Took a short walk through the Magic Kingdom yesterday using Facebook LIVE. While wandering around I pointed out a few of the magical details that I love, including a special family moment – my grandfather’s window on Main Street. Thanks for watching. For the best… Read More »Magic Kingdom Walking Tour
How does it feel to complete one’s quest, obtain the grail, discover gravity? I may not know, but I do know how it feels to have my personal mini-quest resolved. For years now I’ve privately worked with people I knew in the Disney organization to… Read More »Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion returns Imagineer graveyard
When the Haunted Mansion opened in 1969, the Imagineers who worked on the attraction cleverly left tributes to themselves in the form of witty, albeit morbid, tombstone epitaphs. The tombstones were located in and around the queue area of the attraction. Later, most of the… Read More »Disneyland restores tribute tombstones to Haunted Mansion
I don’t talk about him too frequently, but I am proud to have as my grandfather one of the early Imagineers at WED Enterprises. Vic Greene had an impact on a lot of projects, but one that’s near and dear to my heart is the… Read More »Petition to return a lost tombstone to the Haunted Mansion
Rich Pope of the Orlando Sentinel has put together a fun look at one of the Magic Kingdom’s often overlooked features, the Main Street windows. They’re like the credits to the film, only for the theme park. My grandfather has the honor of having his… Read More »Windows on Main Street USA at Magic Kingdom
The Matterhorn Bobsleds at Disneyland has always been a sentimental favorite of mine; in part because my Grandfather Vic Greene was the Art Director for the attraction and for his involvement in the story of how Imagineering got the instructions to build it.
There was a little hill of land in between Tomorrowland and Fantasyland that the Skyway used to get some height to go over the back of Sleeping Beauty Castle. Walt wanted to do something with this land, but he didn’t know what, he asked my grandfather to start thinking of an attraction for the hill. The story as told in the book “How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life” and in my family went like this:
Walt was traveling to Switzerland to film “Third Man on the Mountain” and fell in love with the Matterhorn. In a moment of inspiration, he grabbed a postcard of the mountain from a souvenir stand and sent it back to Vic Greene with the message, “Vic. Build This. Walt” on the back. Vic, of course, immediately set to work on designing what was to become a first of its kind landmark attraction.
Another fun family story is the invention of the Matterhorn’s first of its kind switchback queue. Vic Greene and his team of Imagineers developed a system that would have the entrance to the switchback part of the queue be lower than the exit. When you stood at the entrance, the exit would appear closer to you in an optical illusion. The idea was to make your wait seem less cumbersome by visually shortening the queue.
A version of this story was documented in “Disneyland: Inside Story” by Randy Bright, and it has been told in my family for years. Before the attraction was set to officially open, testing was done using sandbags. When Walt wanted to see a real human on the ride, Vic Greene was selected as the first human to test ride in a bobsled on a steel tube coaster. Since water hadn’t been added to the splash down pools at the end of the ride, Imagineering had set up bales of hay to slow the cars down. Unfortunately the bobsled car hit the hay and stopped so suddenly, Vic nearly got whiplash. Still he survived and the ride was deemed complete.
Below the jump are a few more fun facts from the 55 year history of The Matterhorn.
If you’ve been reading The Disney Blog for a while, then you might remember that one of the attractions I feel a close attraction to is The Matterhorn in Disneyland. It was the first attraction my grandfather Vic Greene was show producer on while at… Read More »Matterhorn Movie
The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland means something special to me since it is one of the few attractions that literally has my grandfather’s name on it (he had a tombstone (his wife made Disney remove it after he died) and his name is on the… Read More »Haunted Mansion 40th Anniversary Official Podcast