Foundations Of Magic

Fern Gully

2009-12-14T18:31:00.006-05:00

The CoCo Key indoor waterpark chain recently announced that they will add a location in the Orlando area.

http://www.cocokeywaterresort.com/Locations/danvers/videos/index.aspx

This speaks for itself.

Themed Entertainment is dying a slow and painful death because people have failed to see its massive potential in education and entertainment alike. CoCo Key is a dismaying example, as are many of the more recent offerings at the major players. Universal recently opened The Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit, and Disney continues to institute some very strange new offerings.

Certainly, the renaissance is coming. The Wizarding World, New Fantasyland and Star Tours 2.0 will all bring us back to the forefront of a field filled with honest and original ideas.

Lets just get one thing straight: Syngery, Branding, Money Talks - these are the buzzwords of the vice presidents, of the businessmen. This is not the language of the creative storytellers who invented the art form. For an example of just how distant Orlando is from Hollywood, I would strongly recommend a viewing of The Princess & The Frog.

Just like Fern Gully, a field that once seemed so bright with promise is dying a tragic death at the hands of men obsessed with greed.

Are You Experienced?

2009-09-16T22:59:00.009-04:00

The next generation of theme park attraction has arrived, in more forms than one, and the playing field is broadening every single day.

Islands of Adventure's Wizarding World of Harry Potter - and particularly Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey - will be experiential to a level we have never seen. This isn't your stock interactive entertainment, built for giddy Generation Y playstation pumping teens. This is the next step of the master art form.

Down the road, Mickey tries not to get crushed. The new Fantasyland stands a valid chance of affirming its bragging rights in the new world of themed entertainment. These aren't just attractions - though with Ariel's Adventure (possibly renamed from DCA's version, "Ariel's Undersea Adventure") we will certainly have our fill of classic Disney experience with cutting edge technology, partnered with all the emotional gusto that came whirring out of those busy little trailers in Glendale twenty years ago.

The most interesting part about this concept painting, though, is how it separates the areas of Fantasyland into actual thematic pieces - a sort of master form of this concept that we've never seen before, expanding even further on the Disneyland idea and ranging closer and closer to the original Fantasyland concept:

Particularly the storybook village concept will be rooted in classic Disney - not just in the sense of the casting, but in the sense of the true experience of a place.

The next generation is supposed to be about bringing the fantastic worlds of our favorite characters to life in new, vibrant and relevant ways.

When the clock strikes midnight, we can only wait, watch and see who turns into the pumpkin. Time will tell.

The Double Edged Sword

2009-07-08T18:20:00.002-04:00

THE VAULT

More than anything, Disneyland is simply a unique mode of experiential design.

Walt Disney was the chief purveyor of a concept still around today, known as Edutainment. Walt wanted to educate audiences without them knowing he was doing it: Disneyland was his story-based answer to many of the challenges he faced as his brands grew out of his own control and became internationally recognized social symbols (Mickey Mouse), popular media-related characters (Zorro, Peter Pan), and even his television writers' creations of concepts that were taking audiences places they may never go in reality (Tomorrowland).

With all these brands burgeoning out of Walt's control and into the control of society and his audiences, as well as media critics, he needed to create a place where all these ideas could "live", and where he could have chief control over how they were being used.

With Disneyland, Walt aimed to create a place where all these brands, concepts and names could live. No matter that sweetly innocent story about Daddy's Days at the Griffith Park Carrousel. It is undeniable that Walt loved his family, and that these events did occur - but just like everything else in the Disney Tradition, many times the realities make far less enticing stories than the myths the storytellers who experienced the realities created in their place.

Disneyland would be a place to hold the brands - and for Walt to control their usage in any way he saw fit. As much as it was a place for him and his Imagineers to dream and do, it was also a place to keep safe his decades of trying, difficult work in bringing first the medium of animation, then the medium of television, to startling life.

If Disneyland is a unique experiment in experiential design, its because Walt wanted a double-edged sword: not only would the park serve as his personal vault, a place to protect his creations in forms he alone could determine (largely because while film and television spawned many jealous copycats and thieves, if not simply interested parties for these brands, the idea of creating a place was brand new and prohibitively expensive - unless you were Walt Disney).

THE GUESTS

The other edge of the sword was that this place could be open to the people Walt loved the most: his audience. Not only could it be his protective place, it was a way to remove his brands, ideas and stories from the reach of the Mintz's of the world, yet still make them available to his audience -- and the last thing he wanted to do was make those people bored.

And so Disneyland, which could have easily become a San Simeon under less creative, innovative direction, became a dramatic departure from anything that had been done before in America. Walt's greatest challenge was movement - both in the physical sense of moving people through an experience and in the sense of the story. If we were going to place all these ideas in one space, a space they would have to share the way a family shares a house, it meant there had to be some kind of story structure - a system, a way for the guests to experience the story on the same level that Wonderful World of Color provided pieces of Edutainment.

Walt wanted his guests to experience the story, without them knowing they were experiencing it. John Hench said it best in his landmark article "Disneyland is Good for You", and the reason is because it places you in a three dimensional story environment and refuses time and again to beat you over the head with its own ideals.

Much is the problem with other destination-based entertainments. Six Flags is the most nefarious example. When you visit a six flags park, you are reminded time and again, often in very crass and avoidable marketing cliches, that you are IN a six flags park.

Walt trusted the guests. The early Imagineers all trusted the guests. They knew they were at Disneyland. They expected experiences here unlike anything they could find elsewhere in the world. It was another double-edged sword, though, because the Disney name was gold. Anything that said "Disney" came with the assumption that it would excel to the level of excellent entertainment (a statute Walt himself set in Animation, Television and Feature Films).

The Imagineers knew that giving guests an experience was their top priority. That experience needed (and needs today) to fit within the story being told. When it doesn't, in the same way as when it does, guests cannot put their finger on the issue, but they know deep down that something is wrong.

In the same way Disneyland can be good for you, it can also be bad for you if the story environment, the progression of experiences, the way each show fits into the next show and how they all relate to the space surrounding them - if these things are not considered (regardless of the reason being marketing, revenue, ego or "business need") the show is affected, the guest experience is affected, and ultimately down the line the revenue is affected.

THE ART OF CHARACTER

In the much maligned argument about adding too much "character" to the Disney experience, we must remember a few crucial cornerstones:

1. Disneyland of 1955 was heavily influenced and often based on entertainment properties.

Indeed, Zorro served as a mascot of Frontierland because Walt wanted the cross-population (note: not necessarily cross-promotion or syngery) of the guest experience. It was one thing to take the guests to the "Old West", but Walt had seen experiences in museums and recreations like this across the country, and even as far away as Europe and had come up with the same feeling as many others - there was nothing in that experience to relate to beyond the history. Walt was an educator, but above all he was a true showman, and an entertainer. By adding "character" to his park, he gave the guests a crucial stepping stone that allowed them to relate to the experiences based on properties, ideas and characters that they already recognized.

2. John Hench himself championed the art of character - after all, if Disneyland is a story place, one of the reasons we create stories is so that our characters have a place to live. Disneyland takes this concept and makes it immediate and real: This is, quite literally, the place where these characters live. Hench, in his book (bible) Designing Disney, writes:

"The art of character at the Disney theme parks lies in maintaining the identity of the forms and colors that express the essential personality traits of these beloved characters."

3. Should everything relate to Disney Characters?

The answer is no, but the problem is that the definition of a "Disney Character" is so often misconstrued. Indiana Jones is not considered a character at Disneyland, but is defined as one because he is an integral personality that plays a part in the guest experience. There is a lot to be said for listening to the guests...but there is also a lot to be said for a designer because that person understands the play space on a conscious level far greater than your typical day guest, for whom the experience is subconscious. Much the same, a film director understands his film on a level deeper than any member of his audience.

So, if we are too narrowly defining Disney "Characters", the solution to this conundrum perhaps lies in no more than very careful, detailed decision making:

1. Pick and Choose who lives where.

Characters do not often determine story. Story determines characters. The long shot paints the close up. There is danger in contradicting elements within any story, or any story place, and the same goes for contradictory characters. Stitch should not appear simultaneously in a Tomorrowland attraction and a stage show fifty feet away, and Frozone should not be parading down Main Street. These are contradictions because Frozone's environment (re: story) and Main Street's environment are inherently different.

That is not a bad thing. In fact, thats a very valuable thing.

The story has to be designed and created before it can be populated with character. Either that, or the characters must bring us the story. If a character has a story to tell, as designers we must make a conscious effort to fit that story within an environment that will be thematically correct from long shot to close up within the context of the overall storyspace (The Park).

It makes sense for Mickey and friends to live at the Magic Kingdom or in Disneyland. It also makes sense for Mickey and friends to appear and occupy space at California Adventure - but you cannot make the cost-cutting choice of making these one and the same. Mickey's appearance at DCA must make sense with the environment in which he has been placed. He must become a part of the story.

If we think of the character appearances in the parks, be it in attractions or as walk arounds, as being a part of the story, there is no reason that these characters cannot fit into those stories. Now, there is a clever piece of manipulation going on here from the marketing executives and the guest survey teams: The guests say "We want to see Mickey". The marketing teams take this and turn it into "We want to see THE SAME Mickey everywhere, THE SAME attractions everywhere, THE SAME 'Disney'. One Disney."

This is not the case. Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald and Pluto (among others) are universally adaptable personalities. Thats the beauty in their design. Their rich forms and colors (as mentioned by Hench) can be adapted to any situation. Stronger characters are inevitably more successful than week ones, so why not make the characters and stories in each space strong and relatable and part of a cohesive whole? This is what Hench meant when he said that Disneyland was good for us. It is good for us because its a living, breathing story, provided to us as the ultimate play space.

