Tag: Disney

Dear Tony Baxter: How one Disney Imagineer’s fearlessness taught us all to be brave

Disney Cicerone May 7, 2026 0 Comments
Dear Tony Baxter, It must have been frustrating to be so youngwanting to be heard but wondering if you had a right to do more than listentrying to find your place at 22 in the shadow of Walt’s legacycobbling together a new idea from pieces of older onesfragments from the original dream-buildersof the park that you loved. It must have been heartbreaking to watch your detailed models go into...

Making Peace With Our Lost Haunted Mansion Hitchhiking Ghosts

Disney Cicerone April 29, 2026 0 Comments
These hitchhiking ghostsused to haunt our Magic Kingdom Doom Buggiesand now they are relics of a timewhen we valued magic tricks over technology. Subtle over silly. Seeing them now brings mixed emotionsremembering the first time they hitched a ridewhen I gazed in wonderat the character whom I hadn’t invitedbut who had chosen me to follow home. When change happensoften the fading pieces of our...

Disneyland Was Made for Adults: Historical Evidence in Defense of Those Who are Young at Heart

Disney Cicerone April 21, 2026 0 Comments
Over the decades I’ve spent as a Disney historian, I’ve heard people say time and time again that there must be something wrong with Disney Adults. Their argument is usually accompanied by the assumption that Disneyland was made for children. But I have historical evidence that proves that Disneyland was, in fact, created for the enjoyment of adults from the very beginning. At the Cannes...

The Dalmatian Disaster: How the Mistakes We Make Shape Who We Are Becoming

Disney Cicerone July 24, 2025 0 Comments
I once saw an interview that both broke my heart and inspired me all at the same time. In 1984, Ken Anderson did an interview for the Disney Channel as part of a series called the Disney Family Album, reflecting back on his time at Disney. He had a prolific career with Disney, from an art director designing Snow White’s cottage in the 1930s to developing Fantasyland for Disneyland. Walt Disney...

The Armor We Choose: Finding Grace in Painful Places

Disney Cicerone December 30, 2022 0 Comments
Armor. That's what she had to put on, every day. Amidst cat calls, pranks, and those who watched and waited for her to fail so they could pounce, Grace Huntington walked a daily minefield with invisible protective gear making her not as invisible as she wished she could be. Walt had warned her about this in her job interview for the story department at Walt Disney Studios. He was honest with...

The Lost Jungle Book that Never Was

Disney Cicerone August 29, 2022 1 Comment
I recently had the privilege of visiting The Walt Disney Family Museum's special exhibit for the Jungle Book called Walt Disney's Jungle Book: Making a Masterpiece, and, to be honest, I was only mildly excited about it walking into the experience. Don't get me wrong, I have always liked The Jungle Book, but it had never been a top 10 (or even 20) Disney movie for me. But after watching the...

“Did you know that… ?” Seeking the Truth in Disney Stories

Disney Cicerone June 14, 2022 0 Comments
I once had a conversation with a former Imagineer who told me something along the lines of, "Disney people are storytellers." And boy, isn't that the truth? Sometimes Disney fans, creators, and even Cast Members hear a story about something in Disney history and get so excited to hear a "secret" that they immediately pass it on as fact without tracking down the primary source (my professor...

Repurposing The Magic: How We Reimagine Our Moments

Disney Cicerone November 2, 2021 0 Comments
It occurred to me the other day that so much of what we see at Disney isn't actually what we think it is. Or it used to be something very different, but we don't realize it. Let me explain. When you ride on Splash Mountain and sing along (jubilantly, if you're anything like me) with the geese and the swamp critters at the end, you probably aren't thinking about how they were all...

Mastering Time like Dr. Strange

Disney Cicerone September 18, 2021 0 Comments
Ok, confession time. I didn't always love Marvel. I used to roll my eyes when people went on and on about it, not understanding why superheroes were a thing. But one day, my husband and I decided to watch all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies in chronological order, and that was it. I was hooked. I know that Marvel isn't traditionally Disney, and maybe you feel the same way I used to about...

How Disney Gives Us the Magic of Confidence

Disney Cicerone August 3, 2021 2 Comments
On a recent visit to Avenger’s Campus, I witnessed a kind of Disney magic I had never seen before. Now, this is really saying something. I’ve held my babies with teary eyes during fireworks, I’ve been pixie-dusted for once-in-a-lifetime moments, and I have witnessed a gentle snow falling on Main Street USA in Disneyland Paris at Christmastime. But this moment was one that will go down in...