Original subtitles

- [Narrator] From high octane thrills

to high tech audio animatronics,

to the actual high seas.

Disney has always been synonymous with innovation.

[riders screaming]

- Whether it be animation, theme parks, or urban planning,

Disney is continuously looking for

that frontier of innovation.

- [Narrator] For more than 70 years,

the company has pushed the boundaries of art and science

through the work of a team known as the Imagineers.

- This is what we call our Imagineering department.

- Imagineers are the dreamers, the designers,

and builders of Disney theme parks,

and resorts, and cruise lines.

- Imagineering is taking story and technology

to where it's never been before.

- [Narrator] Since the earliest days

with Walt at the studio...

- You can trace the lineage of innovation,

all the way from the introduction of sound

in Steamboat Willie.

- [Narrator] Disney artists, and later, Imagineers,

have always turned dreams into reality,

creating thrilling mass entertainment experiences

and changing the world in the process.

- Animatronics isn't just advanced

for theme park entertainment.

This is advanced for the robotics industry in general.

- Disney is continually able to raise the bar

and do stuff no one else would really try to do.

- Many of the things that seem impossible now

will become realities tomorrow.

[dramatic music]

[pensive music]

- [Narrator] Throughout the early 20th century,

one experience reigns as the king of the carnival,

the rollercoaster.

- The rollercoaster actually gets its start

with carts on tracks that are used for mines.

We start getting some real rollercoasters

towards the end of the century,

using a mechanism to wheel the cart uphill,

maybe adding some up and down components to it.

And people embrace it.

- The rollercoaster becomes the centerpiece

of any self-respecting amusement park.

- [Narrator] With one exception.

Disneyland Park opens its gates on July 17th, 1955.

Yet of all the attractions at the park on that first day,

not one of them is a rollercoaster.

- When Disneyland opened, it has zero thrill rides,

but that was very purposeful of Walt.

- Walt is interested in the immersion of the audience

into a story.

So, you can go on the rides that recreate scenes from movies.

- [Narrator] Disneyland Park was designed by Walt

and a small group of animators, set builders,

and scenic painters he recruited from his own studio,

the first Imagineers.

But shortly after Disneyland opens,

Walt realizes his park will almost always

need something new.

- When the young people

who started going to Disneyland began to age,

Walt Disney had to keep people in the park.

He was going to have to add a thrill ride.

- And that's where we came to the Matterhorn Bobsleds.

- [Narrator] In the summer of 1958,

Walt finds final inspiration

for Disneyland's first thrill ride

while working on an entirely different project.

- The Matterhorn came out of an idea

because Walt liked a mountain on a movie set.

- The legendary story is he's on a trip to visit the set

of a movie filming in Switzerland

and he sees a postcard of the Matterhorn Mountain,

and he writes on it, "Build this,"

and mails it back to the Imagineers.

And they get it and go, "Uh oh."

- [Narrator] At 147 feet tall, the Disneyland Matterhorn

will be the tallest structure at the park

at about 1/100th the size of the real Swiss peak.

But building a massive mountain from scratch

will take a lot of dirt.

Luckily, they have plenty.

- The Matterhorn starts out as basically excavated dirt

that comes out of the moat

when the park is first being built.

They just pile it next to the castle.

So there is this tall hill.

- [Narrator] But Walt has more in mind

than recreating an iconic mountain peak.

- Walt said, "I wanna put in a toboggan ride,"

but you can't have ice in Anaheim in the summertime,

so we're gonna do something with wheels.

We would start with the shape of a mountain

and put rollercoaster tracks on the inside of it.

- The Matterhorn wasn't about creating a rollercoaster.

The Matterhorn was the means to creating the experience

of going down the mountain in a toboggan.

- It was a totally new, unique idea that Walt wanted.

- [Narrator] Walt also throws

a few extra curves at the Imagineers.

- Within the Matterhorn, it's not just one coaster.

It's actually two unique coaster tracks

interwoven within one another.

