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Imagineer Interview: Scott Girard | Disney Park Landscaping · Project Horizons

• Mike: All right. So we're joined today by former Walt Disney Imagineers, Scott Girard, who helped make Walt Disney World a very beautiful place, working as a landscape architect and spent decades with the company creating and growing the magic. He also met Walt Disney and worked closely with Roy Disney during the construction of Walt Disney World. So we're looking forward to hearing those stories of those two great men. And so Scott, we are thrilled to have you here on our third show of the WDW Connection show. How are you doing my friend? Scott Girard: Great, Mike, thank you, good to be with you. Mike: Excellent, excellent. looking forward to hearing about your journey to Disney. I know you grew up near Disneyland Scott Girard: Sure, you bet. I grew up in Anaheim, South Anaheim, and the grove land that I grew up on turned out to be three blocks south of Disneyland, the property that Walt bought to build Disneyland. And I was about eight years old, and my elementary school was just kitty corner from the property, Disneyland property. And so... You know, like most adventurous eight year olds, I'd ride my bike before leaving school to go home and I'd ride it across the street and go over and, you know, just see what was going on over at the park was the park was, they were pushing dirt around and throwing trees, you know, off to the side and, so forth. So that's my first rub with Disney was during construction for Disneyland. And Then later, I graduated from high school. I was 17. Back then, you had to be 18 to work at Disneyland. But on my 18th birthday, I started to work at Disneyland. I was hired into Retlaw to work on the monorail and the steam trains. I was hired by Jim Cora. Jim went on to become president of Disneyland International and drove all the international park development right out of the gate there. so Jim was my supervisor on the monorail and steam trains. And I worked those four years, my college years at Disneyland and working on the steam trains and the monorails. And those two attractions, were family owned. Walt owned the rolling stock for both the steam trains and the monorails. The family didn't own the rail lines or the right of ways or the monorail beam ways. They owned all the rolling stock. funny story, whenever Walt was in the park, whenever I knew he was in the park, he'd want to come up and drive the steam trains while the park was open. so, you know, what you do, ⁓ you can't say no to the boss. And what he he didn't want to stop. He wanted to just go around the park nonstop with. And so we'd make an announcement if it was on a train that if I was in Main Street Station and Walt came up and we'd make an announcement for the guests who already on the train and say, you know, we're not going to make any stops if you want to get off and wait. You can wait. Well, nobody get off. Now they all want to ride with Walt. And if it was a two train operation, we'd have to move one train off on a spur down in Frontierland. And again, I've been on the other side of that down in Frontierland where we'd have to move the train off onto the spur, I'll get off the main line. And we'd make an announcement about, know, Walt's gonna come by and if you wanna get off and wait here in the station here in Frontierland. Well, again, nobody get off, you know, they just wanted to see Walt and. And once the main line was cleared and a few minutes later, here came Walt rolling down the main line from Main Street to Frontierland and around the park three or four times. Kind of fun, kind of fun. Mike: it sounds really exciting. what goes through your mind knowing that, you I know you said you met Walt Disney and you see him. you know, basically playing with his toy. Disneyland was his place he'd ride his, firetruck around Disneyland and he would enjoy it just as much, if not more than, than the guests. And this was his favorite place. Scott Girard: Yeah, and you know, yeah, and he was he was very patient with the guests and and and he enjoyed being out in the guest areas and just talking to the guests and hearing what they had to say. one occasion that that I frankly that I value. It was a summer of sixty five. They were bringing great moments with Mr. Lincoln back from the New York World's Fair and. Walt was staying in the apartment the last few nights before the opening in the opera house. And that summer I had an opening shift on the steam train. So I'd open up Main Street Station. And one morning I was crossing town square and Walt was going east toward the opera house where they were installing Mr. Lincoln. And of course I was in costume, know, steam train conductor costume. And Walt stopped me and he looked at my name tag and he said, Scotty, you like working on the steam trains? And I said, yes, sir, I sure do. And he says, well, I do too. And he invited me to sit down on a bench there in town square. he was very inquisitive. He asked me where I was from and was I going to college and how did I come to work at Disneyland? What was I studying? I had told him, said, well, I'm studying landscape architecture. And he said, he says, you need to know Bill Evans. Well, I had met Bill a couple of years before while I was working at Disneyland because I was at Cal, I studied at Cal Poly Pomona. And every year back then Disneyland was closed Monday and Tuesday. during the winter time. And so, Bill would host a field day for the landscape architecture students at Cal Poly while the park was closed and we had a full day walking with Bill around the park. Well, I was already employed, but I was still a student and so it was great to spend some time with Bill. And I told Walt, I said, I know Bill. says, well, that's great. But he was very kind, we probably spent 10 minutes, which, you know. seemed like a little a long time actually I was a little late opening the Main Street station but but it was he was he was very kind and he as I say he loved talking with guests and intermingling with guests and like you say playing with his toys in the park. Mike: Right, right. all the stories you hear about Walt Disney interacting with the guests and having these conversations and learning from them, And you had that, you had that opportunity now you're speaking with Walt Disney. and working with Bill Evans and being in that environment thinking like these names, obviously Walt Disney and Bill Evans and Jim Cora, some pretty big names at the company at that time. And did you think that in your future that you would be at Disney in this role for so many years? Scott Girard: Never, never while I was at Disneyland. Back then they had with Disneyland what they called a biographical summary. It was like an 11 by 17 fold over document that you could fill out. And it was like an employment application on steroids for people that were already employed. And they were interested in knowing, you know, what your major was and would you consider staying with the company and would you ever consider relocating, know, those kinds of things. And this is pre-computer days, you know, and everything was hard written and hard filed. And I filled that out, let's see, I started in 64, I filled it out about 1966. And... So I was studying and so come 68, I'm getting ready to graduate. And I was working the monorail one day and I see Bill Evans come up the speed ramp in Tomorrowland on the monorail station. And he came out on the platform and he walked over to the foreman and they were talking and the foreman turned around and he pointed at me. And Bill came over. And he said, he introduced himself and I said, well, Bill, we've met, you I've been on a few of your field days. And he goes, yeah, great, great, great. He said, well, listen, he said, says here that you're a landscape architect. And he had that, that biographical summary that I'd filled out two years before. And I said, well, I will be here in a couple of weeks when I