Interview with George McGinnis

Lou Mongello: Today is one of those rare, very special opportunities where I’m fortunate enough to meet and speak with somebody whose work I’ve enjoyed and admired for so many years at Walt Disney World.

So it’s my distinct honor and pleasure and privilege to introduce a man who really needs no introduction, he is former Walt Disney Imagineer Mr. George McGinnis.

Mr. McGinnis, welcome to the WDW Radio Show.

George McGinnis: Thank you.

LM: I have to not only thank you for taking the time to speak with me today, but I have to admit really what an absolute thrill this is for me personally to be able to talk to somebody who’s so inherently instrumental in creating something that’s such an important part of my life, and I really do appreciate it.

GM: Thank you, Lou.

LM: Mr. McGinnis, you really have one of the longest and most storied and, certainly, most successful careers at Walt Disney Imagineering. How did you begin with the company?

GM: I was a student at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. In 1966 I was finishing up my senior year and I did a transportation project that caught the eye—or the ear—of Walt Disney. The school Acting President was having lunch with Walt, and told Walt about my project. It was a high-speed train underground between Boston and New York and on to Washington, and it handled the way stations on the northeast corner with a shuttle that would zoom down; a linear motor powered shuttle integrated with the train, which had a station car in the middle and two 4-semi-circular compartments would rotate taking people on and off, with their luggage, in 8 seconds. And then the shuttle would return to, maybe, New London. And all the transfer took place in 2 and half minutes.

So, Walt came over to the school with Dick Irvine, the President of WDI (which was WED Enterprises at the time), Roger Broggie, Bob Gurr, who was responsible for the Monorails up until the Mark IV , and then John Hench was along. And, after Walt ran the train – it was a model that rotated the semi-circular compartment, and Walt invited me over to see the PeopleMover that Bob Gurr was designing, and they had a test track at that time. This PeopleMover was for Disneyland.

So, I started in June 1966, and I worked with . . . Walt had me do some special projects, and he died, unfortunately, in December that year. So, I had 6 months and about 6 meetings with Walt. And it was really a privilege, because he was so excited about everything he was planning. He had a love of design and entertainment.

LM: Notwithstanding the list of people that he brought with, being as incredibly impressive as that is, what’s it like for you when you’re a student and somebody says to you, "Walt Disney wants to come over and see what you’re working on?" I mean, what does that feel like?

GM: I couldn’t believe it. I had entered my train in the Alcoa project at the school, and my train came in second. I was a little disappointed. An aluminum garden cart came in first place. So, I told the Acting President, "I’m going to write to Time Magazine and tell them about my train." And a couple of days later, he told me that Walt wanted to see the train. He told Walt, "McGinnis will carry it over on his back," (Lou laughs). And Walt said, "No, I will come over." So that was very nice of Walt to show that interest.

LM: Well, fortunately, one of your areas of interest and expertise was in the field of transportation and, specifically, trains, which we all know Walt had an interest and affinity in as well. And as you were talking about your initial project, you mentioned something that I think, for a lot of people, instantly raised a red flag which was "linear induction" type of technology. So some of your earlier work actually revolved around using that, and, again, on one of my favorite attractions: the WEDway PeopleMover.

GM: Well, Bob Gurr did all the transportation for Disneyland. He was there from the beginning. I came 10 years later, ’66, so Walt said "We could use another industrial designer at WED." And Bob Gurr told me that Walt said that in the car returning to the studio. So I joined. .. Actually, I started at the school as an automotive designer, and I switched to product design when I came back to the school in ’64, and more diversity in product design. But, I did do a transportation project for the final project.

LM: And your work on the PeopleMover wasn’t just for the theme parks, correct? Because this was meant to be a real working transportation mode in Epcot – the city, not Epcot the Theme Park.

GM: Yes, Walt had asked me to do a larger PeopleMover than the one planned for the Magic Kingdom, so I did that and – it was not my final designs – but it’s now running at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. So, WDI did that with the Linear Induction Motor.

