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| Fresh orange paint, and he's ready to go! |
As today is the dreaded Tax Day, here's a 'sunny thought' to help make everything better. This morning Disney finally
returned the Orange Bird to Walt Disney World, and I'm very happy about that! Hooray, I love the little Orange Bird! He's so cute -- and he's so
orange!
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| 1970s snapshots of the original figure sculpt, WED Imagineering, Glendale. |
Folks enjoying their frozen Citrus Swirls at the newly renovated Sunshine Tree Terrace in Adventureland can once again see the original Orange Bird figure above the counter, this time not in a tree but perched on a fruit crate. The figure was long thought to be lost but I was able to provide a tiny bit of assistance to the Disney Archives in their identifying the figure through some photos I had kept in my files. Apparently the Orange Bird had been taking a decades-long nap in a drawer at Imagineering right under everyone's noses.
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The only known vintage image of the Orange Bird in the Sunshine Tree,
from a color slide taken in 1980 by Stacia Martin. |
Thanks to our friends at WDI and the W.D. Archives, for restoring a wonderful bit of nostalgia for a new generation!