- They were designing the most pretzel-like coaster

that's ever been done before, with two tracks.

It was an impossible puzzle.

- That took a lot of mathematics.

No computer, so I had to teach myself the math

that I didn't get taught in high school.

- [Narrator] The Imagineering team

must finish the Matterhorn Bobsleds by summer 1959,

giving them less than a year.

- We were given the opening date in 1959.

The problem then became there is no time

to build a track of bolded plates to wood.

- [Narrator] Standard rollercoasters

use railroad style tracks

composed of iron rails on a wood structure.

- So we took a deep breath and said,

well, bending pipe is pretty easy.

- They used a tubular design for the rollercoaster track

that went around the Matterhorn,

which was something completely new at that time.

- Tubular steel rails and polyurethane wheels

allow for banking and a very smooth ride experience

so that you could feel as though you're gliding over snow.

And this coincidentally becomes

the start of modern rollercoasters.

- We accidentally invented the pipe coaster industry,

but we didn't think of it and say,

"We're going to invent something."

We were pushed for time

and chose the material that would go the quickest.

- [Narrator] Completing the Matterhorn will require

over 2,000 steel girders, enough lumber to build 27 houses,

and $1.5 million, equivalent to nearly 16 million today.

The Imagineers manage to finish the attraction

for its grand opening in June 1959.

The Matterhorn Bobsleds is an immediate success

with the crowds at Disneyland Park.

- The Matterhorn was one of the first rollercoasters

I felt brave enough to go on.

You would whip around the corners so hard,

flying right alongside the mountain.

[rider shouting]

That was wild.

It was thrilling and scary, and like nothing else,

and it was ahead of its time.

- [Narrator] The success of the Matterhorn

transforms the entire rollercoaster industry.

- The Matterhorn became a cornerstone of rollercoasters

within the theme park industry

because it set this whole new standard for exhilaration.

- [Narrator] Today, there are over 5,600 steel coasters

around the world that can trace their origins

to Disney's Swiss Mountain in California.

But 25 years after the Matterhorn,

the Imagineers face a new challenge

when it's time to add an all new type of thrill

to Disneyland Park.

- Disneyland's not very big.

Every inch of it is spoken for.

Finding a spot for a new ride

takes a lot of shoehorning and imagination.

But new technologies start appearing,

and one of them is motion simulators.

- [Narrator] Since the early days of aviation,

training machines have helped pilots hone their skill

before taking to the sky.

By the 1980s, these simulators are hyper-realistic,

linking immersive imagery with thrilling motion.

- Disney Imagineers look at things

that were meant to train pilots and say,

I bet that would make one hell of a ride.

- It's the experience of a rollercoaster,

but without that massive real estate footprint.

- [Narrator] Now, the challenge becomes finding a story

suited to the technology.

The search leads them to a galaxy far, far away.

- George Lucas went to Disneyland as a kid.

He looked up to Walt Disney,

he understood Walt as a storyteller.

- [Narrator] The year after he finishes Return of the Jedi,

George Lucas gets an offer from Disney, not for a movie,

but to pitch new attractions for Disney Parks.

- The Star Wars universe offered the opportunity

to apply that simulator technology

to develop the attraction we now know as Star Tours.

- But you can't just take a military grade flight simulator

and just use that.

So Imagineers have to tweak it and have to change it a bit

so that it's creating that immersion

that you are on a transport flying into space.

- Light speed to Endor!

- [Adam] The craziest thing is, the pilot is a droid.

- There may be some turbulence up ahead.

Make sure your seatbelts are fastened.

- And he turns around and talks to you

and tells you what to do and to hold on.

- I'm still getting used to my programming!

- Crazier still, the C-3PO and R2-D2

that were used in Star Tours were actual remnants

from the original trilogy

that were outfitted with animatronics.

So you're really in the movie.

- [Narrator] After nearly three years and $32 million,

almost double the amount Walt spent

building the entire park in 1955,

Star Tours opens in early 1987.

- [C-3PO] Today is the grand opening of Star Tours.