So Bob Gurr’s PeopleMover at Disneyland, the quaint one with the tilting roof? (Lou acknowledges.) It was powered by rubber drive floats in the track against a Platon on the bottom of the train, a four or five car train. That worked well for Disneyland, it would get up and down hills and preview the shows along the way. Walt had a great idea, there.

In Walt Disney World, because the linear induction motor had a very close gap that it had to maintain, didn’t make grade changes. It was level all the way around. You may have noticed that.

LM: How different was what ended up being in Walt Disney World from what possibly would have gone into Epcot the City, had it been built?

GM: Well, the larger PeopleMover I designed would carry much more people. I did an illustration of the PeopleMover for Walt’s so-called last film. It was the film he did to show to the Governor of Florida for promoting Epcot. I believe he showed that to the Governor in October, and I did illustrations for that film showing the Monorail and the PeopleMover moving through the International Area, which became World Showcase, eventually. So that illustration is prominent in the film. In fact, they do computer graphics in the film of the area changing and being built in the computer. It’s interesting. I think that’s on the DVD just simply titled "Walt."

LM: Right. I’ve seen the film before, and it’s amazing the foresight and the engineering that was going to go into that, had it actually been built.

GM: Yes, Walt was very interested in Victor Gruen, the architect from Vienna that is responsible for the "malling" of America. But Victor Gruen had these garden city ideas, and they were circular plans. So Walt’s original plan owed much to Victor Gruen’s concepts.

LM: We’re going to talk a little bit later on about some of the things that you did as far as attractions and, specifically, attraction vehicles. But your work wasn’t just limited to that: you also did a lot of work on other transportation systems such as trams. But more importantly, I think, the design concepts on the current Walt Disney World Mark VI Monorails. You also had some work with the Mark IVs with Bob Gurr, correct?

GM: Bob Gurr did four Monorails: Mark I, Mark II, Mark III, and Mark IV. And the Mark IV was done for Walt Disney World. The Mark III ran at Disneyland. Well, Bob left the Company and started his own business, and I kind of took over the transportation. But I spent about half my time on shows and half my time on ride vehicles. So the Monorail, Mark V, I designed it, made 12 trips to Germany following it through production, and then right on to the Mark VI for replacing the Mark IV at Walt Disney World. And I made similar trips to Bombardier in Canada on that production follow-through. So I did Mark V, Mark VI, and I started Mark VII, but then Bombardier reneged on doing such a small order. And I think the Mark VII for Disneyland is in design or maybe in production stage as we speak. But I didn’t do the design; they’re going back to a retro design similar to Bob Gurr’s original Monorails.

LM: Wow, interesting.

You also were very, very instrumental in the plans for Epcot Center, and, when it was announced, you actually became the Manager of Industrial Design for the entire park. What did that job entail for you?

GM: Well, I wouldn’t say I was instrumental in Epcot Center’s planning. I was doing a lot of designs for the Magic Kingdom, but when Epcot started they knew they needed a lot more designers like myself. So they had me interview a bunch of students, recent graduates, from the same school I went to: the Art Center College of Design. And I recommended seven of them, and they hired them all. (laughter) So I told my boss, Marty Sklar, I was less interested in managing and more interested in design. So the managing of all the paperwork, I didn’t have to handle it. It was handled by George Windram in Show Set Design. That relieved me of the time sheets and all of that.

So, I was designing on Horizons at that time. So, these young fellows came along, and one lady. They came along at the right time for handling a lot of details for the Communicore; I worked on many of the shows in Communicore, and these recent graduates were great at detailing the designs. In fact, we got into a little problem there, because these students were trained like I was: to do models, work between models and also, perhaps, drawings, and to come up with a design. So they produced detailed drawings. Well, the Model Shop had just changed to dimensional design; they were now designers rather than model builders. So when they received drawings from the Industrial Design Department, they complained that they were too detailed. They were used to sketches, and then they would build the models from sketches. So I got a little complaint from them that we were giving them too much design. They wanted to go back to the rough sketches, which they would interpret in model form.

