New York World's Fair CD Box set


Gurgitoy2

Active Member
What happened to this proposed CD set? Does anybody have any current information on the status? I had heard that WDR took over the project from RedDotNet and had postponed the release until 2004. I haven't heard anything in a long time though.

I was listening to live recordings from Disney's pavilions from the fair, and it got me thinking about how nice it would be to have a boxed set of all those attractions.
 
It certainly would be great to have the original soundtrack narrations for the WF pavilions just as its great to have them for so many DL/WDW attractions. Ray Dashner's CD-ROM of live recordings is a must and there are some old souvenir LPs of Fair attractions that can be transferred to CD if you find a good copy and have a few resources. These are the ones I know for certain that were released:

1-Travelers Insurance Pavilion-"The Triumph Of Man"
2-Billy Graham Pavilion-"Man In The 5th Dimension"
3-Tower Of Light Pavilion-"Holiday Of Light" (1965 show)
4-Illinois Pavilion-"Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln" (same as DL show)
 

SFMike

Member
Ad me to the list of people very disappointed that the CD boxed set has been cancelled due to clearance issues. :'(

Its kind of funny that most of the time its the same people that complain about file sharing are the same ones that won't grant clearance to make a legit copy available for sale to the public. We are lined up with our dollars in hand but are given no other choice than listen to bootlegs, ect.
 
Ray Dashner's CD-ROM of several dozen live recordings of World's Fair pavilion attractions, as well as the music of the Fair, can be obtained through:

http://www.nywf64.com/raydo01.html

These are recordings Dashner did personally in 1965 when he visited the Fair and he has permission to sell these (Even the Library Of Congress has received copies of this since he is the only one known to have preserved some Pavilion soundtracks). It's a total bargain for a bit less than $20 since you also get great photo files and over 15 hours of audio all told including his own live recording of the Ford Magic Skyway as narrated by Walt.
 

MOOCHIE

New Member
Eric, Thanks so much, you guys never fail to amaze me with your knowledge of hows, whens & wheres of Disney...but let me ask how are these recordings, done professionally or guy with a kiddy type recorder?, I`m surprised that Paul Anderson (editor of Persistence of Vision, and who wrote the most comprehensive book about 6465 Worlds fair) did not mention that these tapes exist....I even asked him directly....but anyway thanks for the heads up! Frank
 

Gurgitoy2

Active Member
The recordings are definitely on the better side of live recordings; especially for their age! He used a high-end recorder that he got from a music store. Apparently they were not sold to the general public, but he was able to get one anyway. So the recordings are in pretty good shape. They actually sound better than some of the recent live recordings that are floating around from modern attractions.
 

MOOCHIE

New Member
Hey Ben, How do you suppose he was able to bring an assumably large reel to reel recorder on these rides without being stopped?, in those days they didn`t have small casette recorders.....certainly Disney would have rules such as "no photos or recording"!, and its amazing how much stuff (I just checked out his order page) is on these cd-rom. Why is it called Vault 2, is there a 1? Thanks, Frank
 
Actually, I think in 1965 the idea of "no recording" never would have occurred to anyone since they wouldn't have expected anyone to have the capability to make recordings like that since Ray had a rare model of recorder you didn't have to plug in.

If there is any slight (and I mean slight) drawback to the tracks as they appear on his CD-ROM it's that a few of them sometimes cut off abruptly and leave off the last second or two of narration/music. The last word and closing musical chord of his dub of the Travelers Insurance "Triumph Of Man" LP were missing for instance, and I felt compelled to get my own copy of the souvenir LP (which is always in great abundance on e-bay) for transfer to CD. Also, I recommend searching for the original LP releases of "Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln" and "Man In The 5th Dimension" which are not represented on the CD-ROM in order to complete one's collection of WF soundtracks (and of course the original Carousel Of Progress tracks from the DL Forever CDs are a must too).
 

Gurgitoy2

Active Member
My CD-Rom does have "Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln" and "Man in the 5th Dimension". I know Ray sells them on Ebay too for pretty cheap and he even pays the shipping. He offers several different versions though, so make sure you get the one you want.

And, yes, I agree that in 1965 the "no recording" rule was probably not in effect since that wouldn't have been a typical practice for the average tourist yet. The unit Ray bought was apparently a professional deck and was fairly small (by 1960's standards). I'm sure most of the attraction hosts and fair employees had no idea what he was doing, and it probably didn't occur to them to tell him to stop.

The one thing that I thougt was funny was on the Ford "Magic Skyway" track. It seems like his recording is bad because Walt Disney's voice keeps dropping out or warping, but then you hear the passengers (Ray & someone else) comment that the tape being used in the "car" is bad. So it's a good recording of a bad recording...
 
