When United Almost became the Official Airline of Disney land and Walt Disney World.
The Story Behind the Light Tunnel Connecting the United Concourses at Chicago O’Hare International Airport
United’s O’Hare Terminal with the B to C tunnel
10 Best
The United Airlines terminal at O’Hare is ranked as one of the 10 best works of American architecture completed since 1980, by the American Institute of Architects.
Imagineering
United put Helmut Jahn, the architect, in touch with Disney’s Imagineering division and they jointly planned on creating some nice 3 dimensional “vignettes” of scenes of various cities that United flew to, in all these “windows” on the sides.
Rainbow
The United & Disney collaboration included the creation and design of the neon rainbow transition sculpture that runs the length of the corridor. The sculpture was created by noted artist Michael Hayden of California. Mr. Hayden had also worked on a similar rainbow piece for Disney. The original popular curving rainbow tunnel which was at the “Image Works” section of the Imagination Pavilion at Disney World’s Epcot, sponsored by Kodak.
It Always Comes Down To Money
Ultimately, the Disney marketing partnership just didn’t work out.
Costs were rising and the budget had not been enough to go through with the collaboration. The walls that would have been the Disney depictions of characters in popular destinations that they would have traveled to are now covered by white plastic backlit panels. While the colors look amazing, we are left to only be able to image what could have been…