LM: You had mentioned, when we were talking about Epcot, exactly what I want to touch on next. We recently did something as part of an Epcot retrospective series on this show about one of my favorite attractions which is, unfortunately, now extinct and, I think, missed by many generations of fans, and that’s Horizons. You developed some of the earliest concepts for the pavilion, including the multiple-screen Omnimax Theater and the ride vehicles, as well as one of the most memorable parts of the show: the ability to choose your own ending. Tell us about some of the things you designed for the pavilion.

GM: Well, I started on the pavilion in ’79 with Collin Campbell, and we researched a lot for the Edison Lab concept. Well, when we presented that to Reginald Jones, the Chairman of General Electric, he rejected it. He didn’t want history; he wanted the future. So we went back to the drawing board, and, working with the General Electric Team and our own show writers, such as Tom Fitzgerald, we came up with a concept of Past, Present, and Future, with the Omnisphere handling the present.

Marty Sklar asked me to see if I could fit an IMAX into the pavilion. And I know Claude Coats was working on an IMAX concept, while I chose the Omnimax. And I had three screens circling around, and the vehicles would travel two times through the experience. Then, later on, when I had to reduce the size of the pavilion – Marty asked me to take $10 Million out of it; usually the engineers have to take $10 Million out. But, it shows how important the Show Designer is to the cost. So, I took 600 feet of track out of the pavilion and didn’t lose any story. The way I did it, my first design for the Omnisphere had three screens, as I said. I reduced it to two screens. And it went in at the bottom and it came out at the top to the level of the next scene after the Omnisphere. So, that was the biggest reduction in track. And then I combined two scenes, scrunched them into one scene in one bay, thus shortening the pavilion. And that, when you went through one side and you went through the back side, you were seeing the next scene.

And then I shortened the front of the building, making the pre-show and post-show very small. Now, we lost the post-show; I had done the post-show concept with Marc Nowadnick, but the incoming Chairman-to-be, Jack Welch, shot that down. So we only had a Bob McCall painting in the post-show, and I put three mirror illusions in the pre-show. So, all in all, the building became shorter in front in back, and two scenes combined, and a lot of track taken out of the Omnisphere. And I never heard whether we reduced it by $10 Million. That was not important to the Show Inventor. Just accomplish it, but never hear the details that resulted.

LM: Not only did you cut it back in size while keeping the integrity of the story, but you were still able to get to the scheduled opening date of October First of ’83, which is even more impressive.

GM: Well, one of these things that I had done: the Omnisphere for the ending, the final ending, but the story team put it in the middle. So Marty asked me to come up with a "weenie," as Walt referred to them, for the ending. So I took something from the post-show that I showed to Jack Welch – traveling screens. I knew that there was ability for projections to travel from one screen to the next. So I suggested that for the ending. I didn’t come up with the idea of Choose Your Future; I came up with the technical concept. I offered an idea, which turned into the Choose Your Future.

LM: One of the things for me was that Horizon really embodied so much of what Epcot as a whole represented on so many levels. It was representative of the themes of Epcot, and Future World specifically, and I think it was, really, the singular attraction that encompassed all of the themes of Future World. But I think, more importantly, it carried over the central themes of everything that Disney does, from its films to its theme parks and every form of entertainment – and that’s the concept of family, and the importance of family.

GM: Yeah. Some people said that the Horizons show should have been in Spaceship Earth, because it explained the reason for Epcot so well. So, that was someone’s concept.

LM: Yeah, and we talk about the connections to the Carousel of Progress, and, again, the whole idea of family transitioning to the next generation. Speaking of family, your own kids can be found on the attraction, right?

GM: My kids were about 5 years old; my daughter was 7, my boys were 5. And Tom Fitzgerald suggested they could be in the scenes. So, Reed is the boy floating in the Space Shuttle that’s docking, and Scott is the little boy with the seal licking his face in the undersea classroom, and Shauna is tapping her foot, with the long blonde hair. So, they did a good job on the kids, they did a good likeness. We always enjoyed that part of the show.

