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Eye-Popping Icon Announces: The Celebration Starts Here
LAKE
BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- When the celebration is a 15-month welcome to the
next thousand years, the centerpiece had better be big, bold and flashy.
The icon for the Walt Disney World Millennium Celebration more than
meets those demands.
It's so big that low-flying aircraft have to be warned off with a beacon
light.
So bold that it towers over "Earth."
And flashy? Imagine the Florida sunshine reflected by a quarter of a
million metallic eye-catchers shimmering in the breeze.
An enormous Mickey Mouse hand holds a magic wand that trails a giant
"2000" over the globe of Spaceship Earth, welcoming guests to the
15-month Walt Disney World Millennium Celebration centered at Epcot. At
25 stories tall, the icon makes for a jaw-dropping invitation to fun.
"We want guests to know as soon as they step in the park that they are
in for an extraordinary time," said Epcot Vice President George
Kalogridis. "The Mickey wand is a symbol of the grand-scale excitement
of our millennium celebration."
For Walt Disney Imagineering, creating the millenium icon proved to
be a design and engineering challenge.
The look of the icon had to announce a celebration, fit the existing
"technology and communication" theme of Spaceship Earth and suggest the
whimsy that guests expect from a Disney park.
The familiar gloved hand and magic wand "express our wish that the
technology of the next millennium will continue to bring cultures
together in a very positive and fun way," said Imagineer Roger Holzberg,
senior show producer and director of the project.
Once the design was settled, a team of Imagineers had to make it real.
That meant suspending the hand, wand and "2000" over the 180-foot
geosphere of Spaceship Earth. To make things trickier, the delicate
aluminum and plastic-alloy "skin" of Spaceship Earth could bear no
additional weight.
The team met the challenge with an elegant aerial arch that seems to
defy gravity as it holds aloft 36-foot-tall numbers covered with
hundreds of thousands of metallic eye-catchers.
The top half of the icon was put together first in an Epcot parking lot
to make sure everything fit together just right. Then, it was taken
apart and reassembled over Spaceship Earth.
But as guests gaze at the millennium icon, Holzberg hopes they're not
thinking about the engineering and construction feat required to put it
there.
"I'd rather guests look at the icon and feel that the future holds
promise for them and their children -- that the journey into the future
will always hold pockets of magic and moments of fun."
Millennium Icon
Fast Facts
Top Honors: At 257 feet tall, the millennium icon is the tallest point
at Walt Disney World Resort, besting the 199 feet of The Twilight Zone
Tower of Terror? at Disney-MGM Studios.
Heavy-Handed: Mickey's gloved hand, the wand and the "2000" logo weigh
nearly 50 tons.
Heavy Metal: The steel frame that supports the icon weighs 250 tons.
Big Numbers: Each number in the "2000" logo is 36 feet tall.
Flush with Flash: Those numbers are covered with more than 250,000
reflective eye-catchers.
Not-So-Small World: Spaceship Earth towers 180 feet high and weighs 16
million pounds.
Spaced Out: The outer skin of Spaceship Earth is covered by 11,324
aluminum and plastic-alloy triangles.
Spaceship Earth in Future World is presented by AT&T.
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