Former Imagineer Eddie Sotto (among others) has some excellent views on using the characters to deliver the content.

2. Don't Overplay the Angle

If the parks become nothing but character-based experiences, the guests will no longer be receiving the one real promise Disney makes to them: A unique experience. The answer is, use the characters to illustrate your story points. The oversight is that Mickey will still be there. The magic of "Disney" is that the audience - the guests - are going to take whatever we give them. That sounds like a very negative connotation, and it isn't meant to be, but its simply the truth. The Disney brand is a seal of excellence all by itself. Its that way because the company has been striving to provide excellence to its audiences since 1923. Once you've made the sale, stop selling. Switch to gently reminding instead.

3. The Choice

Now, that said, it leaves the choice in the hands of the design team. Its a personal journey as much as it is a shared one, because like any art form, we are creating something from nothing. If thats the case, it means we can either give them more of the same (and it won't affect the ratings/revenue/business) or we can give them an excellent, over the top, completely unique and unforgettable experience (which likely won't affect the ratings/revenue/business).

The point is, if we do it the second way, we are accomplishing the goals. If we do it the first way, the old way, the comfortable way, we are simply plodding along not accomplishing anything. We aren't being innovative and original, because we have taken the previous idea that the audience will take whatever we give them and put a negative spin on it to the effect that we no longer have to try.

*Please note that the phrase "We" in this article is hypothetical. This blog is in no way associated with The Walt Disney Company, and all views expressed belong solely to the individuals providing them.

Its an honest mistake: the idea can be interpreted one of two ways.

Here is the first way:

"I was doing a film title that required an eagle to fly into a lighted foreground and land on a rock while folding his wings. I was provided with an eagle that was too old to do the stunt, and stumbled on the rocks. We watched the dailies in a dark sweatbox. When the lights came on, I saw that one of the Studio executives was in the booth watching with us. I said "I'll do this over again. We'll get the eagle to land right, so that it looks like a conqueror." The executive said "No! We will use it. That's okay, the bastards won't know any different." That was his attitude toward the people for whom he was supposed to furnish entertainment. He didn't like them. He didn't care."

Here is the second way:

"Liking the guests is the key to everything we do."

"We have discovered that even our restrooms can fit into the themed environment....Just as guests taught us about good queue design, they also taught us about the elements needed for preshows."

If the guests are truly the ones who taught the art of the show to the original Imagineers, we owe it to them now to listen to what they are saying. Guests want to see Mickey. This is a fact. How they see Mickey can either be a good, enjoyable experience that cannot be placed within the confines of words, or it can be generic, one-for-all entertainment. Disney, as a brand, is unique. There is no rhyme or reason to the way the stories are created. They come because they come.

This notion makes anyone accustomed to formulas, spreadsheets, algorithms and survey results uncomfortable. One experience does not equate to the next. They cannot be rated. Disneyland cannot be compared to Magic Kingdom Park because they are teling different stories.

Liking the guests truly is the key to everything we do - but the decision on what we provide them, and whether what we provide them is unique and original, is entirely up to us as designers. Whether or not the so-called results of some so-called guest surveys that amount only to numbers on a paper or in an email reflect it or not, the fact is that guests love Disney. They do not, however, define what Disney is. That is a job left to the people creating the entertainment.

I hope the following words will change your life in the same way that they have changed mine: "If you settle for less than excellence, that's exactly what you will get." - Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser.

A New Era

2009-05-04T22:43:00.004-04:00

Two recent developments have shown Foundations of Magic that there are still people within the organization that care, and that understand the original intention, far beyond the "One Disney" problem, and the false justification that the guests want "One Disney" wherever they go in the world.

What makes Disney themed entertainment so special? See below, and lets hope these men and their understanding can carry us through a difficult time of forced adaptation.

"And here is the view down Hollywood Boulevard towards the Chinese Theatre, which we think is a great icon. I liked this view a lot more when you could actually see it. With your support, we will bring it back!" - Bob Weis, original creative director, Disney-MGM Studio Tour (Walt Disney Imagineering).

"The easy part of Epcot is that you can do almost anything — and the hard part about Epcot is that you can do almost anything. I think it has to be more and more interactive. Guests want to be involved, they want to touch it, smell it and hear it. They want to do it together." - Dan Cockerell, recently given the Vice President title for Epcot.

Triumph of the American Imagination

2008-12-05T08:25:00.001-05:00

Today is the 107th anniversary of Walt Disney's birth.

Walt was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 5, 1901. Little did Elias and Flora Disney know at the time that their son would go on to redefine the fields of television, film, especially animation...and go on to create a new field of the entertainment industry...

The theme park.

Happy Birthday, Walt!

Foundations: Expedition Everest, the Legend of the Forbidden Mountain

2008-12-04T16:15:00.002-05:00

The attractions of today; in fact, everything done after 1967, when Pirates of the Caribbean finally opened its doors at Disneyland, follows similar models. There are notable exceptions (and not-so-notable ones, too). The Great Movie Ride operates on a similarly inherent contradiction, and employs basic narrative, but also relies on a plot that hangs heavy in the air, and is never resolved. Part of the reason not to include plot as a story-telling device is because in an experience versus a two-dimensional medium, resolution can be difficult.

Every major attraction, commonly referred to since The Matterhorn as “E-Ticket” attractions, follows similar methods to Pirates and Mansion. These were the pioneers in their forms, nearly a decade after Disneyland opened. The Jungle Cruise does some of these things, but the extent to which Montage, Contradiction, Surprise & Suspense and the power of narrative over plot are practiced is nowhere more apparent than in New Orleans Square at Disneyland.

The major attractions, up until the 1990s, followed suit with these ideas. A major return to form was made with Expedition Everest in the new millennium, but that attraction proved difficult due to its nature: a roller coaster is offered as a continuous experience, where a cut can be much harder to achieve, and far more terrifying for the riders.

This is one of the reasons Rock N' Roller Coaster is a very short experience, like the blast from Marty McFly's amplifier at the beginning of Back to the Future- we don't have the mechanics to stop, and if we did, we couldn't achieve the speed within such a confined, indoor space necessary to match the high adrenaline in the music.

Still: We approach a high mountain, at the far edge of a small, provincial Nepalese mountain town. In the town itself, contradiction helps tell the story. Generations and regions and traditions all clash and mingle within the architecture, where an internet café sits peacefully next to a gear shop, and a we travel through a traditional courtyard and follow it up with a gift shop, and then a museum. Finally, a Tea Train approaches (our contradiction). We have come to this mountain in search of the Yeti. We wish to see him, in his natural habitat. Brilliantly, the “plot”- the false front that the attraction puts to guests, provides another major contradiction. The “plot” here tells us we have come to climb Everest, and that the tea train will take us to Everest Base Camp.

Almost always, the "plot" is used as a false front in themed design, and often doubles as the hook. Mansion and Pirates are probably still the only attractions bold enough to operate without the pretense of a false front: from the beginning, we accept our reasons for being there. We know we are boarding a batteau that will carry us deep into the mischievous realm of the pirates, and we know our "Ghost Host" has brought his carriages to give us a tour of this strange, haunted mansion. These stories are rooted so firmly in the collective conscious that they need no further introduction.

At Everest, the subject matter is far less universal to its audience, and so the basic premiss must be derived from what our audience knows: they see a large mountain, purportedly the largest in the world, and expect that if they are invited into the area, they will in one way or another experience the climbing of said mountain because they know that this is the thing people do with large mountains.

We move first through a climbing shop, but we dispense with that idea rather quickly, and we find ourselves waiting the majority of the queue out inside a museum space dedicated to the Yeti. There is a little bit of Hitchcock in this attraction; the voyeurism, the cast (us) being interested in the wrong thing, and the other side giving in and offering us the chance to do something terrible (see the Yeti), which we view as being a “disruption” to our trip, though we (and they) all know, why we are really here is to see this Yeti.

We know this not because of our immediate connections with the Yeti or his legend upon first sight of the majestic mountain; (those are instead reserved for the "climbing" pre tense that draws our guests into the story), but we know this from the clever marketing. The bottom line is that in all great theme park attractions, something usually goes horribly wrong. We are confronted by some major apparition or monster or fear - and have to escape. We know this in the same way we know that if there is a mountain, chances are something related to climbing it will be explored.

Another attraction that uses this concept very well is Revenge of the Mummy at Universal Studios Florida. Here, we find ourselves along New York Street, and before us is the front of the Museum of Antiquities. This being a backlot, is it a film set? It is...but our immediate visual associations with the material provide our minds with the idea that this is a museum. We see Mummies in a museum. We don't expect them to be alive, and we don't expect them to attack us- yet the whole time, we know full well that this is a story in a theme park, and there is always something that goes wrong, because thats part of the fun- so, our subconcious mind validates the idea that there are mummies in the museum, and that the museum itself could be a film set based on the surrounding area and the structure of the story the park is telling, and we then accept that we know, in reality, what we are coming to see.

This suspension of disbelief, this willingness to believe that inside we will likely be menaced by a mummy or some other as-of-yet unseen force- is what drives us to want to experience a theme park and its "attractions". Its a unique form of storytelling where we aide the audience in every way we can to make the decision to believe, and yet at the last moment it is ultimately their own decision to do so.

