In a featurette of the ride, as shown on the DVD release of the film's 70th anniversary, the head Disney Imagineer, Tony Baxter even noted that the new ride looked like one of Gepetto's inventions.
Ton van de Ven, who designed many of Efteling's attractions, is also a good friend of Disney's Tony Baxter (senior vice president of Walt Disney Imagineering).
Baxter had remembered from a previous Walt Disney film: the "Song of the South", had contained a song titled "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah," which he synced with the animatronics transferred from America Sings.
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It was designed by both Tony Baxter and his mentor Claude Coats and was the first ride built in Disneyland without any input from Walt Disney.
Other artworks present Tony Baxter's Discovery Bay which was the basic inspiration for the land, the now-gone Visionarium with one photograph of Michel Piccoli's portrayal of Verne, and the Orbitron ride.
In 2011, Disney imagineer Tony Baxter presented a slideshow of the concept drawings and models at D23 Expo.
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