LM: I couldn’t imagine becoming a permanent fixture in Epcot and having an AudioAnimatronic.

Let’s just stay at Epcot for a minute, because you created some special effects in Communicore, which you mentioned earlier, over at the Astuter Computer Review. Tell us what you created there.

GM: Well, I laid out the show and the narrations and all that, and Tom Fitzgerald wrote the story. Tom and I worked on several shows, he being the story person and I being the show designer. But, the Astuter Computer Review, as it was called, had its beginnings in Alice in Computerland, a show that RCA was to produce, and John Hench did the concept. So, old concepts never die. So when RCA went out of the computer business, and they were to sponsor Space Mountain – which I was working on – Disney offered Space Mountain for them to sponsor. So Alice in Computerland died for a while, but it was reincarnated into the Astuter Computer Review for the Communicore.

LM: And you did some of the effects for that, did you help design some of the special effects, specifically?

GM: Yes, the major special effect was similar to the Haunted Mansion scene where you see the organist and the ghosts. We used the same effect, and it was very effective for the little dancing person on the computers. But Tom Fitzgerald secured the people for the parts and all; I laid out the . . . underneath the guests . . . where the monitors and all, the special effects were moving around, unseen by the guests.

LM: Again, we’re talking about some of the extinct attractions that you worked on. You worked on Dreamflight and Take Flight in the Magic Kingdom . . .

GM: I did the storyboards for Dreamflight, and that’s all I did. Larry Gertz followed that through.

LM: You also worked on one of my favorite extinct attractions, and that’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, where you designed the actual ride vehicles, correct?

GM: Yes, that was one I did very early on in my career. I’m very disappointed that they removed that ride and filled in the lagoon. Because it had as much, and maybe more, potential for a new show than the subs at Disneyland, where they put the Nemo ride in there.

LM: You are not alone in your sentiments, I can assure you.

GM: They never did a proper show for the 20,000 Leagues in Florida. They brought the show from Disneyland with minor changes, and it didn’t relate to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the movie. Can you imagine what they could do with that movie if they had wanted to? They brought, basically, the same show from Disneyland, just like they did the Pirates of the Caribbean. They had an all-new audience in Florida, so they didn’t have to do a new show. But I think Michael Eisner missed the boat in taking out the 20,000 League’s subs. Now, albeit they don’t have a lot of capacity, and right now at Disneyland you wait in line for a long time. But it’s a good show, and 20,000 Leagues could have had a wonderful show, based on the movie. That’s my feeling.

LM: I agree, being a fan of the attraction and a fan of the film. And it’s unfortunate because it sounds – and, again, I haven’t ridden Disneyland’s Nemo Voyages yet – but it sounds like it’s suffering the same issues that the Walt Disney World version was, which was accessibility, load times, the ability to get guests in and out of the attraction very quickly.

GM: The sub rides?

LM: Yeah.

GM: Yeah. It wasn’t a high capacity ride. But Walt didn’t mind that. He wanted you to be entertained in the queue, and we always tried to make the queues interesting. As long as people are walking along, they are happy.

LM: That’s a good segue to talking about one of your greatest triumphs, I think, and one of the things you are most noted for, which is your work on a true classic attraction, and that’s Space Mountain. And that must have been such an incredible project to work on for so many different reasons, from the engineering and the technical challenges to the concepts themselves.

GM: Well, Walt Disney came up with the name. He is reputed to have said, "We have a Matterhorn Mountain, why can’t we have a Space Mountain." And he assigned John Hench to do that. But it didn’t come about for many years after Walt’s death. I started on it in ’71 for Disneyland, believe it or not. We had a 200 foot circle of space between substructures at Disneyland. So, I started on it and Bill Watkins, the engineer I worked with on many rides, he was responsible for the track design. Of course, I did a small wire model, and I showed it to Dick Irvine. It was a two track model that eventually went into Walt Disney World. And Dick Irvine looked at it. "Can it be more pyramidal?" Dick said. And so, shortly after that, they decided to put the Space Mountain in Florida after RCA became the sponsor.

