IN 1931, Eastern Airlines began passenger service to Orlando, Florida, carrying up to six passengers per flight at speeds of almost 120 miles an hour. That same year, an imaginative man named Walt Disney produced a color film, "Flowers and Trees," which won an Academy Award for the year"s best cartoon, and he began making further plans for his four-year-old cartoon character, Mickey Mouse.
Today, one of Eastern's sleek 600-mile-per-hour jets lands in or takes off from Orlando every eighteen minutes of the day, around the clock, while Disney's mouse entertains thousands of visitors daily at his two homes around the country, including his new one near Orlando.
Like more than 35 other major companies, Eastern found public relations and marketing magic by being sprinkled with some of Disney's pixie dust. Last year, more than 20 million visitors came to Disneyland and Walt Disney -World—more than the number of people who were visiting the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Radio City Music Hall, and the Great Smokies, Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks, all combined. And many of them came via Eastern, designated the official airline of Walt Disney World. Once there, they were entertained by such names as Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, Snow White, and Monsanto, RCA, Hallmark, Coca-Cola, Gulf, Sara Lee, and dozens more.
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