It was impossible to escape Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in the late 90s.
The imported British game show was an instant hit when ABC started broadcasting their version in August 1999. Millionaire found a perfect balance between its regal presentation, the charm of its host Regis Philbin, and drop-dead simple premise: answer a series of questions of progressing difficulty to win a million dollars. After a short run in the fall of '99 the show was quickly renewed and a larger show order was requested.
Every network wanted their own prime time TV game show featuring dramatic lighting, tense music, dark backgrounds, and a personable host. Greed, Weakest Link, 21, 1 vs 100, and more attempted to cash in on the Millionaire rush. ABC ran the plane into the ground, showing Millionaire several times a week (new episodes and reruns) plus specials with celebrities and more. Viewership figures dropped and the primetime show was canceled in 2002 but a condensed half-hour version debuted for daytime syndication soon after.
In the middle of Millionaire mayhem, Walt Disney World announced an interactive stage show version of the game show will debut at Disney-MGM Studios. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire - Play It! opened in April 2001 in Soundstage 3 at the Studios. Disney-MGM Studios Entertainment (not WDI) faithfully recreated the New York set with the addition of several large projection screens and 600 seats. The 25-minute show largely played out like the one on TV with three major changes: 1) contestants were picked from the full audience (who had little gamepads to select A B C or D) 2) each question had a time limit to answer 3) instead of cash prizes contestants won "points" with each major milestone featuring pins, hats, jackets, and the million point prize consisting of a trip to see the show record in New York.
But
seriously, “Wo-ho, Wo-ho, A Piwates Wife For Me” is just adorable.
Back
in the day, Disney Vacation Planning videos combined all sorts of presentation
elements to make you DROP EVERYTHING AND GO TO DISNEY WORLD RIGHT NOW
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!! For whatever reason, many of these elements are
lacking in modern Disney Parks videos. But for whatever reason, the early 90s
videos did a better job of showcasing everything at the resort, rather than
just the most profitable elements. They showed an opportunity to relax and have
a vacation. They showed options for all walks of life, not just the core
demographic. And they use phrases like “fun is the only thing Mickey takes
seriously.”
My
favorite part about these videos (besides the EPCOT Center footage obviously)
is the music. They are special, barely-recognizable BGM versions of classics
from Mary Poppins, Beauty and the Beast, Journey Into Imagination, and Spectromagic.
You really have to listen to hear them, but they’re there in full glory. And
they’re tuned in such a way to make you FEEL like you’re in a more relaxed era,
where the best way to spend an afternoon is to sit at the Dixie Landings food
court, and the best way to spend an evening is to golf or go ride World of
Motion. There’s literally no pressure. No Fastpass+ to make. No advanced dining
or character reservation to run to. Just relaxation and fun.
Notice
how Disney by this time still wasn’t afraid to be authentic. I mean, just look
at how many REAL PEOPLE they interview! And you can tell it’s authentic. These
people are not being fed lines. Especially the British guy who rhapsodizes
about the Country Bears (saying pithily they’re “a bunch of bears dancing and
singing”) or the teenagers who literally can’t remember what they saw in the
costume warehouse portion of the Backlot Tour, or the woman who says Space
Mountain “hits the ceiling” (whatever that means). And the Cast Member
interactions are authentic too. You can tell they’re not actors. And it makes
all the difference. A short rundown of some random musings:
·I love seeing a lot of the old footage and
costumes. The skippers with their old costumes and using real guns. The (real)
old video footage of Mansion and Space. The Old Tomorrowland (though we don’t
see much of it outside of the Speedway, Space, and Delta Dreamflight), and of
course Mickey’s Starland.
·This is the point in history when Disney
Animation still considered Rescuers Down Under a classic. Also, Goofy and
Donald are considered “fairy tale characters.”
·There’s an interesting Roger Rabbit sighting
riding Thunder of all things, maybe he got lost on the way back from Griffith
Park?
·As expected, there is some absolutely choice
EPCOT Center footage. Everything from the Rainbow Tunnel to Mesa Verde. And a
tour of the countries before all the margarita wagons. Le sigh.
·There’s a quick tour of MGM in the Superstar
Television/Monster Sound days, where half the appeal of the Backlot Tour was Residential
Street and Ernest’s house.
·I want to go to Pleasure Island again. Right
now. Take me. Especially since apparently the entirety of Orlando can get
shoved in front of the West End Stage for the New Year’s celebration.
·The exploration of the hotels is quite welcome
and quite a contrast to today’s tourist brochures. Notice how much they play up
the sailing and motor-boating aspects. And they’re very quick to point out that
Caribbean Beach, Port Orleans, and Dixie Landings are “light on your
pocketbook.” And the Disney Inn!
·They actually mention the non-Disney property
hotels! Swan and Dolphin and the Hotel Plaza are featured in short segments.
·Remember kids, Disney had villas/condos before
there was the Disney Vacation Club. It was called Disney’s Village Resort,
right where Saratoga Springs is currently.
·DID I MENTION REAL PEOPLE ARE INTERVIEWED?
And remember to fly with Delta, kids! Remember when Disney had such strong ties to sponsors, and when Disney cared about advertising with them? What happened to that? Now it's "presented by Siemens...we think?...we guess? Did they pay for this exhibit?" But here we actually get TESTIMONIALS from customers on why Delta Airlines is so spiffy. Be Our Guest, indeed!
For
the next few weeks we’ll be taking a break from roller coaster specials and
featuring the old 1990s Disney planning videos. So we hope you enjoy a nice
nostalgia romp. Or, conversely, you’ve been warned.
