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Walt Disney World in Florida is a mecca for tourists now, but back in the early 1960s, it was just swampland. Walt had his choice of many locations, so why did he choose the Orlando area? An article at mental_floss has the answer. But even after he decided on the site, buying the land and building on it had their own problems.
Although he had solved the problem of where to build, a new dilemma cropped up: Walt knew if he was making queries about buying land under his own name, the insanely cheap swampland price of $180 an acre would immediately skyrocket. To avoid price gouging, he created a number of fake companies and purchased the land under their names instead. It only worked for a little while – the Orlando Sentinel caught whiff of the scheme and published a story reporting that Walt was the man behind the purchase of thousands of acres of land in Orange and Osceola counties. He was right about the money – in some cases, prices went up to $80,000 an acre.
Of course, the property now is worth its weight in gold. Link
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The Sunshine Pavilion at Walt Disney World in Florida, home of the magical Tiki Birds, opened in 1971 with a show modeled on the older Disneyworld version. Many longtime Disney theme park fans objected when the Tiki Room’s “Under New Management” show debuted in 1998 featuring Zazu from The Lion King and Iago from Aladdin. Now that the attraction had a forced retooling after it was severely damaged by a fire in January, the show will be changed yet again -to be more like the original Disneyland (California) show.
The “new management” has been let go and the future of the Adventureland landmark is in the wings and wit of José, Fritz, Michael and Pierre – four crooning parrot hosts who ushered in sophisticated Audio-Animatronics technology at California’s Disneyland in 1963 at The Enchanted Tiki Room.
The attraction, to be renamed The Enchanted Tiki Room, is scheduled to reopen in August. Link -via Boing Boing
Previously: Neatorama Facts: The Enchanted Tiki Room
Chewbacca and an Ewok do Guns ‘N’ Roses to get the crowd fired up for Star Wars Weekend 2011 at Walt Disney World. Continue on to see the full 24-minute dance-off show. -via Geeks Are Sexy
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The Haunted Mansion attraction at Walt Disney World features tombstones inscribed with the names of real people. This series of posts called 13 Tombstones tracks down who those people are -mostly Disney employees whose names are now enshrined in the parks for posterity. Link -via Boing Boing