- The opening day was a media event

that captured the entire world.

- This was something that no one had ever even imagined,

let alone seen before.

This is an extraordinary evolution of technology.

- I loved it.

- It was just the best.

It was so good.

- [Narrator] Star Tours is a blockbuster hit,

[Chewbacca roars]

creating an entire industry of motion simulator rides.

- Today, motion simulator rides are everywhere.

- [Narrator] But the biggest innovators in the field

remain the company that started the craze, Disney.

- Attractions at Disney

are this beautiful, seamless hybrid

of technology and engineering

that ultimately result in a one of a kind experience.

That's Disney magic.

- [Narrator] After Walt Disney dropped a snowy mountain

in sun-soaked Anaheim, he again reaches for the impossible.

But while one of his next projects starts

as a Polynesian restaurant concept,

it will end up creating a radical evolution

in theme park technology.

- There's many mythologies,

but the story that I've always heard about the Tiki Room

was one of the top, original Imagineers

was developing a restaurant that would be in Disneyland.

- [Narrator] Hawaii became an official American state

in 1959,

and the allure of this vacation destination

sparks a post-war island craze.

Hoping to pay homage, Walt has the Imagineers draw plans

for an enchanted, tropical, bird-themed restaurant.

- The original concept for the Tiki Room

was to bring people into a serenade

where birds entertain guests as they were eating.

- The Imagineers famously wanted live birds

without really considering the impact of live birds

in the ceiling, above your food.

- And Walt thought, that's a terrible idea.

And the Imagineers said, "Oh, no, no, no,

the birds are gonna be mechanical birds that sing."

- [Narrator] With this idea, an entirely new field

of theme park entertainment is born, audio animatronics.

A term coined by Walt, combining animation and electronics.

To make Walt's singing birds a reality,

the Imagineers turn to a new technology, computers.

- [Reporter] The machines are here.

Automation of the office can be a reality.

- In the mid 20th century, computers are massive,

and within that massive computer,

we have magnetic tapes,

and those can store a simple command

that's going to be repeated.

- [Narrator] In the midst of the Cold War,

computers are being integrated

into America's nuclear defense network.

But Walt has a very different use for the technology.

- ♪ Memories

- No.

- You should see my dance, it is even worse.

- Disney was using something that was meant to control

nuclear weapons and nuclear submarines

to make birds sing in the Tiki Room.

- [Narrator] The advanced computer signals pneumatic tubes

controlling the movement of some 120 audio animatronics figures,

including birds, flowers,

and enchanted tikis in sync with music.

In the summer of 1963, Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room

opens to the public,

not as a restaurant, but as an attraction.

- Jose, wake up, it's showtime.

- Oh, buenos dias, senorita.

- [Narrator] Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room

becomes a hit for Disneyland.

- You gotta think about

how guests must have felt back in the early 1960s

when they walked into the Enchanted Tiki Room.

It was magic on a scale which they hadn't seen before.

[birds singing]

- This futuristic technology

is mind blowing for the audience.

This was really a game changer at that time.

[upbeat music] [birds singing]

- [Narrator] Walt's confidence in the storytelling

possibilities of audio animatronics technology

gets him dreaming even bigger.

- He saw what he could do with the Tiki Room birds,

and he thought, how could we apply this

to all different types of animals,

and more importantly, humans?

- But there's a huge difference between

making something you'll accept as a singing bird

versus something you'll accept as a full blown human.

- I didn't know anything about human physiology

and I had to figure out,

where are we gonna put all the bearings

and moves and everything.

- Robert Moses was in charge of the New York World's Fair.

He came out to the studio,

saw what Walt was doing with his audio animatronic and said,

"You know, Walt, we need this at the World's Fair."

- [Narrator] Now, the Imagineers have less than two years

to perfect a realistic, human audio animatronic

for the millions expected to attend

the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.

And it won't be just any human they're building.

Walt challenges his team to create a figure

that looks and sounds

like one of America's greatest leaders.