The tea train is a contradiction because tea trains do not travel to high altitude. It’s not so much what they do not do as what we do not perceive them to do, and we do not perceive that trains can travel on Everest, because it is infinitely too high in our imaginations to accommodate trains- yet, here it is. This train will take us to Everest Base Camp, though we will be interrupted on the way by the fearsome growl of the creature. Notice how this moment always brings a smile to guests’ face, even though we all know its coming. We knew it the second we saw that foreboding mountain, and if not then, certainly when we entered the Yeti museum- not surprisingly the very last room of consequence in the waiting area before we board our tea train.

Now, we journey chronologically through the lowlands, up through a mountain monastery and into a high and icy mountain pass. Unlike Mansion and Pirates, Everest does not use montage to tell its story. The reason for this is that its constant forward motion cannot be denied: the ride system has been associated with moving forward from the beginning, where as in a fully controlled “dark” environment the system itself may move forward, but the viewpoint may move sideways (as in the library scene in Mansion) or even vertically (as in the final scene of Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland).

Although we follow a linear progression from the time we leave the station onward, the story itself- the moments that are being chosen for us to see- can utilize montage. Moving up the mountain pass, we are menaced by the destroyed track and the yeti’s growl, and the only way to go is backwards – and down. In moving backwards is not only a surprise, which is built by the suspense of not knowing where we are going to go, or what we are going to see- and down. Moving down makes sense; because we have reached the highest point that the track can reach, because the Yeti has destroyed the route to “Everest Base Camp”.

This is the moment when our minds place together those disparate elements we have been mulling since our approach: we are here to climb Everest, the tea train will take us to base camp, yet there is something strange happening in "them" showing us all of this Yeti-related information. If we hadn't put it together yet, now it will be impossible to ignore. This is the part the guests love, because it confirms what they wanted to see happen: We all traveled up that mountain wanting to see this creature, wanting to experience the raw power of nature, and now we may just get that chance.

The tea train catapults backwards in the dark- it seems to have become a runaway train. Here is another small element that separates Everest’s narrative from its plot. Once we leave the station, the plot of us traveling to base camp is no longer pursued. One device that may have bordered on a plot point would have been the idea of a driver.

This train, apparently, is automated. How did it get that way? Is it possible to fold this kind of complicated automation into such old technology? If not, then do we have a driver at the beginning? If so, does that driver abandon us high on the mountain after seeing the twisted remains of the track to base camp, and why do we not see or hear this happening? Because it is a detail that is not important to the scene. What is vital is, we are as high as we can go. We know that the train cannot come back down the way it has come up, because from the ground the ascent and descent moments are visible to everyone passing by in Anandapur.

So, we all know that the train must be able to escape somehow, or else the forward motion of this narrative would be impacted. Just as when a slightly too logical person asks of a character in a film why he or she did not choose a particular action, the unavoidable answer comes up: “There wouldn’t have been a film.”

In this case, if we did not know that the train would and must continue to move, “there would not have been an attraction.”

So, Everest is full of inherent contradictions. The next moments in the attraction use montage in terms of the story, but not in terms of the physical movement like Pirates and Mansion. Here, we come to a stop in a dark cavern, and in front of us the shadow of the Yeti rips apart another length of track and lets out a menacing howl.

We find ourselves outside the mountain and then back inside very quickly. The tunnels of the first (backwards) drop are pitch black, while after our second encounter with the Yeti, there is light, and we can see the narrowness of the icy caverns twisting all around us as we fly down through them.

Here, the use of lighting to tell the story and partially confuse the audience is the illusion that has been chosen.

Because we begin our journey in the shade, move into sunlight, into brighter sunlight and then into pitch black after we first hear the Yeti, then into a minimally lit environment in the second show scene where the Yeti rips apart another length of track, and into broad daylight, we have covered a wide variety of lighting setups that match our emotions for each of those moments. The pitch-black backward moments are exactly how me might feel after an encounter with the Yeti- or just the sound of him, echoing off the ice. The daylight after the shadow scene is our moment of escape, the Yeti growling menacingly behind us, we must move forward into the light.

But the mountain has other ideas- just when we have reached the lit safety of the ground; we are twisted back up into the darkness. This time, we are given some light, but it only reveals the extremely narrow and twisting tunnels our tea train is navigating.

This subconsciously tells us that we are not finished- that there must be another encounter of some kind up ahead, less why would we need to move back into the mountain, the darkness, the tunnel? We wouldn’t, unless we are going to see the thing we have really come to see, in full, for the first time.

With so much time in Everest’s preshow dedicated to putting the Yeti into our minds, it would be treason for him not to be revealed. The “story” of Everest- the point of making the attraction, much as making a film, is that the Yeti is not a creature to be feared. He is the protector of these lands, protecting them from us- for the first time in a Disney attraction, mankind becomes the enemy. We interpret the Yeti as frightening because we cannot possibly understand him, and we fear that which we do not understand.

This ideal is the through-line of our experience. We go to Pirates of the Caribbean because we want to see pirates and have an adventure. We visit the Haunted Mansion because we seek ghosts. We board our tea trains because we want to see the Yeti, but also because we know we should not. We know that the tea train is polluting the Yeti’s environment, and we know that the reason he is angry is not because he is a blood thirsty beast, but because we have ventured onto the sacred heights of the world’s highest mountain and its neighboring peaks- the land that he protects in traditional Nepalese folklore.

We know the tea train is “polluting” because of the all-to-important puffs of steam it emits when it cycles back into the station. The steam serves as the “Fire & Water” element- the train, remember, in our psyches, should not be taking us to base camp, because trains cannot do such things- but there is the steam, to prove to us its reality. The steam serves a dual purpose as the “Fire & Water” and evidence of the contradictory statement- that we are threatening the Yeti’s sacred lands in order to catch a glimpse of him.

Now, finally, we see him: he is massive and terrifying, lit like a monster in a horror film. This is yet another contradiction, since we are being told he is the “protector” of the highlands, but he is shown to us here exactly the way we want to see him: as a monster, as a giant and terrifying beast attacking something he cannot understand, where we are really the ones not understanding him.

His overall appearance, especially his fur, is another piece of fire & water. Animals have fur. Yetis are not real, just as pirates are not real, yet here is one with real fur! Pirates are not real, yet here is one spitting water, or with hairs on his leg that appear very real. Ghosts are not real, yet here is one actually seated next to us.

Our encounter with the Yeti is brief, but does him justice because he is gigantic and very close. The same reason that the dinosaurs in Animal Kingdom’s other “E” Ticket attraction appear so frightening and realistic is taken in similar approach here. The dinosaurs and the Yeti are both viewed for a very brief time, like a flash memory or an image from a dream or nightmare, and both are massive creatures.

Another element that proves vital to Expedition Everest is an idea we haven’t discussed much, and that is the Surprise and Suspense element of design. Everest, time and again, builds suspense with situations and movement and then offers us surprise as to the solution. Most of the time, we are put in peril and the surprise is how we are removed from that peril. We find ourselves without a place to ascend. The Yeti’s sounds are all around us, and he may appear over the rise at any moment. Where are we to go? Backwards, and down. It seems improbable, but that is usually the solution.

It’s the one thing we don’t want the train to do- indeed, it cannot do, because this is a roller coaster, and those (our subconscious is screaming) can only move forward! Wrong. Typically, the surprise element is the one thing we have dismissed as entirely impossible, because our minds tend to impress logical and physical limitations of time and space and gravity on such things as thrill rides or themed entertainments.

In his wonderful and bible-like "Designing Disney", Imagineer extraordinaire John Hench discusses the danger of contradiction. When I talk about the "Inherent Contradictions" present in many of the modes of themed design that allow our story to move forward, its not exactly the same kind of contradiction. Hench talks about the Long Shot, and how the close-up (the details) must never betray what our guests experience in the long shot (the big picture). An inherent contradiction might better be described as "our brains taking a right where in normal, everyday life we might take a left". These are the flourishes, often in major experiences the modes of transportation, that enhance the reality our guests have come to experience. These are the carriages moving through the houses, the batteau departing from a quiet bayou and suddenly finding itself in the middle of a pirate showdown- these are the contradictory statements that we as designers work so hard to make real.

If we can make them believe that the carriage is really traveling through the mansion, we have achieved our goals, and their reality has been enhanced. Now, if we can tell a great story that people can relate to within that frame, we've achieved a part- albeit a very small part- of the Disney Magic.

This is the beauty of Expedition Everest: The Legend of the Forbidden Mountain. This is an experience in the grand, narrative tradition of Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion. We have a false front that draws us into the experience, we have a menacing character study that is at once mysterious and powerful, natural and yet removed, and we have a mode of transportation that is inherently impossible and yet it exists before our eyes- and we end on "ah" (that is to say, an open note, which allows guests to question the experience much as we might question a dream).

We question the ghosts in the mansion because as we exit we are confronted with a series of silent crypts. We question the pirates because we have returned to the above-ground world where we started, in the quiet, pirate-free bayou. We question the Yeti because we saw him so briefly, and this is what draws us back: we have a desire to see and experience these things again not only for their value as pieces of entertainment, but because we want to know if we really, truly saw these things that cannot possibly exist.

Next on Foundations:

Editors Note

2008-12-04T16:05:00.002-05:00

**Editor's Note: Please remember that none of the information posted on this site is in any way related to the actual process of story development used at Walt Disney Imagineering. While the "Foundations" series of articles and others here may contain information that is accurate, they may also contain information as viewed from the perspective of me alone.

That is to say, these are only interpretations of the story designs. They are not, and are not intended to be, the actual, "official" manuscripts about the rides, shows and attractions featured here.**

Foundations: Pirates of the Caribbean

2008-12-02T21:00:00.016-05:00

If The Haunted Mansion is archetypal in its themed design, and it set the standard for the themed show, then Pirates of the Caribbean was that in a more common, understandable form.