Disney-MGM Studios is probably the oddest duck in the Disney Parks empire. It was created in fire, through a particularly horrible mud-wrestling contest between Michael Eisner and Lew Wasserman, and never really reached even a fraction of its potential. It’s actually astounding that it garnered a higher attendance than Animal Kingdom until 2006, despite having no main differentiators like the pull of the real-life animal enclosures. It set the stage for decades to come as being a Michael Eisner park through and through, with budget cuts and confusing future . I think the most astonishing thing about this “making of” special is the fact they were able to fill 53 minutes worth of content!
All the official Disney propaganda would have you believe that Disney-MGM Studios was created when Michael Eisner and Frank Wells took a trip through the Glendale Imagineering HQ and thought that the “Great Movie Ride” would make a great central attraction for a theme park themed to Hollywood and the movies, rather than what it was originally destined to be, which was an EPCOT Center pavilion next to Imagination. The Disney executives then all held hands, cavorted through flower beds, and sang good Christian songs as the innocent Hollywood park was built. By most accounts, the creation of Disney-MGM Studios was much more insidious.
As witnesses have attested, Lew Wasserman (then head at Universal) was shopping around the idea of creating a Universal Studios in Florida to bask in the success of Walt Disney World, which opened in 1971. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Lew was passionate about the idea of turning Orlando into Hollywood East, and a Universal Studios would help this image by offering movie and TV studios lower taxes, lower costs on materials and housing, lower wages, and the opportunity to avoid the Hollywood unions. As Lew would envision it, Universal Studios Florida would have a Disney-style theme park along with a working soundstage and backlot area, where real movies, TV shows, and commercials would be filmed. The problem was, Lew was also a notorious cheapskate. Even though he was passionate about the project, he refused to have Universal pay more than half the cost of the new park. So, he visited the executives of other movie studios to pitch them on the idea of investing in the new park (for real, think of the umpteen-millions of dollars Universal lost by not building the Florida park a decade earlier than it did!)
One of the executive teams he visited was the Paramount team. This team consisted of studio head Barry Diller, along with…Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who were major studio executives at Paramount at the time. Paramount ultimately turned Universal down on the prospect of investing in the park.
Eisner and Katzenberg would migrate to Disney in 1984 (after Wasserman told Eisner over the phone that he was “stupid” to go to Disney). And, lo and behold, a year after their terms began, Eisner and Katzenberg came up with a crazy new idea for a Disney Studios theme park, with rides and a working soundstage/backlot area! Amazing!
Wasserman of course was furious. Disney denied the allegations from Wasserman that Disney stole Universal’s idea, and instead concocted the Great Movie Ride story. So began an arms race to build the first studio park in Florida.
Unfortunately, both companies had problems. Wasserman still didn’t want to pay for the entire Universal Studios project. And Disney, well…didn’t have any movies to make any rides out of.
Strange but true, folks (channeling me some Jim Hill there). Remember, in the mid-1980s when the Disney Studios project was announced, Disney’s major hits were almost all animated movies. Besides these, Disney’s only movies that could be considered major hits were Mary Poppins, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Swiss Family Robinson, The Absent-Minded Professor, and The Love Bug. Hardly the material for an entire theme park’s worth of attractions. So Disney had to spend time to find a deal with another movie studio to gain the rights to their material.
Eventually, Disney was able to strike a deal with MGM, makers of all-time classics like Singin’ in the Rain, Gone With the Wind, and The Wizard of Oz. They announced that not only would the Disney-MGM Studios be moving forward, but that there would be multiple Disney-MGM Studios, specifically in France and in Burbank. Michael Eisner loved the idea of a “movie park” so much that he wanted it duplicated in as many places as possible.
Eisner’s aggressive tactics to target the Disney-MGM Studios Burbank project in Universal Studios Hollywood’s backyard enraged Wasserman to the point where he dropped his own stingy demeanor (seriously, this would be like Walt Disney’s moustache spontaneously falling off) and decided to go ahead with Universal Studios Florida, with Universal paying 100%. Both companies were determined to open their park first.
Unfortunately for Universal, Disney’s far greater experience in the theme park arena ensured that their park would open first. But it was not without paying the price. To hurry along construction, only two rides at Disney-MGM Studios were ready for opening day (the Great Movie Ride and the Backlot Tour). The Indiana Jones stunt show was not ready for opening day and had to open several months late. All other attractions were show or tour-based attractions, much cheaper and easier to install.
This lack of things to do did not go unnoticed. Guests swarmed Guest Relations with complaints as to how small the park was and the fact that they had to pay full admission for a half-day park (sound familiar? Disney really doesn’t learn its lessons does it?). Remember, this was before Star Tours, so the entire park terminated at Mickey Avenue (where Voyage of the Little Mermaid is now) for the Backlot Tour, and there was no Star Tours or MuppetVision on the other side. And no Sunset Boulevard. And New York Street was a closed set and available only on the tram portion of the Backlot Tour. That, my friends, is a tiny park. And why I’m continually impressed how Disney was able to fit 53 minutes of material into the making of the park, especially when the opening-day attraction lineup could barely deliver more than 53 minutes of entertainment! Wakka Wakka!
Joe
In the Orlando studio park war Universal Studios Florida won.
Bu that's not today's story. No, as Jeff said, this story is about Disney-MGM Studios.
The concept art always looked too crisp, too precise, too... 80s.
Disney-MGM Studios has been a a park at war with its own success and ambitions. A park born in the fire of Michael Eisner and died under his own cooling power; the park was on the brink of a major power play with The Muppets, Maroon Studios, Dick Tracey, and more before Eisner's own decisions brought all those plans down to the ground.
This special highlights the beginnings of this vision hosted by one Fred Newman. While he might not be a household name he did work with Who Framed Rodger Rabbit. But he's probably best know by us millennials for a later show he did..