graduate. And he said, he said, I've tracked you down. He said, thought I'd come see you, see if you wanted to come up to wed and give us a hand. We're doing this thing in Florida. Project didn't have a name back then. It was just Project Florida. We're doing this thing in Florida. Would you like to give us a hand? And I think back now, I still can't believe the words came out of my mouth. I said, I said, well, Bill, you know, I always imagined when I graduated, I'd go out and get a real job. my frame Mike: that's funny. Scott Girard: of reference was working at Disneyland for four years, weekends and holidays and and summers and so forth. And he Mike: Right. Scott Girard: said he was very kind. said, he said, well, he said, think about it and let me know. He gave me his card. He said, think about it and let me know. So I went home. that afternoon after getting off work. And I was at home and I thought, what in the world is wrong with you? Are you kidding me? I got on the phone first thing in the morning. I called Bill over at the park in his office and I said, count me in, count me in. So after graduation, a weeks later, Bill arranged for me to be transferred up to wed Glendale. And that's how I made the transition from Disneyland to WED. Mike: Very good, very good. Scott Girard: And at the time, he was transitioning down to Florida. Mike: Gotcha. Scott Girard: So we really hadn't started a lot of the design work, landscape design work for the park. And so I got assigned right away to doing some architectural drafting for, I was assigned to the Main Street team. which was the art director for Main Street at the time was Fred Hope, Fred Hope Sr. And so I was assigned, I did some drawings for the Main Street Railroad Station and City Hall, a couple of other buildings on Main Street, just doing some architectural drafting for them and supporting that effort. And then once Bill got moved down to Florida, then He began commuting back and forth and we began the design work in earnest Mike: when you officially joined wed were you making those trips back and forth to Florida or were you stationed mostly in California initially? Okay. Scott Girard: No, not right away. No, I didn't commute to Florida for the first phase back Mike: Hmm. Scott Girard: then, for Walt Disney World, the first phase. I was in Glendale for maybe six or eight months, and then they relocated me to Florida. Mike: Okay Scott Girard: But I didn't travel back and forth for business. That didn't occur until we were doing, after Bill had retired and I took on his mantle. and we were doing Epcot. Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: They sent me back from Florida to Glendale to do Epcot. And then six months later, you know, we signed the deal to do Tokyo. And so Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: we designed those parks, those two parks on parallel tracks, you know, halfway around the world from each other, Epcot and Tokyo Disneyland, six months off track from each other, just six months. And so I did a lot of traveling. I was back and forth. Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: Glendale and Orlando and Tokyo and whatnot for four years. Mike: when you think about Epcot and Tokyo, almost at the same time, like 82 and then 83 opening of getting that complete. about Scott Girard: Massive. Mike: impressive project planning. I mean, the team involved to get that done is just, and the Scott Girard: great, great team. Mike: effect that, you know, the following that they have today, Epcot and really all the Disney parks, people love them. Scott Girard: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mike: And the reason why I wanna have these conversations is just because guests go to these parks and a lot of them, the everyday guest does not always think about the people that were involved in making these dreams happen, making these things come to life. so you eventually worked your way to, to Florida. Scott Girard: I was sent down there in 69, Mike: Okay. Scott Girard: late 69. first job was I went around, I drove around Orlando, the old residential areas in Orlando, know, Winter Park and College Park and whatnot, looking for big trees. go ring a doorbell. If I'd see a nice oak or magnolia flowering tree of some species, I'd ring the doorbell and say, hey, is that tree too big for your house? I'd be glad to Mike: You Scott Girard: give you $300 for it. We'll come get it and plant a smaller tree for you. Primarily because Florida, California has had a long history of tree nurseries, specimen tree nurseries. You're growing big trees in boxes and things. And Florida had a pretty good nursery stock, know, shrubs and ground cover industry going, but no big trees. There was nobody growing big trees. So we had to go out and collect them. And my first job was going around finding trees in people's yards that we could go get. And then we'd bring them back to the farm and the tree farm. And Charlie Sepulveda had been sent down a couple of years earlier. Then I went down and he started the experimental tree farm down there and it was a very clean operation. Charlie set that up. We shipped a number of trees from California, small trees from California and from Texas to see what would really grow in central Florida. know, central Florida, can grow magnolias and you can grow a few elms and a couple of species of oaks. you know, we needed a broader palette of specimen trees of trees of any type for the park. So we started Mike: Right. Yep. Scott Girard: the tree farm. It was about 60 acres that Charlie started. And then as we began collecting large trees from off the property and bringing them back, we put them into tree storage areas. And we filled up seven of those areas around the property. And we just set them on the ground and piled dirt up around the root ball. We had water trucks that go around and water them. And we were doing that while, you know, there was all this underground utility work being done, getting the site ready and the project Mike: Right. Scott Girard: coming up out of the ground. We couldn't get into a lot of areas. you know, we got around the Big River and Tom Sawyer's Island and we did some work in the jungle planting, you know, but the park in general, we really didn't start working. landscaping that until 10 months before opening, which is shocking when you think about it. Mike: Yeah, yeah. It is shocking. That's one of the common things I hear when a lot of these pictures we post of the construction, a frequent comment is, how did you guys get it done so fast? you talk about the landscaping, there's no trees, there's no sod, and all these things got done in a short period of time. And that's just remarkable. that you and your team were able to get that done so quickly. You're probably working around the clock, your teams, Scott Girard: Well, in many cases, we were working around the clock when we Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: had access. coordinating access, when you had a big tree, you had to know, for example, getting into the park with the last of the big trees, we had to know, say, when the last monorail beam was going to be put, was going to be placed. Mike: Hmm. Scott Girard: and you know when and where and so we could make sure we were there before that beam went up because it once the beam went up we wouldn't be able to get under it with some large trees and so forth. So you Mike: Right, right. Scott Girard: know a lot of coordination going on with that and crazy things happen during construction here's an example. I often get asked questions, how did you find all the manpower to do all of this? you know, we never seem to have problem with labor. There was always we could find enough labor, but what was hard was finding, you know, a foreman type supervisor type person, personnel to help us that knew how to read drawings and and landscape plans and how to drive a crew and schedule work and work like that. We hired one fella ⁓ who ⁓ had had a nursery there in Orlando