We enter what looks from the outside like a wax museum- an unassuming structure on the outside, set in the center of the road from Adventureland to New Orleans Square, and boldly announcing that guests are about to enter a new story environment, far different from the last one they encountered. Since the last element of Adventureland is the treehouse, there is a psychological connection made with a point of lookout, in this case over the Rivers of America. There are certain things in America that are associated with water- namely, boats, ships and all manner of mariners and seafarers, including pirates.

This house is situated in a way that not only overlooks the river, but it also could have been a manor house or governor's mansion in its previous life.

The building resembles a museum because that was exactly what it was intended to be. On one end of New Orleans Square, we have a Haunted Mansion, a giant, gothic structure pristine on the outside, but certainly amiss on the interior. Here, we have a building that boldly announces its intentions, but relates thematically to the Mansion because both present false fronts: Inside Pirates’ façade, we will find not a wax museum nor a provincial manor house, but the embarkation point of a live bayou.

Inside the Mansion, we will find not a charming gothic dinner party, but a haunted house filled with references that never pay off- so the theme of the false front is very important to New Orleans Square, a feature that was more or less irrellevant after Walt Disney learned what he did at the World’s Fair of 1964 and 1965.

Inside, we find ourselves immediately in belief of our surroundings. We are deep in a bayou, though we have just come from a quaint New Orleans riverfront sidewalk, and we are also stepping constantly back in time. The riverboats that take us into the bayou are old-fashioned enough, but unassuming. They lead us past fireflies and a shack where a banjo player picks “Deliverance” on his strings. We wind into what appears to be a back-street (Claude Coat’s concept of anonymous background really shines in the final scene before the first waterfall), and here we are presented with yet another shining contradiction.

A decorative skull, hung above a pitch-black archway, begins to speak directly to us. Until this point, the environment we have encountered within the show building has been seamless- now, there is something amiss. The skull serves much the same purpose as the narration in The Haunted Mansion, and combines the narration with the use of the fading portrait; however, where the Mansion sets up our journey through audio only, Pirates uses visual elements and audio to explain, in a thesis statement moment, what is about to occur.

Because of the lighting in this scene, the skull is a focal point that fades away into either blackness or the anonymity of brick surroundings, and we are focused intently on the piece and what it is telling us. These subtle methods of directing our attention have not been adhered to in later attractions there is an impression that the public cannot pay attention to anything that does not demand it. What must be given its due credit is that the skull IS demanding our attention: we simply are not aware that it is doing so, because we are being tricked by the lighting. If we only could pay attention to demanding sets and themes, guests today would not believe they are in the bayou after stepping THROUGH what was essentially an Eisensteinian cut- from a New Orleans sidewalk directly into the Bayou.

Montage has been prevalent in entertainment for so long that it has literally become our second nature, and we no longer notice it. That does not mean we are not paying attention to it, or affected by it being there- we simply accept it as normal and move on.

Down the waterfall we go, and we find ourselves in what amounts to the overture of the attraction. The montage effect shines in the caverns because we are being shown the aftermath of what we are about to experience. Here are the mounds of treasure and the skeletons of the pirates- the aftermath, indeed, of the sacking of the town, so that now we are effectively traveling backwards in time.

Davy Jones is a character invented entirely for cinematic purposes, but actually fits quite well into the structure of the attraction. He is timeless, because he is undead, and has survived an unspecified number of years waiting for his bride to return to him.

He appears in the caverns to tell us that, in fact, Dead Men DO tell tales, which is both in contradiction with what we have just seen in the caverns (the skeletons, NOT telling tales, but being dead) and in tune with what we are seeing because if we are moving backwards through time, then someone must be telling us that tale. That’s what stories do, isn’t it? The thesis of the attraction is that we are seeking “Salty Old Pirates”- the alive or dead piece of the puzzle going unspecified.

Now, we find ourselves in a terrible hurricane. Perhaps the thing that laid the pirates into the treasure caves where they expired, we now see a previous scene in reverse order: perfect anti-chronological montage.

For now, we will skip over a few “scenes” and immerse ourselves directly into a pirate battle, where, apparently, Barbossa is looking for Captain Jack. Not only do we move from the thematic ending to the story, we also jump back physically to the outskirts of the town. This is not a setting we have seen before, but it is one that must exist within the context of the story to give it an anchor.

Plot and story must be kept separate. When we use the word “story” in the context of themed entertainment, we refer to three things: Montage (Eisenstein), Surprise and Suspense (Hitchcock) and visual elements strung together with a common theme (John Ford). Combining these things with a basic through-line will give us our “story” in the context of themed design.

So, in order to anchor our story, our narrative structure, we need this physical place. The Mansion provides its own, because the structure it is housed in contains nearly the entire attraction and its narrative.

Pirates could not contain anything, because the building was designed to house an attraction that was modified heavily from its original intentions. Therefore, within the environment, we must allow several locations to act as coat hangars- places we can string along our narrative. This is where the believability factor really starts to play a key role.

We have come to see pirates. To see them, we must understand that they are no longer alive, and therefore must journey backwards to find them. We must “drop down” into their world, and once we are there, we are absorbed by a typical pirate event: the ransacking of a town. The archetype that makes everyone understand what is happening is the logic of the ransacking in a totally illogical sequence of events.

At home, to get to the kitchen we must walk through the dining room. To get to the dining room, we must enter the house. To enter the house, we must walk up the driveway and through the front door. These are logical sequences of events so built into our lives that we no longer consider them for any length of time.

In a themed environment, we have the ability, much as in film, to move from seemingly unconnected places and events to other places and totally different events without ever feeling as though we have been cheated of something in between. The audience only knows what we give them, and our minds, due to the conditioning of years and years of logical sequences and events fill in the gaps. That was why Claude Coates wanted to fill The Haunted Mansion with all that black nothingness. Our minds hold the possibility of all things, as does all that blackness, and just as with scene transitions in films, we are able to instantly fill in the gaps in a sequence. Because this feels natural to us, we believe that the experiences offered in a designed environment are only presented as linear- certainly they seem that way- but they cannot be linear.

Linear events are also held down by time: we know that pirates and ghosts do not exist in the world we occupy. Because subconsciously we associate linear forms with reality, these things cannot exist within reality, and neither can linear forms. If we started our boat journey at the edge of town and moved into the fort and saw a linear progression of scenes presented as chronological moments in time, we would not only be bored but we would be unable to comprehend what was happening. Here was reality, like a documentary in filmmaking terms, but pirates do not exist in reality.

Though our minds are powerful enough to grasp that we are seeing this happening and its not real, because its in a theme park, the upshot would be us not enjoying the experience for reasons we couldn’t understand, but that our subconscious could not place together into a montage of images. This is the essence of the themed design: we occupy a space but move through it as freely as a film that uses montage.

So, if you think of five places you would expect to find pirates (When they existed), perhaps you would come to similar conclusions: A Bay outside a Spanish town, the bayou, mysterious caverns, a prison and a treasure room. Each of these locations then serves a different thematic purpose within the context of the show, but the narrative structure is similar to that of the Mansion. The main difference being that the latter begins outside, while the narrative of pirates itself begins as soon as we have boarded our vessel.

We float through a bayou, expecting and wanting to see pirates. It seems the place itself has become aware of our intentions, and offers us the chance we seek in the form of a talking skull. We plunge into a dead man’s cavern, filled with pirate treasure and skeletons of passed seafarers. We are informed by Davy Jones that Dead Men DO tell tales, which is of course what we have come to see.

Next, we find ourselves in a bay- that promise immediately fulfilled (Pirates do not exist any longer. Here are pirates!), and the scalliwags are ransacking the town, apparently in search of Captain Jack Sparrow and “the key”- our MacGuffin. The pirates grow increasingly upset and end up burning the town- a tremendous contradiction because they may have burned the key. The surprise is that like the pirates, they key is already in the jail. If they had been more noble and attempted to expunge their own from the cells, they may have found what they wanted.

Now, there is a scene in which the abbreviated Walt Disney World version (more on that momentarily) lacks entirely, but is exceedingly vital in context. The pirates move to the distillery, and engage in a heated gun battle in which we are placed directly in the center. This scene is vital because, much as the hitchhiking ghosts in the mansion, there has yet to be a payoff to the never-ending succession of the narration.

So, we come wanting to see Pirates, we see pirates, and then the pirates place us directly in the center of a battle. The fact that these pirates may or may not have escaped from the prison and the first thing they wanted was rum, while the pirates ransacking the town were so full of rum that they only wanted the key, which was subsequently in the jail with the pirates that wanted the rum- is a wonderful circular gag.

Now, using our montage, we make a jump to a possibly related event: Captain Jack in the treasure room. Now, did the key unlock the treasure room? Or was the key to a box that contained the treasure and Jack has gone off to find it with the key? Are there, in fact, two separate keys: one that Jack holds, with the treasure map, and the other with the dog in the jail*? We may never know, because all are irrelevant. What matters is that the succession has paid off: Captain Jack has gotten the treasure. There is an ironic twist here, too, in that we have already seen what happens to similar treasure rooms, and the visuals from the caverns and the final scene now connect in our minds to form a circle. Jack may have his treasure, but for the narrative to continue endlessly, he must die, in order for there to be a cavern, where dead men like him tell tales, so that the tale of his finding the treasure can be told, so that he can die, and on and on forever.

*In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, the dog actually holds the key in its mouth to the Pirata Codex, being the code of the pirates. Its an interesting though unanswered connection that the reason the pirates may want the key is not to unlock the cell, but to open the book and prove their innocence using the law that they have come to despise due to the actions of the enemy.

