My Half-Century Creating Disney’s Magic Kingdoms (Disney Editions Deluxe)

I enjoyed the stories about Walt and the history of the parks, and with good editing could have been a great book. But it felt like a stream of consciousness mix of stories and lists. And it's surprisingly and annoyingly heavy on self-indulgent examples of how people have complimented the author.

I am giving this 2 stars because although there is nothing wrong with the content, the assembly of the book is completely defective. The entire sheath of pages is cut crooked and glued into the book at an awful angle --should be a reject. Or an "imperfect" price to match. I had to give this as a gift with no time to return (not to mention all that hassle.)

Lately, I've been reading lots of Disney books, but none are as complete as this book. Marty Sklar does a great job integrating the big stories with small, personal accounts. I just wish it was longer!

This is an okay overview of how the Disney company built the different theme parks, far from complete and very skewed toward corporate PR which spins everything positive. The author originally worked internal corporate communications for Disney and he brags a lot about "writing" notices about theme park openings or the press release about Walt's death or even plaques erected on attractions. Because he was there when much of what was going on occurred, he has some inside stories that are worth looking at but the book ignores major aspects of some construction and feels like he was just writing while flipping through old photos or memos. The book isn't very well written, skips around (especially in the first portions), and doesn't have enough detailed stories that make it a whole lot different from the dozens of other Disney books outs there. But it does add a few shadings to what has been previously written.

Sklar is Jewish and he does address the rumor that Walt Disney was anti-Semitic. Walt wasn't. There's a list of some Jews that Walt employed in major roles, including the musical Sherman brothers, and Walt's support of Jewish holidays. He points out that Jewish heads of Hollywood studios were mean to Walt at the start of his career and any negative comments that were made could be attributed to Walt's reaction to how he was treated. Sklar basically says his being Jewish had zero impact, positively or negatively, on how he was treated by Walt Disney.

In May 1955, Marty Sklar got a phone message which he thought was a prank from one of his frat brothers. He thought it was from a card dealer in Vegas. He didn't return the call.

However, E. Cardon Walker, the head of marketing and publicity for the Walt Disney Company, didn't give up, and called him back.

At the time, Marty was the editor-in-chief of "The Daily Bruin", the student newspaper at UCLA. After an interview with Card (and Jimmy Johnson, soon to be the head of Disneyland Records, who recommended Sklar for the job), Marty found himself the editor of the Disneyland News, and was one of the first 100 cast members put on the Disneyland payroll.

Early one morning in 1960, Marty and his boss (Eddie Meck) are having coffee at the Hills Brothers Coffee House in Town Square in Disneyland, and Walt shows up. He asks Marty what he's doing these days, and looks right at Eddie and says, "Well, we will have to give you something more important to do, Marty." And soon, he found himself working part time for WED Enterprises (now WDI, or Imagineering), and was one of of the four man team sent to Dearborn, Michigan to begin development of the Ford Pavilion for the 1964 World's Fair.

Until he retired in 2009 he influenced every Disney Park ever built. Later in his career, he had the ultimate decision on what ideas to present to the powers that be at Disney. But his career went beyond the parks. He was the chief ghostwriter for Disney. He was the one who wrote Roy's (and the company's) official statement on Walt's death. He wrote the scripts to the EPCOT promotional movies that Walt made for Disney World.

This is one of the best books I've read on the building of the Disney Parks, because it involves the memoirs of one of the most senior leaders in Disney's Imagineering group (WDI) over the past 50 years. It not only exposes the philosophy of the company and Imagineering, but how and why things got done, from when Walt himself was alive to the Eisner/Wells era. It's an extraordinary look into how *all* the parks got built, including the 1964 World's Fair attractions.

If the book is a bit weak at all, it's on the construction and continuing operation of the parks. To be fair, that wasn't Marty's job. He was mostly design, show and corporate liaison.

It's the personal stories of the people and events that makes this book stand out. Many of the stories told during D23's WDW 40th and Epcot 30th anniversary are in this book, including the one about Marty having to use this grove of orange trees to relieve himself, and having all the trees die shortly there after...

This is a must read for anyone who has an interest in the history of the Disney Parks, or wants some further insight into Walt Disney Imagineering.