and he was kind of a crusty old guy. And we were planting Tom Sawyer Island. he was new, it was his first day and we hauled a bunch of, there was no water in the river. So we were driving trucks down into the bottom of the river, big river there, Rivers of America. And we were offloading these, Pine trees in seven gallon cans, they were probably five or six feet tall, pine trees. We were planting them on Tom Sawyer's Island. The island didn't open for a couple years after the park opened, but we were planting the island so that the island would grow and look pretty great when the island did open. So he had this plan and I was telling him, just started to, and he kept, get back away from me kid. You bother me. ⁓ At the time I was 22 or 23. ⁓ I felt like I was the Mike: Yeah, yeah. Scott Girard: youngest person on the site, you know? ⁓ And so I said, okay, fine. So I got in my truck and went on. I had other site responsibilities to make sure everything was going and landscape was being installed per plans and so forth. And I came back midday and he had planted those pine trees on Tom Sawyer Island. And you know how the slope on is you know, it's like this. He Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: had planted those trees like this instead of like this. ⁓ It looked like wild hair on a dog's back ⁓ on the slopes Mike: Oh, that could be an issue. Oh no. Scott Girard: of Tom Sawyer Island. And I said, that's it, you're done. ⁓ I can Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: him right there though, but crazy. Mike: So once that was done, you had to, uproot them and replant them Scott Girard: Yeah. I just turned around to one of the, one of the guys on the crew. said, come on, you guys, let's, correct this. Let's get them up right. And, and they did, they did. Mike: Dick Nunis find out about this? Scott Girard: No, Dick didn't see it. Mike: Okay, good. That's something that should be hidden from Dick Nunis If that was in his Scott Girard: was a huge fan of landscape. He always has been. you probably heard the story about in the final days, we called it the final flail. Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: Everybody just flailing away and just laying sod, just throwing sod. Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: ⁓ hundreds of people, hundreds of guys out there throwing sod on the roadsides. And that's not even the story of Contemporary Hotel, that 18 acres, that 18 acres of sod was laid overnight ⁓ Mike: Yep. Scott Girard: before opening. But Dick Nunis would always ride by whenever there was somebody throwing sod on the ground, and he'd roll his window down on his car and he'd yell, green side up, green side up. Because he always thought, if you got a job throwing sod you may not know what side to throw. You never know. Mike: I love hearing that story. ⁓ It's one of those classic ⁓ Dick Scott Girard: Yeah. Mike: Nunis stories. you mentioned you went to the people's houses to see if they wanted to have their trees, removed and then you replaced it with a smaller tree. Walt Disney World's planning obviously was ⁓ Well, at that time, it wasn't a secret. So did you tell them who you were, that you're with Disney Okay. Scott Girard: Yeah, had a company pickup. Yeah, I had a company pickup truck. know, a lot of people, once they found out, oh, it's going to be at Walt Disney World. You know, it's going to be at Disney World. Oh, yeah, sure. That'd be great. Yeah, can you tell me where it's Mike: Yeah. Take whatever you want, right? Scott Girard: going to be? And I said, I can't tell you where it's going to be, but we're Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: happy to take it. And it's a beautiful specimen. so, you know, and some people, you know, I say $300. You know, I want $1,000. Well, OK, goodbye. Mike: that time, there was a lot of trees in central Florida. So before it was all built up like it is today. Scott Girard: Yeah. Yeah. Mike: I guess probably the most famous tree outside of the Swiss Family Robinson tree house is Liberty Oak, yes. Scott Girard: Yeah. Mike: I guess you know the story of that. Could you tell our... Scott Girard: Yeah. Yeah. Mike: Wonderful community, that amazing story. Scott Girard: We knew we needed a Liberty Oak. We knew we having Liberty Square and there was a Liberty Oak that was going to be required. And we knew that if we found one down in Tampa or Clearwater or Plant City or Daytona, we knew it would be so big we couldn't get it over the road. So we began looking around the property and you know the property is 28,000 acres and two thirds of it, you know, was swamp. you know, there's some upland, pine scrub upland and we found five candidates that we thought would be, you know, acceptable as trees, big specimen. oak trees and they were in pastures down south of 192. Most of the pasture land was south of US 192. so Bill made the final selection of the tree. We had found six candidates and Bill made the selection of which tree it was going to be. And so the first thing we did is we root wound it in the pasture. And root pruning just means you dig down, you figure out how big a root ball, the diameter of the root Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: ball. In this case, it was about 18 feet in diameter. And we dug down around the tree, 18 feet around. And we backfilled that trench then with sand and sawdust. And we left it in place for a year. Mike: Hmph. Scott Girard: so it would heal itself from the root root. So one year later, we came back to that tree and we lifted it with the lifting pin method. I don't know if you're familiar with that. was quite frankly, Bill developed it in California in Disneyland where you drill a hole through the trunk of the tree. The trunk of the tree is through the hardwood of the tree, it's the strongest part of the tree. Because this tree was 38 tons. Mike: Right. Scott Girard: There was no way you could put straps under the root ball and put that 38 ton weight on the root ball and expect that tree Mike: Right, right, right. Scott Girard: to live. And you couldn't, it was so heavy you couldn't just put straps around any of the branches or around the trunk because you'd rip the bark free. So that tree had a a trunk back then, a trunk of about 24 inches and maybe 28. And so we drilled holes through the trunk at 90 degree angles, about 12 inches apart, 12 inches in height apart. And we put case hardened steel axles through that. And that's what we hook all of the grappling and lifting devices. onto those case hardened steel axles. And so we lifted it with those pins and there was no stress on the branches, there was no stress on the root balls. And we put it on a low boy and we took it from that area down south of 192 and we brought it up to the park and we set it on a big open flat area. Back then we just called it Thunder Mesa. And it turned out to be that's where Thunder Big Thunder Mountain is now. But Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: back then it was just a big open flat area next to the river, river, rivers of America. And we set it there and we backfilled dirt up around the we set it right on top of the ground and backfilled the root ball. And so we watered it and we left it there for another year. to revive itself from the trauma of the move. And so from that location to the final planting location by straight line is about 500 feet. And so we decided Frontierland had already begun construction. We knew we couldn't get around the Frontierland Street over to Liberty Square. So we built ramps down into the rivers of America and another big long ramp up out of Rivers of America on the Liberty Square side. So we could just about go straight angle 500 feet. we decided, Bill decided, That morning we were there to move it. It was March. So, know, gosh, we were just six months, seven months from opening and. Bill decided, well, rather than put it on a truck with a low boy, it'd be hard to move that, get that low boy into position and a truck because the construction for Hall of Presidents had begun. And there's just more and more construction going on all the time. Again, that was six, seven months from opening. so Bill decided, well, we'll walk it there with a crane. We latched onto it with the crane and the crane got it up and he started to move with it. He went about 10 feet or so and he lost control with the weight and he dropped a piece of tree about three feet onto the ground and it broke some of that root system, broke some Mike: my goodness. Yeah. Scott Girard: of that root ball. we didn't have another tree. Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: And so it was a section of the root ball that was broken. And so we decided we'd keep moving. So from that point to the final planting operation over in front of Hall of Presidents there in Liberty Square. was eight hours. That's how long it took to go 500 feet and to get the Mike: to Scott Girard: so it took eight hours. And what happened was once we got it planted, then they built the, know, the stack stone wall up around the area. And since it was March, we were gonna watch through the months, the growing season before opening and see if there was any deleterious effect as far as, you know, leaf. leaf sprouting, the spring growth on the the crown of the tree. And sure enough, by June or July, we could see that there was less growth on the broken side of the side of the tree that had the broken root ball. So we immediately went back to the farm and we cut 12 twigs, if you will. They were probably half inch in diameter. oak branches and they were about 18 inches long, about a half inch diameter. And we put one end of that, those sticks, oak sticks is what they were, in root tone, in a rooting hormone and in some boxes at the farm. And we wanted to get those rooted, just those sticks rooted. And so it took Oh, they started to root by October. We put them in a makeshift greenhouse and kept it warm. And they began to leaf. Well, half of them. We got six out of the 12 to Mike: Hmm. Scott Girard: leaf out. So we were looking, we knew they had good roots and we knew that they were alive. The branches, those little branchlets were alive. And so we let them grow. And the following spring, So this is a year after the tree was planted. We went back out and by now the park's open. Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: And we went back out and on the broken side of that root ball, we planted those 18 inch sticks rooted into the top of the root ball on the broken side, just around that side. And we let them get rooted. and we just had them there leaning against the tree. And about three months later, we came back and we grafted each one of those sticks into the main trunk of the oak tree. So you had six, it's called an oak root bridge. And so we grafted those sticks Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: into the side of the main trunk of the tree. And so those little feeder roots of those six little oak branch sticks was feeding the side of the tree that the main ball was broken. And the tree then Mike: Interesting. Scott Girard: began, the crown of the tree began to leaf. And those were in place about two, two and a half years, maybe about three years, I guess. And by that time, The root ball had healed itself down below and we were able to take those six branches off the tree and the tree was on its own. I mean, the other alternative was, you what are you going to do? Take it out in firewood size wood and you'll never Mike: Right. Scott Girard: get another tree that size in because of the construction part being done. So it's quite an incredible journey for that tree. Mike: it's not just getting a tree and moving it, took years, and you save the tree basically. and it looks great. It looks great. Yeah. Okay. Scott Girard: We estimated it was 125 years old and that was 1970. So another 50, 55 Mike: Yeah, yeah. Scott Girard: years. Mike: Weather is different in central Florida than it is Southern California. And I remember when I was in Southern California, it seems like it's beautiful all year round. In central Florida, as you know, it is hot and humid and it rains a lot. How did that affect the work that you do? Scott Girard: Well, you know, in the summertime, it rained every afternoon at four o'clock. Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: And then the sun would come back out and the humidity would go sky high. it Mike: 15 minutes. Scott Girard: was for me as a Southern Californian, I'd never been any place so hot in my life. You know, I mean, it's just Mike: You Scott Girard: hot and muggy and, you know, but you just learn you move from your air conditioned car to your air conditioned office to, you know, your air conditioned apartment. You had to be out in it in the daytime. it can take a toll. actually, it wears you out, the weather. I always said, it's nothing between Orlando and hell but a screen door in the summertime. Mike: That's true. Good point. Good point. Scott Girard: Yeah. Mike: guess, does Disney, keep the bugs away? mean, know if you step off a property, it's like you see some of the strangest insects that you've ever seen. when I'm walking around the parks and the resorts, they must spray something. It's just, you don't see much in the insect world as you would if you step off property. It's pretty amazing. Scott Girard: Well, there's a huge pest control operation. In fact, my Mike: That's what I thought, yeah. Scott Girard: last four years with the company, I moved from the design side over to the operating side when Mike: Hmm. Scott Girard: I was general manager of Disney's Horticulture. And so I had the property-wide landscape and the pest control. And we had 600 pest control techs. And so, you know, it was massive, massive undertaking. You know, whether it's spiders, centipedes, alligators, mosquitoes. Mike: Yep. Scott Girard: Yeah, there's, know, there's it's a tremendous, tremendous undertaking. Seven Seas Lagoon Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: was a swamp. They took all that organic material and put it on the bottom. And the deeper they got, they got down into hard gray, marley clay. And ⁓ they put that on the Polynesian site and what became the Grand Floridian site and the Magic Kingdom site. And they compacted that to 98 % compaction so you could build on it. Well, for planting, that's like putting a tree in a teacup. You know, it's not going to drain. we replanted 70 % of the specimen trees that we planted in the park before opening. We replanted 70 % of them because they drowned. We always tried to auger down to get down through that hard pan. Sometime we were successful and sometimes we weren't. in fact, there's a funny Dick Nunis, Roy Disney story. were ⁓ one night, we were working ⁓ in front of the castle. We Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: were replacing two big oak trees in front of the castle that had drowned. And, you know, when you pull these things out of the ground, when they've you know, been sitting in that muck and that hard-panned clay, that anaerobic buildup, you Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: the anaerobic stench. And we were working by work light. And the crew was, guys were taking turns digging in that mess. And the crews were working. The crane operator was there and he'd hooked onto one of the oak trees. And I stepped away because I stepped back. ⁓ Because I knew what was coming was this big wave of stench of this ⁓ ucky, ucky, ucky stuff. And I backed up and I bumped into something and I turned around and there was a golf cart. Dick Nunis was driving. Roy Disney was in the other front seat next to him. This is two in the morning. And Edna, Mike: my. Scott Girard: Roy's wife, is in the back seat of this cart. ⁓ And Mike: you Scott Girard: I turned around Mike: What's going through your mind here? Scott Girard: and just in that moment, that tree, you know, could hear it sucking, being sucked out of the ground. And in another Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: second, here come that stench. And I looked and here's Dick's doing this, you know, he's waving his hand in front of it. And I looked at Roy, Roy's holding his nose. Roy was holding his nose and Edna had her face all scrunched up. And I always remember that. because it was a financial decision that was made not ⁓ to dispose of all that hard pan stuff and get good material to plant in for the parks and the resorts. I'm sure, and Roy was the chief financial guy. So I always Mike: Right, right. Scott Girard: thought, isn't it ironic that he's there to experience what a choice makes, what happens when Mike: That's right. Scott Girard: you when you make the wrong choice really a wonderful guy, and he was so committed to getting the park done and making sure that it was finished and open. he was always engaged. Whenever he would come to Florida, he always met with Bill and I about landscape, how we're doing. And one particular trip, Bill and I at the end of every day, we'd sit in the office and we'd make our plans for the next day. You know, do we have everything we need and what crews are working where and so forth? And we had our planning session at the end of the day after, you know, the site was completely quiet. And we were there in the in the office trailer there on the tree farm and we heard a car pull in to the driveway. And pretty soon we heard somebody come in the trailer and And my back was to the door in the office and bills are desk faced each other. Somebody came to the door and Bill looked up and hey, Roy, how are you? I turned around Mike: Ha ha ha. Scott Girard: and looked. It was right standing in the door and ⁓ Mike: Wow. Scott Girard: he said, ⁓ hey guys, he said, I ⁓ just need to chat for a minute. I don't want to interrupt your meeting. ⁓ And I got up ⁓ to give him my desk chair ⁓ Mike: Right. Scott Girard: and ⁓ He said, no, no, he says, I'll take it. And he just grabbed a folding, one of those metal folding chairs and construction office chair, folding chair. Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: And Bill said, hey, you know, Scotty, don't you? yeah, right. Yeah. Good. Good to see you, Scotty. And he said, look, guys, he said, I'm going to New York next week to get some get some money. He said, I'm going to I've got to get enough to make sure we finish this project. So he says, I'm going around and I'm talking to everybody and we need to know, I need to know what the final number is. And he said, I can't go back for another time. This has to be the one and only time I go to get more money. Bill and I have been talking about it. Our budget on that project was $4.2 million, which back then was a lot of money. Mike: Mm-hmm. Right, right. Scott Girard: But that was for the contemporary, the Polynesian and the Magic Kingdom and the TTC. Mike: Hmph. Scott Girard: And it was a lot of money, you know, it just, you know, quite honestly, it wasn't enough. We needed another four or five hundred thousand to finish the job. We could see that. So Bill said, I think we can get it done for five hundred thousand. And Roy said, you know, don't make just if if it's another number, you just tell me what it is. He says, said, no, I think we can do it for five hundred. So Roy finished his audit of around the property and he Next week, had apparently gone, I think he went to Chase Manhattan Bank Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: and he borrowed some money at a very preferred interest rate, very preferred interest rate. And he turned around and he loaned that money on a shorter term at a much higher rate. Chase found Mike: . Scott Girard: out about it and wanted to call the loan. And they were furious. They said, you said you were going to use that money to finish the park, to finish the project. He said, I am. I'm going to use every penny of that money plus the additional interest. higher interest that he was charging for on the loans that he put out on shorter term. Mike: Wow. Scott Girard: So that's how smart that guy was and it worked. It worked. But Roy was Mike: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Scott Girard: just a prince of a guy and totally committed to getting the project done. Mike: really do wish there was more visibility for Roy. I know Walt Disney as and Roy and again, Walt Disney, Roy Disney, know, two of our favorite people as we are fans of this company and you worked for the company for so many years. Roy Disney was really the, you know, the driving force ⁓ for Scott Girard: Yes. Mike: getting a project of this magnitude completed on time ⁓ for his brother. And he he was a very humble guy from what I understand. he didn't really care too much to be in front of the cameras, which is probably why you see there's a handful of pictures of Roy Disney. He didn't want to be in the limelight. And he just he wanted to get this project done for Walt and for the fans ⁓ of Disney and for... ⁓ society and for the world. ⁓ This was such a big project that he gave his last, you know, bit of energy for. he passed away Scott Girard: It's true. Mike: couple of months after Walt Disney World opened. Scott Girard: Right. Mike: I think after the ⁓ opening celebration don't think he returned after that. I think he didn't have the opportunity to, passed away in, December. passed away that same year. Scott Girard: Yeah, I don't recall that he ever came back to the property after he and Edna left after the grand opening. Mike: Yeah, yeah. And, cause he was, he was retiring at the time when Walt passed away in 1966. And then Scott Girard: Correct. Mike: he jumped back on, back on the horse. And so we're going to get this project done. And I feel that in a way, cause you know, Walt and Roy, you know, partners for their entire life and they had arguments. They, they also loved each other and respected each other. Walt was, know, what was the dreamer? Walt came up with the ideas and Roy had to find a way to get them paid for. He had to find a way to build his castles, right? And Scott Girard: Ahem. Mike: I think when Walt passed away, Roy kind of became Walt in that moment because he would fight for these projects. We have to get this done. We have to do this. This has to be this way. Kind of like what Walt would say when doing Disneyland and this has to look like this, we need extra money for this. And Roy kind of, became the Walt, the dreamer and the financier together Scott Girard: Yeah, yeah, very, very much so. It had been his lifelong job actually that he took on willingly to help facilitate his younger brother's dreams and all endeavors. Mike: So what was your, so after Walt Disney World opened, what was your role at that point Scott Girard: went from field landscape architect to resident landscape architect. Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: so, you know, the company continued to pour more money into the park, you know, opening, you know, the Tomorrowland. Tomorrowland wasn't there when the park opened per se. so, you know, they kept building Tomorrowland and then Tom Sawyer's Island and Caribbean Plaza with the Pirates of the Caribbean. So, you know, it just kept rolling along. then, of course, Lake Buena Vista, the community of Lake Buena Vista in the mid 70s started to be developed. And Jack Olson, corporate VP of merchandising, drove that effort down in Lake Buena Vista with the shopping village and the Empress Lily and Riverboat Restaurant. The townhouses, the tree houses, the Lake Buena Vista Golf Club, of course. So the property just continued to expand and grow over the years. so that was pretty much it until I got tapped. said, you're going back. We're going to do it. Epcot's going to go forward. Mike: I remember walking into Epcot as a kid and everything just looked like... It was like a perfect world, right? know, kind of like when you walk down Main Street for the first time Scott Girard: Mm. Mike: and everything was just so big, all these large buildings, these big pavilions, like, you've never seen something like this