And so the narrative of Pirates weaves its web. We are moved with montage through the story in reverse, first seeing the aftermath of the events we will witness later, and the ending actually is the beginning, so that the black space between the end and start of the attraction holds all the answers, much as the void of the mansion holds its answers.

It is interesting to note that between the beginning of the attraction and its end in the original Disneyland version of the show, we actually are given a physical object that does, indeed, hold the answers: a treasure map. This is also the first actual show piece in the attraction, viewed as guests are entering the indoor queue area, which is also the last piece we see.

The metaphoric value of the treasure map is two fold: The first and last image of the attraction are the same, but we see it as the last piece with new knowledge and new experience. This, in many ways, is what prepares us for the next experience within the narrative structure of the entire park: we see an object, experience a story and then see the same object again but with its meaning changed.

The second value of the treasure map is the image itself: what would a pirate story be without one?

Pirates and The Mansion hold the keys to designing such experiences. Interestingly, both play on archetypes of America, which is what Disneyland is really about, and that both employ the same basics as any carnival spookhouse: Come! See the ghosts! Come! See real pirates!

The hook that so many search for in vein is that these radical visions actually exist inside each of the attractions, and that you can actually see them. What isn’t revealed is that you are going to be put through a narrative, much like watching a film, and then you will interact with the very elements you have come to see.

The methods of motion are also vitally important. While it wouldn’t make too much sense to put the mansion on the water or pirates on an omni-mover, it makes sense that both are constant flowing motion-based feelings, and that both have the ability to direct your attention wherever they see fit.

The idea of contradiction is also apparent in both The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean- and it is what drives our narratives in place of a traditional “plot”, as would be found in film. The contradiction in Pirates being that pirates do not exist any longer- to our child’s mind, they are much as dinosaurs. They are relics of a past long forgotten, and yet here they are, right there in front of us. Some show elements- the water being spit out by the magistrate in the first scene after we enter the town, and the fire during the ransacking- are there because without them, we might believe that we are seeing an illusion. These elements bring us back to the reality of the scene- fire and water, no matter what else is happening around them, are elements and are therefore perceived by us as real regardless of the context.

In The Haunted Mansion, the idea of ghosts strikes us much the same as pirates. A skeptic might scoff “Sure, but no one has actually seen a ghost”. True, they have not. They have not seen a dinosaur, a pirate, a ghost, a concert put on by Mickey Mouse, or the inside of a spaceship- yet all of these things, thanks to techniques brought from the cinema, are there and available for us to see. The Mansion’s “Fire & Water” is the house itself: we are all immediately familiar with it, because we understand the idea of an old house as an archetype on the cultural level. We get that the house is real, because it appears real: the set designers have designed it to appear to be a real old house, and (next door) a real Spanish-colonial styled village, or a real cavern, or a real jail of the period. What happens inside leaves room for the fantastic, because if we believe the setting, we can more easily place the events there, no matter how fantastic.

The set design is, in itself, a massive contradiction: WHY on Earth would be believe that ghosts would occupy a house simply due to its appearance or its purported age? Because stories about just such places have become ingrained in our very DNA. The contradiction in place of plot is what drives our story forward through each section of the narrative within these settings.

We come expecting to see Pirates, but pirates do not exist- so, we must travel backwards (by way of a waterborne vessel, which can only travel forwards with the current of the water) to find the pirates. We are moving forward, with the current, but backwards in the sense of time and story. We are riding inside a complete contradiction of natural laws, and yet there it is before us. The idea of elements confirms the contradiction: “But, there’s fire and water there, so it must be real!”, we shout, though the entire thing is nothing more than an illusion, just like all of entertainment.

Walt Disney liked his guests. John Hench, often called the “guru of Disney Design”, remarked, “Liking the guests is the key to everything we do.” Because of the somewhat frightening nature of the pirates show, there was another element that the designers wove into the web of story in order to soften the idea of traveling back in time to witness something as frightening as the sacking of the town.

The treasure, we are told from the very beginning of our experience, is cursed. For some reason, the pirates that have sailed these treacherous waters before us have not made it out, where we pass by. We are observers to their participation, although we are participating ourselves (floating through the middle of the battle between Barbossa’s Wicked Wench and the fort). We are told three times that the treasure is cursed, first upon our entry to the bayou (in the queue, on the sandbar), secondly by the visuals in the ghostly grottos and third (and through audio) in the transition tunnel before the waterfall.
By including all these warnings of cursed treasure, we gain an advantage: Walt and his talented designers have given us information the pirates we are about to see are not yet privy to. They are after the treasure, which (we know, but they do not) will ultimately lead to their demise. It makes us fun for the guests to watch, as the show progresses, the pirates coming increasingly closer to their watery graves- and we have already witnessed their fates. This is perhaps the element that moves the show from merely entertaining to real fun.

The Mansion offers a similar contradiction: We move through a house onboard a carriage? *

*At Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, the narration of Paul Frees as the Ghost Host makes it apparent that the “Doom Buggies” are “Carriages”, approaching “To take us into the boundless realm of the supernatural”. At the Magic Kingdom Park in Florida, no such mention is made, and thus the contradiction must become apparent without aide from the attraction itself.

That is impossible, or at the least a very rare occurrence, and yet here it is, happening, not around us, but actually involving us in it!

In this way, the movement itself- the actual method of transportation- becomes the thing that moves us forward through the story, at once a practical solution to hourly capacity for these major-draw attractions and an indispensable story device!

The idea of the contradiction in these thesis shows is perhaps better titled an “opposite conclusion.” Where reality would make a left, Disneyland makes a right, and combines things that the logical mind would dismiss as being uncombinable. In short, Imagineers often make the “opposite conclusion” of what their logical minds would tell them to do, thus providing a unique experience through allowing the viewer to think as though in a fantasy, or, as it is commonly referred to, “through the eyes of a child.”

A New Foundation

2008-11-05T00:47:00.002-05:00

For eight years, we've experienced an old way. We've experienced changes in America- mostly for the worst- that were put in place because of tradition, because of extremism, because of hate and anger and fear.

The foundations have changed. Barack Obama has been elected the 44th president of the United States of America.

We fear that which we do not understand. Before this victory, there was no more We. There was no more America. There was a nation balanced delicately on the edge of fear- leaning over the precipice, staring at the end of the future. The end of optimism, the end of hope- the end of us thinking together, as a people, to build a better tomorrow.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with Foundations of Magic?

When you look at the simple, clean line - the arc of Spaceship Earth, the track of the Monorail running towards a place where we can explore and share together the concept of Tomorrow- it becomes instantly apparent that Barack Obama is a leader who understands THE FUTURE of America- much as Walt Disney understood the future of entertainment.

This, my friends, is a new foundation, by someone who understands the future of this country. This is everything we've always been about at The Walt Disney Company. This is optimism, a look to technology, to the future- the return of hope and change and all those forward thinking notions that Walt Disney and his animators, his Imagineers, his business leaders put into the national consciousness subconsciously with the creation of Disneyland.

For the first time in the history of the world, we are a country that is truly networked, online and, most importantly, got young people involved in the future of their country.

When EPCOT Center opened in 1982, the marketing campaigns advertised it with the slogan "The 21st Century Begins, October 21st, 1982."

It's hard not to feel this same kind of optimism as a new leader takes the reigns of the greatest country in the world with a rallying cry you simply cannot ignore:

Yes We Can.

This feels like America again.

Foundations: The Haunted Mansion

2008-10-31T15:32:00.001-04:00

Perhaps it is possible to view The Walt Disney Company's achievements in themed entertainment as simply accomplishments in the realm of family fun. If there is no underlying structure, there can be no way of studying the art form in any cohesive, information retaining manner except to observe- but the nature of observing a place or activity is that our minds begin to develop patterns and assign meaning to things.

Because there is no school to study Themed Entertainment Design, we as students of the form must look to other avenues to learn: we must read books, we must talk to the people who are still around (there are a few) and study the actual works (i.e. rides, shows and attractions) that the masters have left behind (there are perhaps fewer).

When a guest visits a space- any space- created by "story designers"- many things happen to them emotionally that cannot be fully explained except by experiencing those same emotions. I use the term "Story Designer" to encompass Imagineers of all trades, because they all design within a framework of story- and those designers who do not work for Imagineering are also included in that term, because they- Universal Creative, Universal Entertainment, Walt Disney Entertainment Design and Anheuser-Busch all design places with story. The art form only originated at Walt Disney Imagineering, but has continued to grow by leaps and bounds at other institutions across the world.

Top: Sam McKim concept painting of The Haunted Mansion for Disneyland.

Above: This sign appeared outside the attraction in the years between ground breaking and the opening. Text by Marty Sklar.

The Haunted Mansion

We enter an old, immaculate mansion on the outskirts of a booming colonial village. The grounds are kept immaculately, but the gravestones are very close to the front door. Immediately upon entering, we are witness to supernatural activities. A portrait in the antechamber ages before our very eyes, in a way allowing us to simultaneously see the past and the future of this place.
An apparition- or rather, the voice of an unseen presence, guides us into a doorless chamber. The room physically grows to occupy more space than seems possible, and we are taken deep inside the mansion, where we are informed that there is no way now to turn back without experiencing what lies ahead. A plethora of carriages approaches to take us further into the mansion, seeming to emerge from a black void, which holds endless possibilities.

