Book Review: The Art of Walt Disney World

This isn't going to be a very standard review, partially because the recent, glossy, expensive volume The Art of Walt Disney World by Jeff Kurtti and Bruce Gordon, has already been so extensively covered online. I don't need to tell you that it's a great book. It has already received glowing coverage on several sites and may be the best reviewed product relating to Walt Disney World so far this year. What I do hope to do here is provide some perspective from a (I guess pseudo professional) Walt Disney World historian and perhaps increase the enjoyment of the book for those of you who already have it.

An appropriate review of such a volume would begin, I suppose, with the book it is ostensibly a followup to, The Art of Disneyland, published in 1955. That book was released in the midst of the excitement surrounding the 50th anniversary of Disneyland, and it was, along with the wonderful A Musical History of Disneyland CD set, one of the big ticket items made generally available for that event. I fondly remember haunting the various shops in the Marketplace hoping to find either of these items over the course of a week; in the end my vigilance paid off - although I guess Disney was really the big winner in the end. No matter, my policy is to reward Disney with my money when they do something I like and I still have no regrets as to buying The Art of Disneyland.

That volume had some problems. primarily the $75 price tag. That price was quickly reduced in a second printing-leading some of us early buyers to feel as though our excitement about the park's 50th had been exploited. And, much of The Art of Disneyland featured material we'd all seen before. It was literally the best of what we had been seeing for the past fifty years, but now in astonishing size, clarity and quality. It was all of the basic, famous canon concept art for Disneyland and its famous classic attractions. Still, the high asking price of the first run resulted in many forlorn unsold copies resting in the Disney Gallery and elsewhere, showing that perhaps not all buyers were as impressed as I.

I am happy to report that The Art of Walt Disney World addresses all of my problems with the first volume, and indeed makes The Art of Disneyland seem even better - like a first volume that covers all the stuff it's expected to, and a second volume that really gets into the more advanced topics. The pictures are more varied in style and topic, with nearly every resort getting some kind of representation, and material on the theme parks often specifically relating to forgotten or unrealized elements. Page after page, I was presented either with art which reshaped my opinion of the final project's realization, confirmed long standing suspicions, or presented huge beautiful reproductions of things I had been forced to merely squint at in pre-opening material from 40 years ago. The book manages to put more art into more pages than did its Disneyland cousin and is also a much better deal at $50. The text this time around is fantastic and authoritative, usually right on point and it actually even corrected the Jason Surrell Pirates of the Caribbean book which erroneously listed a Collin Campbell piece for Treasure Island as a Marc Davis piece for the queue of Pirates of the Caribbean! As the painting was obviously not in Davis' style this particular point was very confusing and the resulting correction was very satisfying to see.

Speaking of Marc Davis, pages 31-34 may contain most of the work he did on the Florida Pirates, material which is rarely seen but which was faithfully carried out in the original version of that attraction. Included is an alternate staging for Dead Man's Cove which was rejected because the art is frankly, fairly uninspired and somewhat indicative of the general atmosphere of haste and compromise that project was riddled with. These are important aids, however, in assessing the work which was done in 1972 and 1973, a period in the history of the company which is not very well documented in the public sphere.

Walt Disney World in general is not very often afforded the respect and sense of history that Disneyland often receives, a perception which may be changing within the company. This book is not the only symptom of this change, but it may be the most significant acknowledgment so far on the part of Disney that things like Treasure/Discovery Island once existed and had some pretty cool concepts behind them. Now, for the first time, we know that Dorthea Redmond's hand in Adventureland is what lends that area her sensual color and mystery, and we can finally examine Herb Ryman's painting of Liberty Square to see just how closely they were, in fact, reproduced. Marc Davis, we learn, designed most of the scenes along the Florida river, something I've long secretly believed, which makes the entire West Side of the Magic Kingdom "Marc Davis Kingdom", especially had his Western River Expedition actually moved forward.

Beautiful Mary Blair art both for Western River Expedition and her similarly themed mural in the Contemporary Resort is present, and some astonishing pieces which make Paul Hartley and Sam McKim my new best friends. What isn't included in too much detail is art for the portions of EPCOT Center which were actually realized, nor much from Animal Kingdom, which each have their own separate volumes which cover their beautiful art extensively. So perfectly balanced is the book, and so revelatory even to somebody who thinks she's seen it all such as myself, that not recommending it to both lay Disney World enthusiasts and the dedicated obsessives seems ungenerous. Matched with the Richard Beard EPCOT Center book from 1982, and you've got a Walt Disney World concept art resource that anyone outside of WDI would find desirable.