In their highly recommended books The Disneyland Story and Three Years in Wonderland , Disney historians Sam Gennawey and Todd James Pierce both had to resort to citing me about Walt's use of the word “wienie” because the inelegant term has become an embarrassment for the increasingly sophisticated Disney Company once the Disney brothers died.
Over the decades, the company has referred to the concept as “the architectural visual icon that causes people to gravitate naturally toward a location.” Often Disney refers to it as just a “visual magnet.”
When I worked at the Disney Institute, we were told when doing classes for professional organizations to substitute the term “carrot” because of the well-known image of being able to direct a donkey or a horse forward by dangling a carrot in front of it.
That frustrating image undercut the joy that Walt intended by using the word “wienie.”
As a result of this type of misplaced political correctness, the true story behind the word and Walt's use of it has been almost completely forgotten, so hopefully this article will help current and future historians and fans better understand this important term.
Academics, and too often the Disney Company, will still avoid the term because of its current unfortunate associations, and others will childishly giggle uncomfortably when the proper term is used.
English is a living language, which means it is constantly changing as it continues to get used over the years. Latin was once considered a dead language because no one actively used it anymore, so no further changes would occur including the creation of new words and new definitions.
As a result of English changing because of usage, some words have had their original meanings hijacked over the years. The word “gay” meant “joyful, light-hearted, merry and carefree” as in the Gay Nineties, the novel Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1942) or the final line of the original lyrics for The Flintstones theme song: “we'll have a gay old time” (now officially changed to the word “grand”). Today, another meaning comes immediately to mind for many people.
“Wienie” is one of those words whose original primary definition has been downgraded. Wienie (also sometimes spelled “weenie” or “weeny”) evolved into a slang term for a man's private parts or a derogatory term for a person who behaves wimpishly or frightened.
I've had Disney cast members seriously tell me that Walt used the word “wienie” because they are vertical, cylindrical landmarks reminiscent of a penis, like the spires on the castle or the TWA Moonliner. Again, this is just another example of Disney cast members creating their own stories when the Disney Company does not share with them the real stories. There is always the very real fear that this misinterpretation will become the truth through repetition without proper refutation.
Sleeping Beauty Castle was just designed to be seen from a distance and give people a joyful treat when they arrived, like dog and a “wienie,”
Originally, the word “wienie” was just a shortened version of the German word wienerwurst (Vienna sausage) and, over the years, it became used for any type of pre-cooked sausage item, like a hot dog or frankfurter. The original German word comes from Wien (the German name for Vienna), where the food was supposedly first created in 1487 A.D., and wurst, meaning sausage, in German.
Walt Disney grew up in a community that had a large German population with his best friend Walter Pfeiffer whose family was of German heritage and celebrated it when Disney visited. It would have been common for them to use the word “wienie” frequently when Walt stayed for dinner.
During Walt's formative years, “wienie roasts,” where guests brought their own hot dogs to a picnic event for roasting over an open fire, became a popular Midwestern community activity. So, for Walt, any type of hot dog was a “wienie” and he used that term for the rest of his life.
While Walt only had one year of high school education, he was an avid reader, very articulate and constantly trying to improve his vocabulary, often doing a “new word a day” game with his secretaries. However, he preferred communicating with the simplest of words for clarity.
Famously, he used the word “plus” as a noun, verb or adjective. In arithmetic class, he learned that “plus” meant adding something as in “one plus one equals two.” So, for the rest of his life, when he wanted to enhance something in animation or at Disneyland, he directed his staff to “plus it”.
While retaining the original intent of the word, Walt creatively utilized it to quickly summarize his intentions. That was also true of the word “wienie” which he used because of a game he played with his poodles.
After the death of the Chow Sunnee (the famous puppy who popped out of a hatbox and inspired a similar scene in Lady and the Tramp in 1955), who was really more of his wife Lillian's dog, Walt got a brown poodle who he named Duchess Disney (or “DeeDee”), who eagerly followed him around the house. She even accompanied him on his weekend forays to the studio where employees who happened to be there got to know the repetitive “clip, clip, clip” sound of her nails on the tile floor.
“She was a great consolation to me,” Walt told writer Pete Martin in a June 1956 interview. “I'd go down in my [barn] to work. And you know that poodle would stay down there and at a certain hour, she would just know that it was time for me to come back up to the house and be with the family. She'd always come up to me and touch me, nudge me. She'd sit and look at me until I came back to the house. She wouldn't leave my side until I came. She was always my dog. My wife never took to it.”
