OCT 18 Disney History

2003:

Epcot's 8th International Food and Wine

Festival kicks off in Florida. The festival takes place around World

Showcase and includes a month-long concert series called "Eat to the Beat!" Sister Sledge opens the

series with three half-hour concerts daily (throught October 22) on the America Gardens Theatre stage.

Golf great Tiger Woods (a Florida resident) visits Walt Disney World and takes his turn on Epcot's Mission:SPACE.

1913:

Evelyn Venable, the original model for the Columbia Pictures logo and the voice of the Blue Fairy in Disney's Pinocchio, is born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1926:

Disney's Alice Comedy Alice the Fire Fighter is released.

1927:

Actor George C. Scott, the voice of McLeach in Disney's 1990 film The Rescuers Down Under, is born in Wise, Virginia.

1946:

Disney's animated educational film The Story of Menstruation is delivered to the

International Cellu-Cotton Company. It will be a popular Disney film for schoolgirls for several decades.

1955:

The Mickey Mouse Club airs on ABC-TV. Today is Guest Star Day with

comedian and Disney voice actor George Givot.

1964:

The World's Fair in Flushing, New York (which includes 4 Disney attractions) closes for its 1964 season. It will re-open the following spring for its final season.

1967:

Disney's 19th animated feature film The Jungle Book

has its general release. Rudyard Kipling's classic tale of

the jungle is the last animated feature personally

supervised by Walt Disney (who passed away during the film's production). Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, the film features the voices of Phil Harris as Baloo, Sebastian Cabot as Bagheera, Louis Prima as King Louie, George Sanders as Shere Khan, Sterling Holloway as Kaa, Bruce Reitherman as Mowgli and Clint Howard as Junior. The song "Bare Necesseties," written by Terry Gilkyson, will be nominated for an Academy Award.

1971:

TIME magazine features an article on a newly opened

theme park - "Disney World: Pixie Dust Over Florida".

1987:

Actor Zac Efron, the star of Disney Channel's 2006 High School

Musical, and its sequels, is born in San Luis Obispo, California.

1990:

Imagineer Roger Broggie is among those honored at the Disney Legends Awards. Company Chairman Michael Eisner states, "Any mechanical things you had to do, what you said was, 'Call Roger, he'll know how to fix it.' Without him, Disneyland wouldn't have happened."

2001:

Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party premieres in

Disney World for the first time this season.

2002:

The Disneyland Resort salutes the American League pennant-winning Anaheim Angels

with a pep rally at Downtown Disney.

2006:

The upcoming Disney World musical version of “Finding Nemo,” receives a short preview presentation on the stage of Broadway’s Palace Theatre in New York City. Finding Nemo - The Musical is the first major musical produced for the Walt Disney World Resort by Disney Creative Entertainment.

1935:

Actor Peter Boyle is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He will portray Mr. Whittle in Disney's live-action The Santa Clause, and Father Time in both The Santa Clause 2 and The Santa Clause 3. (TV fans will know him as Frank Barone on the comedy series Everybody Loves Raymond.)

King Louie (the orangutan voiced by Louis Prima) was one of the characters created especially for Disney's The Jungle Book, for he doesn't appear in Rudyard Kipling's original story.

Bagheera: "You wouldn't marry a panther, would you?"

Baloo: "I don't know. Come to think of it, no panther ever asked me."

2007:

An annual holiday tradition kicks off at the El Capitan Theater with the re-release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. The El Capitan offers a special opening-night filmmakers' panel with guests producer Don Hahn, feature producer Denise Di Novi, director Henry Selick and supervising animator Mike Belzer. Nightmare will open to theaters in Disney Digital 3-D the following day (and run through November 18).

The Best of Both Worlds Tour, a 54-date North American run starring Miley Cyrus as both herself and in character as Hannah Montana, kicks off in St. Louis, Missouri. Hollywood Records recording artists Jonas Brothers also appear. (Tour tickets for each date have sold

out in record time.)

1995:

Final paving for the track at the new Walt Disney World Speedway takes place.

Despite 1995 being the wettest June-July in Orlando on record (75 inches of

rain), including Hurricane Erin, the construction has been completed on-time!

The Jungle is JUMPIN'!

1997:

The Wonderful World of Disney airs "Sabrina The Teenage Witch: The Movie" on ABC-TV.

1965:

Pixar character designer, writer and art director Ralph Eggleston is born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He directed the Academy Award-winning short For the Birds, which premiered alongside Monsters Inc. - which he also co-wrote. Eggleston's credits include

WALL-E, Finding Nemo (which earned him an Annie Award), and The Incredibles.

2008:

Radio Disney hosts the "planet premiere" of the High School Musical 3: Senior Year soundtrack. The album (to be released on October 21 in the U.S. - 3 days before the film's release) is played on the air in its entirety. "Now or Never" the opening musical number had its world premiere on Radio Disney last July.

The first foreign-language production of Mary Poppins opens in Göteborg, Sweden at the Göteborgs Operan.