TheCoasterNerd
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
Rude
-
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Walt Disney – A Magical Life
- Thread starter wdwmagic
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TheCoasterNerd
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
To be fair, my American History class did have a page on TWDC with almost a paragraph about Walt
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Lol, its not rude its just reality for under 20 that aren't Disney fans.
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
You must have gone to a Disney fan school. Only explanation! Haha
TheCoasterNerd
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
I was kidding. Just saying I'm 15 and I know more about Walt than most people older than me!Lol, its not rude its just reality for under 20 that aren't Disney fans.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
I'm aware you were joking, hence the smiley, I wish more knew about Walt the way many of us do. And hopefully this show will help do that.
SuddenStorm
Well-Known Member
Walt Disney is one of the most recognizable figures in American history. I'd bet most teens recognize him, and many elementary school kids as well.
PiratesMansion
Well-Known Member
And many simply think it's called that because it's a Land of Disney (the company) Things, not helped by the corporation's general direction from Iger onwards.
People don't automatically know that Walt Disney is a real person, and that Disneyland is named after the person and not the company.
Furthermore, even if people know Disney was a real person, that doesn't mean they know the right info. I've had teachers and other people genuinely ask me if it was true that he was an antisemite or took it for granted that he was indeed frozen. Others took it for granted that Walt was a huge tyrannical control freak in the most negative possible context. This is much more widespread than people are acknowledging.
I think some in this thread are overestimating how much exposure many have to the real man and his real principles. We're here in a bubble where everyone basically knows the gist of the story-but out in the rest of the world? To many people not actively involved in consuming Disney content with regularity (and even some that do, undoubtedly), Disney is just a media company that makes animated movies and Marvel and Star Wars that has theme parks that have no purpose but to promote those things. Why is it inconceivable that this is the case when the company itself, outside of occasional initiatives like this one, actively cultivates such a mindset on a regular basis through the content it makes and the way it approaches messaging and branding? Thus this attraction, if done right, is a step in the right direction to combat that problem (and others), IMO.
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
Boy I can’t wait for this attraction -
Walt: “I bet you guys are wondering… who’s this? I’ve never heard of “Walt Disney” before - well let me assure you folks that I’m not a frozen head nor an anti-Semite.”
I feel like I’m in the twilight zone…. 95% of the guests at Disneyland know who Walt Disney was haha
Animaniac93-98
Well-Known Member
The Disney Family Museum and One Man's Dream are examples of tasteful ways to educate the public about Walt IMO
An AA who speaks a highly edited archival sourced speech that pushes current corporate Disney's image and mindset is not.
That's what I fear this new show will be.
An AA who speaks a highly edited archival sourced speech that pushes current corporate Disney's image and mindset is not.
That's what I fear this new show will be.
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
I was thinking that too…. Get the Disney Family Museum to consult on this project. Maybe one day they can take over the park before it’s too late.
PiratesMansion
Well-Known Member
Are you sure?
I think we can all acknowledge that there are a lot of complete idiots out there,and/or people who are at the very least intellectually incurious; so it seems a leap to me to assume that 95% of people coming to the park just know who Walt Disney is, even with a highly localized population base.
Yes, he was tied to the park intimately during his lifetime-which ended well over fifty years ago. It's not like the casuals are watching reruns of the Disney weekly show, you know? There are undoubtedly plenty of people, even locals, who are stopping by a place to take their kids and nothing more, and hey, Junior loves Lightning McQueen and Teen loves the Avengers. Not everyone stopping by is going to be intimately acquainted with Walt or the way things used to be-some people just see things they think they will like and their brain truly stops there.
Again, this board is not an accurate reflection of Joe and Jane Public and what they know and/or are bringing to the parks, this board is full of people who know and care about this stuff. I'm suggesting to you and others that there are plenty out there who don't.
We don't yet know that this will be the case. I'm hopeful that because they're using actual Walt audio that this is basically Walt Disney Story, but with an animatronic.
I could certainly be wrong, but if they do this right, I don't necessarily see how this can't also be a tasteful way to educate the public about Walt.
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
I think more people in this country know who Walt Disney was than George Washington haha.
It’s also a great time to bring out a favorite Joe Rohde quote:
“
I happen to think it is the height of arrogance to assert that other theoretical "people" are not going to understand something that you yourself understand. Like you are better or something. That means your theoretical world of people is full of dumb people. Mine is full of smart, curious people.
“
Disney Irish
Premium Member
And I counter that the reverse can also be true....
