Can you find the hidden Mickeys?

May 19, 2002|By Christopher Elliott. Special to the Tribune.

ORLANDO — Next time you're standing in line for a ride at The Magic Kingdom, notice the walls. Check out the sculptures. The landscaping.

Look closer.

Three circles--two small, one large. Isn't that a mouse head?

It probably is. Hidden Mickeys, as they're commonly called, are everywhere at Walt Disney's theme parks. But nowhere can you find more of these subliminal rodents than in Orlando, where the phenomenon is believed to have started. Spotting the famous logo is becoming a pastime for distracted parents--and an obsession for a handful of park visitors who follow each mouse sighting as if they'd seen a solar eclipse.

The rocks in the outdoor observation area behind Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge are etched with several hidden Mickeys. Finding them isn't easy amid the other seemingly random patterns.

The glass in the roof of the Main Street train station is covered in hidden Mickeys. The best way to see them is to look up at the glass skylight from the ground floor of the station.

An aerial view of Disney's MGM studios reveals a giant hidden logo in the architecture. The only way to get a good look at it is to buy a map or fly over the park in an aircraft.

The surreptitious symbols aren't usually sanctioned at the corporate level. Instead, credit the mice to the so-called "imagineers" who design the attractions. They like hiding the Mickeys as much as park guest enjoy trying to uncover them, according to Dave Smith, an archivist for the Walt Disney Corporation.

"A lot of the hidden Mickeys were put there on purpose," he explains. "But many more were snuck in by the imagineers, and I get the sense that we may be a little embarrassed by the millions of hidden Mickeys out there."

Maybe that's why Disney is so reluctant to talk about the hidden Mickey phenomenon. (A request to interview a representative from the imagineering department for this article was declined.) Although the company doesn't deny the existence of the logos, better known as "HMs" inside Disney, its reluctance to speak has given the hidden Mickeys a kind of cult following.

They're supported by a network of fans who look for hidden messages in Disney's films. You've probably heard about them--they watch movies like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" frame by frame in the hope of finding Jessica Rabbit sans evening dress or play the "The Lion King" repeatedly in an effort to spot concealed words that--how shall we say this?--don't exactly reflect Disney's family values.

On the Web site, you can review every mouse sighting going back to the mid-1990s. They range from the obvious (there's a Mickey next to Walt Disney's name on the ice cream shop on Main Street at the Magic Kingdom) to the obscure (patterns in a fireworks show that form the famous logo).

And what exactly is a hidden Mickey? Disney's concept is relatively rigid. "It has to look like Mickey Mouse," says Smith. "It can't just be a big circle and two little circles. It can't be placed there intentionally as a design element, like a Mickey Mouse logo on a manhole cover."

The first Disney attraction to conceal information was a motion simulator ride called StarTours in which designers secretly scratched their birthdays on the pipes, according to Disney. In 1988, hidden Mickey Mouse logos appeared at the Norway pavilion at EPCOT. By the next year, the mice had infested the Disney-MGM theme park.

But Tom Shaw, the editor of, believes hidden Mickeys in Orlando go back to before 1971, when construction crews placed survey markers with mouse ears on the property. What's more, the logos appeared at Disneyland--the California theme park--long before then. "I've met imagineers, artists, construction workers and cast members who have placed hidden Mickeys and other hidden things in the theme parks for multiple reasons," he says. "It's not that unusual. But now there are just more of them, and that's attracting attention."

Shaw, like many other fans of the "HM," has adopted a looser definition of what constitutes a hidden Mickey. Who's right? It doesn't really matter. Having a broader definition means more opportunities to discover the mouse. Disney's classification makes more sense as a cultural phenomenon. And it keeps the imagineers out of trouble. If you subscribe to the stricter definition, then the rise of the concealed logo coincided with the "Where's Waldo?" craze--a series of children's books in which readers searched impossibly busy illustrations for a bespectacled character named Waldo.

While the company insists that it doesn't rubber-stamp the ever-growing list of secret mice, it's likely that Uncle Walt would have approved of turning his theme parks into an enormous "Where's Mickey?" attraction. Disney always wanted to put more into his attractions than a visitor could assimilate in a single experience.

And if it keeps 'em coming back, what's the harm in hiding a few more logos?

Here's how to find Mickey