Originally built to look like a medieval fair, with banners and flags decorating the attraction entrances, Fantasyland received a dramatic makeover in 1983 when Walt Disney Imagineering gave Walt Disney’s “happiest kingdom of them all” a fairy-tale transformation. The attraction facades were given much more than paint touch-ups. Each entrance was completely remodeled to reflect …
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Pictured: Heather O’Rourke and Lance Sloan. To promote Disneyland’s completely remodeled Fantasyland with entirely renovated and additional attractions, Believe You Can… And You Can! aired on television on this day in 1983. In the story, little Heather (Heather O’Rourke) is sad about moving away to Minneapolis. Her brother brings her to Disneyland but leaves her …
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Disney Studio Showcase is a title given to a group of films which first aired in 1983 and were produced under the supervision of Disney’s feature film division. This unique collection of movies featured such fondly remembered films as Beyond Tron, a look at Disney risk-taking through the years from Alice cartoons to Tron, and …
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On this day in 1983, the Disney Channel began broadcasting for the first time. To celebrate this day in Disney history, we thought it would be fun to find someone who was working there at the very second that it all started and located Joanne Crawford Duner. Joanne was kind enough to channel us into …
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After the success of the American Disney Parks, many different countries made entreaties to Disney about building their own version of Walt’s Magic Kingdom. Of all the requests, Japan’s seemed most eminently feasible. The Oriental Land Company had some land reclaimed from the Tokyo Bay, which had to be used for a recreational purpose, and …
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When Walt Disney World opened its doors on October 1, 1971 and introduced the second generation of Disney theme park entertainment, no one could have imagined how popular this worldwide destination would become. Covering 40 square miles, Walt Disney World Resort is about the size of San Francisco or two Manhattan islands. Carrie Stahl went …
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Imagine this… just a few months after the opening of EPCOT Center, as the Walt Disney World park was then called, a new attraction opened in Future World on this day in 1983. Journey into Imagination introduced the world to the characters of the human Dreamfinder and the lovable, purple dragon-like creature named Figment, voiced …
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On October 1, 1982, EPCOT Center (now known simply as Epcot) first invited the public to explore “this place of joy, hope and friendship,” as Disney chairman and CEO Card Walker would describe it in his dedication speech. Throughout the month, each of the pavilions in both Future World and World Showcase would have its …
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In 1982, before laptops and DVDs, before multi-gigabyte hard drives and the World Wide Web, there came the silver screen computer world of Tron. Tron tells the story of Kevin Flynn, a brilliant young video game programmer for ENCOM, who discovers that Ed Dillinger, in an effort to boost his own career, has stolen Flynn’s …
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On this day in 1982, TV audiences learned that Computers Are People, Too! At a time when PCs were far from common in most households, the show offered a look at how dancers, artists, and composers use computers to create or enhance their own craft (not by coincidence, the program coincided with the original release …
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