I love all things Disney and Disneyland. I've bought and read dozens of autobiographies by Disney people over the years and loved some of the great historical archive books but this one is the ONLY book I've read that was a chore to read. It opens with Marty basically admitting he didn't take the advice of others to have a ghost-writer and wow, how it shows. It was a real struggle to get to page 70 because so much of his book was quoting someone else's Disney autobiography. How would you feel if you bought a book and all it's basically doing is being a sampler of everyone else's book? I kid you not, every other page is a 3/4 page quotation from some other Disney person's memoirs. Marty didn't stop quoting until about page 100. Until then the most I got was his childhood and time going to college and sports reporting, and a customer of this book really wants to know about the Disney years, not the minutiae of things that had no tie-in.

At the expense of offending many of these 4 & 5 star reviewers above I would have to assume the only reason someone would rate this high is out of blind loyalty to Walt to the point that one feels obligated to give every Disney autobiography story a high rating. I hold to a different standard; if you worked for Walt and have great stories to tell, then TELL THEM. Tell YOUR stories not someone else's stories, over and over. This whole works suffers from a disjointed structure and while I'm sure Marty had a head full of amazing stories I'd love to hear, I wonder when we'll see that book.

I'm so disappointed in this book but also in those who rated it so high out of loyalty. It's okay to recognize a bad job and call it out when you see it. You owe it to the memory of Walt and all he created to maintain that high standard, not give an A+ to a sub-par output like this.

Disneyland has always been a magical place for me. It’s the only place in the world where I feel young and filled with childlike wonder. It will always be a place of beauty, and I can’t wait to take my kids and re-experience all the joy through their eyes.

The other part of Disneyland that fascinates me is how it works. I love knowing and seeing the inner workings, and the behind the scenes stuff that turns plain buildings into virtual fairy tales. Knowing how the magic is made doesn’t spoil anything for me, in fact it allows me to appreciate the artistry and design even more.

I have read plenty on the original Disneyland and the creation and evolution of all the Disney parks. The stories have become so polished and overused over the years that they have become somewhat boring.

Walt sat on a park bench. He had an idea; fast forward a few years and you get Disneyland despite the critics.
It’s a good story just not too interesting anymore.

Marty Sklar gives you the backstories you want to hear. No, there is nothing scandalous or shocking in the in Sklar’s stories, but they do show you the grit and gruff it took to design the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, the rest of Walt Disney World, and the parks throughout the world. Since the death of Walt Disney, the Disney company and brand has gone through a lot of trials and tribulations and Marty Sklar was one of the main, positive stars throughout it all.

I definitely wanted to hear more about the development of the Disneyland Resort. There is no mention about the ill-fated WestCOT and very little talk about the development of Disney’s California Adventure. It was fun to see Sklar rip into the Paul Pressler era. Any Disneyland fan understands the disdain and contempt directed at Pressler, but it was nice to hear a Disney legend give his official stamp of frustration towards Pressler. Furthermore, it was surprising to see Sklar have a generally positive review of Eisner. According to Sklar, Eisner saved the company from despair yet failed to make it thrive.

This was simply a great book. If you love Disney history, buy it.

Heard about the, "I love ME," wall? This is the, "I love ME," book.

A ghostwriter could only have improved this book. Instead of being stories about the creative forces that combined to create the Walt Disney theme parks and attractions, this book is mostly about Mary Sklar and dealings with mundane aspects. Pictures are Marty and others standing in front of something Disney. Instead of choosing a story to write about for each chapter, he jumps around and name-drops to no point. Who cares who were the people involved in negotiating the land purchase for Walt Disney World? Tell more of the stories about the creative process, not who signed the **** contracts.

And a whole lot less about Marty's background at UCLA would have helped -- and I say this as a proud UCLA grad.

Overall, a really disappointing book. It is hard to reconcile the quality of the work he did for Disney with the choppy narrative here. He also missed his audience. We don't much care about random names of people in front of random Disney scenes -- tell the cool stories about the creative conflicts and synergies that came together to create great attractions and places that went beyond anything we could have imagined a theme park could be.

This is probably the worse written books about Walt Disney I've ever read. The writer seems to find joy in telling you a story about something Walt did or was involved with and then throwing in a "dig" against Walt or about another co-worker. I'd like to say a lot more but this is not the forum for that. Don't waste your money on this one.