- Walt Disney had a great respect and love

for Abraham Lincoln.

He was known to dress up like Abraham Lincoln as a child,

reciting the Gettysburg Address.

- But everybody knew what Abraham Lincoln looked like.

He was on the $5 bill, so he knew he had to make sure

that the animatronic took on the same characteristics,

the same personality, the same movements of Abraham Lincoln.

- And that led to all of these new challenges.

How do you make skin for a person?

So they were experimenting with new kind of plastics,

trying to sculpt a face of Lincoln and bring that to life.

It was a monumental task.

- After about a year, we were trying to get Lincoln

to work correctly and get up out of a chair.

- But he sat down violently

and just smashed the seat to smithereens.

- Walt was very upset.

We were a year behind,

and he pointed to the figure and said,

make twice as many parts and half as much weight.

- That alone is a challenge.

He's not perched on a branch where you can run the wires.

Everything has to be contained in this human form.

- So I combined lightweight steel tubing

with aircraft parts and it becomes the structure

for the President of the United States.

- [Narrator] To ensure Lincoln's gestures

were believably human,

the Imagineers also develop a precursor

to modern motion capture technology.

- You had these elaborate apparatus

that you would put on and do all these movements,

which would be recorded onto tape and then played back,

and the figure would then repeat those actions.

- [Narrator] In the spring of 1964,

Walt brings the completed Lincoln 2,800 miles east

for the World's Fair.

- [Lincoln] Our reliance is in the love of liberty.

- When people saw Abraham Lincoln get up out of a chair

and move so humanlike,

people couldn't believe what they were seeing.

- They were in awe, stunned into silence.

There was a sense of magic in the room.

- That was our first big jumping point,

and we just kept on going ever since.

- [Narrator] Over the next few decades,

audio animatronics technology is incorporated

in almost every major Disney attraction.

- 60 years on from Lincoln,

animatronics isn't just for theme park entertainment.

This is advanced for the robotics industry in general.

- [Narrator] Today, animatronic technology

can be seen everywhere,

creating an industry worth billions.

- In giving all of these wonderful characters life,

the line between fantasy and reality is now forever blurred.

- [Narrator] From the very beginning,

one of Disneyland park's most popular attractions

is the Jungle Cruise.

Delighted audiences encounter seemingly wild animals

from three different continents

in the span of about eight minutes.

There's just one limitation.

- There's a predictability to it

because the animals are not real.

- Walt Disney has always been determined

to feature animals in his park,

as they have long held a special place in his heart.

- Growing up on a farm in Marceline, Missouri,

introduced to him a lifelong love of animals.

- Walt Disney always said the most fascinating person

he ever met was an animal.

- [Narrator] Walt originally envisioned live animals

as part of the Jungle Cruise.

- But at the time, they didn't know

how to display animals safely and theatrically.

So the answer was, build a mechanical figure.

- The mechanics for these are very basic.

The giraffe, for example, it's not a full giraffe.

It's only the neck and head of the giraffe

hidden behind some trees and bushes.

The hippos rise up out of the water,

then it sinks back down.

These are repetitive, cyclical motion figures.

- The Jungle Cruise became one of the most iconic rides

at Disneyland.

But Walt always wanted live animals.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] Although Walt died in 1966,

his dream for a Disney park with real animals lives on.

And in the early 1990s, a new generation of Imagineers

turns back to Walt's original vision,

but in an all new way,

at Florida's Walt Disney World Resort.

- Imagineer, Joe Rohde, took the challenge to heart

and formulated the concept for a park

that put actual animals at the center of an experience.

- [Narrator] Rohde calls this new park concept,

"Disney's Animal Kingdom."

Designed to cover some 580 acres,

it'll be the largest theme park on Earth when completed.

But not everyone is on board.

- There was a lot of controversy because,

well, how do you compete with zoos, right?

- [Narrator] The concept of wild animal parks

dates back to Ancient Egypt

where the elite kept exotic menageries.

In the 18th century,

these private animal collections evolved

into urban public institutions called zoos.