So the track that was designed for Disneyland, although it wouldn’t have fit in very well, was now going to be in Walt Disney World. So, in ’71 Roger Broggie told me to go over to John Hench’s office, and I did, and John put me on Space Mountain, told me have a pre-show and a post-show along a belt going in and a moving belt going out and have the load area at the back end. So, I laid that out, and Bill Watkins did the track around my show concept.

I went right on to Space Mountain for Disneyland after that, in ’75. There had been some work done on it, showing the load area outside the mountain. Well, I gave a big challenge to the engineer. I took the load area to the bottom floor of that 200 foot circle, and I entered 30 feet above that. So the queue walking along, they saw into the ride, and the luminescent vehicles zooming around were the pre-show. And then they got into the load area 30 feet below the entrance. What I did was produce a headache for the track engineer; it got so tight at the bottom that, in order to get the vehicles back to the load area, they had to dig out some of the embankment and surcharge the foundation for Bill’s track to make it back to the unload. I’m sure that boosted the cost of the Mountain considerably. They were hoping for a $1 Million structure. I didn’t hear how much it cost, but I’m sure it went over because of that.

LM: See, that’s why they made you cut back on Horizons, because of all the money you spent on Space Mountain. (Both laugh).

GM: Well, it’s always the time to reduce costs.

Now, at that time, we didn’t have project management, all the people that are concerned with that. Project management came with Epcot. Bill and I, the engineer and the show designer, worked together and we designed the ride. Later on, we had more people to make happy, with the project managers and bean counters.

LM: One of the elements of Space Mountain that I believe you helped work on was the Star Tunnel. For a lot of people, including myself, it really is one of the most exciting parts of the ride; it’s really very exhilarating in what you created there just as the attraction begins.

GM: Yeah, I wonder if you mean the revolving tunnel that was to be on both Space Mountains, but ended up being at the end for the fiery re-entry. And the illusion of turning over didn’t work in the 4 seconds it takes. You pass through that so fast there was no illusion of turning over. But that brings us to the Space Mountain that was re-designed for Disneyland that opened in 2005. I did the redesign on the vehicle, bringing the speakers into the seats and making the seats much more comfortable. That was the last real project I did as a consultant for Disneyland.

Now the Space Mountain at Disneyland has the revolving tunnel I designed for Walt Disney World, and then I designed it for Disneyland, and they put versions of it at the ending, but the effect didn’t work. But it works very well at Disneyland now: you feel like you’re turning over.

LM: I have yet to experience it, but from what I hear the effect itself is incredible.

Back at Walt Disney World, as the park continued to grow and as the property continued to grow, you continued making some of that magic: a lot of the new ride vehicles over at the Studios as well as over at Animal Kingdom, you worked on the Studio Tram, the Honey I Shrunk the Kids play area, Kilimanjaro Safari, the Wilderness Express, the steam train, the Dinosaur— actually, the Countdown to Extinction – ride vehicle, as well as the Kali River Rafts. Tell us about some of the things you worked on.

GM: Some of those things I worked on as a consultant after I retired in ’95. I worked about 8 years as a consultant after retiring.

But, the Star Tunnel – back to that – the Strobe Tunnel that I put in to Walt Disney World’s Space Mountain. When Space Mountain was for Disneyland, I wanted to make, after Dick Irvine asked me if it could be more cone shaped or pyramidal, I took Bill Watkins’ track, and tried to make a cone out of it, letting the track go outside the cone. They were in the design called Satelloids by John Hench. He was disappointed that they finally went away when the design went to Walt Disney World, and we had a 300 foot cone that contained the whole track. But I did the Strobe Tunnel to get the vehicles to the front of the mountain before they went up the lift. And I called it the Strobe Tunnel . . . blinking lights.

