Your first LOOK at the magical new Disney World

LOOK Magazine
April 6, 1971
Volume 35, No. 7

 

LOOK Magazine published a great 25 page spread on "the most gargantuan vacation enterprise ever devised...."  The article was titled Florida Boom! Boom! Boom?

"A day at Disney World will cost visitors - 45,000 expected on a busy day - at least $7.25 each...."

Note the pre-opening dirt road in Town Square.

"It's going to be thousands of acres of computerized fun"

"Popcorn, submarines and castles - but ecologically it's a good thing"

"It's entertainment and still more - a brand-new vacation world"

Count the number of hotels on the map.  A few never came to be.

This small, blurry picture is the only place the Bid D logo appears in the magazine.  It is the last picture and there is no mention as to why it is there.

Pre-Opening Postcards

Liberty Square Pre-opening Postcard
(FL-032)

This was a pre-opening postcard used to announce the opening of Walt Disney World in Florida.  The front is an artist rendering of Liberty Square in the Magic Kingdom.  

The Big D logo is prominent on the front.  Some versions of this card use the Florida Flag logo.

The Big D icon appears on the back at the bottom above the Walt Disney Productions copyright.


The divider on the back announces "Opening October, 1971."

"The Vacation Kingdom of the World" was the tag used under the non-Big D logo on the back.

Note the postmark on this card...February 1, 1971.

This card was written and mailed exactly 8 months prior to WDW's official opening day.

FL-032 (back)

It all started with...

Framed Postcards

...postcards.  That's how the collection began.  These are the first ones I purchased at a flea market.  Having just started out, not really sure what I was looking for and not sure how to bargain when things are not priced, I picked these old looking, colorful cards for a quarter a piece and left the cards with drawings of WDW.  What I turned  down were the more rare and elusive "pre-opening" postcards.  More on those later.

I had been collecting postcards for awhile without much focus.  They were primarily cheap souvenirs of my travels.  So it made sense to begin my WDW collecting with postcards.  My wife came up with the frame idea as a gift.

I have since begun to catalog the various series of early WDW cards that I have collected with help from a great resource list at Big Brian's WDW History in Postcards.