Word: disney
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...famed Walt Disney Imagineering group, a department of artists and engineers that Walt first assembled in 1952 to build Disneyland, had been sharply cut back before Eisner came aboard. He promptly revived the Imagineers, but with a difference. The group began to collaborate with the hottest show-business talent available, a strategy that enabled Disney to give its theme parks an immediate injection of Hollywood hipness. Enter Michael Jackson, who was recruited by Eisner to help write and star in Captain Eo, a 17-minute, $17 million movie musical in 3-D. Even more spectacular is Star Tours...
More pixilation is on the way. At Disneyland, stonemasons are now building the facade for the $35 million Splash Mountain, in which passengers will ride replicas of hollowed-out logs down huge slides and through tableaus populated by 101 robotic characters like Br'er Rabbit from Disney's 1946 film Song of the South. "We can control how much the passengers get wet, depending on the time of year," Eisner points out mischievously...
...plans are even grander at Disney World, where the company owns 47 sq. mi. of land. Earthmovers are clearing the way for Typhoon Lagoon, a 50-acre water park where visitors will be able to slide down a 95-ft. mountain, surf on 6-ft. waves and snorkel in pools filled with tropical fish. Opening this fall is the Pleasure Island night-life park, complete with rollerdrome, comedy warehouse, teen video club and jazz saloon. Eisner hopes customers will not remember too well the Pinocchio story, in which visitors to a place called Pleasure Island were turned into donkeys...
Since 80% of the Florida park's 26 million annual visitors live outside the state (in contrast to 50% of Disneyland's 12 million), the company is aggressively building hotels to capture the business of guests who previously lodged outside the park. In January, Disney announced plans for a $375 million twin-hotel complex designed by Architect Michael Graves, a postmodernist who has playfully topped one building with two five-story-tall dolphin sculptures and another with two four-story swans. Eisner, who wants Disney to become known for its architecture, says grandly, "They're going to be important monuments...
Michael Eisner says he was raised in Manhattan, but he must have meant on Mars. What earthling could claim that he never saw a Disney movie until...