1964 New York World's Fair - Disney Influence

Disney Influence

The fair also is remembered as the venue Walt Disney used to design and perfect his system of "Audio-Animatronics", in which a combination of electromechanical actuators and computers controls the movement of lifelike robots to act out scenes. The Walt Disney Company designed and created four shows at the fair:

• In "Pepsi Presents Walt Disney's 'It's a small world' - a Salute to UNICEF and the World's Children" at the Pepsi pavilion, animated dolls and animals frolicked in a spirit of international unity accompanying a boat ride around the world. The song was written by the Sherman Brothers. Each of the animated dolls had an identical face, originally designed by New York (Valley Stream) artist Gregory S. Marinello in partnership with Walt Disney himself.

• General Electric sponsored "Progressland", where an audience seated in a revolving auditorium (the "Carousel of Progress") viewed an audio-animatronic presentation of the progress of electricity in the home. The Sherman Brothers song "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" was composed for this attraction. The highlight of the exhibit demonstrated a brief plasma "explosion" of controlled nuclear fusion. The crowd-pleasing loud crack that was produced could be heard even on the line outside in the neighboring Travelers Insurance pavilion.

• Ford Motor Company presented "Ford's Magic Skyway", a WED Imagineering designed pavilion, which was the second most popular exhibit at the fair. It featured 50 motorless convertible Ford Mustangs in an early prototype of what would become the PeopleMover ride system. The ride moved the audience through scenes featuring life-sized audio-animatronic dinosaurs and cavemen. The Walt Disney Company had earlier been asked by General Motors to produce their exhibit, which also featured a similar ride and dioramas, but Disney had declined this job.

• At the Illinois pavilion, a lifelike President Abraham Lincoln, voiced by Royal Dano, recited his famous speeches in "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln". In the book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, author James Loewen later noted that the animatronic Abraham Lincoln presented by Disney never mentions slavery, thereby throwing its historical trustworthiness into question.

After the fair, there was some discussion of the Disney company retaining these exhibits on-site and converting Flushing Meadows Park into an East Coast version of Disneyland, but this idea was abandoned. Instead, Disney relocated several of these exhibits to Disneyland in Anaheim, California and subsequently replicated them at other Disney theme parks. Today's Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida is essentially the realization of the original concept of an "East Coast Disneyland" with Epcot Center designed as a "permanent" world's fair.

All four attractions from 1964 are still represented in one way or another: Two attractions from the fair are relatively unchanged, including a replica of "It's a small world" and the original (albeit updated) Carousel of Progress. Versions of "It's a small world" are an attraction at all five Disney Magic Kingdom-style parks, and its theme song is among the most widely known on the planet.

The two remaining attractions exist as evolutions of the originals. The dinosaurs from Ford's Magic Skyway became the Disneyland Railroad Primeval World diorama, and the motorized tires embedded in the track which propelled and regulated the speed of ride vehicles inspired Disneyland's PeopleMover, and later the Tomorrowland Transit Authority of Walt Disney World Resort's Magic Kingdom. "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" was expanded into The Hall of Presidents.

Meanwhile, Disneyland still hosts the original "It's a small world" and "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" transferred from New York, as well as the now-unused track of the original Disneyland PeopleMover based on the Ford's Magic Skyway. The original Carousel of Progress was first moved to Disneyland in 1967 and then to its current home at the Magic Kingdom in 1973.

Disney used technologies developed for the fair to create the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, and Epcot Center's original attractions borrowed heavily from the audio-animatronic advances of the fair and its general design guidelines.