Whicker's World WDW Walt Disney World Pre-Opening, July 1971 U.K. TV Show

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] there's nowhere lazier than a cow town in Central Florida a peaceful cluster of dilapidation where folk can meander kissimmee frontier town with a gallop in bar it's that kind of a place nothing much ever happens [Music] except the morning train to temper should it ever drop a passenger it seems like Russia and people start wondering what's up what's up right now is so unusual that Kissimmee will never be the same again this place is about to be pixelated and no one around here is quite sure whether that's a good thing to be but good or bad it's a revolutionary a cataclysmic process involving 100 million pounds and 10 million people that's just for this year so right now I'm off to see the Wizard [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] you can see why it's called Orange County yet all these trees are about to disappear the lazy days are almost over and those groves will soon look like this on a site bigger than Manchester a spread of swamp and woodland 80 times the size of Hyde Park they're building a fantasy for a hundred and twenty five million pounds this is the house the mouse built the two million pound centerpiece of Walt Disney World the biggest thing to hit Florida since sunshine Cinderella's castle a fiberglass inspiration that looks real from any distance should this be your idea of reality on October the first Mickey Mouse aged 43 opens his billion-dollar business here an improbable dream of Disney Imagineers to cater for 10,000 visitors an hour 50,000 a day ten million a year and so solve many American's worries about expanding laser time and surplus cash the first years take should be 40 million pounds amid a profusion of whimsy nothing's what it seems to be it's all fiberglass and clever plate they even build trees branch by branch vinyl leaves upon a steel skeleton but there's nothing up in the air about Disney's accountants who've calculated each visiting family should spend around 40 pounds for their day out in an unreal world where man-made animals and dead presidents controlled by computers will move and talk life dehumanized but frightening Lea imitated by audio animatronics we're walking down our main street now USA and this is an old old town during the 1890s and all these little stores and shops here will be open for business I just swallowed one your fun that's an audio-animatronic fly it's a bogus street but it's quite enchanting oh yes we'll have boutiques we'll have ice-cream shops and we'll have card shop an Emporium where you can buy anything Mickey Mouse hat shirt anything down at the end of our Main Street here you see the train station this is where our guests will first enter into walk his neighbor predigested nostalgia across an area 90 times larger than the Californian Disneyland we're outside promoters made four times business profit from his crowds so here in Florida he bought 27,000 acres to keep his customers captive in five giant resort hotels they'll play here and they'll stay here for 15 pounds a day without food hotels perfectly sited of course straddling artificial lakes with man-made islands visitors will arrive by boat or by this sky highway traveling by high-speed monorail through the biggest private construction Enterprise in the world silent trains will run right through this Grand Canyon of a hotel lobby soon to be a landscaped park with trees a thousand prefabricated rooms built down the road were just slotted in there'll also be four motels a city of tomorrow for 20,000 people 200 ships on five lakes a couple of railways and a wholesome tribe of a hundred American hostesses we call the University of Walt Disney World what do you doing the University we learned a great deal about Walt Disney what his thinking was what his philosophy was and that's where we get our pixie dust the most important thing is is to learn exactly what this is all about what Walt wanted and that's that's the most important what about this pixie dust well how does it show itself Oh pixie dust is I think just a feeling that you get remember in the story of Peter Pan when Tinker Bell flew down and sprinkled pixie dust everyone could fly everyone have this feeling they and I think that's what pixie dust is with us when we think of spreading it we think of spreading happiness and the Disney feeling throughout the employees and throughout the the gets but I think I'm not impressed by honey and that is that Walt Disney is about to be deified it's gonna be st. Walt in in 25 years time I'm sure all right oh yeah oh yes to me he's my life he really is he's me he's given me seven wonderful years that I I couldn't have gotten without Walt Disney and what he's created we're ready to go out and tear the world up we're ready to tell everybody and that's what we called pixie dust it's just just something we have that we spread how do you go why can't I have something you've got it coming down it's either giving people a chance to be themselves or to regress into childhood right it's it's it's so innocent it's unbelievable well people are people are so afraid to do what they want to do but here or at Disneyland they can do anything they want to do they're not afraid to laugh or to sit down on the floor and