- Zoos become public amusements,

but they are not very nice places.

They're enclosed in cities.

There's no sense of a natural environment.

You're seeing the animals in a cage.

- [Narrator] The Imagineers want to transform

that experience.

- Joe and his team had to keep fighting for the idea

that we can find ways to get you

up close and personal with animals

in ways you don't get to see in a zoo.

- [Narrator] And to sell his bosses on the idea,

Rohde makes a unique boardroom pitch.

- There's the very famous story

of how he brought a Bengal tiger into a conference room.

- The tiger just sat down

and all the executives in the room shrank back,

and electricity went through the room.

And Joe just quietly said,

"So, are there any of you who still feel that animals

aren't compelling?"

And the issue was never questioned again.

- [Narrator] In the summer of 1995,

construction begins on Disney's Animal Kingdom.

Now, the Imagineers have to make their vision a reality.

- But how do you recreate the African Savannah?

- [Narrator] To answer the question,

Rohde and the crew work on a centerpiece attraction

for their new park, that will deliver the same thrill

as the original Jungle Cruise, but with actual animals.

The Kilimanjaro safaris.

- They developed an entire safari ride

where they really wanted the animals

to be able to roam free.

The safety dividers between you and the animals

are a little trench in the ground

that the animal can't leap across.

- It lets the animals be the animals,

wild in an environment that looks natural

and as good as it can be within a controlled environment.

- [Narrator] But there's another challenge.

How do you get the animals to do what you want?

- Aside from the inherent risk of having, you know,

my grandma, Gilda, interacting with a Bengal tiger,

which is, you know, not advisable,

you can't guarantee how live animals will perform.

Will they be visible?

Will they be active?

- [Narrator] Imagineers employ hidden food caches

and even underground air vents that cool rock formations,

enticing animals to the picture perfect spot for guests

on their Savannah Safari.

- It was all about encouraging animals

to do what they naturally do,

but in the places where the guests would see them doing it.

- Animal Kingdom is as closest

to going on a safari trek that you can

without actually going into the wild.

- And it was like the ultimate

behind the scenes tour of nature.

Nowhere else could you see

that many ecosystems in one place,

without enclosures, without bars, no one else was doing it.

No one else could do it.

- [Narrator] Joe Rohde and his team will spend

nearly $800 million to complete Disney's Animal Kingdom.

- Animal Kingdom was immense.

It was 1,000 animals, over 2,000 species of plants

inside of it.

So the amount of effort to accomplish something like that

was just huge.

- [Narrator] On April 22nd, 1998,

Disney's Animal Kingdom opens to the public.

- People thought no one's gonna want to go

to a highly expensive zoo

or to travel great distances to go to one.

And 30,000 people showed up.

They were overwhelmed, at capacity by 9:00 AM.

- Animal Kingdom was incredibly popular

and incredibly successful.

- Animal Kingdom is the culmination of the dream

that Walt Disney had with the Jungle Cruise.

- [Narrator] Today, Disney's Animal Kingdom

hosts over 9 million guests a year,

and the park's innovations have set the standard

for accredited zoos and aquariums worldwide.

- When you interact with a wild animal,

you feel a greater sense of being connected to this world,

and that's what Joe Rohde and his team proved

with building a place like Animal Kingdom.

- [Narrator] Since it first opened in 1955,

Walt Disney and his Imagineers have used Disneyland Park

as a laboratory for trying out new ideas.

From immersive attractions, to lifelike audio animatronics.

- [Lincoln] All men are created equal.

- [Narrator] Over the years, Walt also wanted Disneyland

to showcase one area of innovation he was fond of.

Futuristic vehicles.

- Walt wanted the past, present, and future

represented throughout the park.

So you have the steamboat, the train,

and the Autopia Freeway system.

But there's nothing for the future.

- The Imagineers were incredibly talented

at recreating things from the past,

but how do you create for a time

that hasn't come, with no reference point?