Walt's oldest daughter Diane Disney Miller told me:
“We had this old poodle that dad just loved but she got very sick. Mother wanted her put out of her misery, but dad just wouldn't hear of it. She had gallstones removed one time I remember. She was just sick and miserable during the day, but, when dad came home in the evening, she just perked up and that's the only time he saw her. He never realized how sick she really was until the end.
“In the evening it was cooler, so maybe that helped. Dad would park his car in the garage and come in to the house through the kitchen. He would go to the refrigerator and pull out two uncooked hot dogs, one for himself and one for the dog. He would play with her, wiggling the hot dog around and she would go wherever he moved around and was so happy when she finally got her treat. It was part of an evening ritual and both of them loved it and looked forward to it.”
Walt saw that he could control where he wanted her to go by waving this treat around and the joy she had when she finally got her reward. So, Walt used the word “wienie” to explain to the WED designers of Disneyland of how he wanted to get guests to move to a certain area. Once he explained his experience with Duchess, they understood completely what Walt wanted.
Duchess passed away from a blood clot while she was being bathed around the time of the opening of Disneyland. Walt kept Duchess' blanket undisturbed in his workshop in the barn after her death.
A photo of Walt, kneeling by an open refrigerator with a hot dog in each hand, and his playful and adorable miniature poodle, Lady, anxiously waiting for her treat, first appeared on page 24 in an issue of the Saturday Evening Post (December 22, 1956) to illustrate one of the installments of Diane Disney Miller's story about her father.
The caption reads: “Walt, who often pretends he's overlooked as the only male in the house sneaks a snack for Lady the family's French poodle, just after getting home from work.”
Lady was the small poodle that sometimes appeared with Walt in the introductions of his weekly television show, like the one promoting the film Old Yeller (1957) titled “The Best Doggoned Dog In the World” (Nov. 20, 1957).
“Before Lady, we owned a large sized standard poodle and I used to think she was the only female in my family that really understood me,” stated Walt in the show. “[Lady's] small but she's easy on the brick and brack. Round the house, she is a personality in her own right.”
In “Carnival Time” (March 4, 1962), Lady sits on Walt's lap on a big red easy chair as they both watch The Von Drake Report hosted by Ludwig Von Drake.
Walt's dog Lady was used in several introductions of his weekly TV series. The concept of a wienie was one that Walt learned from the family dogs, including Lady.
Fortunately, that important photo of Walt using hot dogs to play with Lady was reprinted in a smaller version on pg. 134 of the book Inside the Dream: The Personal Story of Walt Disney (Disney Editions 2001). Basically, he repeated the same game with a hot dog with Lady that Duchess enjoyed so much. Apparently, Lady enjoyed it as well and followed wherever the hot dog “wienie” was waved.
While developing Disneyland, Walt, C.V. Wood and Nat Winecoff visited a popular San Francisco amusement park called Whitney's Playland at the Beach. In charge of the midway was George K. Whitney, the son of the owner, who gave the men a tour and answered their questions.
Walt was impressed when Whitney explained how the park controlled the movement of the guests to get them to go from one area to another by using tricks like raised marquees, lights, sounds and elevated buildings. People seemed naturally drawn to taller objects in the distance Whitney explained, so they were placed in such a way that leaving one ride the customers caught a glance of another elevated structure to guide them there. Walt later hired Whitney as a consultant on Disneyland.
Walt had his designers create interesting large elevated structures that could be easily seen from a distance like Sleeping Beauty Castle and he called them “wienies.” It wasn't just to get people to move in a certain direction, although that was very important, but to make it a joyful treat once they arrived.
So it was not a dangling carrot frustratingly tempting a stubborn horse or donkey to move forward and do work pulling a cart or wagon in hopes of finally receiving a small reward. It was a playful game that resulted in joy and the revelation of other “wienies”.
There were a wider variety of wienies at Disneyland in 1955 than most people suspect.
In general, Disney fans parrot the fact that the “wienies” are Sleeping Beauty Castle and the TWA Moonliner, and forget that once guests entered Fantasyland it was the large colorful Chicken of the Sea Pirate Ship that drew people into the heart of the area.
The Clock of the World first caught the attention of guests and lured them into Tomorrowland down a bare concrete pathway from the Hub, where they could see the Moonliner and be further motivated to go deeper into the land.