before. Walking under spaceship earth, like what is this giant, as they call it, like, you know, this, this is big golf ball, you know? It's like this amazing Scott Girard: Yeah. Mike: structure. And this is why, like, you want to learn about how these things were designed, what went into designing and building these amazing pavilions and in the case of landscaping and making Epcot look beautiful role in the Epcot story Scott Girard: Bill was Bill was forced to retire in in 75. And Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: so I took on his mantle and I and I was still in, you know, in Florida. And so in 78, the announcement was made that Epcot would go forward. And so I had to pick me up and move me back to California. And I had to start a new landscape architecture department for to start designing Epcot. And back then there were a lot of different iterations for Epcot and, Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: you know, from a one park world's fair kind of thing to a two park world showcase and future world kind of thing. And, you know, those massive buildings, know, it's a huge project and they create massive spaces between buildings Mike: Right? Scott Girard: and you have the west side court and you have the east side court and you have the fountain of nations in the center of Communicorps and then the transition down to World Showcase and World Showcase Lagoon and then the promenade around the lake. Walt discovered nearly very early on, in fact, back at Disneyland, there were always competing voices with the various designers, building designers, you know, they wanted to have control over, you know, what happened outside their building, you know, and Walt learned early on that wasn't going to happen, that wasn't going to work. Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: So that's when he put the landscape architect in charge of everything outside the face of a building will be under the control of a landscape architect. That included paving and curbing and light fixtures, landscape irrigation, know, you name it. mean, pedestrian bridges, any structural bridges, Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: of course, you know, would be designed by a structural engineer, but You know, all of the accoutrements that you think of in a park outside, you know, where the guests spends most of their time actually ⁓ is designed by, you know, Walt Mike: Mm-hmm. Yep. Scott Girard: always said, want one neck to wring you know, when it comes to that. So ⁓ the landscape architects had had Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: control over the area development for a long time. And so we we ⁓ jumped into that project and ⁓ I hired right away, I hired a bright young guy, Terry Palmer, bright landscape architect and Burj Bahasnillian came to us out of Burbank and they were my two real go-to folks during Epcot. Becky Bishop, I hired Becky, she was a student at Cal Poly, I hired her as a co-op student and then she came back to us after graduation. to work on, she went on to do some great things. Shanghai and Tokyo, some work at Tokyo Disneyland after it opened. Joe Paranello also joined us. Joe went on to lead the entire organization, landscape organization for the Universal Group. So, you we had some great talent. I recruited some great talent back then, during those years. But yeah, you know, again, those big buildings require big spaces. And Mike: That's right. Scott Girard: if you look at an aerial, you can see that the design on the west side over on the land pavilion side, we used water a lot. And it was kind of a curvilinear design in the paving and the area development and whatnot, the planting shapes and planter shapes and rather organic. Over on the east side, world of motion, horizons, it's more rectilinear, more straight lines. So we wanted the guests to have Mike: Interesting, yeah. Scott Girard: two different experiences, east and west. And then of course, they've changed the entire center core of CommuniCorps now with the dismissal of the founding nations and whatnot. Mike: Yeah, big loss, Scott Girard: I think so. Mike: growing up going to Epcot, spend a lot of time around the fountain of nations in communicore and then eventually interventions. mean, that theme changed, but it was generally the same look. mean, there was some lakes around there before interventions, but it was a really... beautiful place. especially around World Showcase. still look at it as a very beautiful park. it, but it's interesting how the designs on the Future World East, Future World West had a lot of those unique appearances, right? And one thing that comes Scott Girard: Yeah, yeah. Mike: to mind, which actually is still there today, and you probably know this, in front of Horizons, there's this planter that is in the shape of the Horizons Pavilion. Scott Girard: Correct. Mike: that's still there today. I bring family there, I'll explain that, you know what used to be here? And it's one of those things where the meticulous attention to detail about something like that, that's still there today. you wouldn't think that that would be done. today. And that's Scott Girard: Yeah. Mike: just what's, what was so great about the design ⁓ of that area at that time. something as simple as that, to a general fan and for someone like me that is so meaningful all these years later. a decision was made to make that look like that. ⁓ It's just, it's, ⁓ I noticed, yeah. ⁓ Scott Girard: Well, God bless you for noticing, you know, a of people would walk right by it and just not even remember, not put two and two together. Mike: It's yeah. And that's just one. Right. Right. And that's just one example. I'm sure there's others as well. And the designers you included, I mean, at that time, looked at the big picture, looked at like, this is what this area should look like. And not necessarily thinking that, you know, someone 40 years later is going to say, you know what? I noticed that, but Scott Girard: You Mike: people do. mean, I'm not the only people that I've, you know, people that are in the community, they say, yeah, there's the horizons. planner and yeah, it's a really fun. It's a fun story. And It's a fun discussion point, it's those things that are so important to people like me and others who, who are fascinated by the design and the history And so you were in charge of design the exterior of a lot of these pavilions. Everything outside the building, okay. Scott Girard: Yeah, everything outside the building. Outside buildings, So, know, paving patterns and, you Mike: Okay. Scott Girard: know, you think about the paving patterns in all the different pavilions around World Showcase. You know, and details like the Japan Garden details, the railings around it, Mike: Right, yeah. Scott Girard: the Japan Garden and the Knot Garden and the UK Pavilion. know, Jane Hathaway's cottage in the garden there. And ⁓ Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: when when we designed the ⁓ World Showcase promenade, we talked, we knew that entertainment was planning a parade. So the promenade, when we designed it, we sat down with the entertainment people and said, all right, what's your right-of-way What's your right away for your parade? And They gave us a number, I think it was 40 feet, 40 feet. Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: And so we calculated how much standing room there would be on either side of that plus pedestrian circulation beyond that. So that's what determined the basic width of the promenade. We didn't want to be in a position where we found ourselves like in the Magic Kingdom where We had the Castle forecourt and after a couple of years, entertainment took that Castle forecourt and turned it into a stage and they blocked up the walkway through the castle. ⁓ Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: There's a, I have Mike Craven and a number of other ⁓ good friends in entertainment. We had lots of discussions, lively discussions. Mike: I'm sure, Scott Girard: about things like this. So we didn't want Mike: I'm Yep. Scott Girard: this to happen. You know, again, let's coordinate all this. Mike: Right. Scott Girard: And so there was a lot of thought that went into the design of that that promenade. And Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: because each pavilion had a different theme, each pavilion would have a different plant palette. So we wanted the promenade to have a feeling of its own. with some shade trees. And so we selected the camphor tree, which is kind of a broad headed evergreen tree, apple green foliage. It's nondescript. And that became the pearls on the necklace. around. ⁓ And it didn't fight, that particular species didn't fight with any of the other themes of changes in plant material from ⁓ Germany to Japan to U.S. Pavilion to Norway to Mexico, you know, but it was a nice large park-shaped tree that would provide some shade as people walk along the promenade. Mike: was another pavilion that I feel like is a topic of conversation with a lot of people, the Africa Pavilion that never got built. Scott Girard: Correct. Mike: And ⁓ we see concept art ⁓ and as a landscape architect, you probably see that concept and you're like, I can have fun with this. Scott Girard: it was going to be fantastic. I spent three weeks in Africa with Ken Anderson. Ken and I and Steve Baker traveled from Dakar, Senegal, down along the West Coast of Africa and across to Nigeria and then into Kenya doing research. for this pavilion. And we were ⁓ in Africa for three weeks. And I was doing research on plant material. Ken was doing research on the various tribal aspects. And when we flew out of Kenya, we were flying back to London. We were flying out of Nairobi. And by the time we arrived in London, it was an overnight flight. And by the time we arrived in London, Ken already had in his mind and he'd already started to sketch some ideas for that pavilion to be a dinner show that would include tribal dancing. And the name of the show was called The Heartbeat of Africa, which is music. The Heartbeat of Africa is music, actually, when you look. and experience Africa. And the idea, Ken's idea would be that all these various native instruments would be on the wall around the dining room as if it was, you know, they're like museum pieces, except they would come to life and, you know, provide sound. And there were various tribal dance groups that would perform during dinner and there would be you know, a wide variety of cuisine from across equatorial Africa. It was, and of course the exterior of the pavilion would have been fantastic. It would have been, you know, a walk through the brush and the safari to tropical portions of Africa. You know, we did a lot of work and they're just... There wasn't any money coming out of Africa to sponsor it. And Card Walker, who was chairman at the time, just didn't have the appetite to fund it. So, you we have that and we had we opened with this anemic little souvenir stand so, you know, Ken was a bit crushed, you know, as you might imagine. But Mike: Sure, yeah, absolutely. Scott Girard: what he had designed was just stunning, just stunning. Mike: Yeah, it would have been a fan favorite. you talk about the food and dining experience would have been fantastic. just to connect the dots to Seven Seas Lagoon and the excavation and that soil material was brought to Magic Kingdom and Polynesian for these sites to improve the building on those sites. Scott Girard: Yes. Mike: Was there a similar process done in the area around for Epcot? how was the building on that site compared Scott Girard: Yeah, Mike: to Magic Kingdom? Scott Girard: excellent question. I'm glad you asked because all of the deleterious material for the lagoon, the World Chase Lagoon was deported, you know, it was transported out. And we found some good sand, maybe just sandy, just Florida sand. And Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: we had borrowed, We dug borrow pits, big rectangular borrow pits just south of the Epcot site. And that was the material that was brought onto the Epcot site. We Mike: Hmm. Scott Girard: convinced management that we couldn't, to do otherwise would be silly. We learned our lesson at Magic Kingdom. Let's not do that again. And if you look at an aerial photograph of Epcot, And a little bit further south, just south of Epcot, is the Caribbean Beach Resort. Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: And if you look on the aerial, you'll still see there were three or four borrow pits that were kind north-south kind of long longitudinal rectangles. A few of them have been reshaped to be part on the edges of the Caribbean Beach Resort. but you'll still see the footprint of those borrow pits Mike: I've seen a lot of aerial views and I'm picturing that and I'm saying, that's okay. There it is. There it is. Right. that's awesome. That's awesome. Scott Girard: Yeah, take a look. You'll see, you'll see, that was an old bar. there's another one right there. They changed the, not all the sides, but most of the sides, but you'll see some squares. Mike: Yeah, did those, I guess those sites that were dug up that became I guess the lake area for Caribbean beach. Yeah, Scott Girard: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mike: that's interesting. so that area that was dug up that wasn't initially a lake before that that was actually dug up and became. Interesting. Interesting. Scott Girard: no, no, it was just just a high sandy scrub upland, you know, pine upland. Mike: learn something new every day, right? Very good, very good. a name that comes to mind when I think about horticulture and plants, trees, is Carl Hodges. Scott Girard: Dr. Carl Hodges out of University of Arizona, Tucson. He and Mickey Fontez, Dr. Fontez, they were part of our consulting team for the land pavilion. And Carl had done ⁓ tremendous amount of work in the Middle East with aquaculture. And that's what drew us to him. to begin with for the land pavilion Mike: Hmm. Scott Girard: for the aquaculture aspect. And he was growing tilapia, farm raising tilapia in the Middle East, primarily to feed population ⁓ with good protein, ⁓ easily Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: grown, easily farmed. And so I got acquainted with Carl Hodges through that process. And yeah, we worked very closely with Carl. Carl and Mickey Fontez on the development of the land pavilion. flew, one time we flew down to Puerto Pugnasco, which is right down in Mexico. It's just across, not far from Tucson ⁓ down into Mexico. And Mike: Hmm. Scott Girard: University of Arizona Tucson had a lab down there that they were growing shrimp, farm raising shrimp Mike: Interesting. Scott Girard: as part of an aquaculture experiment and so forth. And that was all funded by Coca-Cola. And so they flew us down there to take a look at that and so as to be part of the pavilion as well. But yeah, Carl Hodges really was the main guy that was driving the University of Arizona team with us on that Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: project. Great group of folks. Great group of folks. wonderful show and it's very educational. the whole conveyor system, you know, for the hydroponics, know, or the spring, the, know, bare roots on these plants and Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: the bare roots are hanging down and you're spraying moisture and nutrients on just the bare roots. And of course, the drum growth and the rotary Mike: Yep. Scott Girard: drums and growing lettuce and. and whatnot, they've done that in space. mean, you know, it's all good stuff. we, in fact, Carl led us to Hank Robitale and we hired Hank, the company hired Hank, and he was the director of on the Disney side to get the Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: pavilion open and operating and so forth. And Hanks a great horticulturalist and agronomist and so he's the guy who took all of the stuff that was handed to him from the Tucson crowd and