Martin Sklar (–2017)

A great Disney book by a true Disney Legend!

Marty Sklar started his career with Disney in 1955, one month prior to the opening of Disneyland. He remained with the company until retiring in 2009, and is the only Disney employee to have participated in the design and opening of all 11 currently operating Disney theme parks (Disneyland, Disney California Adventure, Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney Hollywood Studios, Disney's Animal Kingdom, Hong Kong Disneyland, Tokyo Disneyland, Tokyo DisneySea, Disneyland Paris, and Walt Disney Studios Park). Though he started in marketing, he quickly found a home at WED Enterprises / Walt Disney Imagineering where he eventually ended up leading the organization for more than 30 years until his transition to "Ambassador for Walt Disney Imagineering" leading up to his retirement in 2009.

This book is a "memoir" of the author's 50 years working for Walt Disney Productions/The Walt Disney Company, and includes chapters about the development of all of the theme parks, as well as a chapter about the author's time at UCLA and his association with Coach John Wooden. It also includes "Mickey's Ten Commandments", a list of ten key principles for theme park design that have become legendary in their own right. The book also includes 3 additional lists of "Mickey's Ten (more) Commandments", focusing on leadership and followship. Because of the close working relationship the author had with Walt Disney, this book provides an intimate look at the impact of Walt's death on the company.

The role that Marty Sklar has played in the success of the Walt Disney Company and Disney Theme Parks can't be understated. In his early days at WED, Marty wrote many of Walt Disney's speeches, presentations, and film scripts, including the script for the Epcot film (which was the last film Walt recorded before his death in December 1966). It was Marty Sklar who coined the famous definition of imagineering: "the blending of creative imagination and technical know-how." Later he was pivotal in the design and creation of Epcot and every other Disney theme park since.

As a fan of Disney theme parks in general and Imagineering in specific, buying and reading this book was a no-brainer for me. Despite that, I was initially somewhat skeptical about this book, thinking that it wouldn't provide the level of detail and insight that I like most in books about Disney parks and Imagineering. I was worried it would be a white-washed memoir that would retell the stories found in the other books in my Disney/Imagineering library. I needn't have worried at all.

After reading the introduction, I was hooked. While many memoirs like this tend to gloss over details and omit "unpleasant" or controversial stories, this isn't the case with this book at all. This book is a welcomed addition to my library, and one that I expect I will read and re-read again and again.

If I have one minor quibble with the book it's the lack of an index, which would be helpful in finding stories about the many people that the author worked with during his time at Disney.

I strongly recommend this book to any fan of Disney theme parks. You won't be disappointed!… (more)

4 stars: An "okay" book, possibly draggy or too light, not my thing

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From the back cover: Marty Sklar was hired by The Walt Disney Company after his junior year at UCLA, and began his Disney career at Disneyland in July 1955, the month before the park opened. He spent his first decade at Disney as "the kid," the very youngest of the creative team Walt had assembled at WED Enterprises. But despite his youth, his talents propelled him forward into substantial responsibility: he became Walt's speech writer, penned Walt's and Roy's messages in the company's annual report, composed most of the publicity and marketing materials for Disneyland, conceived presentations for the U.S. government, devised initiatives to obtain sponsors to enable new Disneyland developments, and wrote a twenty-four-minute film expressing Walt's philosophy for the Walt Disney World project and Epcot. He was Walt's literary right-hand man.

Over the next forty years, Marty Sklar rose to become president and principal creative executive of Walt Disney Imagineering, and he devoted his entire career to creating, enhancing, and expanding Walt's magical empire.
This beautifully written and enlightening book is Marty's own retelling of his epic Disney journey, a grand adventure that lasted over half a century.

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I read this book the month leading up to my 2022 trip to Disney World. I was as surprised as anyone that I didn't find most of it very interesting. The rare exception that stands out is the Engineering around Spaceship Earth (aka the Epcot Ball). That did fascinate me and I read further. Mostly I found Sklar to be a very entitled Jewish guy who doesn't recognize other minorities and thinks he should have it all. Very dated, for sure.… (more)

As I’ve not spent too much time on the history of the Disney world (deliberate lower case), I have no idea how much of this is new, but it is an interesting memoir collecting a few inside stories from Sklar’s 54 years with Disney. A bit non-linear at times (jumping from Disney World to Disneyland to the 1964-65 World’s Fair and in and out and back and forth), a reader can get a little idea as to late-Disney, post-Disney, Eisner, et al and the task of building an empire. A few nuggets:

- Walt was not a boss who wanted a “yes” at all costs. He just didn’t like “no.”

- “Marc [Davis, animator, on a storyboard for a park show],” Walt said, “I have a whole floor of finance people and accountants upstairs who are going to tell me what the cheapest way to do something is. What I pay you for is to tell me the best way!”

- [Walt, on his vision] The way I see it, Disneyland will never be finished. It’s something we can keep developing and adding to. A motion picture is different. Once it’s wrapped up and sent out for processing, we’re through with it. If there are things that could be improved, we can’t do anything about them anymore. I’ve always wanted to work on something alive, something that keeps growing. We’ve got that in Disneyland.

- [From an early Florida press conference, and the future Walt Disney World and EPCoT] “I would like to create new things…you hate to repeat yourself…I don’t like to make sequels to my pictures. I like to take a new thing and develop something…a new concept.”

- Michael Eisner (3/3/88): “We are committed to acting as though we know what we are doing”

- Marty Sklar to his team (7/6/87): “Remember: every day is the only day many of our guests will ever visit one of our parks!”


On top of the insider access value to aficionados my takeaways are the first ten of “Mickey’s Commandments” that Sklar assembled for his Imagineers, yet with universal applicability:

1. Know your audience: Identify the prime audience for your attraction or show before you begin design.

2. Wear your guests’ shoes: Insist that your team members experience your creation just the way guests do it.

3. Organize the flow of people and ideas: Make sure there is a logic and sequence in your stories and in the way guests experience them.

4. Create a wienie (visual magnet): Create visual “_targets” that will lead visitors clearly and logically through your facility. [read the book...you'll see what he means]

5. Communicate with visual literacy: Make good use of color, shape, form, texture—all the nonverbal ways of communication.

6. Avoid overload—create turn-ons: Resist the temptation to overload your audience with too much information and too many objects.

7. Tell one story at a time: Stick to the story line; good stories are clear, logical, and consistent.

8. Avoid contradictions—maintain identity: Details in design or content that contradict one another confuse an audience about your story or the time period it takes place in.

9. For every ounce of treatment, provide a ton of treat: In our business, Walt Disney said, you can educate people—but don’t tell them you’re doing it! Make it fun!

10. Keep it up! (maintain it): In a Disney park or resort, everything must work. Poor maintenance is poor show!

Sklar added thirty more Mickey commandments that are just as good, but you can read the book for those…

A nice read.… (more)