was a very junior member of the Architectural Drafting department, but I had the pixie dust and I knew all about the place before I got there and, by gosh, I met all those real Imagineers and more.
I’ll start at the beginning. (LaughingPlace doesn’t pay anything, but it’s by the word, so here goes.) I saw Disneyland first as a seven-year-old in October 1964 when we moved to Los Angeles. By Fall of ’67, I was an old hand at visiting the park and I can still remember turning the corner and finding the gleaming new Tomorrowland staring back at me unexpectedly, with slick PeopleMover cars going to and fro. I stopped and stared. I was ten and the idea of Disneyland was cool enough, but to be confronted with the notion that one could just scrape an area off and start over again just pegged my fabulosity meter.
I began taking two hour bus rides on my own through the downtown LA bus terminal just to visit the park. There were no annual passes, but after a while I just bought general admission because I didn’t go for the rides (and I had a million A-C tickets anyway). I went to sketch the architecture because I wanted to build an accurate model of the place. I carried a clipboard and was proud to field guest questions as if I worked there. It was just bad luck that Disneyland’s run of furious expansion was just about over in 1968. I was one of the first riders when the Haunted Mansion finally opened in August 1969. Before it did, I took dozens of photographs of the construction work.
Confession time. In 1969 and 70 I broke a million rules at the park. I explored everything I could. What amazed me the most was what I found under the portrait artists in New Orleans Square. You can see it in aerial construction photos-New Orleans Square is one big basement. A drive-able tunnel, precursor to Walt Disney World, runs from Adventureland to the central kitchen under the French Market. I cajoled employees to show me Club 33 and other forbidden places, and I was sent to Security on a couple of occasions, but never ejected. I thought I was unique back then, but now I know that pixie dust is a widespread disease.
I applied to work as an unpaid apprentice at WED in 1974 and I was turned down. Magic Mountain took me on, however, and I worked for an ex-WED designer named Paul Opp. He and I didn’t get along, but I got to meet Randall Duell, roller coaster designer Paul Saunders and sketch artist John DeCuir, Sr. I learned that the ex-Disney community is broad. I became more seasoned after a year and a half and Paul, seeing that I was ready to move on, made a call to WED on my behalf-I’ll always be grateful-and I found myself talking to Glenn Durflinger and Ron Bowman in October 1975. Glenn was the lead drafter on Cinderella’s Castle and the Project Designer for Space Mountain at WDW. Ron was the Project Designer for Bear Country at Disneyland and the Village Haus restaurant at WDW, among other things.
We spoke in Glenn’s office next to the suite that Marty Sklar shared with John Hench. Just off the lobby, these offices had windows onto Flower Street and carpeting. I later learned that this was called the Gold Coast due to the color of the carpet. I was very jazzed just to be in the building. When I got my driver’s license a few years before, I looked up 1401 Flower Street after dinner and walked across the lawn and into the planting to stare through the windows. “What a jerk” comes to mind in hindsight, or more to the point “Get a life,” but when it came to Disneyland design, I was twitterpated.