Rolly Crump dies at 93; theme park designer had huge hand in shaping Disneyland

The self-described “worst” artist ever hired by Walt Disney who went on to help create three of Disneyland’s most beloved attractions and shape Knott’s Berry Farm has died after a kooky, whimsical and fearless career as a theme park designer.

Rolly Crump died Sunday, March 12 in his Carlsbad home at the age of 93, according to the Walt Disney Company.

Crump helped design It’s a Small World, Haunted Mansion and Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room — three of Disneyland’s most enduring attractions.

“I wasn’t that much of an illustrator,” Crump said in the 2016 documentary “The Whimsical Imagineer.” “I think Walt liked my imagination.”

Influenced by comic strips and comic books, Crump began drawing as a child in the 1930s while trying to imagine the mental pictures painted in his head by radio serials like “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy.”

Crump got his start at Disney’s animation studio in 1952 working for Eric Larson, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men.

“They told me I probably had the worst portfolio of anyone that was ever hired in animation at the studio,” Crump said in the documentary film. “I still hold that record I think.”

Making $35 per week, Crump took a significant pay cut to work as an in-betweener animator on “Peter Pan,” “Lady and the Tramp,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “101 Dalmatians.” He lowered bricks and mixed mud on weekends, building sewer manholes to supplement his income.

His big break came when a playful propeller exhibit Crump set up in the studio library caught Walt Disney’s eye. In 1959, Crump moved to WED Enterprises — the precursor to Walt Disney Imagineering — to help bring to life the new Disneyland attractions the boss was dreaming up.

“The one thing Walt taught me more than anything else was the big picture,” Crump said in the documentary film. “He had a vision and knew exactly what it was going to be and how to get there.”

Crump immediately set to work on a field of flowers with propeller petals for Ozland, a “Wizard of Oz” land envisioned for Disneyland that never materialized.

Crump made his first significant imprint on Disneyland with the Enchanted Tiki Room. Originally envisioned as a restaurant, the Tiki Room featured a new innovation for the park: audio-animatronic birds.

Crump recounted the birth of the Tiki Room in the Disney+ documentary “The Imagineering Story” and told a decidedly un-Disney story about Walt’s colorful concerns about early plans that conceived of the bird show as a restaurant.

“Walt always wanted a tea room, but instead we’re going to do a little restaurant,” Crump said in the Disney+ documentary. “John Hench was asked to do a rendering and in there he had birds in cages. Walt took one look at it and said, ‘John, you can’t have birds in cages.’ John says, ‘Why not?’ Walt says, ‘Because they’ll poop in the food.’ That’s exactly what he said. We all cracked up. John said, ‘No, no, no. Maybe they’re little mechanical birds.’ And Walt said, ‘Oh, little mechanical birds.’ And that’s how it all got started.”

For the 1964 New York World’s FaIr, Crump and his team built more than 350 toys for It’s a Small World. The marquee Tower of the Four Winds entry sculpture once again featured Crump’s signature propellers. The attraction moved to Disneyland after the World’s Fair and to this day a parade of wooden dolls march around the facade’s clock tower every 15 minutes.

The Haunted Mansion was Crump’s crowning achievement. He worked with Yale Gracey and a number of Imagineers on the dark and weird ride, which was originally envisioned as a walk-through attraction. Some of Crump’s bizarre concepts for a never-realized Museum of the Weird restaurant made their way into the Haunted Mansion.

Starting in 1958, Crump and Gracey developed haunted house special effects based on 19th century magic illusions and “Popular Mechanics” books for ingenious boys.

During a 1965 episode of the “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” television show, Crump laid out his vision for the Haunted Mansion that included a “Museum of the Weird” with a coffin clock and a melting candle man among other oddities.

Crump looked at the world through a different lens than most people. He wanted a Haunted Mansion that broke the mold. Walt Disney envisioned the Museum of the Weird serving as the entry and exit experiences for the Haunted Mansion.

Disney died in 1966 before the Haunted Mansion was finished and plans for the ghost house changed and evolved — but elements of Crump’s unrealized Museum of the Weird still exist today in the wallpaper, furnishings and paintings of the Haunted Mansion.

The Rolo Rumkin tombstone in the Haunted Mansion graveyard pays tribute to Crump with the inscription: Rolo Rumkin lived and died a friendly bumpkin.

During a break from Imagineering, Crump designed the original Knott’s Bear-y Tales dark ride that opened in 1975. A new 4-D interactive dark ride that pays tribute to the original Bear-y Tales attraction opened in 2021 at the Buena Park theme park.

“A lot of people say, ‘What was your favorite project?’” Crump said in “The Whimsical Imagineer” documentary. “They were all my favorite projects. The thing I love the most is a challenge. To be asked to do something you’ve never done before. And that’s about as exciting as you can get. Believe it or not, that’s where the imagination kicks in.”

Born Roland Fargo Crump on Feb. 27, 1930, in Alhambra, California, Rolly got his unique nickname from Walt Disney who struggled to remember Roland.

Crump was named a Disney Legend in 2004 and got an honorary palm reader window on Disneyland’s Main Street U.S.A . promising whimsical and weird predictions that will haunt you. His 2012 autobiography, “It’s Kind of a Cute Story,” has spawned multiple sequels.

Crump is survived by his wife, Marie Tocci, his children Christopher, Roxana and Theresa and three grandchildren.