In Disney's fantasy world

ANITA JOSHUA

What better tribute can there be to the genius of the Disney brothers and those keeping alive their legacy than the sea of humanity that visits their amusement parks in the age of virtual reality and talking books.

Each a complete holiday destination by itself, the four Disney properties - Disneyland in Southern California, Walt Disney World (WDW) in Central Florida, Euro-Disney in Paris and Tokyo Disneyland - represent a world created to bring a smile to every face. Of the four, WDW in Orlando is the biggest spread as it is over 47 sq miles which makes it twice the size of New York's Manhattan.

Only a third of the property has been developed and WDW already has four theme parks, three water parks, 27 hotels - 17 of them owned and operated by WDW - besides a host of other attractions including half-a-dozen golf courses, a sports complex, a multi- screen movie theatre and a pick of nightclubs.

A township by itself, WDW is administered by Walt Disney Productions; something that is evident the moment you cross into the property, thanks mainly to the Mickey-eared signboards in festive hues of purple and red, and the use of Disney dollars. But what really signals the self-administered nature of WDW is the conspicuous absence of men in uniform.

Inside each attraction, cast members - this is how employees are addressed at WDW - keep a tight rein on the goings-on without ever being offensive or officious. If there is any place in the park where their behaviour borders on the offensive, it is at the 'Haunted House' attraction in Magic Kingdom. Here cast members dressed up as grouchy witches usher guests into the cobwebbed 'attraction' by addressing them as "stinky bodies".

At every attraction of WDW, cast members are clothed differently. So at Cinderella's Castle, you may run into her step-mother or Prince Charming dressed exactly the way they are in picture- books. Even if the cast members are uniformed in shorts and T- shirts, no two attractions at WDW have them wearing the same colours/patterns. And with over 50,000 cast members, the WDW closet has more than 2.5 million garments; making it the largest working wardrobe in the world.

Coming back to how WDW managed to secure the right to administer the area, Walt Disney Productions negotiated with the Florida administration and secured a degree of autonomy for the East Coast Disneyland as it was Walt Disney's dream to build a "planned city" and avoid the imperfections that had crept into the original Disneyland in California.

Sadly, Walt Disney himself never lived to see his model of a "planned city" take shape. A little over a year after it became public the vast and partly swampy land of Orlando had been selected to house the second Disneyland from among sites in St. Louis, Niagara Falls, Baltimore, Washington D.C. and Queens in New York, Walt Elias Disney died on December 15, 1966; 10 days short of his 65th birthday.

His obvious successor was his brother Roy Oliver Disney, the man who complemented Walt Disney's creative genius with organisational back-up from behind the scenes. He personally steered the planning and construction of the Orlando project to its opening in October 1971. To ensure that the entire world knew Disney World was his brother's dream, he renamed it Walt Disney World.

Though WDW opened with only the Magic Kingdom - Disney's flagship amusement park which was also the original name of Disneyland when it opened in California in 1955 - the subsequent years saw the World grow beyond the dream of the original dreamer: Walt Disney.

But first things first. Walt Disney was not interested in just making a replica of Disneyland. What excited him most about the Disney World project was his plan for a "science fiction city of the future" christened by him shortly before his death as the 'Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT)'. So, the first project that was taken up by those left in charge with the legacy following Roy Disney's death was EPCOT which opened on October 1, 1982; exactly 11 years - to the day - after Magic Kingdom was thrown open.

A showcase for "the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise", EPCOT represents a community of tomorrow that will never be completed. But then nothing at Disney is permanent, say cast members. Every now and then new attractions are introduced like "Rock 'n' Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith" at WDW's third theme park, Disney-MGM Studios. And old ones are made more attractive. A case in point being 'Tiki Birds' - Disney's first Audio-Animatronics attraction at Magic Kingdom - that has just acquired some new characters and been packaged anew as 'The Enchanted Tiki Room'.

Since the word impossible did not exist in Walt Disney's dictionary, it is a term that has apparently been struck off the vocabulary of WDW. How else do you explain the recreation of the Kilimanjaro Safaris - complete with its savannah grasslands and the real animals that inhabit the African jungle - in WDW's youngest theme park, Animal Kingdom, which opened on April 22, 1998.

Slated to open in 2005, the Hong Kong Disneyland - a mix of the best attractions from other Magic Kingdoms - will be Asia's second Disney stop after the Tokyo Disneyland which attracts the maximum number of visitors. But for those who want it all, there will still be no alternative to Walt Disney World in Orlando.

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