The Tragic Legacy of Beastly Kingdom: Part One
1992 looked to be a banner year for The Walt Disney Company.
Hotshot CEO Michael Eisner was in his eighth year at the helm, and everything seemed to be coming up Disney. Eisner and his partner in crime, COO Frank Wells, had modernized The Company, turning a near-record profit every year. At the dawn of the decade, Eisner proclaimed the ’90s would be the Disney Decade, and two years in, he seemed to be right.
The pair had brought in a certified renaissance of animated films and were looking ahead to their third-consecutive cartoon blockbuster, Aladdin. The Disney Afternoon on ABC brought Disney animation into people’s living rooms, and Touchstone Pictures was releasing stellar live action movies like Dead Poets Society, Pretty Woman and What About Bob?
Eisner’s proudest accomplishment in his eight years at Disney, however, may have been the boom in the theme park division. Disney’s Yacht Club and Disney’s Beach Club resorts popped up around EPCOT Center, the regal Disney’s Grand Floridian Beach Resort set up shop on the monorail loop and new moderate hotels joined Walt Disney World. Perhaps Eisner’s proudest moment came when he opened Disney-MGM Studios, his park, in 1989.
Just outside of Paris, on April 12, 1992, Eisner was preparing to unveil his second park, Euro Disneyland. For Disney’s first European park, everything had to be grander. After all, Disney reasoned, people can see real castles in Europe; we’ve got to give them a reason to see our castle. The Euro Disney Resort would open with seven hotels, each themed to a region and culture of the United States, and 45 restaurants were sprinkled throughout the park, hotels and the shopping and entertainment district, Festival Disney. Disney was expecting over 500,000 guests to swarm the park on opening day. Approximately less than 25,000 showed up.
April 12, 1992, would prove to be a watershed moment for Michael Eisner and The Walt Disney Company, specifically in theme park development. Euro Disneyland fell far short of expectations for a number of reasons, lack of understanding of European, specifically French, culture, a continent-wide recession and grandiose investment in architecture. But, regardless of the understandable reasons for the initial failure, Eisner changed his tune on investment in anything. Gone was the optimistic, aggressive Eisner proclaiming the Disney Decade just two years prior; the Chief Executive now was wary of anything that couldn’t guarantee a large profit. This sea change was especially disheartening for another theme park currently under construction half a world away, Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
Back at Walt Disney World, notable Imagineer Joe Rohde was building his park. A park not rooted in nostalgia, fantasy or cinema, but a park that was, as Eisner would quip on its opening day in 1998, “..a kingdom of animals real, ancient and imagined.” However, as observant guests must’ve noticed, while you did see ancient animals in DinoLand U.S.A. and real animals in the how-did-they-do-it realistic lands of Africa and Asia, there were no imagined animals anywhere to be found.
There were meant to be, of course, Animal Kingdom’s iconography included dragons, unicorns and even what seemed to be a sinister cave from which flickered fire which was seen along the Discovery River Boats attraction. Michael Eisner, still gun-shy following the Paris ordeal, began to wonder if imagined animals were really necessary. After all, the real animals inhabiting Walt Disney World’s fourth theme park were already inflating budgets far past expectations. Passionate Imagineers pushed Eisner to go through with Beastly Kingdom, Animal Kingdom’s would-be fourth land, budget be damned. And, in the end, he considered their plea. There would be a Beastly Kingdom, he said, in a future Phase II expansion of the park. Imagineers were not pleased.
To truly understand why Imagineers were so enamored of this project, let’s discuss what Beastly Kingdom was, well, would’ve been. Crossing over the southwestern bridge from Discovery Island, guests would find themselves in a land straight from medieval fantasy. Unlike Magic Kingdom’s Fantasyland, however, this land would have no cartoonish flair or exaggeration. Beastly Kingdom would’ve been Fantasyland storytelling and setting with EPCOT detail and realism.
There would be two paths guests could take upon entering Beastly Kingdom. The path to the right would lead guests through bright, lush landscapes alluding to the royal gardens of Versailles. This Kingdom of Light would host two attractions: a relaxing boat trip through the “Dance of the Hours” scene from Walt Disney’s Fantasia complete with ballet-dancing hippos and crocodiles and Quest for the Unicorn, a hedge-maze journey to awaken living animal statues who hold the secret to open the Unicorn’s Grotto. The Unicorn audio-animatronic, as well as the uncanny setting of the magical grotto, would’ve been an absolute high mark of Disney Magic.
Guests who chose to go left at the entrance to Beastly Kingdom would find themselves in a lowly-lit, winding –some might say gnarled– forest which led to a village made of torched stone. Crooked ruins of a once grand castle loomed over the village, marked by fire even more than the buildings below. The ruler of this land, a terrifying hulk of a dragon, would keep his subjects in check by stretching his fearsome head out of a breach in the castle and turning the majestic waterfall that lapped the castle walls into a ghastly curtain of fire. Souls brave enough to dare would be able to step up to the castle and enter Dragon Tower, a thrilling coaster ride through the darkened ruins of the castle where guests would find themselves just out of reach of the incensed dragon’s fire.
If Disney wasn’t going to use these fantastic plans, the Imagineers reasoned, someone will. And, they left.
Check back for part two in The Tragic Legacy of Beastly Kingdom series.
Austin Vaughn is a Columnist for the Boardwalk Times
