The Walt Disney Family Album - WED Imagineers (1985)

The Walt Disney Family Album was a monthly series on the recently launched Disney Channel that showcased the people Walt Disney collaborated with on many of his creations. The development of this series was a perfect storm. The brand new Disney Channel needed new content, there were a bunch of young people recently starting out at the studio learning from these masters, and many of these people were working on the lot or retiring and wanted to share their stories with the world. At the time people had their entire careers at Walt Disney Productions. Not so today.

The series was produced on a shoestring budget. Pretty much the crew was sent out with cameras to interview various people and put these shows together. It was a pet project of former Disney CEO Card Walker who'd been at the studio since the 1938 when he started as a mail clerk and personally knew all of these people and their important contributions to the studio. Walker cared very much about history and understood the importance of the Walt Disney legacy being preserved.

Walt's friend and Disney Legend Buddy Ebsen narrates the series. He starred in several Walt Disney films including Davy Crockett and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. He was also the first live action reference model for what became audioanimatronics. The theme song was written by future film score composer John Debney. His father had been a producer on the lot for decades and John started out his music career with Disney. The opening title was put together by John Lasseter in one of his final projects for Walt Disney Feature Animation. He was trying to get computer animation in at Walt Disney Productions and was eventually fired for he. He would eventually become one of the driving forces behind Pixar and would return to head Walt Disney Feature Animation in 2006.

In the long run, the Walt Disney Family Album proved to be a tremendous historical record as many of these people passed away shortly after being interviewed. There were plans to continue this series but when the Eisner regime took over, they shut it down because it was a Card Walker project. It's a great tragedy because who's stories never got to be told because they were robbed of this opportunity...There needs to be a revival of this series to chronicle the careers of the people at Disney in the 80's and 90's as they're retiring and could be gone in the coming decades.

The Walt Disney Family Album aired on the Disney Channel in reruns off and on up through the early 2000's when it aired on Vault Disney. It hasn't been seen since but sometimes interviews have been excerpted in other documentaries.

This thirteenth episode focuses on the WED Imagineers. Here we get to meet Randy Bright, Bill Justice, Tim Delaney, X Atencio and Dave Feiten. They share some of the history behind the Disney park attractions. Some of this episode touches on beloved attractions such as The Enchanted Tiki Room, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, and others. There's also a look ahead to the new EPCOT Center attraction The Living Seas.

- Randy Bright started at Disneyland in 1959 and worked his way through the ranks of the company eventually winding up in Imagineering. He became an executive producer and a Manager of Concepts for shows in Disneyland, Walt Disney World, EPCOT Center, and Tokyo Disney. In 1987 he wrote the first definitive book on Disneyland, Disneyland: The inside Story. All further books about the park are based on this book. He also co-produced the TV Special The Disneyland Story which is in this archived collection. In this episode he explains how the Disney Theme Parks experiences are like a film and other philosophies of the parks.

Randy Bright was named a Disney Legend in 2005. He passed away in a bicycle accident in 1990.

- Bill Justice started with the Walt Disney Studio in 1937 where he developed stories for Walt. He also animated and directed a few shorts as well as drew the artwork for many Walt Disney storybooks. He worked on a total of 19 animated features, 57 short subjects, and several projects that never made it to film such as The Gremlins. In 1960 Walt brought him in to redesign the character costumes at Disneyland to make them an attraction of themselves. Justice stayed on at WED where he applied his animation skills to creating the movements for such animatronics figures as Mr Lincoln, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, and the Country Bears Jamboree among others. He retired in 1979.

Bill Justice was named a Disney Legend in 1996. He passed away in 2011.

- Tim Delaney started at Walt Disney Imagineering in the early 1980's where he developed The Living Seas for EPCOT Center. He stayed with the company for decades working on attractions in all the parks and new ones under construction. He eventually left Disney after 34 years and started his own company designing architecture and attractions for clients around the world.

- Xavier Atencio started at the Walt Disney Studio in 1938 and worked animated features and shorts as diverse as Fantasia to Toot, Whistle, Plunk, Boom. He later worked on the Jiminy Cricket educational shorts for The Mickey Mouse Club before moving on to the Studio's new stop motion animation unit. There he worked on the main titles for films such as The Shaggy Dog and The Parent Trap as well as doing effects sequences in the live action films such as Babes in Toyland and Mary Poppins.

In 1965 Walt moved him over the WED where he adapted some of the World's Fair attractions to work in Disneyland. From there he wrote the Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion attractions including their theme songs. He also sometimes voiced characters in the rides such as the talking skull in Pirates of the Caribbean and the live man in the coffin on The Haunted Mansion. He retired in 1984.

Xavier Antencio was named a Disney Legend in 1996. He passed away in 2017.

- Dave Feiten started out in the Disney Animation Studio in 1981 on The Fox & the Hound. He was mentored by many of the Nine Old Men and eventually ended up at Walt Disney Imagineering. He eventually became the head of all audioanimatronics world wide. Then one day, his classmate, John Lasseter, offered him a job at Pixar and Feiten had a new career where he worked on A Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and other films.

Feiten eventually worked for other animation studios as well as Universal Studios theme parks where he once again programmed and animated animatronics. He still works in animation and special effects to this day.

Original air date June 2, 1985

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.