This past weekend, I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by Disney Legend and Imagineering ambassador Marty Sklar at the Walt Disney Family Museum. While many of us had heard Marty speak before, his long history at Disney gives him many stories to tell. After all, he is the only person to be present at every Disney theme park opening across the globe. The focus of this presentation was Walt’s legacy of Epcot.
With Diane Disney Miller in attendance, he showed the complete EPCOT film including both endings. One designed to get the Florida government give Disney the authority they needed and the other designed to woo American industry to participate in the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.
Marty also expressed his love of the classic Epcot logo. He feels it represents the interconnectivity of the disciplines of each pavilion and how they represent the whole world. He mentioned his admiration for this logo several times and does not know why they still do not use it.
To be frank, he called the logo change stupid and called the current logo dumb. When pressed on the issue during the Q&A session, he gave what would not be considered a politically correct answer.
I bring this up not to show Marty sticking it to current Epcot management, but to show Marty’s passion for Epcot. As the writer of the Epcot film, he felt a strong connection to the project from the beginning. Working with Walt on every detail of the script and taking long notes over two meetings regarding Walt’s vision.
Marty knows Walt’s original vision, would be difficult to create without having Walt be the salesman convincing everyone to play ball. But it comes across that Marty believes that EPCOT Center and the entire Walt Disney World project, was important to execute as Walt’s final dreams. In fact, Marty included many of Walt’s philosophies into the preamble of the EPCOT Building Code that governs all of the property inside the Reedy Creek Improvement District. (the quasi-governmental agency set up to build and support Walt Disney World).
At first glance, it was odd to me that Marty chose to go to the Walt Disney Family Museum and speak about a project completed after Walt passed, but through the 90 minutes Marty spoke, it was clear that Marty views, cares, and wants to protect Epcot as it is Walt’s final legacy and one of Marty’s proudest accomplishments.
After Walt passed, Marty took his notes from his meetings with Walt and combined it together with other material to give to the new Imagineers joining the team to build Walt Disney World so that everyone could get on the same page. By giving them information related to the company’s founder the hope was that everyone would embrace the history and heritage left by Walt. Marty revealed he would be giving a copy of this material to Diane Disney Miller so it could be a part of The Walt Disney Family Museum. For there is no doubt, that Marty wants the legacy of his mentor to live on for future generations.
If you want to learn more from Marty Sklar, you can pick up his book, “Dream It! Do It!: My Half-Century Creating Disney’s Magic Kingdoms”. You can also support Marty’s charity, Ryman Arts, which offers free art classes to young students as a tribute to former Imagineer Herb Ryman.