Walt Disney World
1971-present
If You Had Wings opened to the public in June 1972, when Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom was eight months old. It was the first new attraction that wasn't merely delayed from the October 1971 grand opening. Over the course of fifteen years, If You Had Wings hosted millions of Magic Kingdom visitors - spinning them through a loud and happening tour of various vacation spots serviced by Eastern Airlines, the attraction's sponsor and the official airline of WDW from 1970 to 1987. The ride accomplished its task free of charge (during an era when, until 1980, most Kingdom rides required separate admission tickets) and often with less than a minute's wait.
In June 1987, the last guests rode through If You Had Wings. Eastern had withdrawn its WDW sponsorship due to financial problems, which called for several changes to the attraction. Its next incarnation, called If You Could Fly, opened later that month. If You Could Fly was an "alternate" version of its former self ... the ride was physically much the same but the old music and references to Eastern were missing. It lacked the magnetism of the original and invited disappointing comparisons. If You Could Fly hosted its last visitors in January of 1989. Upon its closure, almost everything visually inherent to If You Had Wings and its successor was destroyed and removed from the building's interior as trash. By the time Dreamflight (sponsored by Delta Airlines) opened there in June 1989, If You Had Wings was a memory with another attraction built around its track. A fun house of excitement, warmth and innocence was lost to the unrelenting march of progress. If that sounds melodramatic, spare yourself further despair and find another website!
When that final version of the rode closed, I was an Operations host in the Magic Kingdom East department, working mostly at 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. During my breaks I would often go down into the tunnel below the park, walk a few hundred feet, ascend a stairwell and arrive in the middle of If You Could Fly. That's how I ended up walking through the attraction as it was being dismantled. On first witnessing that, I could hardly believe the sets and props were being hacked apart simply to expedite their removal. My If You Had Wings "collection" began at that time, thanks in part to some of the debris lying around on the floor. I also started writing about the attraction, tongue partly in cheek, and interviewing friends for their recollections of it while the memories were still fresh. Years later, the project is still ongoing; to my own surprise I'm still learning things about the ride and finding new photographs, audio recordings and home movie images thanks to others who have found this page and offered to help.
In the course of spending so much time on this, a truth surfaced: Nearly everyone who remembered If You Had Wings loved it, and even more people will at least tell you it was one of their favorites. My inconsequential point being that during its heyday, If You Had Wings was often derided as "second rate" by people with little appreciation for weirdness in general, and SOME of those people like the ride more now in hindsight. I'm not the judge of who loved If You Had Wings and who didn't, I'm just saying that it was dated from the offset and very silly but that's what made it great. It had a compromised track layout and its theme was basically "four-minute airline commercial" and it did amazing things in spite of both. It didn't overreach or ask its riders to buy into anything as unfathomable as being launched into space - as did its early neighbor, Flight To The Moon. It simply asked you to pretend that you were visiting a few vacation spots not that far removed from Florida, encountering both locals and other tourists who were having a great time dancing, singing, fishing and all sorts of other stuff. Whether regarded as a classic or not, lots of people can still sing If You Had Wings' theme song as if they had just stepped off the ride, which no one has done for 25 years. As of this "40th anniversary update" to WYW's IYHW tribute, the Magic Kingdom has operated longer without If You Had Wings than it did with it. And whereas in the late 1980s its loss felt very personal, now it has become of one many things I loved as a child that are revisited online with great affection by thousands of people.
What a place!
Sponsorships have been a big part of the Disney theme park experience from the moment Disneyland opened its gates in July 1955. At that time, "lessees" (as the company originally called them) were as varied as The Upjohn Company, Swift, and Kaiser Aluminum who sponsored, respectively, Main Street USA's Pharmacy, the Market House and Tomorrowland's Hall of Aluminum Fame. Their financial contributions helped make the construction of the park possible, and their presence in the park's shops and exhibits put their corporate logos and/or services in plain view of millions of visitors every year.
By the time planning for Walt Disney World was underway in the late 1960s, Disneyland had developed a more mature and far-reaching "participation program" for its growing roster of major corporate sponsors. Concurrent with Walt Disney Productions' new relationship with 1964-1965 New York World's Fair partners (Ford Motor Co., General Electric and Pepsi-Cola), they had also in 1964 secured United Airlines as a ten-year sponsor of Disneyland's new Enchanted Tiki Room attraction.
Six years later, there was little doubt that a major airline would be solicited for a similar relationship with Walt Disney World. In 1970, however, United was coming off a decade of diversification and, more importantly, its first year of multi-million-dollar net losses. Additionally, since WDW was under construction there was no opportunity for a company to merely assume the sponsorship of an "existing" attraction as United had done with the Tiki Room in California. Rather Disney was now seeking the commitment of a larger sum of money to bankroll the development of an as-yet-to-be-determined attraction.
The exact amount of that "larger sum" was reportedly $10 million. And the airline that proffered this fee turned out to be Eastern Airlines, by that time a major nationwide air carrier that had dominated air traffic routes along the Atlantic coast since the 1930s. By 1971 Eastern provided flight service to Orlando from 60 different cities. Below is a photo of Disney's vice president of Industry Sales Jack Sayers (at left) and Eastern's senior vice president Thomas B. McFadden at the time of contract signing.opened to the public in June 1972, when Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom was eight months old. It was the first new attraction that wasn't merely delayed from
Sponsorships have been a big part of the Disney theme park experience from the moment Disneyland opened its gates in July 1955. At that time, "lessees" (as the company originally called them) were as varied as The Upjohn Company, Swift, and Kaiser Aluminum who sponsored, respectively, Main Street USA's Pharmacy, the Market House and Tomorrowland's Hall of Aluminum Fame. Their financial contributions helped make the construction of the park possible, and their presence in the park's shops and exhibits put their corporate logos and/or services in plain view of millions of visitors every year.
By the time planning for Walt Disney World was underway in the late 1960s, Disneyland had developed a more mature and far-reaching "participation program" for its growing roster of major corporate sponsors. Concurrent with Walt Disney Productions' new relationship with 1964-1965 New York World's Fair partners (Ford Motor Co., General Electric and Pepsi-Cola), they had also in 1964 secured United Airlines as a ten-year sponsor of Disneyland's new Enchanted Tiki Room attraction.
Six years later, there was little doubt that a major airline would be solicited for a similar relationship with Walt Disney World. In 1970, however, United was coming off a decade of diversification and, more importantly, its first year of multi-million-dollar net losses. Additionally, since WDW was under construction there was no opportunity for a company to merely assume the sponsorship of an "existing" attraction as United had done with the Tiki Room in California. Rather Disney was now seeking the commitment of a larger sum of money to bankroll the development of an as-yet-to-be-determined attraction.
The exact amount of that "larger sum" was reportedly $10 million. And the airline that proffered this fee turned out to be Eastern Airlines, by that time a major nationwide air carrier that had dominated air traffic routes along the Atlantic coast since the 1930s. By 1971 Eastern provided flight service to Orlando from 60 different cities. Below is a photo of Disney's vice president of Industry Sales Jack Sayers (at left) and Eastern's senior vice president Thomas B. McFadden at the time of contract signing.opened to the public in June 1972, when Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom was eight months old. It was the first new attraction that wasn't merely delayed from
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