Orlando Sentinel, February 1967
Ken Martinez has scanned a fascinating item for you today! It's a special 1967 edition of the Orlando Sentinel, with lots of early details about how this massive project would change central Florida, and about what people might expect from this new Disney park. I guess it's not surprising that Walt Disney World would not open for another three years.
The pages are large, and at first I considered trying to cut them up into smaller chunks, but ultimately I couldn't figure out a way to do so efficiently. SO... each jpeg is over 3 megabytes. I hope you don't have any trouble loading the images. When clicked on, they should easily be large enough for you to read.
Here's Ken:
Orlando Sentinel - Disney World Souvenir Edition Part 1
Today is part one of the Orlando Sentinel - Disney World Souvenir Edition. This special edition of the Orlando Sentinel was released on February 3, 1967 around the time of the announcement of “Disney World” as it was then called. At the time of this edition release, only two months had passed since Walt Disney died.
Featured today are two full pages from this special edition. Also of interest is that the majority of the articles focus on EPCOT as it appeared to be the main driving force behind the Florida project.
Of interest is the mention that the monorail will be the main transportation throughout the 43 square mile property. In addition it is stated that the theme park will be five times larger than Disneyland. I would assume that actually meant the “Vacation Kingdom” which included Seven Seas Lagoon, Bay Lake and the resorts. The Magic Kingdom was definitely not five times larger than Disneyland.
It’s interesting looking at this artist rendering of the Industrial complex which would showcase industry at work. Might it have been the inspiration for “Future World” at Epcot Center? Also mentioned is an international area featuring imported merchandise, food and entertainment from different nations around the world. The Imagineers surely must’ve drawn from this when creating “World Showcase” for Epcot Center.
There will be one more post from this souvenir edition. I hope you’ve enjoyed a bit pre-history on the “Disney World” which opened approximately five years later as “Walt Disney World”. More to come.
THANK YOU, Ken Martinez!
12 comments:
Oh, man....I wish we had gotten to see Walt's original version of EPCOT built! But I suppose if it had been built, it would probably be quite different today with Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars overlays plastered on everything.
This edition of the Orlando Sentinel happens to be from the same year as a certain Disney movie that I have been obsessed with lately.
Thanks for sharing this Ken and Major!
Thanks Ken and Major. This is fascinating! I wonder if people then were truly able to grasp just how much change – for better and worse – the project would bring to central Florida...
Indeed, fascinating reading. Thank you Ken and Major!
Might I ask a technical question? How were you two able to scan in a newspaper page? My scanner can't handle anything much larger than a standard 8.5" X 11" page.
Very cool! Thanks Major and Ken. Something I've never seen before is always welcome. I'm guessing that wasn't The Jungle Book Tokyo M.
TokyoMagic!, You mean "The Happiest Millionaire"? In EPCOT Center's World of Motion it might've been cool as an homage to the film to put A.A. figures of John Davidson and Leslie Ann Warren in the antique automobile heading to Detroit. After all "It's the land where golden chariots are molded out of dreams!"
Yes, just think of the new subdivisions E.P.C.O.T. Marvel Town! Pixarville! Lucasburgh and now the possibility 20th Century Fox Commons. It'll all be wonderful. Just you wait and see!
Pegleg Pete, I'd assume the business and commerce community as well as the State of Florida knew full well the impact that would come to Central Florida and the tourism industry in general.
Steve DeGaetano, It was through my Photoshop, not my scanner that I was able to create a single image. Each newspaper page image in this post consists of nine separate scans that I did on my little legal size 8.5" x11" EPSON V600 Photo scanner.
In order the create a single image, I scanned the entire newspaper page in nine different sections making sure each scan overlapped into the other scans I did. This was needed for image recognition when I merged the images together in Adobe Photoshop. When I dropped all nine scanned images into the Photoshop "photo merge" the program then looks for familiar attributes in each scanned image and so it will be able to recognize duplication, match it up and merge automatically all the images in the selected group to create a single seamless image. If you do not overlap the scanned images it will not work. I hope that answers your question. If not I'll try to explain further.
DrGoat, Good to hear from you and glad you liked it. I forgot! It's The Jungle Book's 50th anniversary this year too. I don't remember reading anything about it this year. Guess Disney was too occupied with Pixar, Marvel and LucasFilm to bother promoting a classic Disney film's anniversary. Not enough of a ROI I guess.
Major and Ken, this is a terrific post. Both for content, which is fascinating, and for the technical effort assembling these large scans.
Makes me wish I could use Photoshop.
Thank you!
JG
JG, Glad you enjoyed. It's a lot to read, but there are some interesting bits of info in there. Also, Photoshop is not hard to use once you teach yourself the basics. Doing these articles for GDB has actually helped me a lot in learning technical tricks for digital imagery. It's a learning process, but I enjoy it.
Major, I forgot to thank you for dealing with my mega-images and making them workable for your blog. I greatly appreciate all the effort you put into it. Thank you!
Thanks Ken, I understand the process now. You put in some serious effort there!
Even though it wasn't a residential community, EPCOT’s Future World really did use to embody that blueprint of possible future life. You could hang around there and easily imagine you were living in a prototype community of tomorrow.
Ken-
Thanks for sharing this article. As they say: what a page-turner.
I have a 52-page brochure simply titled: Orlando. Presumably, published by a tourist bureau, or chamber of commerce of some sort. The opening page states - A result of interviews with families recently arrived. What they wanted to know before they moved to ORLANDO. The brochure is very cagey as to when it was published, but I think around 1969. It contains a single concept drawing of EPCOT that represents what Disney plans to build in central Florida. And then this quote: "In addition, what promises to be the grandest and most worthwhile man-made attraction anywhere, the 27,400 acre Walt Disney World, is now being constructed on land, that, by opening date, will abut Orlando's growing south end. The estimated cost of the Disney Florida development is $600 million. Plans include a theme park similar to Disneyland, resort hotels, a high-capacity transportation system, and EPCOT (The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow), where 20,000 permanent residents will live in an urban environment designed 25 years onto the future.
No mention in the brochure that "unbridled growth" might not always be in the best interest of Orlando or its residents'.... Well - most places now know how such things often turn out.
Thanks, Ken.
Melissa, I always thought "The Land" pavilion was the closest to Walt's vision of EPCOT as it actually demonstrated new techniques in food and plant production.
Nanook, Thanks for that excerpt from your brochure. With Disney's history of their properties and the affect on surrounding areas and their playing hardball with the local governments, I think a lot of communities aren't so welcoming to Disney as they once were.
Dr. Goat, you are right, I wasn't talking about The Jungle Book! ;-)
Ken, yes, that's the movie I meant. I would love to see Lesley Ann Warren and John Davidson audio-animatronics in a ride. World of Motion would have been the perfect attraction for that, but they could have also shoehorned them into Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion or even the Enchanted Tiki Room. It would have worked.
Speaking of The Jungle Book's 50th anniversary, I checked ebay and found six different pins all commemorating the film's 50th! The Happiest Millionaire only received one pin in honor of it's 50th this year, and that pin was available exclusively to cast members only. Sheesh! Where is the love?
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