Today In Disney History ~ April 24th
Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Sklar was a student at UCLA and editor of its Daily Bruin newspaper in 1955 when he was recruited to create a 1950s-themed newspaper, The Disneyland News, a month before the theme park opened. After graduating, he joined Disneyland full-time in 1956, where he held responsibility for most of the park’s publicity and marketing materials.
In 1961, he moved to WED Enterprises, renamed in 1986 to Walt Disney Imagineering, where he worked on attractions for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Among the attractions he helped to design during this period were The Enchanted Tiki Room and It’s a Small World, the latter originally for the World’s Fair. For nearly 10 years, he wrote personal materials for Walt Disney for use in publications, television and special films. In 1974 he became vice president of concepts/planning, and guided the creative development of EPCOT Center (now known as Epcot) at Florida’s Walt Disney World Resort.
As vice president of creative development, executive vice president and then president of Imagineering for nine years, Sklar supervised the design and construction of Tokyo Disneyland, the Disney-MGM Studios, Disneyland Paris, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Disney California Adventure Park, Tokyo DisneySea, the Walt Disney Studios Park and most recently Hong Kong Disneyland. Former Disneyland International chairman Jim Cora later said of him, “He understands the Disney way because he learned it at Walt’s knee. He is the keeper of the keys, the conscience, the Jiminy Cricket for the organization.
He was The Walt Disney Company’s International Ambassador for Walt Disney Imagineering, the subsidiary of the company which designs and constructs the Disney theme parks and resorts across the world. Sklar was formerly vice president of concepts and planning for the company, before being promoted to president, and then eventually taking the position of vice chairman and principal creative executive of the company before his final role. The company honored him with a window dedication ceremony on his date of retirement, July 17, 2009. Sklar wrote an autobiography titled Dream It! Do It!: My Half-Century Creating Disney’s Magic Kingdoms.
Michele also contributes theme park news for Fox 35 Orlando 11pm news and on the radio on WDBO.
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