construction Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: and he's carried all that forward. But it's a great experience, it's a great horticultural, agricultural show. Mike: Yeah, The Land Pavilion is just a remarkable pavilion and that boat ride is great. I can ride that all day. and did you have any involvement in the, leapfrog fountains and the imagination pavilion. that, cause that's an exterior part of the pavilions. Yeah. Fuller. Yeah. Okay. Scott Girard: Yeah, yeah. Well, well, Mark Fuller, you know, was the brainchild behind that. And Mark was was in our special effects group and brilliant, brilliant guy, Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: an engineer. And he was they were working on harmonic fountain for up there on the imagination where, you know, it's just going to be a garden, exit garden. from the 3D theater and the guests would just find their way down and out of the pavilion, out of this exit garden. It was just a place where when the theater ended, when the show ended and the theater doors, exit doors opened, everybody could, you know, belch their way out of the building so that more people could come in and watch the show. so it was just a rather a pedestrian little garden area. But Mark was playing with some fountains and he had developed computerized found that with, I think there were like 10 nozzles in a row Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: and he could make them dance across, you know, and then down over the wall and down below was a little pond where the upside down waterfall would shoot up the wall. Mike: Mm-hmm. Scott Girard: I was amazed at what they were doing, for one thing, with the water. Mike: Yep. Scott Girard: And I said, what if you had another nozzle at the end that this thing would do this harmonic drill, and at the last minute, at the end, a slug of water goes over the wall and down below. that surprised the guest. Give him something to, what? Where'd that go? Where'd that come from? Mike: Ha ha ha. Scott Girard: He said, hey, know, that's not a bad idea. So they started fooling around with how they could do that to get a slug of water to do that. a few months later, Mark called me he said, come on out to Tahunga. And I got up there and those guys had developed, Mark had developed the laminar flow nozzle and what's called a laminar flow nozzle now with a high speed actuator on it. They were shooting slugs of water, know, three quarters of an inch to an inch. They were shooting slugs of water 50 feet into a 55 gallon drum. I looked at that, I couldn't believe it. Mike: That's amazing. Yeah. Scott Girard: And you know, the slug of water was like three feet long and Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: there was no oxygen in it. So it looked like like laminar plastic, clear plastic, like Mike: Right. Scott Girard: a big arc. And I couldn't believe it. So Mark said, could you just, you know, we could hop these things around this garden. Could you know, can you can you place, you know, can you tell us where we could have some of these containers? We'll put a receptacle. and a nozzle in the same one so we can shoot water into a receptacle and have it bounce out and go a different direction. And we could choreograph that to a computer. Sure. So we started designing within the garden how, where these things could sit in the landscape, these round disks. And they were actually quite deep, I 24 inches deep. Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: take the nozzle and a reservoir and so forth. so that's where that all started. And that's what happened. It turned a very passive garden into a very active and interactive garden for the guests. Mike: seeing all this kinetic energy as you approach these fountains, not expecting it, and then it's like, there's a there's water jumping around like this is, this is really neat. Scott Girard: Yeah, the guests can't see, the guests going into the pavilion can't see that space. Mike: Right, It's like the fun never ends, right? You go Scott Girard: Yeah. Mike: into an attraction you exit, there's still more stuff happening right here. It's great. Scott Girard: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Mike: Epcot really is an incredible place and the way it was designed, it became is pretty impressive. And I know I speak for many people who are fans of Epcot Center and today's Epcot as well. Just a great product, Scott Girard: the Polynesian, the atrium was just a fantastic jewel to that resort. And we, of course, we had to get all the two story tall coconut palms and all the big palm trees and whatnot into the, into the atrium before they closed up the Mike: Yep. Scott Girard: front of the building. And so we got that done. And then when they They finished the building or they were finishing the building and about a week before opening, we flew Griff Griffith down from Los Angeles. Griff's dad was Griff was one of. Walt's or one of Bill Evans contemporary friends and ⁓ Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: Griff's dad is the one who gave that land for Griffith Park. ⁓ He was an industrialist Mike: Very cool. Scott Girard: in ⁓ Southern California. ⁓ but Griff was a a plantman and he wasn't just any plantman. He didn't he didn't go into his dad's business. He was a plantman. He just loved plants, traveled all Mike: Yep. Scott Girard: over the world ⁓ and he was ⁓ he knew more plants. I can't tell you. He knew more plants than you could shake a stick at. Mike: I'm sure, I'm sure. Scott Girard: so Bill sent the plan that we had developed for the atrium. And he said, tell us what you need. And we want you to come down here and help us plant it. Well, he took our plant pallet and he just threw it away. And he said, I want you to buy this. And he gave us the quantities. And we ended up going to the Bahamas to get some of this stuff. And so ⁓ he arrived and this was about a week before opening. ⁓ And ⁓ the Polynesian, you know, it looked like it was finished, ⁓ except, ⁓ we didn't finish the outside until the night before opening. ⁓ this Mike: Yeah. Scott Girard: was the week before opening. We gave him a crew to support people to handle plants. And ⁓ he took, he had it all in his head. He didn't have it on paper, but he took all of that plant material. And he planted that atrium with three or four guys and he told them Mike: Amazing. Scott Girard: all where it was going to go. And it was just, just stunning. Mike: that's incredible. Thanks for sharing all these wonderful stories and Scott, I'm amazed that I have the opportunity to speak with people like you who have been there and have made this place look beautiful. And I'll tell you, know, Walt Disney World and Disney parks that you were involved in, they're more beautiful and they're a great place because of Scott Gerard. And so thank you for all the work that you've done making this place memorable for all of us and the reason we still keep going back. Scott Girard: Well, if I might say one thing, Mike: Sure. Scott Girard: if a couple other folks that you've talked to, I know Jimmy Sarno, you talked to him and I Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Scott Girard: still haven't seen the entire podcast, but I'm going to. There's so many of us that appreciate folks like you and some other podcast folks that we've talked to and are. that are interested and want to share some of crazy stories and history and so forth. We're grateful that Mike: Thank you. Scott Girard: you carry the torch. Thank you, Mike, appreciate it. If you ever want to chat Mike: Oh, it's my pleasure. Scott Girard: again, let me know. Mike: Oh, you're always welcome here. You always have a seat here at the show. And so we'll definitely be in touch. Thank you for your kind words and thank you for the time that you've taken to speak with me today. Just great, Scott Girard: Good deal. Mike: great stories and thank you again and have a wonderful day and we'll definitely talk soon. Scott Girard: Okay. Yeah, you Mike: Thank you so much, Scott.