- [Narrator] America in the 1950s

is a nation in love with the automobile.

- Cities start tearing down their mass transit systems

because they believe the automobile is the future.

- [Reporter] There will be better automobiles

and better roads.

- [Narrator] But Walt has a different idea.

- Everyone said it's the automotive age,

and Walt Disney says no, the future is more than the car.

- Walt Disney could foresee the problems

of freeways and traffic,

and also the fact that we were isolated in a car.

- [Narrator] Walt is searching

for the ideal transportation of the future.

- In 1958, he and his wife

were driving in Germany near Cologne.

At that moment, a vehicle went right across the road

in the trees in front of them,

which looked like a loaf of bread on a stick.

And you learned it was called a monorail.

- A monorail, it either hangs from a rail

or rides right on top of it.

- Monorails solved many of the issues

that urban sprawl had with cars,

because it meant you could go from A to B up in the sky,

away from ground traffic.

- [Narrator] But in the car-crazy United States,

no one had seriously considered building a monorail,

until now.

- Walt said, "This is perfect for my Tomorrow."

- But he definitely wanted to pizazz it up a little bit.

So he turned to Bob Gurr, the young Imagineer.

- Walt brought me some photographs and said,

"Bobby, I want you to get started on ours right away."

- The important design elements of the monorail

are the wheels on top of the beam

and the wheels on the side of the beam

that pair it and keep it in place.

- Within a couple of days,

I came up with the overall shape of it

from the Buck Rogers cartoons in the 1930s,

and these two fins going along the lower side

to hide the suspension and the wheels.

And it made a good looking monorail.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Walt wants every part of the monorail

to be a showcase of advanced technology.

And with the monorail,

that extends to the composition of the track itself.

Within a thin, 26 inch wide single beam

of concrete and steel,

is a core made from styrofoam to keep the track lightweight,

yet still strong enough to hold the heavy train.

The first daily operating monorail system

in the Western Hemisphere

officially opens on June 14th, 1959 at Disneyland Park.

- I mean, who wants to ride a piece of transportation?

But when you went to Disneyland,

you really wanted to ride the monorail.

- We live in the day and age now

where there are monorails found all over the world,

from Seattle, to Newark, New Jersey, Bangkok,

and Tokyo, and Seoul,

and yet the most iconic

and the one that really pioneered the technology

and championed it, it's at Disneyland Park.

- [Narrator] It's 1967.

Construction crews are breaking ground

on Disney's most ambitious project to date,

Walt Disney World Resort.

But for the first time, the Imagineers must push forward

without Walt Disney.

- Now, you have 27,000 acres of swampland in Central Florida,

and the guy whose vision it was to build Disney World

isn't there to lead it.

- [Narrator] At the heart of Walt's vision

for those vast acres of Florida swampland

was a city of the future.

- Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, EPCOT.

This was gonna be a futuristic expression

of all the technology in modern America

condensed into this one city.

- And Walt's vision of the future,

something that was considered to be unsightly,

like delivery trucks, put that underground.

- There's the monorail,

which might be a way that people can get to work

without driving their cars on the freeway.

- And he also had the idea

for a hotel tower of the future, right in a heart of EPCOT.

- [Narrator] Although Walt's death

halts the full realization of EPCOT,

his cherished experimental city of the future,

Disney's Imagineers do seek to incorporate

many of his designs and goals

as part of what will become Walt Disney World Resort.

Starting with a transportation system

that will not just move guests around the park,

but keep them in the immersive world of Disney

for their entire stay at the resort,

a system that Disney has already been operating

successfully for nearly a decade in California,

a monorail.

- Walt Disney World takes the monorail,

which had been purely a function of being a ride, you know,

sort of a viewing platform in Disneyland,

but in Disney World,

it's an organic part of the whole thing.

- Building a resort twice the size of Manhattan,

one of the most important things was gonna be transportation.

So the monorail became the spine of travel

around Walt Disney World.

You could ride to the park in your pajamas

straight from your bedroom at the hotel.