At first, the spirits seem weary. They do not show themselves directly, though they watch us with distanced eyes. A hallway of “portraits” watches our vehicles as they pass beneath, and the ghostwriters in the library are interested, too. The ghosts show us their footsteps, indicating their movement, and then the wallpaper itself seems to watch. An eerie candelabra floats into our sight from time to time, seeming to follow us through the mansion, devoid of an owner.
In the parlor, a newly arrived corpse attempts to pry open his coffin. He is there perhaps as a gesture from the ghosts? From them to us, to say, hey, he’s new here too, and perhaps you can adjust together? Or is it one of them, disguised, yet another watching form, as they observe us?

Regardless, they soon lose their interest, but they deem it okay for us to continue. We are soon enough witness to an ill-advised séance, conducted by the medium called Madame Leota, and she summons the spirits to us directly, asking them to appear.

Our ghost host leaves us, explaining that the spirits are “assembling for a swinging wake”, and that he is expected. Only at this point do the spirits fully materialize, though we aren’t sure if we are being put on or if we are actually seeing a haunting. However, something is amiss. From the ballroom, where we nearly come to fully believe the sights before our eyes, without our tour guide we end up wandering into the attic of the old mansion.
Here, the still-beating heart of a bride gets louder and louder as we twist and turn through the piles of old cobwebbed junk, and the portraits build up to the bride herself- the payoff being that she is still there, happy and hoarding her riches, having cut off each of her husband’s heads.

From there, the only choice we have is to move out onto the roof of the house. Behind the mansion, in the forest, a graveyard has come to life. The spirits appear to be fleeing. Staring in wonder, we stumble off the roof. Below, the only human character in the attraction, the groundskeeper, watches in horror as the spirits hold their jamboree. The entire reason we were allowed to enter the house, and the reason the ghost host was able to escort us in as far as he was, is perhaps that the groundskeeper has been standing here mortified the entire time, maybe even for years, and was thus absent long enough to permit our entry or stop us from venturing deeper. Though he knew the house was haunted, he has clearly never seen the spirits themselves until this moment, and his young age also suggests that perhaps his fear stems from being new to the job.
We move through the graveyard, which has an entirely different tone than the scenes inside the house- now, not only are we seeing the spirits, but we are engaging with them. In the ballroom, they played much as a scene from a film- in front of us, for our enjoyment. Here, they seem to be in the middle of a much more personal affair. The ghosts are partying for their own sake, and not to see us amused, though the same effect they had on us in the ballroom and in the attic, they are also having here on the groundskeeper.

An important note here is that we also return to the musical thesis of the attraction- as if the spooks had planned this moment from the beginning, but were unsure if we could be trusted until Madame Leota, the wise old disembodied head/medium that occupies the dark void of the attic, agreed that we could be and summoned the spirits to appear for us- presuming, apparently, that the spirits are what we had come to see.
Our ghost host catches up to us only at the tail end of the graveyard scene, where the reappearance of a central object- much as with the candelabra, but this time a crow- allows for the final transition into the payoff of the entire attraction.
Our host reminds us, essentially, that there are still ghosts who either don’t like it here very much, or have unfinished business in the real world, and are thus trying to hitchhike out of their “ghostly retreat”. He mentions that the spirits, looking for more ghosts to fill up the mansion, have selected us, his (perhaps) accidental tour guests, to fill the “quota”. It is unclear whether they hitchhike with the intent of leaving the house themselves or the intent of keeping us in the house with them, but what is clear is that a part of the mansion will “follow you home”. If this is an attempt to bring us back to the mansion or a more selfish motive is present is also left to us to decide.

In another contradictory situation, what is said to be a younger version of “Leota” beckons to us from high in a crypt, where she reminds us that we must bring our death certificates if we decide to retire to the mansion. The “little leota” seems less pushy than the hitchhiking ghosts, but nonetheless seems to genuinely want for us to remain at the mansion. Our host then makes the final and most contradictory notion of all by raising the safety bar and asking us to watch our step as we leave the attraction.

This line is delivered with a certain fleeting tone: does the Ghost Host really not want to allow us to leave, or is he trying to save us from remaining in the house? Is he himself one of the hitchhiking ghosts?

All of these and many more questions go unanswered, because The Haunted Mansion is the antithesis of attraction design. It offers no answers, only raises questions, only gives snippets of archetypal imagery and flashes of things from our past and collective memory, and follows only a loosely undulating narrative. It has no story, only events tied together by theme. Like a John Ford western, the events form the theme of the story, but avoid plot and all the things that come associated with it.

The theme then plays out to its natural (some have said “mathematical”) conclusion: in essence, we come expecting to see ghosts, to be afraid. The ghosts are afraid of us, but once they learn to trust us, they show themselves, so we see them. Then, having seen them, our meeting having been completed, some of them invite us to stay while others attempt to follow us home.
The through-line is, of course, the experience we expect when we arrive.

Though we expect to see ghosts, and to be taken deep into the frightening mansion, we do not expect that they will interact with us directly in the final scene. It is this element of surprise, present throughout the Mansion and many other great attractions, that ties together seemingly random images and events into a cohesive “story”. We use the word “story” because there is no term better, though it isn’t story telling as much as it is narrative structure being placed upon a series of images.

Basically, its Eisenstein meets John Ford before Eisenstein’s theory became “corrupted” by story itself.

The narrative structure of the mansion is a catch 22 because it isn't important to your average guest- atleast that is what the suits will tell you. The reason is, because the average guest doesn't know that they are experiencing a story environment. The most important case in point for this argument, though, is Disney's California Adventure. During its construction, the attitude became apparent among the creative leadership that the park didn't need to tell a cohesive story.

Now, almost ten years after the fact, the 1.2 Billion dollar "Re-Imagineering" project should pretty well answer the question: Don't expect the average guest to praise your efforts and call your attractions "magnificent examples of storytelling"...but if you don't provide them with a quality experience, they will speak up about it, and you may find yourself pulling a DCA.

In short, our audience may not understand the technical grammar of the experience- but if we as story designers fail to understand it, and fail to implement it, we will fail to provide them an experience that will be remembered as meaningful.

"You know, since we're born, the first thing we fight for in life is that feeling of being alive -- and it's the last thing, too. We never want to give up that experience of being alive. This is the secret of Disneyland: Everywhere in the park, it's like a pat in the back telling you: "You're okay. Life is good." - John Hench.

"Which way does one....Go?"

2008-10-08T01:09:00.001-04:00

So, you want to be an Imagineer.

Like Alice, its a journey down the rabbit hole. It takes a long, long, long time.

Where do you start?

The only answer is, you have to teach yourself. You have to experience it every single day and look and study and listen in the actual places that are the result of the talent and hard work of the many who have come before.

And trust me, there are going to be some Chesire Cats in this forest. More than a few.

Roots of the Future

2008-10-01T00:01:00.006-04:00

If we look back at the global concept of "the future" throughout the last century in America, we will likely find that Spaceship Earth is not the only part of EPCOT tied implicitly to the ideologies of the World's Fair.

In the 1939/1940 New York World's Fair, we find the roots for the entire concept of EPCOT center. Here, the fair had the unique attribute of being "themed", and the "theme" was strikingly similar to that of Future World: "Building the World of Tomorrow".

The icons for this momentous occasion were none other than the Trylon & Perisphere, designed by Wallace Harrison (exterior) and Henry Dreyfuss (interior show, called "Democracity"). This giant white spike and accompanying globe stood where the Unisphere has stood since the 1964/65 World's Fair, in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, New York.

Before Spaceship Earth started taking travelers through the pre-modern futuristic concepts provided by Ray Bradbury and Buckminster Fuller, the Democracity exhibit and the striking image of the Trylon & Perisphere provided the basis for the concept of a space- be that space a city or not- that provided guests and visitors with a view of what the future would actually be like.

The Unisphere, Icon of the 1964/65 World's Fair.

It's strange today just how transparent the history of the 1939 fair has become. The Trylon stood at a magnificent 700 feet tall, the Perisphere 200 feet, and the fair itself ended its second season with attendance levels topping 25 million people from April 1939 until October 1939, and from April 1940 until October of that year.

If you do the math, thats a total of 12 months. In contrast, today's Epcot takes in between 12 and 16 million guests a year.

In the New York World's Fairs, we see many of the concepts that would later shape EPCOT Center (the theme park) begin to develop.

The 1939 fair featured "zones" (lands, anyone?) fifteen years before Disneyland was a reflection in Walt Disney's eye. The zones featured themes of their own, all of which related back to the central idea of "Building the World of Tomorrow". In the transportation zone, guests could experience "Futurama", an attraction designed by a Hollywood set designer named Norman Bel Geddes. Guests traveled in seats suspended from the ceiling that took them through a series of miniatures depicting the cities of the future, and specifically their options for transportation.

As the show progressed, the models got larger and larger until guests found themselves in a full sized city block with automobiles whirring around them. And to think, all of this preceeded World of Motion by just over 40 years!

Now, none of this is to take away from the credibility or creative ingenuity of EPCOT's talented team of designers. They were the ones who organized these ideas into a cohesive whole- and the ones who took the concepts presented at the fair forty years earlier as essentially a very expensive science fair, and made them fun and family-friendly.

EPCOT was and is the single most innovative concept that exists in themed entertainment today, and we cannot thank Wallace Harrison, Henry Dreyfuss, Buckminster Fuller or even Ray Bradbury for that.

But we can thank them for presenting the first physical place that provided an optimistic view of the future and caused the public to take an interest in Building the World of Tomorrow.

26 years ago today, The Walt Disney Company opened the doors of EPCOT Center and changed the way we view a Disney themed show or experience forever.