do anything they want it's just the atmosphere you know because for one thing the employees which I am they're doing the same things you'll see i skidding around the floor all the time and sometimes it gets a little out of hand I think but most of the time everybody joins in you know and it's it's just fun and that's part of the excitement too we respect people like this company is a first name company Roy Disney we call him Roy and they'll correct you every time if you call them mr. Disney or mr. Tatem and that doesn't that make you feel good it does me just to know that but I was special enough to to call the big man that is this part of the costume The Watcher now we get wig affairs ourselves but we can wear them and most all the girls did he sort of our patron saint yes he is actually and I noticed that Walt Disney is being almost deified or sanctified isn't there one sees his photograph placed discreetly in various places like a shrine on earth I think it's do I really do myself if I can meet anybody in the world or could have met I think he'd be the one Chris I work here and I've grown to love him more and more but I think he has his place as one of the greatest Americans ever worship inspired by a sort of genius whose sweet vision of innocence spun fantasies reconcile generations awakened Oh dreams but never forgot the hard sell the thing is that the Disney World is located just a few miles from the crossing point of Interstate 4 at Sunshine State Parkway Disney died of cancer five years ago but does not go short of memorials at his Californian University this Welshman was an instructor responsibilities was to perhaps use the word indoctrinate the new employees when they first arrived with the company and put them through a four-hour orientation program this was to make them have the right attitudes and by presentation and to uphold the image of the company now what is the right attitude the right attitude is one of perhaps mimicking what most people call the all-american person the smiling youthful full of energy young man or woman that have clean attitudes and smile and words and smiling phrases this is this pixie dust thing is this is the pixie dust thing yes so I suppose the people may be brainwashed more easily if they've been selected carefully in the first place what's the problem of selection well first of all your screamed to make sure that you're fit the Disney image but you don't have spots your hair is not too long you'll present an attractive appearance beginning to sound they said I couldn't get a dog with it probably not you'd have to do quite a bit of renovation shave off your moustache sideburns have a haircut it's just like going into the army it's too much what else anything else your classes probably if you were behind the scenes it wouldn't matter so much but if you're in front of the public you shouldn't really wear that no glasses and also it would help to polish up your teeth your standard address has to be it can be perhaps very much conservative by American standards give me a time yes how's your dress now which would be perfectly acceptable for most supervisors reposition okay I think it's really the bar but I don't think I'll try well what's he got against mustaches Walt Disney word of a stache this I can never understand yes yes Walter wore a mustache and the thing is though it's uncontrollable this is the point once you allow an infringement of the sort of basic rules you would find the mustache would become a long walrus mustache or something like this and the whole attitude is not only to appear neat and tidy but also clean the compensation is the the pixie dust the fact that you are honored and respected in the community and you automatically become a an accepted social person so it seems that I'm an untouchable as far as Disney is concerned on just about every count these encyclopedias are they're backstage Bibles confidential instructions to their executives from the Disney Land University out in California where they manufacture the pixie dust and for example here's some instructions some Commandments one might say about the Disneyland look hair neatly trimmed and tapered at the sides and back height of the hair from the crown of the head should not exceed one inch shaving eyebrows is considered an extreme and is not permitted sideburns should be neatly trimmed and should not extend below mid ear mustaches are not permitted no beards will be allowed in the park men are requested to wear black shoes and black socks the only jewelry to be worn watches and approved tie clips and approved tie clip is one with Mickey Mouse on it a blueprint of the future is about to be stamped upon tranquill kissimmee with its 23 churches and pious senior citizens all about to be overwhelmed by disney's eager army offering instant happiness - millions of tourists these gentle folk is still unaware a suspect of the magnitude of this coming invasion business presented been used for idioms with the wildest statistics since spaceflight his incredible playground will generate 80,000 jobs 3,000 million pounds in cash a thousand new hotels restaurants service stations in the land rush a one acre lot has just sold for a hundred and twenty five thousand pounds and disney has seven thousand hard hats on the job with a payroll of half a million