Arrow was chiefly involved in designing the transportation systems that would make many of the classic Disney rides work to Walt’s vision. Their relationship goes all the way back to Disney’s involvement in World’s Fair projects. Some examples are the boats used in rides like Small World, PoC and the ride you take in the Mexican pavilion in Epcot. They also designed the transportation system for many of Disney’s dark rides which were required to do complex things like hang from ceilings. They also built the first Dumbo style ride made for Disneyland along with the first Tea Cups ride also custom built for Disney. They built Disney’s first (and as far as I know, also their current) curtsey trams and were responsible for making the Doom Buggies of the Haunted Mansions (the precursor to the Disney Omni Mover systems) ride system. Back in those days, Imagineers were mostly Disney animators that had little to no experience in engineering. The Disney Co. was full of ideas but had no real idea on how to pull them off in a safe realistic manner. Enter Arrow. Prior to Disney, Arrow started out as a small machine shop that had nothing to do with rides at all. Its owners purchased a small amusement park as a financial investment only and the machine shop became responsible for the upkeep of the rides. They had designed a few small things for this park (which was aimed at young children) and had done a carousel for someone else. Walt Disney came to them with his ideas for a World’s Fair project and they agreed to work with him. That is how their relationship started. The Disney Co. came up with the ideas and then Arrow figured out how to construct them. They worked hand in hand the whole way and it was a sort of partnership. As a result Disney was pretty much responsible for Arrow becoming what it is today. Arrow did not have a design for a steel coaster prior to Disney’s involvement. In fact, Arrow had never even built a coaster before the Matterhorn. Disney came to them specifically with the idea of building a coaster and having it be made out of steel. Oddly, the Imagineers had more involvement in this new ride system than they had in the previous ones and this one was considerably more complex and dangerous. I think the Matterhorn is what actually launched the Imagineering division into full fledged ride system design….
It was after Disneyland became a success and Arrow’s involvement in the construction became known that Arrow started doing real contract work with amusement parks. So it is feasible to say that we wouldn’t have steel coasters today the way we do now if it weren’t for Disney. Would they have come up with the idea of steel coasters by now? It’s hard to say. At the time when the Matterhorn was built, coasters were not the big thing that they are today. In fact, up until the mid 70’s we were actually seeing a decline in the number of coasters in the world. Steel coasters were largely responsible for the resurgence of their popularity and had Disney and Arrow not pioneered this field, it might not have happened and we may not have ended up with the steel beasts that we have today or… Consider this: Steel on the first coaster was not used so that it could make fancy loops or do much of anything special that a wooden one couldn’t. It was used for the purpose of better hiding the track and supports and allowing for better theme to be added. Why is this a big deal? Because a coaster would have had to have been built out of steel in the first place before anyone would have tried using it for doing things like loops and quarskrews and before Disney, nobody seemed to see a need to build a coaster out of steel when it was easier and cheaper to do it with wood. Had the Matterhorn never been built and someone had eventually come up with the idea of using steel a decade or two later, we wouldn’t have half the steel coasters that we do today and most of what we would have would be much less innovative overall. That means probably no launch systems and possibly no suspended coasters. Things like that seem obvious in hindsight but so does the idea of a microprocessor over crystal tubes but had the person who invented it not come up with the microprocessor and we were left to wait for someone else, would we be at personal computers today having this conversation from different parts of the world? It’s hard to say, isn’t it?
Throughout its history, Disney has worked with companies like Arrow and Vekoma because they are willing to work directly with Disney in a more partner-like relationship. In an industry full of trade secrets that span everything from design to actual construction techniques, this is a rare thing to find. As one Disney Imagineer put it, they feel “no need to reinvent the wheel” so they choose to rely on other companies expertise when they can find someone that they think can do a better job with something than they can.
What does this have to do with Primeval Whirl? Well it doesn’t but neither has half of what’s been said in this thread already.
