Disney Food & Bev
Walt Disney World 50th Food & Beverage art
With the Celebration about to come to a close, I wanted to share several contributions I made to a very special milestone, The Walt Disney World 50th Anniversary. Leading up to the big bash (during the pandemic while stuck at home) I created art for a few popcorn buckets, refillable drink mugs and disposable paper wraps for when you buy something like a pretzel or a churro. Here is a look at the art specifically created in honor of the The Magic Kingdom, The Contemporary Resort, The Polynesian Resort, and Fort Wilderness. With these art pieces I wanted to pay tribute to iconic elements of the Resort from the past and future, highlighted by some attractions that have been there since opening day.
In a Celebration that didn’t lean into nostalgia too heavily, it was nice to create something that took people back to the early days of the Walt Disney World Resort. I was able to do some research and found an original book of E tickets and combined those with some of the original branding identity, featuring the original Cinderella Castle Icon, Walt Disney World Resort announcement logo (the one with “Florida” worked in) and the “Key to the Kingdom” logo. Vector files of these images didn’t exist for I had a blast recreating them. And they never looked better. There was a fun juxtaposition magic that happened when they were all placed together with the beautiful new 50th logo.
So next time you pick up a churro or a pretzel at the Magic Kingdom, take a look at some of the little details that went into making sure the 50th WDW celebration had some good throwback goodness embedded in it, even it was just a disposable paper wrapper.
We wanted to make sure the entire Resort felt like they were part of the 50th Celebrations. I was asked to create something special just for the WDW water parks. Both Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach have the most unique and recognizable icons, I wanted to see how they would look in the world of the new Mickey Mouse animated shorts. Those cartoons have the most beautiful backgrounds, then to continue that look I used the same style for the Fab 5 for Mickey and Donald in this piece. That duck and mouse work hard, nice to see them chill out once in a while too.
This art was created as a refillable drink mug and a cup for some very blue ice cream, both sold at the Walt Disney World water parks during the Resort’s 50th anniversary celebration.
Speaking of the whole Resort, this one was something extra special, and not just because it was a part of the 50th. In the past whenever you saw a Resort mug at World Disney World, it usually had a few Resorts represented on it. My goal with this one was to give some sort of nod to every Resort on property. Or at least as many as possible. With the proposed sketch I first wanted to throw out the realistic map layout of the WDW Resort, so I grouped the 4 park icons almost as if they were an isolated island. That allowed for a loose placement around them of the various Resorts.
It was important to me not just to get as many, but represent all the different levels of Resorts, from the most deluxe to the ones with the most value. It was also a goal of mine to try to capture every mode of transportation on property. So you might notice you will find the Monorail, Ferries, Bus and my new favorite, the Skyliner. The exaggerated style was continued in this art from the new Mickey Mouse animated shorts. Which is featured in one of the newest attractions at WDW, “Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway”.
