WDW Magazine April 2016 - Disney's Hollywood Studios | Page 13

Hats off to the millennium makeover…

The original icon for the park was the Earffel Tower, cleverly named after the Eiffel Tower
with a Mickey Ears twist. Though the tower has never actually held water, it was built to
replicate the water tower found at the original Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. It remained
the park icon until 2001, when the new millennium brought a multitude of changes to the
park.
The WDW Resort put on 100 Years of Magic, a yearlong celebration honoring the
anniversary of Walt Disney’s birth beginning on October 1, 2001 through the end of 2002.
Fun Fact: Walt Disney’s actual birthday was December 5, 1901.
New parades and shows debuted across WDW but at Disney-MGM Studios the
celebration could not be ignored; to honor Walt’s classic passion-project, Fantasia, a
colossal 122-foot tall Sorcerer’s Hat—complete with Mickey Ears and his icon glove—was
built at the center of Hollywood Boulevard, just outside of The Great Movie Ride. And
suddenly the water tower became a thing of the past as Disney branded The Sorcerer’s Hat
the new park icon.
In 2003, Walt Disney Feature Animation closed in order to make room for new attractions
and lands. This was the first of the eventual closing of all of the park’s working studios for
the future expansion of the park.