2003:
Actress Julie Andrews takes a spin on Cinderella's Golden Carrousel as
five members of television's "The Brady Bunch" make an appearance at Disney
-MGM Studios as part of Disney World's Magical Gatherings celebration. They join
dozens of celebrities this weekend who are helping Disney World open new attractions and shows. Wishes: A Magical Gathering of Disney Dreams, a new fireworks show at the Magic Kingdom, also debuts. The show is hosted by Jiminy Cricket and the Blue Fairy, and revolves around the wishes of famous Disney characters - good and bad.
Epcot closes at 3:00 pm for a special evening press event for the
opening of Mission: SPACE. The dedication is presided over by Walt Disney Co.
Chairman and CEO Michael Eisner, Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and
NASA President Sean O'Keefe. In attendance are legendary astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Jim
Lovell and Wally Schirra. The event also includes beamed in remarks and well-wishes
from Russian Cosmonaut Commander Yuri Malenchenko and NASA science officer Ed Lu - who are both aboard
the International Space Station.
Sugar Ray and The B-52s perform on the Fountain Stage in Epcot after the
Mission: SPACE ceremony and prior to the evening's display of Illuminations.
1925:
The Apollo Theater in Los Angeles, California premieres Disney's Alice comedy film Alice Rattled by Rats. The short won't be officially released until November.
1942:
The Goofy cartoon The Olympic Champ, directed by Jack Kinney, is released.
Goofy tries his hand at track and field with the kind of hilarious results one has come to expect from the Goof.
1957:
ABC-TV's Disneyland series airs the second episode of "The Saga of Andy Burnett."
1959:
The TV series Walt Disney Presents airs episode 127 - part 2
of "Moochie of the Little League."
1960:
Walt Disney Presents airs the episode "The Plausible Impossible" on ABC-TV.
1963:
Ronald Miller, Walt Disney's grandson, is born to Ron Miller and
Diane Disney in Los Angeles County, California.
1966:
Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color airs part 2 of "Savage Sam" on NBC-TV.
A film sequel to Old Yeller based on the novel of the same name by Fred Gipson,
"Savage Sam" is directed by Norman Tokar, and stars Brian Keith, Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran.
(Kirk and Corcoran wil be named Disney Legends 40 years later on this same day.)
Walt Disney is honored for "advancing the cause of international understanding
and friendship through motion pictures and television" at a meeting of People to
People (a service organization based in Kansas City). Seated next to Walt is
J.C. Hall (founder of Hallmark Cards) and entertainer Bob Hope!
1982:
The CBS-TV series Walt Disney airs part 1 of "Freaky Friday."
1988:
Disney's long-running television series debuts under the new title The Magical World of Disney on NBC.
1999:
Singing group 98 Degrees, featuring Drew Lachey, Justin Jeffre, Jeff Timmons, and
Nick Lachey, visit Animal Kingdom to tape the holiday special Walt Disney World's
Very Merry Christmas Parade.
The Disney Channel Original Movie Don't Look Under the Bed first airs on television.
2001:
Disney re-releases its 1937 classic
Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs on DVD.
1956:
Walt Disney pens a letter to the future (to be placed in a time capsule) from
his Burbank, California studio entitled:
PREDICTION OF ENTERTAINMENT IN WORLD 50 YEARS FROM NOW.
Mr. Disney believes that the world will be overturned by technology.
2006:
Disney inducts the 2006 Disney Legends at The Walt Disney Company headquarters in Burbank, California. Songwriter Sir Elton John and news anchorman Peter Jennings are among the 12 inductees to receive the award.
1919:
Walt Disney, who has served as a Red Cross volunteer in France, arrives back in
the United States. Aboard the SS Canada, he pulls into New York Harbor after a long slow trip.
(Walt will be discharged the following day and arrive back in Chicago October 11.)
"When you're lying on your back
and see all the smoke billow up
around the windows before you
rocket off, that's just like it is
inside the space shuttle."
-Winston Scott
(retired
astronaut)
on Epcot's
Mission: SPACE
1983:
Tiger Town, the very first Disney Channel television film, debuts. The film stars Roy
Scheider as an aging baseball player for the Detroit Tigers, and Justin Henry as a young fan who believes in him.
Tiger manager Sparky Anderson, who is managing the team in real life, appears frequently throughout the
movie, as does Mary Wilson, a former Supreme, singing the national anthem.
2007:
High School Musical on Tour, a new stage version of the hit Disney
Channel movie, begins a series of performances at Bushnell
Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford, Connecticut.
T
O
U
R
1992:
Disney's Beauty and the Beast is widely released in theaters in the United Kingdom.
Actor Tyler James Williams is born in Westchester County, New York. Among his best known roles is songwriter Cyrus DeBarge in the 2012 Disney Channel movie Let It Shine. (You may recognize him from the UPN/CW sitcom Everybody Hates Chris.)
2008:
Disney welcomes a new Mary and Bert when Scarlett Strallen and Adam
Fiorentino join the hit Broadway musical Mary Poppins at the New Amsterdam
Theatre in New York City. Strallen was in the London version of Mary Poppins in fall 2005 and
returned to the show in the spring 2007 after a stint with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Life on Mars, a new science fiction crime drama distributed by Disney-ABC
Domestic Television, premieres on ABC-TV. Actor Jason O'Mara plays police detective Sam Tyler
who suddenly finds himself inexplicably transported from 2008 to 1973.
