Development of The Attraction
Walt Disney was always fascinated with the life of Abraham Lincoln. He even recited Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to his elementary class as a small boy. As Disneyland became more prosperous, Walt proposed an expansion of Main Street, U.S.A. in 1957 to be called Liberty Street. It was to be a look back at Colonial-era America. The centerpiece attraction would have been The Hall of Presidents, a stage presentation featuring figures of every single U.S. President, which would later be built at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. Walt wanted all the figures to move, but limitations of the audio-animatronics technology of the era made it impossible. After Liberty Street was abandoned, the Imagineers concentrated their efforts on one president: Mr. Lincoln.
In April 1962, Robert Moses approached Walt Disney about contributing attractions to the pavilions of the 1964 New York World's Fair. Walt took Moses around the studio, showing him the new technology his Imagineers were working on. Nothing really sparked Moses' interest. Walt then showed Moses a prototype electronic figure of Lincoln. Moses was astonished at the possibilities and told Walt that he had to have this figure at the Fair. Despite knowing that the figure was years from completion, Walt told Moses it would be ready. Moses then sought the State of Illinois as a sponsor to have Mr. Lincoln as the featured attraction at their pavilion.
Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln performed very well and became one of the big draws to the Fair. It was the first human audio-animatronics figure ever attempted by Walt Disney. In 2009, the attraction was again used to showcase the latest technology when it became the first attraction to use a human autonomatronics figure.
Read more about this topic: Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln
Famous quotes containing the words development of the, development of, development and/or attraction:
“There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.”
—John Emerich Edward Dalberg, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902)
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.”
—Italo Calvino (1923–1985)