Clearly Marty Sklar is a gifted writer. He included several examples of his press releases and letters in this book, and he helped invent the idea that something needs a good simple story to make it digestible. (He says this several times through the book!). However, this book doesn't showcase his skills. It cries out for a talented editor who can focus the story. As it is, it's a hodgepodge of events and names. Sometimes it's obscurely celebratory and at other times it's disturbingly vindictive.

Here's my favorite example. He wanted to point out that it was a challenge dealing with contractors who hail from different countries. He mentions several examples showing the type of contractor and their country of origin. Then he closes this thought with "Another Italian contractor met its match when it tried to intimidate Mickey Steinberg". Any editor worth their salt would have omitted this last sentence or would at least have explained what "met its match" and "intimidate" actually mean in this context.

It's a hard read without a consistent storyline. And we have to wade through a list of what seems like every name he can recall. For example when he observes that design of Tokyo DisneySea was quite expensive, he doesn't simply say that. Instead, he mentions six names: "The Grand Designs made me wonder how" (insert the names of 6 people here) "convinced the OLC to spend so much money." (It took me a while and flipping back and forth to figure out what OLC meant, by the way. It was used about 100 pages earlier to abbreviate Oriental Land Company, the company that developed Tokyo Disney.)

This book does provide a behind-the-curtain look at the Disney corporation. I just wish it were better written. I'd look elsewhere to get a view of how the Disney company actually works.

I am offering some advice I wish someone had offered me before wasting my time and money. If you're an executive of a company and you want to know all the mind-numbing details of budgets, investments, sponserships and other boring mumbo jumbo that goes on behind closed doors when big shots get together, then by all means go for it! Marty was a high ranking officer on the staff of Disney, so he's like the old general describing a war to an audience (ME) who wants to hear the enlisted man's point of view. I guess being a writer by trade, Marty is a stickler for deail. For me , the detail is about as exciting as watching a chess match for 10 hours on a Sunday afternoon. When my eyes weren't rolling from Marty's self-serving comments about his own genius, they were skimming over the details involved in a big business decisions with Eisner and his "yes" men. There is more fun entertainment and information in one paragraph of Rolly Crumps book than the entire contents of this one. Marty is a brilliant writer but the subject matter is not fot the average Joe or Jane. You've been warned! Suits Only!!!

Fantastic book. What a rich history on an interesting topic. Marty is the closest person we have to Walt Disney who was with him from the opening of Disneyland in Anaheim to the present day. He has some fascinating stories about his time in service of the mouse. I was lucky enough to take my son to go and meet him at a book signing and he was genuine inspiration.

Marty gives a behind the scenes workings of the early days of Disneyland's arrival. I found it fascinating about how Walt Disney and his team were taking to make something new out of an old industry. Marty goes through the major projects that he had a hand in. The biggest asset to the book is the top 10 lists that he lays out. They are adaptable in other industries and companies.

It was a nice read from someone who has been writing for the public for decades.

Strengths:
1) The book has some interesting insights and trivia Disney and the development of its parks. I like the insights about Walt himself and how he went about his work
2) It is written with simple and accessible language

Weaknesses:
1) The book is very poorly structured - it's as if the author decided to do a brainstorm and dump everything out as he thought of it
2) The author is way too pompous and arrogant, taking credit for so many things which clearly aren't his alone, such as for instance building Epcot
3) Much of the trivia is unfortunately not new information which is surprising because the author should have had more to offer than most people familiar with Disney Parks

All in all ... not a book worth reading. ..It's quite disappointing actually

While Marty Sklar is legendary at Disney and his book is chock full of stories about Walt Disney, the development of Imagineering, and the Disney Empire, the book is a boring read. I'm surprised that it doesn't flow well because Mr. Sklar was a "journalism" person. It jumps around, and I found it difficult to follow. After 52 pages, I gave up on reading it and donated it to Goodwill.

Great book about one of the Disney insiders. Martin Sklar gives all the inside information about what it is like to work for Disney and all the projects he was involved with. I would recommend it to anyone who is a Disney fan or is just looking for a great book about a creative person.