Every town has a Main Street.
When he stood on his, I imagine he saw the best of his past. He was back in Marceline.
This street was the only entrance. He made us pass under the steam train and down the eerily clean streets and toward his imagination. He had made it more perfect than reality. It was made perfect for the legions that would follow the same path. Walk the same sidewalks and ride a horse drawn carriage toward a castle.
At the end of the street, he lead us to the Wild West. He let us live in the pages of fairytales. He showed us the future, as he saw it.
He could feel it, and see it. It was in the concrete paths and fabricated mountains. He could hear it - The fans blowiong overhead at the ice-cream shop and the whistle of the steam train. He could live it again. This was him.
And as they played, he watched them from his apartement above a fire station.
The first generation of people invited to walk the streets got to watch it grow, from small-town anywhere to a quait world-famous metropolis. They learned its secrets, and passed them onto their children. He had given them an escape, where nothing else exsisted. He has blocked the outside world with trees and dirt hills.
Now, it was theirs. Now, it is ours.
But this was not enough. He wanted to give us more. He wanted a city.
On November 30, 1966, after battling health problems, he collapsed and was taken to hospital.
His life was hanging by a pencil.
On December 15, 1966, at 9:30 a.m. and 10 days after he turned 65, Walter Elias Disney died at
Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, Califonia. Across the street from his studio and his loyal employees.
He wanted a city. What we got, was a whole wide World.
The place where lots of us go to escape. The place where nothing else exsists. For some, the only world we want to be a part of know. Walt Disney World.
It`s here we dine on amazing food, scream on the best rides, get lost in your stories and get to ride in the air on an elephant with ears that were just a little to big.
This Main Street is one you never got to see, but imagined it for us. From us, the millions that have walked that Street, we say thank you.
Thank you Roy O. Disney, for turning your brother`s dreams into reality.
Especially, thank you Walt, for dreaming and being brave enough to share them with us.
Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and
fantasy. -
-Plaque at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom
