This is David Parford, Senior Correspondent for the Dizon Plugged.

Today it is my pleasure to welcome back to the show, Retired Executive Vice President and Ambassador for Walt Disney Imagineering,

Disney Legend and Friend of the Dizon Plugged, Mr. Marty Sklar, President of Marty Sklar Creative Inc. Welcome back to the show, Marty.

Well thanks David, I'm happy to be with you, help celebrate Walt Disney World's 40th birthday again.

That's right, that's right. So on Saturday, October 1st, Walt Disney World turned 40, celebrating the grand opening of Florida's Magic Kingdom.

And so we thought we would talk a little bit about your thoughts and impressions on the very beginnings of Walt Disney World.

Great.

Do you remember the very first time you traveled to Florida and saw the land that would eventually become the Magic Kingdom?

Oh absolutely. Yeah, it was October of 1967 and you know, it's actually pretty strongly in my mind because it was an important trip because Dick Irvine,

it was a design head of Imagineering, you know, from the beginning when it was set up under wed enterprise, decided that we really had to all be on the same page

until we put together a trip on the Gulf Stream 1, which is still on display at the Disney Hollywood Studios in Florida.

And we had quite a delegation on board, we had the Imagineers were Dick Irvine and John Hinch and Bill Martin, who ended up being the principal designer of the Magic Kingdom, actually.

And Marvin Davis, who did the Master Plan for Walt Disney Land in Walt Disney World and was welcomed back at the architect, who's firm did the Polynesian and Contemporary Hotel design.

And the two important joes in the company, Joe Fowler, who ran Disneyland and Joe Potter, who was actually the first employee of Walt Disney World.

He had come from Robert Moses staff in New York World's Fair and Dick Nunes, who were in the park and Card Walker, who was later the chairman of the company at that time, he was the head of marketing.

And the whole idea was to get all of us thinking about all the things that needed to be done there and, you know, we looked at some hotels in the South Atlanta and in the Bahamas and then we ended up all of us at Walt Disney World.

And that was, it was an amazing trip. And of course I was a kid. I was, let's say I was 33 years old at that time. And these were all senior executives and legends and, you know, the whole work.

And the way it turned out was that there were so many issues that had to be resolved that they decided Dick Irvine decided to leave me behind.

Is that right?

They all went home. And they left me behind of what we did was we rented two helicopters, a big army job and a bell, street passenger bell helicopter.

And it was, they sent Carl Frith, who was a photographer, one of the photographers in Disneyland, at that time I had hired Carl when I was working at Disney Land.

And the pilot, we sent it, they had a pilot, of course. And the three of us spent three days flying over that property and Carl shot a motion picture footage from the big army helicopter and stills from the bell job.

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