While some of the changes have been positive and others have not been in the best interest of Epcot, we can thank Robert Moses, Buckminster Fuller, Ray Bradbury, Wallace Harrison, Henry Dreyfuss, Gilmore D. Clarke, Walt Disney, John Hench, Marty Sklar, Rick Rothschild, Barry Braverman, Tony Baxter, Marc Davis, Bob Zalk, Eric Goodman, Ken Neville and the many other talented and passionate people that have been building the world of tomorrow since before we could imagine the year 1982.

Happy 26th Anniversary, EPCOT.

We've Just Begun to Dream.

"Fun For All, And All for Fun!"

2008-09-25T02:15:00.001-04:00

It was a surreal experience to stand at the bar in the former Fireworks Factory this evening and watch an eclectic mixture of absurdly uninformed tourists and tearful locals and cast members perform the Cha Cha Cha Slide one last time on the dance floor.

Tonight marks the beginning of the final push for Pleasure Island. The final night of operation for this piece of Disney history will be this coming Saturday, September 27, 2008.

More than the executives taking away free nighttime, adult entertainment for thousands of cast members, and more than the pain felt by many WDW passholders and repeat visitors that have enjoyed the island for many years, its what is coming to replace Merriweather Pleasure's paradise that hurts the most.

It's the fact that we're losing another piece- perhaps one of the final pieces- of Walt Disney World that made the property so unique for so many years. If they no longer have the edge, its because The Walt Disney Company makes constant decisions to provide more of the same for the guest.

Downtown Disney Vice President Kevin Lansberry during the press conference to announce the closure and "Re-Imagineering" of Pleasure Island.

It is into this graveyard pit of despair called Jay Rasulo's "Global Initiative" that Pleasure Island's fate has fallen. The only words that can describe this latest in a long chain of despairing decisions are the following:

"If the guests don't understand the story, then it is not their fault. It is our fault because we have not told the story clearly."

And perhaps the only other thought that still counts comes from Pleasure Island's original Show Concept:

"Along the streets of this reawakened Island you can sometimes catch a glimpse of a portly, but strangely ethereal man, dressed in a yachting cap and natty plus-fours. Or perhaps you'll be sitting in a restaurant booth or a cozy corner of a nightclub when you hear a voice murmur quietly, 'Fun for all—and all for fun!' "

So Fun For All, And All For Fun, Merriweather! You'll be deeply missed.

Enhancing Reality

2008-09-22T22:15:00.002-04:00

In fifty five years since its inception, the idea of themed entertainment has grown to become the single biggest and most encompassing business in the world. The Walt Disney Company is the second largest in existence, second only to Lockheed Martin.

Certainly, as we are all aware, there have been missteps. There have been poor decisions and bad promotions. There have been people put in charge that have no roots in story. There have been people let go that were true geniuses of their times, their achievements forgotten and sucked into the vacuum of "Global Identity", as executives with MBAs and closed minds continue to strip our most compelling places of their individuality.

You have to like the guest. "Liking the guest is the key to everything we do." It is still true today, and its still true today that they like the guest. It's just that they got a little too specific, and now they like the guests' dollar.

In order to sort through what is a truly poor addition/removal and what was actually conceived to enhance the stories of the parks, we must remember that times change. There are still, and will always be, a company-wide enthusiasm for creating wonderful entertainment that no amount of Mendenhall styled branding can possibly destroy.

Look, for example, at the Sorcerer's Hat. The hat was added for a number of reasons, but the official publicly acknowledged reason was to honor the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney's birth. When one observes the prototype model of the modern theme park that is Disneyland, we begin to understand the hat with a bit more compassion.

Both the Sorcerer's Hat and Grauman's Chinese Theatre, which one provided the beautiful end piece to Hollywood Boulevard, share the same purpose. Hench, and subsequently Imagineering theory, calls this purpose "Enhancing Reality."

As we approach the toll plaza of the Hollywood Studios park, the architecture and color scheme begs some sort of vague familiarity in our collective consciousness. It is the gates of the Pan Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles, which burned to the ground on May 24, 1989. Just three weeks prior, on May 1, the Disney-MGM Studios in Lake Buena Vista, Florida had opened to the public with the architecture of the famed entrance to the auditorium also providing the entrance to the park.

It is strange and bittersweet that it happened the way it did. The Pan Pacific was designed by Wurdeman & Becket- a southern California architecture firm whose other notable (and Disney-related) achievements include the towering "Theme Building" at LAX. Because our experience at the Studios park is based on a Hollywood that "Never was...and always will be", immediately the architecture of the Pan Pacific entrance sets up our experience: we are no longer in a world that exists, but one that can now only exist in our memories, and one that (for the most part) never existed at all.

Hollywood as we collectively "remember" it, and as it is portrayed at the Studios, never actually existed. It is the result of clever advertising campaigns and fantasy worlds created by Hollywood set designers and filmmakers- and Disney Imagineers.

As we enter the park, we encounter a highly stylized version of Hollywood Boulevard that never actually existed, either. Here, we find a classic portrayal of many famous Los Angeles landmarks, all condensed onto one street.

Now, imagine entering the park in May 1989, and at the far end of Hollywood Boulevard towers a glimmering replica of Grauman's famous Chinese Theatre. As designers, we may ask ourselves many questions to start:

Q: What end-of-this-experience icon would we expect to see at the end of an idealized Hollywood Boulevard?
A: A "movie palace" .

Q: What movie palaces have a famous enough architectural statement to communicate immediately with all of our guests?
A: The Chinese Theatre.

Now, we must address an issue that postdates the Magic Kingdoms in favor of EPCOT- the thesis attraction.

Q: What central experience can we provide that will allow our guests an overview of the ideas found in the rest of the park/story?
A: Movies!

This is where Hench's enhanced reality starts to come into play.

Q: In the normal, everyday world, our guests might expect to see a movie palace at the end of a street. What makes this one different? What enhances the reality and takes the experience from a normal one to a Disney one?
A: Inside this movie palace, we aren't going to watch movies. We are going to journey into them.

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Now, flash forward to 2001, as we begin to gear up to celebrate what would have been Walt Disney's 100th birthday. If there was ever an endearing symbol for The Walt Disney Company as a whole, the sorcerer's hat would have to take the top honor. Fantasia was a film that was very close to Walt's own heart, and though it failed considerably at the box office and wasn't well recieved by the audience or the critics either, the film did provide a very early form of Imagineering in that Walt developed new technologies and set new precedents with what could be done in many different types of entertainment.

More than it was a film, Fantasia was an experience: the first time Disney had ever truly attempted to bring the picture off the screen. He created a system called FantaSound, which was in essence the very first version of surround sound. Walt even wanted a form of "Smell-O-Vision" to be installed in all the theaters that were to play Fantasia, but couldn't secure the financing to create something that elaborate at the time.

The Sorcerer has always been the symbol of Walt Disney Imagineering, post WED Enterprises. The idea of Mickey as the apprentice to the must older and wiser Yensid pertains to everything WDI does. It makes Imagineers constant apprentices: to the art form, to themselves and to one another. Instead of being the experts, they are a team, always learning and trying new things and moving in the only direction their heirs have ever known how to move in: forward.

It was also fitting that at the beginning of the 21st century, the entire concept behind the Studios park was evolving: it was no longer just a place about Hollywood and filmmaking, it was now a place about the entire world of entertainment: "Where Showbiz Is".

It was under these conditions that Imagineers decided to place the Sorcerer Hat in front of the Chinese Theatre.

What this did to the vantage from the far, Pan-Pacific end of the Studios entrance plaza (more on this space in a later post) was created a juxtaposed image. Previously, we enhanced our reality and used the thesis attraction to set the stage for the show to follow by taking the idea of a movie palace one step farther and allowing guests a level of interaction that they simply cannot attain while watching a film.

Now, "The Hat" moves the story closer in line with what Disneyland's model projects with Sleeping Beauty Castle. We do not expect to find a fairy-tale castle at the end of a turn of the century Main Street, USA- but there it is. Our reality, by simply viewing an image placed carefully before us and detailed to a high level of realism, has therefore become enhanced.

The Sorcerer Hat does the same. It provides a large central icon that can be seen from all areas of the park, and it provides a juxtaposed image. We do not expect to see a gigantic Sorcerer's Hat at the far end of an idealized 1940s Hollywood Boulevard- but there it is.

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Now, the problem. The Payoff. The entire idea of an "Icon", as defined in our first Icon-O-Class, comes from that old carnival term, "wienie". The guests are instinctively drawn to a Disney icon the way a dog is drawn to a hot dog. When they get there, there needs to be a payoff. In Henchian terms, the long shot needs to match with the close-up.

When it does not, we experience the conundrum of contradiction. Contradictions destroy a story environment and bring us back into the real world. On the two dimensional motion picture screen, we are given various cues and patterns to help us "suspension of disbelief". As designers, our goal is to get the guest to accept instead an "Enhanced Reality." We cannot do this if the previous reality has not been suspended. This is the purpose of the separation of the Magic Kingdom by the Seven Seas Lagoon, of the straight and simple lines EPCOT's entrance plaza, and of the Pan Pacific facade at the Studios.

Here, our reality has been suspended, but since we have yet to reach any thesis attraction to show us what this show is going to be all about in specific detail, there is still the chance that our suspension of disbelief will be broken.

Unfortunately, a beautiful and aesthetically pleasing icon such as the Sorcerer's Hat cannot fulfill its obligations to the rest of the image of Hollywood Boulevard because the long shot does not match with the close up. When guests reach the hat, the payoff, the suspension of disbelief, is a cart and cashier selling generic Disney pins and High School Musical merchandise.

