News

Jim, as we record today’s show, our intrepid field reporter Christina is sitting down for lunch at Roundup Rodeo BBQ and will be texting us commentary as she goes through the menu. So I’ll be providing those updates in real time throughout the show.

Jim, did you tell our listeners where we’ve been for the last couple of weeks?

• Las Vegas

• Omega Mart and Area 15

• California

• Garner Holt factory tour

• Disney Imagineering Archives Tour

• There’s an actual brochure of the Peoplemove expansion to Disney Springs

• DCA and Disneyland
  
  

• TRON is in soft opening at the Magic Kingdom, well ahead of its official opening on April 4.

• Virtual queue reservations are selling out in under 4 seconds each day.
• Individual Lightning Lane is just over $21 per person including tax.
• The walkway between Tomorrowland and Storybook Circus has reopened.        

• Breakfast and lunch will return to EPCOT’s Restaurant Akershus in the Norway pavilion.

• Returns May 14.
• With princesses
• No pricing or menus yet.

• While we’re on the subject of character dining, there’s a rumor going around that 1900 Park Fair’s reopening should be announced soon as well.
• A former Disney Imagineer has posted to social media a set of images that show what the Mary Poppins ride would’ve looked like in EPCOT’s United Kingdom pavilion.
  
  

• Two preshow scenes?

• Speaking of concept art, Disney’s released a visual of the scene inside the first drop of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure:
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• Disney’s testing a 30% discount for DVC members at the Galactic Starcruiser in August. I think this is a sign that more discounts are coming. And I’d be surprised if 30% is the number that gets people to go, because it’s still around $3,500, which is a lot of money.

Surveys

Our friend Lauren sends in a survey she got after a stay at the Polynesian Villas:

• Why didn’t you use Minnie Vans?
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• And:
  
• Lauren also mentions that there was a series of questions at the end of the survey, asking how many times you experienced different things.  And you couldn’t answer 0 for any of those questions:
  
  

Listener Questions

Patents:

Robert A.M. Stern feature piece

Part One of Two

Before we get started here today … Wanted to talk with you about a real estate opportunity. 5-acre lot overlooking the Pacific Ocean in scenic Malibu. Owned by Michael & Jane Eisner. Listed in May of last year for $225 million.

Real estate prices dipping all over the country. Not in this case. Largely because the Eisner compound (Michael & Jane started with one house lot in Malibu in the mid-1990s and – over time – bought the four house lots to either side) was designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern. Stern eventually finished work on this 9 building, 16 bedroom complex (which is village-like in its layout) in 2020.

Michael (who’s 81) and Jane have decided to simplify their lives. They’ve put the Malibu compound on the market but are hanging onto their Spruce Lodge complex up in Colorado (which was also designed by Robert A.M. Stern). Huge hotel-like estate. Described as “ … a log lodge built on a stone foundation combines the rustic forms of an Adirondack camp with a Rocky Mountain ranch.”

For those who’ve been paying attention to many of the buildings that The Walt Disney Company has constructed around the globe, it’s not honestly a surprise that Robert A.M. Stern designed not one but two of Michael Eisner’s homes. During Eisner’s architecture patron phase, Michael hired some of the great architects of the 1990s – among them Michael Graves, Peter Dominick & Arata Isozaki – to design structures for the Company. But only one of these architects was offered a seat on Disney’s board of directors. And that was Robert A.M. Stern.

Eisner’s flirtation with being an architect patron dates back to … Well, when he came on board as Disney’s new CEO in last September of 1984. Among the many things that Michael inherited with his new job at the Mouse House was a handshake deal that Disney had with Tishman Realty & Construction. These were the folks who had done most of the heavy lifting (construction-wise) on EPCOT Center in the early 1980s.

And because they had actually managed to get this 305 acre complex (that’s more than twice the size of WDW’s Magic Kingdom, by the way), Disney World management had agreed to give Tishman Realty & Construction the right to build a convention center (along with a convention hotel that could feature upwards of 20,000 moderately priced rooms) anywhere they like on Walt Disney World property.

Mind you, it was the previous Disney management team that had had this handshake deal with Tishman. Not Michael Eisner & Frank Wells. And Michael thought that he might be able to get far better terms for a convention center & convention hotel if he pursued an agreement with Marriott instead of Tishman. So meetings with Marriott were held on the sly. Execs at Tishman somehow found out. And then – in February of 1986 – they sued The Walt Disney Company for $1.3 billion.

