By Max Lark With Pete’s Dragon charming audiences and critics in theaters, we Disney fans can’t help but be reminded of the 1977 film of the same name. Although the new film portrays a completely different adventure, it shares the central premise of the earlier film—telling the unforgettable story of an orphaned boy named Pete …
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By D23 Team D23 Members will explore the travels and adventures of the “Showman of the World” as the Walt Disney Archives presents “Walt’s Great Adventures” at Destination D: Amazing Adventures, November 19 and 20 at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. This special exhibit, created exclusively for the event, will feature rare photography, models, and props that …
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By Nicole Nalty On August 6, 1961, guests began to fly into the future with Walt Disney’s latest attraction, the Flying Saucers. Bringing life to a relatively quiet Tomorrowland, the Flying Saucers were the bumper cars of the future—the saucers hovered above the ground thanks to bursts of air shooting through the attraction’s floor. While …
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By Steven Vagnini Sixty-five years ago, on July 26, 1951, Walt Disney’s long-awaited animated fantasy Alice in Wonderland was unveiled to audiences with a premiere at the Leicester Square Theatre in London. A film adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic stories had been on Walt’s mind for nearly 20 years—after silent film star Mary Pickford (a …
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By Steven Vagnini “I get red, white, and blue at times,” Walt Disney once said, expressing his deep love for America. Walt’s passion for his country was made especially evident during the official dedication ceremonies for Disneyland, when, standing just a few feet away from the American flag in Town Square, he proclaimed, “Disneyland is …
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By Greg Ehrbar More than a decade before Walt Disney welcomed guests into his land of fantasy and two decades before author Roald Dahl penned his excursion into The BFG’s cave and Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, these two creative legends crossed paths in 1942 when The Walt Disney Studios optioned Dahl’s first book, The Gremlins, …
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By Les Perkins When discussing the early Disney feature films, we usually refer to the five classics: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi. But there’s actually a sixth feature sandwiched in between Fantasia (November 1940) and Dumbo (October 1941): The Reluctant Dragon, released June 20, 1941. The film provided a …
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By Steven Vagnini Since starting his “Ask Dave” question-and-answer column in the early 1980s, Disney Legend and Walt Disney Archives founder Dave Smith has answered thousands of burning questions from Disney fans all over the world. In 2012, a collection of these answers was published in a book—Disney Trivia from the Vault—and just this month, …
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By Steven Vagnini This spring, D23 invites fans to take an inside look at a few beloved rain-and-flower sequences for insight into these memorable moments in Disney animation. From feature films like Bambi and Alice in Wonderland to shorts like Ferdinand the Bull and Disney•Pixar’s The Blue Umbrella, the fan in all of us will …
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by Stacia Martin While not a musician himself, Walt Disney instinctively recognized the appeal of rhythm from his earliest filmmaking days—even before pictures learned to talk. Beat, meter, patterns, and cycles created visual harmonics onscreen in much the same way that poetry can be said to communicate the musicality of words without the addition of melody. …
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