had a partially unwrapped music box and lots of musical notes on the main tower , which would become a saxophone . Dancing atop the present would be one of the tutu-wearing hippos from Fantasia . Another Fantasia idea was a scene from ‘ The Sorcerer ’ s Apprentice ,’ with Mickey in his magic hat directing titanic splashes of water across the towers of the castle .”
“ So I was walking into the building one day to meet with Wayne about some project or another , and I passed by a conference room where several easels had been set up with the color sketches of the castle birthday cake concept that I had drawn for Imagineering ,” Conrad told me . “ To be fair , most of the details had been worked out by the highly talented team at WDI ( Joe Warren and company ), and all they had asked me to do was put it all together in a series of perspectives based on photos of a model of the original castle .”
Wayne Gagne , then Entertainment Manager , told Conrad that Michael Eisner had passed on WDI ’ s concept because it wasn ’ t fun enough — it looked too much like a building with icing on it and not enough like a giant cake — so the job had been handed over to Entertainment to take another stab . He asked me if I wanted to be part of the effort . “ Are you kidding ?” Conrad said . “ It was my idea !”
ABOVE : Other concepts included characters from Fantasia and unwrapped presents . IMAGES COURTESY OF MIKE CONRAD
While these designs are incredibly fanciful and grand , Conrad noted that they were so large that they would be “ a tremendous problem to implement .” And it turns out , the castle cake idea was already in the Disney zeitgeist . The hive mind of creatives at Walt Disney World , including Ron Logan , thought the castle would translate pretty well into a confectioner ’ s dream . And eventually , Conrad got the call : The Creative Entertainment department had indeed settled on the castle cake idea .
TOP : A scale model of Cinderella Castle for reference . BOTTOM : Mike ' s concept art based on the scale model . IMAGES COURTESY OF MIKE CONRAD
100 MAGICAL ISSUES