Recycling Design: the Posters of WDW's Magic Kingdom

WDW was never intended to be a copy of Disneyland, but once the decision was made to put a Magic Kingdom in Florida, it was up to the people at WED to figure out what parts of the new park could be duplicated from the original to save time and money and what would have to be designed and fabricated from scratch. For example, it's commonly reported that the props for both Disneyland's and Walt Disney World's Haunted Mansion were built at the same time. New casts could be pulled from old moulds for characters in the Tropical Serenade and Jungle Cruise as well. With all the new attractions going in at the time, any part of Disneyland that could be reused was probably considered a blessing.

And so it would be for many of the attraction posters that would be placed under the Main Street Station at WDW's Magic Kingdom. Along with new posters for new attractions like the Hall of Presidents and the Mickey Mouse Review, some of the old poster designs would appear with minor tweaks, customizing it for Florida.

Here's a couple of samples. Ready to play Hocus-Focus and spot the differences?

This poster for the Hunted Mansion is a classic. No need to really mess with it—but there were some minor changes:

• Mansion facade changed to depict WDW's design. Color changed to purple to stand out a bit more.
• Hitchhiking Ghots, top subhead, and land name changed fom blue to white.
• Bottom subhead changed from green to yellow (to complement the purple).
• Grass/shadow color changed from dark green to black.
• Two scary trees added next to the house to fill in some of the white space. This is a subtle, but nice change, as it keeps the eye moving uninterrupted between the house and the ghosts.

Here we have the poster for the Enchanted Tiki Room and it's Florida cousin, the Tropical Serenade. The birds are the same and so is the Adventureland font, but after that things begin to vary:

• The name changed between the coasts. "Walt Disney's" is gone, as 1) Walt is dead, 2) you're at Walt Disney World, so by default anything in it is Walt's, 3) the attraction is no longer owned and operated by Retlaw, so it's not his legally his. The Enchanted Tiki Room was replaced as the name because the attraction is housed inside "The Sunshine Tree Pavilion," which also includes the Sunshine Tree Terrace juice bar. You can't have a room in a pavilion, I suppose.
• The tag line is shortened substantially. One can assume Audioanimatronics at Disney parks is now expected and not something worth mentioning on the poster.
• "At the Gateway to" is dropped from in front of Adventureland (because it's not at the entrance to the land in Florida, it's much farther back). Curiously, the designer chose not to center "Adventureland" on the poster or fill the now empty void created by the edit.
• The tiki is different (it's now a Lono). Oddly, like in the Disneyland poster, it's still not one of the tikis in the show.

Ah, 20K, as the employees called it. It is missed. This has the most strightforward changes of all the posters, which is good, because the design is fantastic!

• Name of attraction changed.
• Sub style changed.
• Mermaids removed and replaced by teaser copy.
• Name of land changed
• Ocean floor reworked slightly (Atlantis column out, seaweed in) to better fit around the shape of the word "Fantasyland." Note how the "Tomorrowland" on the old one was hard to read as the thin-serifed face crossed over the busier background.

The poster for the Monorail is one of my favorites. Clean design; sweeping arcs: the poster practically knocks you over the head with the idea that this transportation system is fast and modern.

And it has a giant error. Can you spot it? It's more obvious than you think, but I had this hanging on my wall for almost 6 months before it jumped out at me.

• Name changed.
• Information on where to board changed. Oddly, no mention of the Ticket and Transportation Center.
• TWA Moonliner and Flight to the Moon attraction building replaced by Cinderella's Castle.
• Matterhorn replaced by the Contemporary Hotel (note the colored area inside the building that represents Mary Blair's Grand Canyon Concourse tilework. It's economic and brilliantly done.)
• Did you find the mistake? Although there's a Mark IV monorail in the background in front of the castle (at it should be), that's the same Mark III as in Disneyland's poster somehow coming out of the Contemporary. It's such an obvious mistake, one has to wonder if there was once a plan to use the Mark IIIs at WDW.

The posters of Disneyland and Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom are nothing short of wonderful. It's no suprise that the company is not only still using them, but selling them as souvineers in the parks as well. They've even shown up in film — scattered about in the different children's rooms visited in Pixar's Monsters, Inc. It's a shame that the designers and illustrators of most of the posters have remained unknown and not received the credit and recognition that many of the other Imagineers have and deserve.