Walt actually used multiple “wienies” to move people into and out of areas, and it was all done in a subconscious manner. Walt claimed he never controlled people, but that he controlled the experience and that resulted in the guests making the right choices.
“A beckoning hand promises something worthwhile. It stimulates curiosity,” said Imagineer John Hench in his book Designing Disney (Disney Editions 2003). “Walt observed that people move toward things that are inviting, and he coined the term 'wienie' to refer to such things. Walt had a lifelong love of hot dogs. Imagineers have found that people respond to a wienie at the end of a corridor because it beckons them to continue further in their journey.
“The wienie promises that you will be rewarded for the time and effort it takes to walk down that corridor,” Hench said. “A well-designed wienie can brighten and energize an entire area. The Matterhorn at Disneyland; the Tree of Life at Disney's Animal Kingdom; and Big Tillie, the stranded ship at Typhoon Lagoon are all effective wienies. They set the stage, establish a mood and draw the eye. We created a number of successful wienies at Disneyland, each of which posed special design challenges. For a wienie to be effective, we have to set the scene for it, using staging techniques derived from film.”
Over the years, people have puzzled over the fact that there was not a wienie for Adventureland, and the Disney Company has responded that Walt felt it should be a place of mystery and discovery. A wienie would give a landmark for direction and defeat that purpose.
Actually, Walt did indeed intend for Adventureland to have a wienie. In the very first souvenir guidebook for Disneyland there is a line drawing and a full-color concept painting for the Arboretum. It was to be located to the side of the Jungle Cruise boathouse and tower over it since it was to be nearly as tall as Sleeping Beauty's Castle.
It was a glass-enclosed, spike-topped (to reference Asian architecture) structure to be filled with exotic plants and birds. Walt had made arrangements to purchase crown herons and other exotic birds for both the Jungle Cruise and this attraction, but had to cancel that order as costs spiraled out of control in the building of Disneyland. It was simpler to just eliminate this structure and re-direct the money to other more necessary attractions, especially since the budget for plants had long since been depleted.
However, the fact that it appears in the souvenir guide seems to indicate it was a late decision to remove it from the layout of the land.
Many of the Disneyland “wienies” related to taking a trip. The Mark Twain steamboat in Frontierland, the spaceship in Tomorrowland, and the Chicken of the Sea Pirate in Fantasyland all referenced going on a voyage to someplace different, whether it was the past, future, or fantasy. The never-built Arboretum for Adventureland would have been a popular location to watch the Jungle Cruise launches as they plied their way on the Rivers of the World so, it, too, was connected with taking a trip to some exotic land.
At the end of the day, the train station on Main Street U.S.A. was the “wienie” that pulled guests reluctantly to the front of the park as their trip ended just as its placement on an elevated berm had tempted guests in the parking lot to head toward the entrance to begin a new journey.
In Walt's original design for the Florida Project, the Magic Kingdom itself was put at the very top of the property to act as a “wienie” to bring guests into the property.
In Walt's plans, the entrance to the property was off of I-95 where the “main gate” would be, which is why the big non-descript Disney building at Sherberth Road that houses Entertainment, Disney Design Group and Merchandise is called MainGate, since it is where the entrance to the park was intended, just across the street from the airport Walt was going to build.
Walt realized that not everyone would be interesting in visiting his version of Epcot, so by putting the Magic Kingdom theme park at the top of the property, guests would have to go through Epcot to get there and go through it again to leave.
The use of “wienies” at Disneyland was so effective in controlling the movement of people that it inspired the concept of “anchor stores” at American malls. Major retailers placed at the end of a long corridor pulled customers up and down the pathway to experience all of the smaller businesses and give the customers a visual anchor so they could determine their location.
It was just another way that Disneyland affected so many things in American culture. In fact, the concept of the original malls was influenced by Main Street U.S.A. where shops did not have separate alleyways between them, but were placed right next to each other and the design and color aided in an overall cohesive pleasing appearance.
I hope that this clears up the origin and concept of why Walt chose the word “wienie” to describe what he wanted. So when it comes to Disneyland “wienies,” let us never forget that it all started with a poodle.
By the way, Disneyland guests must have loved real wienies. According to a Disneyland publicity release from July 1956 “Approximately 935,460 hot dogs were consumed by Disneyland guests in the first year after the park was opened.”
