This article was first released on MousePlanet.com as a three-part series on October 12, October 26, and November 9, 2005. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of MousePlanet.
Walt Disney’s Space Mountain vision took approximately ten years to come to fruition after he described it to the late John Hench. It “landed” on the perimeter of Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in January 1975. Disneyland’s Space Mountain “came out of the ground” two years later. A grand opening featured the attendance of six U.S. Mercury astronauts and the widow of Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, the other member of the “Mercury Seven”.
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