- [Narrator] The system will cover

nearly 15 miles of track throughout the resort.

- The Walt Disney World monorail

was a much more advanced train.

It had to be totally enclosed against rain,

it had to have air conditioning,

so it was quite a complex train design.

- [Narrator] But the biggest hurdle

will be connecting the monorail

to another of Walt Disney World's signature structures,

a futuristic hotel called Disney's Contemporary Resort.

- They took this daring, sort of crazy step

of having the monorail literally swoop

right into the lobby of the hotel.

- When I first saw the architectural drawings,

I thought, oh, boy, that's a shockingly daring thing to do.

- The vibration of the physical monorail structure

created a lot of problems

for the structure of the contemporary hotel.

So the solution to that

was to literally decouple these items from one another.

So you have the monorail as a suspended structure

running right through the middle of the building.

- The company wanted me to take a seismograph

to demonstrate whether the monorail shook the building.

So I drove 42 miles per hour through that hotel,

and the seismograph never saw a thing.

- [Narrator] The monorail will link

the Magic Kingdom Theme Park with the initial resort hotels,

skirting the perimeter of an enormous,

200 acre, manmade body of water,

the creation of which is the nation's

largest Earth moving operation since the Hoover Dam,

the Seven Seas Lagoon.

- Now, originally they had plans

for several hotels around Seven Seas Lagoon.

- And so the idea was doing sort of global themes.

If we're gonna build a lagoon,

what if we had a hotel that was themed around Venice, Italy?

What if we had a themed hotel around Polynesia?

- [Narrator] Resort hotels with Asian and Persian themes

were also part of early concepts,

though only the Polynesian and the contemporary

are ultimately built.

- They didn't want just an ordinary hotel.

They wanted adventurous hotels.

- So if you stay once at the Polynesian,

the next time, like,

"Oh, I've gotta go stay at the Contemporary."

It had a way of saying, "We gotta come back."

- [Narrator] It takes more than four years

and costs approximately $400 million

to finish Walt Disney World.

But it finally opens on October 1st, 1971.

[energetic music]

The resort quickly proves to be a triumph,

drawing 400,000 guests within its first month.

- Ultimately, this 27,000 acres

of swampland has gone on to become

the largest and single most visited theme park destination

in the entire world.

- [Narrator] Walt Disney World Resort's success

has given rise to a theme resort industry,

now worth nearly $14 billion.

- Nowadays, we find these all over the world,

but Disney World was the first one.

- [Narrator] The original innovations

Walt conceived for EPCOT and realized by his Imagineers

remain icons that thrill guests to this day.

- Like so many things in the Walt Disney story,

the magic is, of course, how did they do that?

And in this case, how did they do it without Walt?

It's because this idea of forever pushing forward

and that nothing is impossible

will always drive Disney Imagineers to the next level.

- [Narrator] By the 1990s, Disney Imagineers

are taking on perhaps their most daring challenge yet,

as they move the theme park experience itself

from land to the sea.

- Ships were always in the Disney DNA.

There was Mark Twain and the Jungle Cruise ride,

and over time, Disney kept playing around

with the idea of cruise ships.

- But for a company that's been running parks

and making movies,

suddenly getting into the cruise business,

this is a huge risk.

- The thinking was,

if we're gonna build a Disney Cruise Line,

we're gonna use everything we know

to build an experience that is as delightful and as complete

on the water as your adventure in the parks.

- [Narrator] But it may be a challenge

to get their usual guests on board.

At the time, the cruise industry

was anything but family-friendly.

- You've got pleasure cruises

with entertainment built into it.

We have the rise of the love boat,

but this is very adult-oriented.

This is really more Vegas on the water

than the family vacation.

- [Narrator] Despite the challenges,

in early 1994, Disney moves forward.

The opportunity, construct a vessel unlike anything else

in the cruise industry, starting with the look.

- Cruise ships in the '90s

were very sort of white and modern and bold and clean,

and sort of a little futuristic.

The Imagineers all agreed that a Disney ship

should feel more like a fantasy experience.

