-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
News Phil Holmes Retiring in August
- Thread starter realBobChapek
- Start date
peter11435
Well-Known Member
Thats really not the only option.
Is that your takeaway from Joe Rohde being featured in the haunted mansion? or Joe Lanzisero being in Roger Rabbit cartoon spin? what about the windows on Main Street? Castaway Cay signage, haunted mansion tombstones...
They’ve done these sort of tributes for years.
The Empress Lilly
Well-Known Member
Yes, fair points.
Frankly I also find the big Baxter portrait in Thunder a bit much. 2010s Disney. Although Baxter, too, is both an aimiable man and a vain one who knows how to work corporate culture and sell himself.
Tributes easily turn into vanity. Naming the trains and ships, MS windows, using relatives as models - these retain an air of restraint. The Empress Lilly takes Lillian Disney's name, but there's no lifesize statue of her in front.
I'm not sure where, if at all, there is a line. Maybe a matter of subjective taste.
Cockerell retired at 49 to begin his consulting business in which he travels the world as a motivational speaker. He should have kept working.
the.dreamfinder
Well-Known Member
Lee Cockerell, Dan’s father, was one of the main architects in the watering down of Walt Disney World.
Animaniac93-98
Well-Known Member
In hindsight, it's surprising WDI hasn't put up a life-size bronze statue of Lilly somewhere on Disney property a la Walt and Roy.
Not that I'm suggesting they should, it's just the kind of (literal) corporate myth building they'd do.
Lee's a really nice guy and did a lot of good in terms of cast empowerment and some other things.
What he did not do well was a lot of the homogenization across property, which basically watered down the restaurants, resorts and other guest facing areas from each having their own identity to just being kind of part of, essentially, a "chain."
Last edited:
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
I think there is a big difference when it is your coworker.
The Empress Lilly
Well-Known Member
What do you mean?
I'm afraid the reference is lost on me.
Animaniac93-98
Well-Known Member
Phil Holmes was still working at MK when his portrait went up.
He's that influential to be honored while still working! That's impressive.
peter11435
Well-Known Member
All but one of the examples I gave were tributes installed while the respective honoree was still in their role.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Using the name or likeness of a fellow Imagineer versus an executive. A prominent example would be Joe Rhode as the model for Harrison Hightower. He wasn’t part of the Tower of Terror design team nor was he any sort of gatekeeper for projects at Tokyo DisneySEA. That’s how a lot of these things started, a name on something that would have one adds realism and using the name of someone you know is an easy way to have a name instead of pun or something else.
The Empress Lilly
Well-Known Member
I do believe this is how Baxter's portrait came about too. A tribute decades later by a new generation. But I'm too lazy to look that up.
Beyond creatives, executives have tributes too. Precedents to Holmes' 'doggy syndrome' painting (doges too love to mark where they've been...) could be naming the Liberty Belle ship the Richard F. Irvine. Or Meg Crofton's MS window. I must confess I find the Irvine sign less grating than the Holmes and Crofton tributes, but I can't identify why. I hate to be found out as just a petty traditionalist, but not enough to invent an intellectually dishonest trivial distinction.