That its highly arrogant to assume that just because you know something (or in this case someone) that others must also know it.
MK-fan
Well-Known Member
95%???? What are you smoking? You’re giving the fairweather Disney fan too much credit. Walt Disney is being forgotten because Disney is just a brand to most people now a days, especially to the younger generation. Disney is just too big a company as well as a conglomerate which has extended too much for them to even acknowledge much of their past. Disney Plus only has about 25% of material that happened in Walt’s time from the 1920’s-1960’s, that’s almost 50 years of Disney’s 100 year life. Im in my 30s and they were still pushing Walt Disney for a long time while I was growing up. In my youth, we only had the Disney parks, Disney Animation which was getting back on its feet and the Disney Channel, that was it. The 1980’s generation knew Walt Disney because everything that was memorable that Disney created up to that point, Walt Disney had a hand in. Up to that point in time, Walt was associated with almost everything Disney, because Disney was a dying brand with no new popular new IP. The name Walt is being taken out of everything accept for Walt Disney World but thats only because it was grandfathered in due to the Disneys never wanting that changed, especially Roy who made it so. His legacy is being erased little by little by making his animation crowning achievements into live-action CGI hybrid bastards that are just awful. They’ve taken the Walt out of the Disney Pictures logo and out of the 12 classic Disney animated story films that Walt was associated with, nine of them have been made into these CGI duds in the theater or Disney plus. Pirates of the Caribbean was the crowning achievement of his rides but now kids think it was made after the POTC franchise, distancing itself far from Walt. Again 95% is very generous but I very much doubt this is true, regardless if it’s only the guests that are going to the parks.
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PiratesMansion
Well-Known Member
I challenge people who assume that "everyone" knows who Walt Disney is to go and ask random people (think coworkers, not friends/family who either share your Disney interest/knowledge or have potentially heard you chattering on about Disney this or that incessantly; and by all means ask children and teens too) the following questions:
1.) Where did he grow up?
2.) What sorts of ideals and interests were important to him?
3.) What movies and media did he have a direct hand in making?
4.) Which theme park came first? How many Disney theme parks did he walk in?
5.) When did he die, and what happened to his body afterward?
You'd probably be surprised at what you'll hear.
The company has basically stopped actively promoting anything made before Little Mermaid with only rare exceptions (Peter Pan, largely because of Tinkerbell; the princesses, because gotta promote that Disney Princess line!; Pooh, because $$$$). There just isn't the active familiarity with even the old animation catalog that there was when I was growing up, in part because the company has increasingly narrowed its focus and can't pay attention to more than eight properties at a time.
The Walt stuff got a lot of play pre-Mermaid and even into the 90s because there just weren't any better cards to play; now, they have oodles and oodles of newer, lucrative properties to promote instead. So they've stopped promoting the Walt stuff, cynically, because they probably don't feel they need to. I'd argue it's an incredibly short-sighted mindset, but unfortunately, it's reality, and it has already affected how Disney fans under a certain age view the company.
And as said, every legacy attraction in the parks that can be tied to an IP has been, even the classics. POTC, Mansion twice and with a Muppet special, IASW now has Disney characters, Jungle Cruise, and so on all have had other media based upon them, so the ignorant fan could almost be forgiven for assuming that, like Universal, they've built rides based on recent IP instead of the reality that those attractions have been there for decades. The subs no longer explore Atlantis but instead visit Nemo and friends. Big Thunder and Space Mountain are about the only things left (though that Big Thunder movie will almost certainly be made at some point, whether we want it or not) other than a few things that are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things to most guests (Enchanted Tiki Room, Carousel of Progress, Lincoln who of course is a person of great import, but is decidedly NOT a Disney IP, and who Disney was already trying to get rid of well before the modern version of the company existed).
We're not in Walt's Disney anymore, and we haven't been for some time. And given the ample evidence elsewhere that the company doesn't care about his legacy other than when it's to justify poor decisions, it seems incongruous to insist that huge numbers of people actively know his life story and what he stood for when the company is doing very little to promote it, and much of the rumblings about him within our culture has long ago mostly turned false and negative.
1.) Where did he grow up?
2.) What sorts of ideals and interests were important to him?
3.) What movies and media did he have a direct hand in making?
4.) Which theme park came first? How many Disney theme parks did he walk in?
5.) When did he die, and what happened to his body afterward?
You'd probably be surprised at what you'll hear.
Walt Disney isn't on the one dollar bill, nor is there a 100% chance he is discussed in a US history class.