Well, Tom Fitzgerald was a cast member of Walt Disney World at the time, over at Haunted Mansion. And he put in a suggestion that we add sound in the tunnel. I didn’t think of that. So the tunnel has an ascending sound . . . ascending in that it always is going up. That was a wonderful addition. Now, Tom was interested in bringing the Strobe Tunnel to the new Space Mountain re-do at Disneyland. It’s at the top of the first lift, you go in to the Strobe Tunnel and then you go into the Revolving Tunnel up the main lift. So, I hope your listeners come to Disneyland so they can experience that.

LM: Yeah, again, from what I hear the enhancements are just breathtaking. And I know there’ve been rumors for some time that Walt Disney World may be getting some of those same enhancements as well.

GM: Yeah . . . the man that did the special effects for Disneyland, Mayrand is his name, he told me he was working on Walt Disney World’s Space Mountain, so I hope they get the same effects.

LM: Wow. I do as well, again, from what I hear.

Back in the 80s, if I understand correctly, you were appointed by Marty Sklar as head of the Industrial Design Department. What was it like – and you alluded to this before – what was it like going from the hands-on approach to Imagineering and creating to more of the role of a Director?

GM: Well, I don’t know that there’s much change. I was directing, as I said, seven designers. I kept on my job, and gave them jobs that came in. So we were all sort of on this same level, as far as I was concerned.

LM: I have to admit that one of the accomplishments on your very, very extensive resume – and, again, we talked about your other work over at the Studios and the Animal Kingdom as Walt Disney World began to grow was actually the creation of one of my favorite characters from my childhood, and that was Vincent the Robot from the Black Hole movie. How were you recruited from working on Theme Parks to designing a robot for a feature film?

GM: I did so many things, from the Rocket Jets, which was one of my first designs for Disneyland . . . even did the mailbox for Tomorrowland. Yeah, Peter Ellenshaw was our director on that film, the late Peter Ellenshaw, and he was doing a wonderful job but he was having problems with the robots. So, our Vice President of R&D was the astronaut Gordon Cooper, he was Vice President of R&D at WDI and he came over one day and, our offices were just around the corner from each other. And he said "George, I have Ron Miller in my office; we want to talk about robots for the Black Hole." Well, I went over with him and Ron explained he wanted a small, cute robot. Bob McCall was working on the film, and it was called Space Probe 1 or something like that, but Ron wanted to call it the Black Hole and have a cute robot. And I kind of argued with Ron, I said, "Do you want to compete with R2D2?" (Laughter)

I didn’t want to, but he said "Yes, we’re going to do a small robot." So I did the robots, all the robots, and my only screen credit. And it was quite a privilege. And the movie . . . Roger Broggie said that the robots were the best thing in it.

LM: I have to agree.

GM: I like that compliment.

I was Director-level at the end; I didn’t know that, I wouldn’t have known it because they never told me. A support person told me, "George, you can fly first class because you are Director-level. Do you mind not flying with the rest of the team?" I said "I have no problem with that." And so I was able to use my – we were getting triple points there with American Express and so I took my family on one of the trips to Munich, and we have wonderful memories of that.

LM: The incredibly talented people that you were able to meet and work with at Disney is just mindboggling. The list is just a veritable Who’s Who of Disney history, like you said, Dick Nunis, and Marty Sklar, and John Hench, and Bob Gurr, Michael Eisner, X Atencio, and, of course, Walt Disney. What was it like working with, and learning from, and, eventually, teaching people whose names are synonymous with making Disney Magic.