Yes, you're right that the Lincoln show is on the CD, though it is nowhere near the length of the LP program, which runs 38 minutes. I didn't find "Man In The Fifth Dimension" on my CD though.
 
Thanks to everyone for bringing the World's Fair to the Forum, and especially thank you for the information about Ray Dashner's CD--what a tremendouls work! I only got to go once to the Fair, and really can't recall many details(my wife always tells me her story of how everyone was eating Belgian waffles, and all she could get to eat were the lousy sandwiches her mother brought from home!). I was going to make my own CD with what little audio I have(Small World, Lincoln--my own Triumph of Man, which I had from the 60's; I missed the Carousel of Progress recordings from the CD kiosks), but with the Dashner CD, that's certainly a recording session that can wait! I just had one question about the Dashner CD-ROM--it's in mp3 format, correct? So then it can't be played on a standard CD player, unless the player can also read mp3 files--is that right? Thanks again everyone! Mike.
 
That's correct that all files are mp3. I've copied all the Dashner files to my hard drive, but I can't yet figure out whether they can be converted back to a normal CD for playback on other machines.

There's also a gent named Fred Stern who has the best selection of 64 World's Fair films avaialable for sale at reasonable rates and some of these include promo films and also some of the actual films shown in the pavilions (Kodak's "The Searching Eye" and IBM's "The Information Machine") as well as a complete film of the Dupont "Wonderful WOrld Of Chemistry" live/film show.
 
The Official New York World's Fair Disney box set is great. They did a lot of work for this set and it's too bad it will never be released. They booklet that was made for this has a lot of information and great pictures. The CDs are almost complete. (Almost!) The Small World CD contains all the music from the ride but without the vocals and sound effects, vocals recording sessions (english only), Entrance music, Exit music, as well as the basic music bed from the Paris version. There is also a promo film soundtrack. The Lincoln CD features the entrance music, pre-show film, and the complete show. Also includes recording sessions with the voice of Lincon and recording sessions for the finale song. It also include the pre-show and main show music isolated. The Progressland CD has tons of stuff: The Toucan and Parrot show, Sky Dome Spectacular, entrance music, recording sessions, early script reading, early recording of the full CoP show, and some music cues from the Disneyland show and a piece from Horizons at Epcot. Unfortunately, it doesn't include the full CoP show as presented at the fair. That version was almost identical to the Disneyland version but some of the narration was re-recorded and the last scene is very different. Even different voice for the mom. Oh well. It is also missing the narration recorded for the experiment they conduct as well as the narration for the Medalion exibit. The last CD is for the Ford Pavillion. It includes a ride-thru of the Magic Skyways attraction with the Walt Narration and stereo music. It doesn't include any sound effects though. It also has entrance music, International Gardens music (all 9 pieces), the Auto Parts Orchestra, as well as the complete recordings done for the Disneyland version that never happened. Sounds like a stage show about Ford and the song Get the Feel of the Wheel in like 10 different versions.
The whole set is great, except for the missing items. The set box is identical to the 75th Anniversay set that Randy did with the four CDs set in the same spots. the CD labels themselves are very colorful, and so is the booklet inside. The booklet is complete exept for the recording dates which are marked recorded XX XX XX. I guess they where going to be filled in later. More mixing could have been done for these. The audio quality is PERFECT. They were taken from the Masters. Any other questions, feel free to e-mail me. Louisg@hotmail.com
 

MOOCHIE

New Member
Wow!, Sweet Lou you had to go and tell us how great that set would have been....But let me ask you Sweet lou, how did you obtain this info?, are you on the inside? Moochie
 

X-S Tech

Active Member
By almost complete and missing tracks do you mean that they intended to put the missing tracks on or that in a perfect complete set they would have. If I'm not mistaken the Carousel disc rounds out at about 74 minutes and probably couldn't hold much more. The others are significantly shorter, but if the book was just about ready to go, I wouldn't think they'd still be adding stuff. Just curious. My real question....
Does anyone (Louis) have the exact titles for the 9 International Gardens tracks for the Ford Magic Skyway pavillion CD? Thanks
 
The International Gardens tracks are (in no particular order): The South American Way, La Gaviota, Disneyland '61, Moonlight Time In Old Hawaii, Join the Swing, The Flubber Waltz, Serengeti Serenade, Flyin' Ford, Nation On Wheels.
It seems that they were going to leave out the CoP. I asume they figured you could buy the Disneyland version at the kiosks. But it's not identical so this bothered me.
Not the main reason, but one of the issues that arose was that Ford owns the rights to the Ford Pavilion music and they were asking for A LOT of money. Since they were only maiking 5,000 copies of each set, at the amount Ford was asking for, they would have to sell each box set for about 500 dollars each to be profitable. Maybe Disney and Ford can resolve this issue and maybe we can see the box set for the 40th anniversary coming in 2004, but don't hold your breath.
 

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