pounds a week before they appeared johnny's corner did a daily business of just ten dollars i believe that's right and that right when i sprite start now what sort of business do you reckon you're doing now well it's we're doing we're doing oh I'd say what 40 40 50 times that much you're catching a lot of checks I say oh yeah what sort of a mounted you catch Oh we'd probably around 25 $35 I was the business changed here apart from multiplying 40 or 50 times how the custom has changed everything knives is a construction worker I mean I'd say 99.9% of its construction worker looks to me as though you can't cope with a business X well that's about the truth that's about that's that's about extent that it is see this is the only place around 10 miles that anybody can get any beer or Coca Cola's anything else there nice milk your bank manager must be smiling more than you are yeah well they they smile [Music] a forced smile though from the rancher who almost missed out on the boom senator Ella Brunson did business with Disney's original buyers when they first tiptoed into the state seven years ago snapping up land in various company names before revealing their master plan you sold most of the land that Disney has now Disney World to him do you wish you hadn't no sir you got I'm told that they cust isn't an average of one hundred and eighty-seven dollars an acre that's probably about right on this whole welfare but now it's selling for about sixty thousand dollars an acre isn't it so move it in somewhere don't you feel maybe that you lost a few chances there well my dad told me a long time ago I don't have a look back making mistake is always just as good ahead if you know how to work and did yeah yeah well I hope so you're still selling land oh yeah I see but of course not to Disney to the operators yes how much land do you have left mr. 100 a day I can see why you've got the solid gold Cadillac man since you've been down at least fifteen years how price has changed well we went $50 an acre some of even as low as $25 an acre and that same property today is selling up as high as ten thousand fifteen twenty thousand dollars an acre it's a neat profit has been very steady it's been very steady but this boom must have brought in a lot of very suspect operators in your line of country not as many as people predicted or thought they you'll probably see more of those as we as we as we become more populated as the other development start that's when the real promoter and that type gets in this is still pretty straight you know most of the people in the area and in the banks and everything else but I mean everyone's at five years warning I would have thought the the con artists would have been in here five years ago public weren't here though you only have the the natives and you're not about if I may use to con the natives now no way these are pretty sharp individuals these Cowboys yes you're not gonna be taken quickly so you think this is the the quick money operators it will be starting to come in now right now they'll start but I've been hearing some extraordinary stories even now people buying swampland over the telephone well you know this is true but there's always that type in every business and we do have some that are selling by mail and telephone hotline telephone what they call watch lines they run what you call a boiler room operation they may have ten or fifteen salesmen on the telephone calling mrs. Jones in Wisconsin and saying I've got a marvelous thing to you I understand you own property near so-and-so well I've got some 120 miles from Walt Disney World an acre and a quarter for only nine thousand dollars now that's marvelous you could come to Florida and vacation there and then go see Disney but they told him it was a hundred and twenty five miles away I mean I've got an airtight just pulled out of the paper that reads just like that and the contract reads this land is not going to be used for anything but floodwaters then they're foolish enough to sign it that is they deserve to lose it what can you say a lot of people think they can't they can't go wrong yeah what seemed to me is this truth that you can't lose money buying land in a place like this we don't feel that you can lose money we're investing all we can find in the land it's almost possible that you can almost throw a dart on the wall within a 25 mile radius of the Disney property and know that you're going to have a good investment in in if not in one year at least in ten it'll happen it'll be here sounds you've got a nice quiet little play fair well let's start it I mean this is boom boom town and actually what's going to happen is everything is going to step up I mean every year as we get closer to Disney's opening in October the pace will pick up then the thousands of the millions of people they're talking about a million people a month coming into the area and you've never had a million people in this area in a year much less a month so you imagine what's going to happen this is this is going to be boom boom town USA is what it amounts to so it's boom boom time on the pickings are sweet they're soon the only orange tree around here will be in Disney World with plastic fruit on the sidelines of this show that's about to begin the residents of threat on the back waters have just started