Makin’ Memories (Magic Eye Theater Pre-Show Audio)

Before there was a ride, there was a song about photographs.

When EPCOT Center opened on October 1, 1982, the Journey Into Imagination pavilion was only half there. The ride itself, with Dreamfinder and Figment, was running months behind and would not open until March 5, 1983. So the pavilion opened with its theater instead: the Magic Eye Theater, showing Magic Journeys, Disney’s first 3D film, directed by Murray Lerner. And before the film, guests stood through a pre-show built from still photographs and one purpose-written song.

“Makin’ Memories” was written by Richard and Robert Sherman for sponsor Eastman Kodak, whose name was on the pavilion. On screen, a slideshow traced photography from its earliest days to the family snapshot, while the song made the sponsor’s whole argument in a single line: takin’ pictures is makin’ memories. Richard Sherman later called it a subliminal commercial pitch for Kodak, “the softest sell in the history of singing commercials.” It is also, simply, one of the loveliest things the brothers wrote for the parks, warm, unhurried, and built to make a roomful of strangers think about their own family albums.

The pre-show’s life was short and entirely local. It played only at Epcot, and only in front of Magic Journeys, from opening day until February 9, 1986, when Captain EO took over the theater. Magic Journeys later moved to the Magic Kingdom, but the Kodak pre-show stayed behind; in Fantasyland the film was paired with a Donald Duck cartoon instead. The song lived on in shorter form on the park albums, where an edited version drops the “all around us” verses. The recording preserved here is the pre-show as guests heard it in the theater.

It belongs in this archive next to the park’s other opening-day music, like the Kitchen Kabaret show over at The Land: two productions from EPCOT Center’s first day that almost nobody thought to save at the time. The theater’s own load music, the instrumental Magic Journeys theme that played as guests took their seats, is preserved here too.

Photo: the Imagination pavilion at Epcot, by Reywas92, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).