Someone didn’t do their research 😬😂 Big Thunder Mountain’s Huntington Mill in Disneyland Paris was almost removed from the queue altogether. Here’s Pat Burke’s account: “Tony Baxter was worried this smoke stack would block the view of the Butte and asked Skip to have me take it out of the scene. I told Skip not to worry, that the smoke stack could fold down as it did when traveling on the road. I folded it down into its yoke and all was fine. There were only 3 of these mills produced, and I located 2 of them to salvage 1 for Thunder Mesa.” The Huntington mill also has a nod to Imagineer Jack Ferges on the sign, saying “Contact Mr. Jack O Ferges, Foreman in assay office”. I love Tony Baxter’s tale of how unassuming Pat Burke would acquire the mining equipment: “He would look at something and say ‘that’s a very beautiful stamp mill…boy, I would love to have that’. And the person might say, ‘I can see that you’d really care for this, and I’m getting older, and I’m not gonna be able to make sure it’s well loved and everything, so I’ll give it to you for a nice [price]…’ and he goes ‘OK’. And then he’d get out the cheque and it’d be ‘Walt Disney,’ you know. And they were probably sitting there saying, ‘wow, we could’ve probably gotten a lot more money.’” 😂
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