- The style of the Disney cruise ships

is meant to harken back

to the original transatlantic steamers,

these beautiful, grand ships

taking you back into the world of adventure.

- The Disney cruise look is signature.

It has a big, fabulous hull.

It has smokestacks.

It's not unlike Main Street at Disneyland.

This is a nostalgic idea.

- [Narrator] Although the modern ship

only needs one smokestack,

the Imagineers include two to complete the classic look.

And that's not the only unique design choice.

- It was understood by maritime law

that lifeboats have to be a certain, exact shade of orange.

But they got the maritime agencies to agree

that you could paint the lifeboats Mickey's shoe yellow.

And so the whole ship really is Mickey colors.

- [Narrator] After over a year of planning,

Disney awards an Italian ship builder the contract

to build the first Disney cruise ships.

The shipyard has over 200 years of experience,

but they've never built anything like this.

- There are rides and attractions on the upper deck.

Things were implemented on Disney ships

that never existed before,

like the first water coaster at sea.

- [Narrator] Later, Imagineers combine lighting,

special effects, and surprises

to create the first attraction at sea,

featuring 760 feet of winding tubes across the deck.

And that's just one of the Cruise Line's notable firsts.

- State rooms on the ships were 25% larger

than on any cruise line before that.

And an entire deck is devoted

to spaces where kids can have a space of their own.

- Disney was taking a form of entertainment

that's geared towards adults,

turning it into something that works for families.

- [Narrator] At 984 feet from stem to stern,

even the smallest Disney cruise ship

is still longer than Disneyland Park's Main Street USA.

- It's an amazing leap of faith,

to create a Disney Cruise Line.

But when has Disney not taken on too much?

- [Narrator] Disney invests hundreds of millions of dollars

into their new cruise ships,

each of which takes years to complete.

But before any of the ships set sail,

they add one last Disney ingredient, characters.

- Making it oriented to be family-friendly,

the cruise has also introduced

character experiences for children.

- The Disney cruise isn't about wearing a lei

and playing shuffleboard.

It's water slides,

breakfast where your favorite Disney characters join you,

on the sea.

- And it all paid off.

The Disney Cruise Line was an instant hit.

- [Narrator] Today, the Disney Cruise Line

operates a fleet of five ships,

with three more on the way.

- The Disney Cruise Line revolutionized

the way that the entire industry

started to look at entertainment-based ships.

- [Narrator] Now, the majority of the cruise industry

is following in Disney's wake

by catering to families too,

topping their decks with racetracks, zip lines,

and surf pools.

- It's not uncommon to have

three generations of the same family on a boat.

Cruise lines are trying to find something

that will appeal to grandma as much as the little kids.

- [Narrator] But it was Disney's Imagineers

who first had the audacity to take their family brand

on the high seas,

revolutionizing the entire industry.

- [Adam] It's all about escape.

It's all about joy.

It's all about family.

- [Narrator] Thanks to bold imagination

and the use of state-of-the-art technology,

Disney's Imagineers have consistently delivered

dazzling experiences that have entertained audiences

for decades.

[riders screaming]

- These were brilliant, genius designers

taking an ephemeral idea and making it real.

- Today, the generation of Imagineers

have continued to build on the shoulders

that everybody that went before.

I am so proud that the Imagineers today

have reached more pinnacles

of doing something that is just so right.

- [Narrator] Today, the Imagineers continue to innovate,

transforming not only Disney, but the entire world.

- It's almost impossible to imagine

what the world would be like without Imagineering.

Beyond Disneyland, every time you go to a museum today,

every time you go to a resort or an airport,

it's so much more interesting, thanks to Imagineering.

- The Imagineers at Disney have always raised the bar

for what entertaining could be, what storytelling can be.

Our world has been changed forever

because nothing held these Imagineers back.

- As long as there is imagination left in the world,

Disneyland will never be complete.

Repair and Synchronization by Easy Subtitles Synchronizer 1.0.0.0