{"id":30909,"date":"2013-09-24T05:50:06","date_gmt":"2013-09-24T09:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/?p=30909"},"modified":"2022-05-05T13:40:45","modified_gmt":"2022-05-05T17:40:45","slug":"review-marty-sklars-book-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/review-marty-sklars-book-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of Marty Sklar’s Book Dream It! Do It!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dream<\/a> For my first blog post, I couldn\u2019t think of anything more appropriate than a review of Marty Sklar\u2019s new book,\u00a0 Dream It! Do It! My Half-Century Creating Disney\u2019s Magic Kingdoms<\/span>.\u00a0 Marty Sklar is a Disney Legend who has dedicated 54 years of service to the Disney Empire.\u00a0 His career began at the age of 21 (1 month before Disneyland opened), as a staff writer and rose to the title of vice chairman and principal creative executive at Imagineering when he retired in 2009.\u00a0 Sklar worked closely with Walt Disney and ghost wrote many of Walt\u2019s famous speeches including the famous 24 minute film Walt narrated explaining EPCOT.\u00a0 Marty is the only Disney employee to participate in the opening of all 11 Disney Parks around the world.<\/p>\n

Marty states in his book \u201cI\u2019m going to tell only personal stories-that is those experienced directly by me or my peers. Most of these stories have never appeared in print.\u201d Throughout the 20 chapters of his book, Marty weaves detailed accounts of Disney milestones such as the opening day of Disneyland, working on attractions for the 1964-65 World\u2019s Fair, carrying on after Walt\u2019s death, the hype and challenges of building Magic Kingdom, moving forward with Walt\u2019s vision of EPCOT, as well as constructing Disney Parks for Paris, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite accounts is the story Marty tells of how EPCOT and World Showcase were originally to be two separate parks.\u00a0 Literally, one hour before a key sponsorship meeting with executives, Marty and Disney Legend, John Hench, pushed the two models of EPCOT and World Showcase together to become one.\u00a0 Imagineer model makers scrambled together to make it appear it had been designed as one park all along.\u00a0 Acts such as these truly reflect the creative genius of Disney Imagineering.<\/p>\n

Marty also relates to the time he spent working with other Disney Legends such as, John Hench, Harper Goff, Herb Ryman, Dick Nunis, and the Sherman brothers to name a few.\u00a0 However, his memories of working with Walt take center stage.\u00a0 Reading about his relationship with Walt, it is apparent how much Walt was respected and admired by Marty and his employees. Walt pushed them to find solutions to problems and find a way to \u2018make it work\u2018.\u00a0 Marty cites, \u201cWalt was not a boss who wanted a \u2018yes\u2019 at all costs.\u00a0 He just didn\u2019t like \u2018no\u2019.<\/p>\n

The book concludes with Marty\u2019s, \u201cMickey\u2019s 10 Commandments\u201d.\u00a0 A creation of his own ideas and \u2018learnings\u2019 throughout his Disney career.\u00a0 Marty has given many speeches using these \u2018Commandments\u2019 to train and motivate leaders at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.\u00a0 After the initial 10, \u00a0he has written about 30 more that could also be used as inspirations for everyday life. \u201cNever fear failure – winners sometimes fail too!\u201d<\/p>\n

After reading Dream It! Do It!, I was in awe of the brilliant creativity used by the Disney Imagineers for all their amazing accomplishments.\u00a0 Behind the scene stories are intertwined with humor, ambition, and achievements.\u00a0 My only complaint is that I wish it were longer.\u00a0 No doubt, an inspiring read for avid Disney fans and those\u00a0who have a dream they wish to fulfill.<\/p>\n

Sponsored Ad:<\/strong>\u00a0 Would you like to help support The Mouse For Less website in continuing their mission of being THE Disney vacation planning resource?\u00a0 You can do so by purchasing Marty Skylar’s Dream It! Do It! My Half-Century Creating Disney\u2019s Magic Kingdoms\u00a0from our affiliate link through Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For my first blog post, I couldn\u2019t think of anything more appropriate than a review of Marty Sklar\u2019s new book,\u00a0 Dream It! Do It! My Half-Century Creating Disney\u2019s Magic Kingdoms.\u00a0 Marty Sklar is a Disney Legend who has dedicated 54 years of service to the Disney Empire.\u00a0 His career began at the age of 21…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":30910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86420,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30909\/revisions\/86420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}