Which was actually okay with Michael Eisner. Because – by this time – he’d seen what Marriott was planning on Disney World property. The convention center and that convention hotel which could eventually be expanded into a facility with 20,000 moderately priced hotel rooms. And Eisner wasn’t very enthusiastic about what he saw. He reportedly described the convention hotel facility that Marriott wanted to build as “ … a bunch of refrigerator boxes.”

Mind you, Michael had been on the job at Disney for about a year and a half at this point. And he had begun toying with an overall vision for the Walt Disney Company (which was an entertainment company) where even the buildings that the Company would be housed in would be entertaining.

By January of 1988, Eisner had cut a deal with Tishman that then shut down their $1.3 billion lawsuit. They’d now be allowed to build their convention center & convention hotel (Luckily for Disney, the site that Tishman chose for this project was right down the road from Epcot Center). But Disney would be allowed to pick the architect for this project. And that was Michael Graves.

Now it’s important to point out that – prior to the Dolphin & the Swan – Michael Graves had never designed a hotel before. And there are those who will tell you that the Dolphin & the Swan definitely show Graves’ lack of experience when it comes to designing hotels.

But Eisner was still solidly in Graves’ corner at this time because Michael had come up with the design for the Team Disney Burbank building. The company’s corporate headquarters on the Disney Lot.

As the story goes, while the Team Disney Burbank building was in its initial design phase, Eisner reportedly told Graves “ … when I come in to work each morning and go up to my office, I’ll probably have very little to smile about. So do something with this building that will make me smile whenever I arrive.”

So Michael Graves did some research about the Disney Company and discovered that the land that the Burbank lot stood on had been purchased back in August of 1938 with the money that had been generated from the enormous success of the Company’s first full-length animated feature, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Which had premiered in December of 1937 but had gone into wide release in February of 1938.

So since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was truly the foundation of the Disney Studios in Burbank, Graves decided to make the Team Disney Burbank pay tribute to that motion picture by having the Seven Dwarfs themselves serve as Carry-at-Dids for this structure. For those of you who don’t know, a Carry-At-Did is a sculpted figure that serves as an architectural support, which then takes the place of a column or a pillar that supports horizontal bands with this building.

19-foot-tall dwarfs.

The Team Disney Burbank building was completed in 1990 and did make Michael Eisner smile.

Which is more than you can say about Walt Disney World’s Dolphin & the Swan. By that I mean: They did finally give the Resort an on-site convention center of size (far bigger than the convention facilities over at the Contemporary) with an attached hotel facility. But the look of these two structures (the Swan with its 12-story-tall rectangular main building flanked by its two 7-story-tall wings which is then connected by a walkway across water to the 26-story-tall triangular Dolphin) has been considered controversial since these two hotels opened just six months apart (The 758-room Swan in January of 1990, and the 1509-room Dolphin just six months later in June of that same year).

Ever hear the story of why the Dolphin & the Swan look the way that they do? It actually borrows a page from the backstory of Typhoon Lagoon.

To hear Michael Graves tell the story, Walt Disney World’s Dolphin Hotel is actually a tropical island that was formed by a sudden cataclysmic event — an upheaval by an underwater volcano or earthquake. When the island emerged from under the sea, it lifted dolphins out of the water, and these are the dolphins on the roof. A mountain struggled to thrust its way upward out of the tropical rainforest. That is the reason for the banana leaves painted along the side of the building to suggest a tropical forest.

The struggle caused the heart of the mountain to explode, and the water cascades nine stories down the side of the hotel, passing through five clamshell basins to a fountain, eventually splashing into Crescent Lake. Notice that the walkway from the Walt Disney World Dolphin to the Walt Disney World Swan has railings and landscaping that mimic waves. The water splashes up onto the Walt Disney World Swan and that accounts for the waves painted on the side of that hotel.

Okay. So it doesn’t exactly look like any tropical island that you’ve seen before. This was because Michael Graves was considered the king of architectural postmodernism.

Michael Eisner had initially been pleased with the small scale models of the Dolphin & the Swan. But was kind of taken aback when the 26 story, 12 story and 9 story buildings began to rise up out of the ground and visually intrude on both Epcot Center and the then-still-under-construction Disney-MGM.

Turkey & the Tuna nickname. Joke that all of the rooftops of the pavilions around World Showcase should have their country’s national animal placed up on the top.

Eisner continued to support Graves’ endeavors. Michael designed the post office at Celebration. Likewise the Hotel New York at Disneyland Paris (recently rethemed / relaunched at the Hotel New York – Art of Marvel). But when it came to WDW and entertainment architecture, Eisner now embraces another vision. One that largely flowed off of the design table of one Robert A.M. Stern.

Second installment of this series … We’ll talk about the many structures that Stern designed for the Walt Disney World Resort.

BCX