GM: Well, you learn a lot of things from the people you work with. John Hench was always reminding us we were getting an education at Disney that we could get nowhere else. And I think that was true. The understanding of how important story is to an attraction. Having the success and momentum behind us with the successful attractions already built. And especially learning from the animators that Walt brought over to Glendale to design Disneyland: Herb Ryman, of course John Hench, X Atencio, and . . . I could name a lot, if I had the list in front of me. I had that list of Mahogany Row when I first started there. I wondered if I made a mistake – I left a job with the City of Los Angeles where I had a beautiful electric drafting table, all modern equipment . . . and they threw a 4x8 piece of plywood on two sawhorses and I had my drafting table. But I didn’t realize how blessed I was: there was Marc Davis right beside me? And Chuck Myall, and Vic Greene, and Herb Ryman, and others who were right in a row. And they were just in a cubicle without a door. Dick Irvine had the only door on his cubicle where I interviewed with him.

I was in a perfect place to learn, and I remember Walt Disney coming in to see Marc the last time he visited WED. He went in to talk to Marc right beside my door, which was out in the middle of the floor. WED’s only computer was to the right of me. And Ken Klug and Jim Cashen were working on the Monorail track on the computer. So I was right there, and the Architectural Department was one area adjacent to it and one of the persons who was very welcoming to me was Sam McKim.

LM: Wow.

GM: He was wonderful to bring me up to date on what it was like to work at WDI. He first informed me I didn’t need to wear a necktie. Working for the City as a draftsman, I had more formal clothing. I came in after finishing at the Art Center, I had taken a leave of absence from the City. And, as I said, when they dropped down that sawhorse and the 4x8 piece of plywood I wondered "Did I make the right decision?" (Laughter) But it worked out wonderfully, I worked there for 5 months, for 6 months, and Dick Irvine sent me over to Engineering to work beside Bob Gurr, my office was next to his, and I learned a lot from Bob.

Now, 20,000 Leagues submarine: there’s a story there. I like detail, and submarines had detail on the outside, and I was in the process of adding the detail to the inside, like the Grand Salon, as much as I could. Well, I passed Dick Irvine in the hall one day, and he said, "George, are you glossing the goose over there?" And I thought "Oh, oh, something’s going to change . . ." And, sure enough, Roger took me off the project, put me on another, and Bob Gurr finished the submarines in the field. He went to Tampa Shipyards to follow through the construction.

LM: Mr. McGinnis, just to wrap up, what do you think with all the accomplishments that you’ve done with Disney and elsewhere, what do you think your greatest accomplishment is while when you worked for the company, or what are you most proud of?

GM: The Horizons Pavilion.

LM: I was hoping you were going to say that!

GM: Because we had a great team. Horizons opened late, and the best people were retained after Epcot opened, and they worked on the Horizons project. So, we had a great team with General Electric, their persons were fun to work with, and I think I, in coming up with the Omnimax, I gave basic form to the pavilion, and George Rester, the architect, gave it its design. I worked from ’79 from the Edison Lab concept to when it opened. And we had a wonderful opening day experience in Florida. So that encompassed not only all the stories of Epcot, there were so many different areas of design in the pavilion and its special effects. I really enjoyed laying out the pavilion and saving $10 Million and all that went into it. It was the best and largest project of my Disney career.

LM: Mr. McGinnis, there’s so much more that you’ve done in your career at Disney that I know so many of us recognize and appreciate. And your creativity, and your talent, and your inspirational work embody the true definition of an Imagineer, as your imagination and your engineering created what was the essence of Disney Magic. I think that you faithfully carry on Walt Disney’s values and his optimistic views, and you integrated them so well into everything you did throughout all the theme parks worldwide. Walt was quoted as saying that all he asked of his designers was that his guests leave with a smile on their face. And I can testify as being a guest that you have accomplished and exceeded that goal many times over, and I really want to give you my sincere thanks for taking the time today to share your stories with me and my listeners, and I hope to one day have the opportunity to meet you in person sometime in the future.

GM: OK, Lou. Thanks much, and, if you get to California, I want to take you on the trolleys I’ve been designing.

LM: I would absolutely love that, and I appreciate that offer. I will promise to definitely take you up on that.

GM: Thank you, Lou.

LM: Thanks, Mr. McGinnis.