Flying saucers were hot in the 1950s, especially in the movies. Some of them were built by aliens and came to Earth The Day the Earth Stood Still, and some were built by humans and traveled to other planets (Forbidden Planet). Some brought messages of peace while others threatened conquest and destruction (Earth vs. the Flying Saucers). But the one thing they all had in common was that they were all fictional. You could not really ride in any of them. In 1960, Walt Disney and his design team of Disneyland "Imagineers" set out to rectify that situation.
In the early '50s, Bob Gurr was working as a designer for Ford and Kaiser-Willys. In 1954, he took on a part-time job with WED Enterprises, the company Disney had set up to build Disneyland, to design the miniature cars for the Autopia ride. He immediately found himself in great demand designing all sorts of vehicles for the nascent theme park, including all the "antique" trucks and buses used on Main Street (which had to look old, but run with modern reliability and safety). Within a year he had joined Disney full time as Director of Special Vehicle Development.
By 1960, Gurr was working on one of the many upgrades already changing the face of the park, which Walt had said, "will never be finished." In particular, he was given the task of replacing the Phantom Boats attraction. These were small, powered, self-directed boats that were conceptually much like Gurr's own Autopia cars, except on water. The Phantom Boats were bothersome to park operators since the ride's throughput was low and the waterway they used took up a lot of space.
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