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If You Had Wings
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If You Had Wings (June 5, 1972 – June 1, 1987) was a two-person Omnimover dark ride in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. It was sponsored by Eastern Air Lines. The ride featured images of some of Eastern's tourist destinations, including Mexico City, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and New Orleans. The ride had a memorable theme song with music by Buddy Baker and lyrics by X Atencio.
greatly advertized or well-known, waiting lines for this attraction (located across from Mission to Mars) were nonexistent or short even when the park was crowded.
If You Had Wings was an undisguised promotion for the then-giant Eastern Air Lines, whose slogan at the time was "The Wings of Man." Eastern's investment in the ride was reportedly $10 million.
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Encyclopedia
If You Had Wings (June 5, 1972 – June 1, 1987) was a two-person Omnimover dark ride in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. It was sponsored by Eastern Air Lines. The ride featured images of some of Eastern's tourist destinations, including Mexico City, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and New Orleans. The ride had a memorable theme song with music by Buddy Baker and lyrics by X Atencio.
History
Not greatly advertized or well-known, waiting lines for this attraction (located across from Mission to Mars) were nonexistent or short even when the park was crowded.
If You Had Wings was an undisguised promotion for the then-giant Eastern Air Lines, whose slogan at the time was "The Wings of Man." Eastern's investment in the ride was reportedly $10 million. A four-and-a-half-minute dark ride based on Disney's Omnimover ride system, it conveyed seated passengers slowly, steadily, and smoothly through a series of rooms. It was structurally similar to the Disneyland attraction Adventure Thru Inner Space, which might be considered its spiritual predecessor; both were designed by Claude Coats. The experience began with a vaguely-simulated "takeoff" in which the ride ascended a slope, while projections of animated silhouettes of seagulls and airplanes swept past on the walls, enhancing the feeling of motion and gently suggesting flight.
Riders observed various theater-like sets embedding small screens showing rear-projected short, filmed scenes and endlessly repeated. Thirty-eight 16mm projectors were used in the attraction. The rooms illustrated various Eastern destinations and presented tourist experiences such as straw-hat markets, fishermen, limbo dancers, and steel drum bands. The omnipresent music featured singers tunefully chanting, "If you had wings, you could do all these things, you could widen your world if you had wings, if you had wings had wings had wings, if you had wings had wings had wings had wings had wings." The music did not succeed in masking the sound of the hidden projectors, which were audible throughout most of the ride.
Viewers passed through a sequence of colorful scenes corresponding to the following locations: Mexico,
Bermuda, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas (where a traffic cop directed a flock of flamingos as well as pedestrians and vehicles), Jamaica (where the ride's only 35mm projector showed a
pod of bathing-suit-clad young people clambering up the rocks at Dunn's River Falls), Trinidad, and New Orleans (where shadows of blowing jazzmen flickered on the wall). Eastern Air Lines had, uncoincidentally, a vested interest in travel to all of these places. Many of the scenes had their own sound effects that mixed with the ceaseless music.
Having passed through this sequence of site sets, riders entered the "speed room", an ellipsoid onto the interior of which were projected snippets of first-person movies of an airplane taking off, a train, water skis, motorcycles, airboats, and a few other scenes. The clips were projected on the walls by a 70mm projector. The ovoid screen encompassed the viewers' peripheral vision. Furthermore, the vehicle reclined in the speed room, and a breeze was blown on riders. The wraparound images, in combination with the motion and reclining angle of the vehicle and a blast of air, arguably constituted an early attempt at virtual reality. The images were to some extent blurry and distorted, unlike Disney's sharper Circle-Vision 360 technology; it rather resembled the fuzzy Cinema 180 shows featured in many contemporary amusement parks. Nevertheless, the projection effect combined with the motion of the ride produced a genuinely exhilarating sense of speed, and the long, egg-like shape of the room allowed plenty of time to experience the effect. The speed room was followed by the "mirror room", where two more 70mm projectors produced images of snow-covered mountains appearing on large screens and were reflected in enormous floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and the music changed to a wordless symphonic swell of harmonies.
The ride "descended" after the mirror room, and a buttery baritone voice of Orson Wells gave riders the following soothing assurance:
You do have wings.
You can do all these things.
You can widen your world.
Eastern. We'll be your wings.
(In the earlier years of this attraction, the voice's closing words ended with the phrase, "Eastern: the Wings of Man.") Subsequent to hearing this message, riders disembarked to an area containing an Eastern Air Lines reservation desk. Agents stood ready to assist riders, presumably inspired by what they had just experienced, with travel arrangements. Few seemed to take advantage of this opportunity.
In 1987, Eastern withdrew its sponsorship and the attraction closed on June 1 of that year. Eastern itself would go out of business just four years later. Although remembered affectionately by many, a fan website devoted to the attraction notes, "If you can't remember the public uproar surrounding the closing... one possible reason is that there was none."
Transitions
If You Could Fly
Subsequent to the closing of IYHW, Disney removed all references to Eastern, changed the name of the ride to If You Could Fly, and re-opened it on June 6, 1987. The sets and films were intact, but the theme music had been replaced. For many fans of the ride the absence of the infectious original music had taken much of the fun out of the attraction, and the opening scene which originally had a film about Eastern had been replaced with footage of flying birds. On January 4, 1989, If You Could Fly was permanently closed.
Delta Dreamflight
Soon after, Delta Air Lines took over sponsorship and made plans to update and remodel the attraction. The replacement was Delta Dreamflight, which made use of the same ride system and floor layout, but all new scenery and music.
Disney's Take Flight
Delta dropped its sponsorship in June 1996. WDW removed all references to Delta and renamed the attraction Disney's Take Flight. The ride lasted two years, closing in January 1998.
Unlike the wholesale musical change from If You Had Wings to If You Could Fly, Take Flight 's music was the same as Dreamflight 's except for some tweaks to the lyrics.
Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin
Disney decided to use the ride space to promote its popular film, Pixar's Toy Story. The new attraction, Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, again makes use of the original ride system and floor plan, but now riders can control the rotation of their vehicle via joysticks, and are armed with "laser guns" to shoot at targets stationed throughout the attraction.
Influence
The influence of If You Had Wings was clearly felt in EPCOT Center's World of Motion and Horizons dark rides, both of which featured Omnimovers in settings similar to the speed room mentioned above. Both those rides are permanently closed. The El Rio del Tiempo boat ride at the Mexico pavilion at World Showcase, which has since been modified into the Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros, includes films projected onto small screens embedded in elaborate sets. Any ride that simulates a greater degree of movement than it actually has, including Star Tours, Body Wars and Soarin', is indebted in part to IYHWs speed room.
IYHW, and Epcot's Spaceship Earth, were parodied as the "FutureSphere" in an episode of The Simpsons where a similar exhibit in the fictional "EFCOT Center" shows a future where Eastern Air Lines controls every aspect of life.
See also
External links
- Detailed and affectionate fan site featuring a wealth of prose, maps, photographs, and audio recordings.
- An official appreciation of the late Disney animator and Imagineer Claude Coats.
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