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Walt Disney used the private jet to scout Disney World – then codenamed Project X.
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The company flagship was affectionately known as Walt’s Plane and The Mouse.
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The fully outfitted galley included a hot cup for heating Walt’s favorite chili.
The Walt Disney Company has reverentially restored the mothballed and neglected historic exterior of its famed founder’s beloved Mickey Mouse One Gulfstream jet that was abandoned to rot in the Florida heat and humidity of a field in Disney World.
Walt Disney’s Grumman Gulfstream I airplane will debut at its new home at the Palm Springs Air Museum on Saturday, October 15.
The company flagship refurbished by Walt Disney Imagineering and the Disney Archives was affectionately known throughout its storied history as Walt’s Plane and The Mouse.
Disney CEO Bob Chapek unveiled the restored Mickey Mouse One in its “full original glory” as the centerpiece of the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California.
“This little beauty has been basking in the Florida sun for about the last 40 years,” Chapek said at the D23 Expo.
From his cabin window, Disney surveyed the scrub-filled Central Florida swamps in the 1960s that would become Walt Disney World – then known by the code name Project X.
“Walt made several trips to Florida to look at the property and fly his Imagineers back and forth,” Walt Disney Archives Director Becky Cline said. “It wasn’t just Florida they were scouting with Project X. They wanted to do an East Coast Disneyland. They looked at a number of different places on the East Coast.”
A customized instrument panel with an altimeter, true airspeed indicator, and Mickey Mouse clock allowed the aviation enthusiast to monitor flight conditions from his favorite cabin seat.
A nearby telephone handset gave him a direct line of communication to the pilot in the cockpit.
Walt never became a pilot – but that didn’t keep him out of the cockpit. “Often he would go up and sit in the co-pilot seat and watch the plane being flown,” Cline said during a phone interview. “He was fascinated by all modes of travel.”
The flight crew always kept a Mickey Mouse matchbook next to the plane’s Duk-It ashtray for the boss – a lifelong smoker.
Passengers flying aboard The Mouse were given a flight bag with a silhouette image of Mickey lounging on the tail of the Gulfstream.
Cocktail napkins featured pilot Mickey and stewardess Minnie flying on a patched-together cartoon plywood prop plane version of N234MM – the same tail number as Mickey Mouse One.
Disney pilots often changed the “Two, Three, Four, Metro Metro” air traffic controller call to “Two, Three, Four, Mickey Mouse” on approach to an airport.
The 15-passenger plane with a 3-person crew featured a galley kitchen, two couches, two tables, a drop-down desk, and two restrooms – one…