OCTOBER 9
THIS DAY MADE IN THE USA
OCTOBER 09
Mission: SPACE officially opens
 | ||||
| ||||
"As you can see, astronaut flight training isn't like anything you've ever experienced before. It is intense. And, if you would like to opt out, you can sign up for Mission Control training in the advanced training lab. Just ask any member of the ISTC crew for directions. As for the rest of you, report for your pre-flight briefing. It's go time."
-Mission: SPACE
| ||||
2006 Disney Legends
2009:
Some 4.6 million viewers tune in to watch "Franken Girl," the third
season debut of the Disney Channel series Wizards of Waverly Place.
1940:
Singer-songwriter John Lennon, who rose to worldwide fame as one of
the founding members of The Beatles, is born in Liverpool England.
In August 1965 Walt Disney met with Brian Epstein - manager of The Beatles - to discuss the possibility of the
popular Fab Four performing songs for the upcoming film The Jungle Book. Later Lennon supposedly
nixed the idea and Walt ended up using semi-soundalikes to voice what wound up being vultures in the film.
In late 1973 Lennon visited Disneyland with his son Julian, girl friend May, ex-wife Cynthia (mother of Julian),
and friends Mal Evans (once a Beatles roadie) and Jesse Ed Davis. Lennon, who had not seen Julian in 4 years,
thought the Anaheim park was a good place to reconnect with his 9-year-old son.
On December 29, 1974 Lennon, while staying at Disney's Polynesian Village Hotel (today known as Disney's
Polynesian Resort), signed the paperwork that officially broke up The Beatles. Although the group hadn't worked
together since 1970, it took another 4 years for the proper legal paperwork to be agreed upon. He was the last
Beatle to sign the documents thus ending The Beatles at Walt Disney World.
1968:
Pete Docter, animator, film director, screenwriter, and voice actor is born Peter Hans
Docter in Bloomington, Minnesota. Starting at Pixar at age 21 (the third animator on the staff and the tenth person hired by the company), today he is best known for directing the animated feature films Monsters, Inc. (2001), Up (2009), and Inside Out (2015). As a key figure and collaborator at Pixar, he's also been an integral part
of such classics as Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bugs Life, Cars, and Wall-E. Docter has also contributed voices
for Up, The Incredibles, and Monsters, Inc., and directed a special segment of Up for the 82nd Academy Awards.
Following John Lasseter's step-down from Pixar, Docter became the studio's chief creative officer.
| ||||
October 09
Magical Gatherings!
2015:
A ramp that leads from westbound Interstate 4 directly into the parking garage of
Disney World's Disney Springs opens. The Florida roadway is part of the infrastructure improvements
with the expansion (and renaming) of the Downtown Disney entertainment district. Motorists traveling from
Orlando can take Exit 67, marked with signs indicating the way to Epcot and Disney Springs. Midway through
that ramp, a new spur on the right-hand side leads into the 4,000-slot parking garage.
Invisible Sister, a Disney Channel Original Movie, based on the book "My Invisible
Sister" by Beatrice Colin and Sara Pinto, premieres. Cleo's (Rowan Blanchard) science project
goes awry when she accidentally makes her sister (Paris Berelc) invisible.
2005:
Little Einsteins, an interactive animated children's television series on Playhouse
Disney, debuts in the U.S. with the episode "Ring Around the Planet". The educational
preschool series has been developed for television by Douglas Wood who created the concept and characters, and
a subsequent team headed by Emmy Award-winning director Aidan Abril and JoJo's Circus co-creator Eric Weiner,
and produced by Curious Pictures and The Baby Einstein Company.
Johnny and the Sprites, a musical television series aimed at children, airs for the first
time on Disney Channel. The show has been created by, produced by, and stars John Tartaglia (most famous
at this time for his work on the musical comedy Avenue Q). Each episode of the show will feature a musical number,
many of which are written by various notable Broadway composers. The show follows Johnny T (Tartaglia), a songwriter who moves into a house given to him by his great-uncle. There, he discovers little magical creatures called "sprites," who introduce him to their fantasy world.
1953:
Actor Anthony Marcus "Tony" Shalhoub is born in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He voiced Jerry Valentine on the ABC sitcom Dinosaurs, the Emir in the Gargoyles episode "Grief", and Luigi in Pixar's Cars franchise. Shalhoub also played Kevin Conway in the 1998 Touchstone Pictures film A Civil Action and Tommy Sanz in the 2004 film The Last Shot. Shalhoub is widely known as detective Adrian Monk in the USA TV series Monk (produced by Mandeville Films and Disney/ABC's Touchstone Television in association with Universal Network Television).
1998:
Touchstone Pictures releases the comedy-drama Holy Man, starring Eddie Murphy, Jeff Goldblum, Kelly Preston, Robert Loggia, Jon Cryer, and Eric McCormack. An
over-the-top television evangelist finds a way to turn television home shopping into a religious experience... and takes America by storm!
1981:
Actor Zachery Ty Bryan is born in Aurora, Colorado. Best known for playing Brad Taylor on the ABC hit sitcom Home Improvement, he also appeared in the 1996 comedy First Kid.
2016:
The Main Street Electrical Parade gives its final performance at Walt Disney World.
2020:
The Right Stuff, a historical drama anthology series, begins to stream on Disney+.
Based on the 1979 book of the same name by Tom Wolfe and its 1983 movie adaptation, the series explores the origins and growth of the United States' space program.
1936:
Actor, presenter, writer and mountaineer Brian Blessed is born in Mexborough, Yorkshire, England. Playing the role of Boss Nass in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, he also voiced Clayton (an intelligent and suave yet arrogant and treacherous hunter) in Disney's 1999 Tarzan.
