History
In his 1998 memoir Work in Progress, Disney CEO Michael Eisner credited his wife, Jane, with the idea for the campaign. According to Eisner, during the January 1987 grand opening for the Star Tours attraction at Disneyland, the couple dined with Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, who in December 1986 had piloted the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling. After Jane Eisner asked what the pilots planned to do next, they replied, "Well, we're going to Disneyland." She later told her husband the phrase would make a great advertising campaign.
Weeks later, Disney launched the series following Super Bowl XXI on January 25, 1987 with a commercial featuring New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms. Simms was paid a reported $75,000 for his participation. The company later aired three more ads that year with other athletes following major sports championships.
In subsequent years, Disney reportedly has offered $30,000 to athletes and other stars for participating in the ads and appearing at one of its theme parks.
Read more about this topic: I'm Going To Disney World!
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The true theater of history is therefore the temperate zone.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)