I may have mentioned in a previous post that I am sort of a Disney afficianado. I have always felt an affinity to their films; two of my favorite films in my youth were the dog features, 101 DALMATIONS and LADY AND THE TRAMP. Those may have been ones that struck a chord with me, but they by no means were the only ones that I enjoyed. The "princess" animated features were enjoyable, but I really liked PINOCCHIO and the Winnie the Pooh stuff as a child. And the TV show, THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISNEY, was a favorite, can't-miss hour (or two, or whatever) of Sunday night television in my youth.

I recently have become more interested than ever in the Disney story, probably because of my two recent visits to the Florida theme parks. EPCOT, in particular, really captured my fancy, and I started taking notes on sort of a pie-in-the-sky dream of developing one myself. (Now I know that this is likely never going to happen, but it's sort of fun to do the thought exercises.) I've been checking books out of the library and surfing the internet reading sites that are about the parks and the Imagineers. MICE AGE (www.miceage.com) is one of them, as is Re-Imagineering (http://imagineerebirth.blogspot.com) is another.

And when I saw this biography of the man himself, called WALT DISNEY: THE TRIUMPH OF THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION by Neal Gabler, I figured I'd check it out of the library. So, while everyone else in the world is reading the final Harry Potter installment (which I have, but haven't begun yet), I'm reading about Walt's life story, along with the history of the Disney film studio, the parks, and everything else up to his death on December 15, 1966.

What I learned about the man was that he was certainly a genius in the creative realm. He seemed to have an instinctual feel for what would work and what wasn't, and seemed to be right far more than he was wrong. This applied to his early work on short cartoons, the longer animated features, and finally on the theme parks. He was driven, wouldn't take no for an answer, didn't worry about cost too much, and was single minded when he was engaged in a project.

The book lists several times in his life that he fully engaged in the projects he was working on, and at those times he was virtually unstoppable, and almost infallible. When he was making SNOW WHITE, he was like that - he just needed to find a way to get the thing made, knowing that he was doing something special at the time. Disney's TV production at the beginning and the 1964 World's Fair exhibits that Disney designed were two other things that fully engaged him. Then of course, the theme parks focused his creative energies fully, first Disneyland in California, then Disney World in Florida, then finally the initial utopian vision he had for EPCOT, which was never carried out.

It's an inspiring story for anyone, a can-do type of tale that makes you think you can accomplish anything truly important to you, and at the same time it sort of intimidates you with the hurdles that they overcame because they had this creative genius to bank on. How can any normal person overcome stuff like they dealt with?

Anyway, it was long and every word matters in biography, usually, so it took me a while to read, but I'm very glad I finished it.