to erect their defenses we're going to have to learn to live with it and plan to try to keep our tranquility we still want to keep it a one of the best residential areas in the county but how do you keep tranquility when you're getting 10 or 12 million people trained it's very hard we just do the best we can and we don't want to pave the streets we don't want to change anything we don't want to widen the streets or pave the only change we're gonna have I guess we'll be young people people yes somebody was forecasting 25 mile traffic jams our noses well I just say wait to see well what about the policemen is it one place won't know if you've got more than one we have two now and we'll probably have three before the end of the year okay Fred most of Windham is residents retired to these peaceful waters to discover Disney looks down on them you can see the big contemporary hotel within sight of our own front yard and right there five miles from where I'm pointing there is a city of 80,000 being planned and when that city goes up it will go up all at one time the shopping centers the hotels the motels the residences the City Hall everything's going to be built at once then three miles further down the road is the largest industrial center in Florida being built and that will have perhaps a hundred thousand people now when you get lots of people added in the neighborhood of a little village in 312 registered voters it's going to have some effect on us and we'd rather be left alone now Disney is going to bring a lot of money to Florida economically it's a great thing for the state but personally and I have a lot of friends and Disney and I hope you don't show this film where my friends will see it but I wish they had built Disney where just about another hundred and fifty miles in the direction I'm pointing and then we would be happy like all the businessmen are happy I can see this beautiful lake mile after mile as busy as a serpentine in London yeah yeah where people would be rowing little canoes around and the boats will be bumper-to-bumper my favorite pastime is to come out here in the middle of the afternoon in this boat and turn the motor off and sit and drift and read a book all afternoon Wow Gladys sits over there and works a crossword puzzle or reads a book we get a lot of think time that's why we moved to Windermere from Washington DC we have seat doesn't it seems to me is gonna make a lot of money for 5% of the people and just be milling inconvenience for the other night well I don't know the percentages but somewhere down the line that is true now one thing that we're pretty sure within the next 15 years now you'll talk to people in Orlando who will tell you three years five years but within the next 15 years Orlando area will be the largest area in Florida this will be larger than Miami we like the life here that's why we want to keep it we want to keep the lakes clean enough so that five years from now that same little girl can water-ski behind the boat safely and not have it so polluted that she doesn't dare go swimming in now right now you can drink this water this is the price of progress but you're getting your progress in one big dollar bunch of it the only thing wrong with progress it never stops so kiss amis transformation begins Main Street into motel and hot dog strip cow town into Mouse town with all the signs of progress [Music] to cope with Cup final traffic arriving every day of the year a new network of magnificent highways which will surely be an adequate and for meandering folk a noisy no-man's lega problems are on the way for the Windermere rotary which today can still enjoy it's 7:00 a.m. breakfast gathering by a quiet country lane we have doubled the size of our sewage treatment facilities we've more than doubled our water production capacity and treatment ability we've more than doubled our electric generation and distribution capability of course the big problem is money you see Disney's taking all the goodies and given the Orlando and Kissimmee all the problems they're not building jails or hospitals we have to they're not building schools we have to which means that our areas got to pay for their for their goody-goody land operation which is exactly what it amounts to they're taking the profits they are taking the profit yes they've led Miami they own the real estate agents why we wouldn't say that I'd say the investors we're just helping out they're private parties over in a fantastic fall out of pixie dust the audio-animatronic animals are on the March Central Florida's about to be asphyxiated on the mountaintop Tennessee Green has died in the land of the free Christ in the woods so Lee knew every tree killed him apart he was only three Davey Davey Crockett king of the wild frontier [Music]

Channel: Your Mileage May Vary

Views: 43,335

Rating: 4.8821054 out of 5

Keywords: Disney, WDW, Walt Disney World, Opening, Construction, 1971, United Kingdom, television, CMs, Cast Members, Kissimmee, Windermere, FL, Florida, U.K., TV

Id: oyrxSElC1vs

Length: 27min 5sec (1625 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 10 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Utexan]

Thanks for posting! This was super interesting!

[u/azkyoto]

"Pixie Dust on Goody-Goody Land". Sounds dirty, truly not. Thanks for sharing that!