Assuming that people are intelligent enough to appreciate themed design is not the same as assuming that they know the accurate factoids about a person who died over fifty years ago.
Exactly. People have seemingly forgotten that only a year ago or so, when they were promoting Disney100 and rereleased films to theaters to celebrate, NOT ONE of those films was a film Walt had an active hand in making. That was a big deal here, yet people have already forgotten it was ever discussed.
The company has basically stopped actively promoting anything made before Little Mermaid with only rare exceptions (Peter Pan, largely because of Tinkerbell; the princesses, because gotta promote that Disney Princess line!; Pooh, because $$$$). There just isn't the active familiarity with even the old animation catalog that there was when I was growing up, in part because the company has increasingly narrowed its focus and can't pay attention to more than eight properties at a time.
The Walt stuff got a lot of play pre-Mermaid and even into the 90s because there just weren't any better cards to play; now, they have oodles and oodles of newer, lucrative properties to promote instead. So they've stopped promoting the Walt stuff, cynically, because they probably don't feel they need to. I'd argue it's an incredibly short-sighted mindset, but unfortunately, it's reality, and it has already affected how Disney fans under a certain age view the company.
And as said, every legacy attraction in the parks that can be tied to an IP has been, even the classics. POTC, Mansion twice and with a Muppet special, IASW now has Disney characters, Jungle Cruise, and so on all have had other media based upon them, so the ignorant fan could almost be forgiven for assuming that, like Universal, they've built rides based on recent IP instead of the reality that those attractions have been there for decades. The subs no longer explore Atlantis but instead visit Nemo and friends. Big Thunder and Space Mountain are about the only things left (though that Big Thunder movie will almost certainly be made at some point, whether we want it or not) other than a few things that are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things to most guests (Enchanted Tiki Room, Carousel of Progress, Lincoln who of course is a person of great import, but is decidedly NOT a Disney IP, and who Disney was already trying to get rid of well before the modern version of the company existed).
We're not in Walt's Disney anymore, and we haven't been for some time. And given the ample evidence elsewhere that the company doesn't care about his legacy other than when it's to justify poor decisions, it seems incongruous to insist that huge numbers of people actively know his life story and what he stood for when the company is doing very little to promote it, and much of the rumblings about him within our culture has long ago mostly turned false and negative.
How many lifelong Walmart and Sam's Club shoppers could tell you the first thing about Sam Walton? Do you have any idea how many grown adults minds I have blown when I tell them that Colonel Sanders isn't just a chicken mascot but a real human whose birthday party my Father once attended? Both of those figures were around way more recently than Walt by the way.
I think most people have heard the name Walt Disney, I think a lot of people could recognize a picture of him within a couple guesses, but to know any significant details about his life is very rare... and that okay, that's normal, he's been dead a very long time.
I think most people have heard the name Walt Disney, I think a lot of people could recognize a picture of him within a couple guesses, but to know any significant details about his life is very rare... and that okay, that's normal, he's been dead a very long time.
Phroobar
Well-Known Member
Same goes for other Disney IPs. We no longer have George Lucas's Star Wars. There is strong case that Lucasfilm doesn't understand it's own IP anymore. We no longer have Jim Henson's Muppets. That IP died shortly after Disney acquired the brand from Brian Henson. The good news is we still have the media legacy they left. However modern Disney is doing everything they can to erase it.
People don't delve into trivia. Most people couldn't tell you anything taught in a high school history class. They are more likely to know about Taylor Swift because she is advertised far more often.
People don't delve into trivia. Most people couldn't tell you anything taught in a high school history class. They are more likely to know about Taylor Swift because she is advertised far more often.
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Disney Irish
Premium Member
However Disney is not actually erasing that media legacy that was left just because they are not using it in the same way. The OT and PT that Lucas made is still there. So are all the Muppets movies made by the Henson company. None of that goes away just because Disney chooses to do something different with them. And in many cases Disney actually attempts to makes nods or outright links to that legacy in whatever they actual do with them.
This I will actually agree with, most in the public know more about the latest Tiktok trend than they do history. Blame society, short attention spans, what have you. This is why this idea that many in the public know Walt is silly, he hasn't been in the public consciousness in decades. Many in the Disney fandom bubble take it for granted because we know about it. Outside the bubble unless its in a 30 second video its unknown.
EPCOTCenterLover
Well-Known Member
I am excited about this for the reasons mentioned above, It is MUCH better than when the Muppets were scheduled to replace Lincoln!