About a decade before Epcot Center opened, a young college boy began his Disney career working part time as an ice cream scooper at Disneyland. This young man is also known as Tony Baxter. He would be the Marc Davis in a new generation of Imagineers after Walt’s death. He played a key role in attractions such as Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Star Tours and Journey into Imagination. The central attraction at the Imagination pavilion at Epcot first opened 33 years ago. The original Journey into Imagination featuring Figment and the Dreamfinder would have celebrated this birthday last Saturday, the 5th if March. That is if it had remained in its original form. But before I begin the journey into the original imagination attraction at Epcot, we should visit a brilliant, yet unrealized land expansion, known as Discovery Bay.
Shortly after completing college at Cal State in 1969, Baxter was hired by Disney in the Imagineering department. He was immediately sent to Florida, under the supervision of Davis, to help with the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea attraction at the Magic Kingdom. Shortly after that, he found himself at the helm of a Disneyland revitalization project. He was tasked the challenge to create a new land on the shores of the Rivers of America. Discovery Bay was to be a balance between fantasy and technology set against the backdrop of 1860s San Francisco. It was to be a steampunk style land before the term was coined and was announced to be coming to the park around 1976. One of the attractions that Baxter had in mind was to be called Mr. Marvel’s Gallery of Wonders. The show’s concept was very similar to the Carousel of Progress in that guests would sit in a rotating theatre around a stationary stage which included various scenes with animatronics. Since the Carousel of Progress show proved to be very popular and recently moved to Florida, it made sense that Disneyland needed a similar style show in its replacement. Mr Marvel was to be a professor of imagination and the show would be the professor showcasing his collection of inventions and unique animals. One of those animals was originally going to be a friendly green dragon. (It actually sounds very similar to the basic story and characters of Mystic Manor at Hong Kong Disneyland.)
Unfortunately, Discovery Bay was a victim of the chopping block. One of the big reasons it was cancelled was due to the box office failure Island at the Top of the World. This new land’s E-ticket attraction was to be a ride based on this film. A combination of this failure and the public’s interest in the mid 1970s shifting to adventure stories and films set in space (i.e. Star Wars) led Imagineers to stopping the project. Also by the mid 70s, Imagineering had to refocus its staff towards two new park developments; Epcot in Florida and Tokyo Disneyland. Both of these enormous projects were slated to open in the early 1980s.
Even though Tony Baxter’s dream of Discovery Bay failed to become a reality, he still was able to breathe new life into that area of Disneyland by 1979. His family thrill ride, Big Thunder Mountain, was a hit and marked the beginning of a new era of attractions from Disney. Many of the ideas of this land saw the light of day in some form or another both at Disneyland Paris and Tokyo Disney Sea. But Epcot would become the home of a new imagination attraction that included his original character duo. He even brought elements of his adapted version of Carousel of Progress to the Imagination’s ride system.
Stay tuned tomorrow as we discover how Baxter’s little spark of imagination developed one of Epcot’s most beloved characters and attraction.