The beautiful replica courtyard of the Chinese Theatre lies some distance behind, and certainly guests still find their way there and experience the aging Great Movie Ride, but as a guest you expect there to be something incredible either just beneath or inside that central icon- and unfortunately in an effort to make a fast dollar, the money men provide us not with any sort of enhanced reality but instead with another opportunity to purchase more Mickey-related Schlock.

"Icon-O-Class"......Our Spaceship Earth

2008-09-21T14:10:00.001-04:00

Perhaps The Walt Disney Company is the finest example of a truly American major corporation that continues to exist and prosper today.

After Walt Disney passed away in late 1966, the heirs to his throne were left saddened and confused, and weren't even sure things could continue. It was in a sketch recovered from a trash can in Walt's office that a new dream was born, but it wasn't long before it was determined impossible. If Walt Disney hadn't been there to guide Walt Disney's dreams, rest assured the men of lesser conviction that surrounded the entertainment industry during the first half of the twentieth century would have been eager to shut them down. There would be no animated feature film, no theme parks, no television as we know it today.

Often referenced in the literature as "Walt's Last Dream", the city called EPCOT would have transformed central Florida and the entire world. It went far beyond "forward". It was to be a new example and a way for Walt to transform his audience into the community of tomorrow. In short, what was being attempted was to transform society itself. Walt clearly thought he had the right ideas about the future, and certainly he had the track record to prove it.

In the end, EPCOT would never happen. The logistics overwhelmed those left behind to achieve the dream, in every respect of the word. That isn't meant as a negative comment: they had overwhelmed Walt Disney himself, as his numerous nervous breakdowns and physical ailments and constant stress treatments (provided by the Studio nurse, Hazel George, at the end of each day) can attest.

Yet, something had to be done. The ring leaders of the next great dream, more so than any of the other equally talented Imagineers, were John Hench and Marty Sklar. They understood what Walt had wanted to do with EPCOT, but they also knew that without him the entire company was failing and faltering in ways that had never been expected. They didn't have the creative ability, the logistical ability, or the finances to go about creating a massive city in the heart of Central Florida.

What they did have was the ability to translate the ideas and concepts into a new concept in themed entertainment.

Or was it so new?

Here enters our story the strange and wonderful personages of two visionaries of the early-mid twentieth century that helped shape the project that was to revolutionize Disney as a brand, and themed entertainment as an art form.

First, we have Ray Bradbury. This science fiction writer, responsible for the creation of Farenheit 451, came onto the EPCOT project even before some of the in-house designers were placed. He created what was to become a prototype script for Spaceship Earth.

Spaceship Earth is EPCOT Center's "Thesis" attraction. This was the first time a single attraction in a themed environment had been used to set the stage for every other piece of the story the guests would experience once they moved into the park itself.

While Bradbury created the metaphors and concepts that played out inside Spaceship Earth, the name itself and the exterior came primarily from the works of architect and visionary Richard Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was a man of broad and engaging concepts. In his lifetime, he created such far reaching concepts as Fuel Efficient cars, the energy independent house, and most importantly to our story today, the Geodesic Dome.

Fuller also wrote two heavily influential works on the future of humanity and the planet, and our overuse of resources. The first was entitled The World Game, and was released in 1961. Fuller's definition was:

"make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone."

The second work was titled An Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, and described the Earth as a vessel in motion in outerspace. The vessel has a finite collection of resources that cannot be restocked. The book also makes the point that a spaceship is a mechanical entity, and if we fail to provide it maintenance it will break down and suffer.

Both of these concepts played into the creation of Spaceship Earth, though not before they influenced the place that was a prototype of EPCOT Center: The 1939 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York.

EPCOT Center, the original theme park incarnation of what has become Epcot, was a park founded on big ideas. Here, guests were going to immerse themselves not in the world of fantasy, but in a world of science and reality. Epcot of today is the saddest example we have of Walt Disney World's growing management issues. Imagineers seem to be far away creatures, and their wonderful creative leadership seems to have less control over what happens in and around Walt Disney World than ever before.

So, as Fuller was responsible for the exterior and Bradbury planted the seed for the show inside, it was legendary Imagineer and color expert John Hench that solved the pavilion's biggest problem. Up until 1979, no one had ever attempted to construct a building as a full sphere. The engineers told Hench and his team that doing such a thing would be impossible. Hench solved the problem by treating the sphere as two separate but unequal halves.

The upper 3/4 of Spaceship Earth itself thereby sits on a table, the legs of which extend down and out of the sphere as the iconic structural supports. The lower quarter of the pavilion is actually suspended from the bottom of this table. This creates an equal distribution of weight.

With the pavilion's design problems solved, it was only a matter of time before the entire EPCOT Center project would push themed entertainment forward into a new era.

The major difference between EPCOT and the parks that came before it is essentially the "Spokes of the Wheel" model. EPCOT was the first theme park to be designed as an open, free-flowing experience. Much like an American World's Fair, the park spans out from a central object but it does not follow a pattern.

For that matter, it also does not follow any sort of thematic map. We are introduced instead to a prototype model of the world, where we experience different varieties of science, imagination, industry and nature in a free flow format that takes us through gardens and across visually simple yet stunning structures to the next experience. The story being told is that of the world, so Epcot was originally allowed to occupy space in the real world, and the separation Walt and his team so sought with Disneyland and, later, his predecessors sought with Magic Kingdom Park, here that separation was given a rest.

Spaceship Earth still stands sentinel over an optimistic vision of the future of our world. Today, we also continue our journey aboard (and inside) Spaceship Earth, albeit in a somewhat altered form from its original incarnation.

Designing in Form

2008-08-25T22:20:00.001-04:00

Firstly, a congratulations: To all the talented young men and women who sweated away their blood and tears this summer as participants in Drum Corps International's "Summer Music Games". All the corps did an absolutely astounding job with their shows on both of the occasions we had the pleasure of seeing them.

Hats off especially to Phantom Regiment, who took their first ever World Championship title (in full) and garnered the "Spirit of Disney" Award for their 2008 program entitled Spartacus. The thing we can all admire about this cherised activity is that the focus is where it belongs: on the audience, the show, the music and, most importantly, the lessons and friendships learned and obtained through participating.

While viewing The Cadets 2008 program, entitled The Pursuit of Happiness, some interesting thoughts came to mind in regards to the activity and its relation to other types of entertainment.

After the Cadets performed their Quarterfinals show on Thursday evening, corps director and program coordinator George Hopkins had a brief conversation with one of the hosts of the event: "I think there is definitely still potential for voiceover narration in this art form."

The Cadets show this year, I should explain, was a source of much controversy in the Drum Corps community. Having been astounded at the Corps' previous performances, I was disappointed not with the talent and expertise of the corps members, nor with their performance, but with the material itself.

The show is an original production that garners its title from the Thomas Jefferson quote that opened the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

From there, we listen to an NPR Radio broadcast about a woman called Sarah Jones, and we follow her through her life and her Pursuit of Happiness.

With key pieces of narration, I could see such a concept working. As it was performed at the DCI Quarterfinals in Bloomington, the show was actually even tolerable. Previously, as when the show was performed in Orlando, The Cadets were still being covered over by voices through most of the more complex musical moments and forming giant smiley faces on the field.

All of this strange spectacle brought to mind a lesson that designers in many different companies in Themed Entertainment have failed to learn: the idea that we must all design within a form.

When we look at The Cadets show compared to the shows of other corps, particularly Phantom Regiment's Spartacus, a much clearer picture begins to emerge. While Hopkin's idea of narration has yet to find its place in the form or its audience, there may still be potential for it in the future.

The fact still remains that what The Cadets said in nearly twelve minutes of narration and music, Phantom Regiment said in twelve minutes and three single words: "I Am Spartacus."

In other words, they let the music tell the story. For Drum Corps, letting the music tell the story is what I'd call designing within the form. The Cadets' program from this year suffered not because of a lack of musicianship or performance quality. In fact, the brass and percussion arrangements and the guard work were all very well arranged, but the reason the show suffered in the end was because of the removal of the narration.

The designers depended far too heavily on something that wasn't within the form to carry the show, and as a result the removal of that element left the music to provide only half of the equation where it should have been providing a solid base on which the rest of the program could grow.

There are foundations in every art form. Calling them rules isn't something I find terribly attractive, because that implies that they must always be followed. Foundations, though, merely implies that things will be easier to build if they are used.

In Drum Corps, the main foundation is the arrangement and/or composition of the music. Next comes the visual impact, which owes to the drill (i.e. the forms the band creates visually on the field by marching in different lines and patterns), and the colorguard. These two elements combine to create what the judges call "General Effect"- in short, how did the audience react to the show?

In Themed Entertainment, the first foundation is story. If an attraction or experience doesn't have story, it may just as well not exist. From story comes character(s), which makes the experience relate to the audience, and sensation & mood, which are what link the experience with the others around it and eventually form a themed environment.

The key to both forms, to any form, really, is story. Its simply the method of relating that story that changes. In Corps, it is done first through music and secondly through visuals. In experiential design it is done through any number of methods: Movement, Sound, Music, Color, Architecture and Action are just a few examples.

All of these things relate directly back to the story.

Stitch's Great Escape. Perhaps the most mentioned failure of Walt Disney World's recent history. Where did things go so terribly wrong?

One of the mainstay ideas behind design in any form is that you must play within certain guidelines. They aren't rules, because they can be broken. The key, as with many arts, is to break them for maximum effect. Stitch's Great Escape is a fabulous example of a show that doesn't play within the guidelines at all the wrong moments. There are shows that utilize audio as a supremely effective story-telling tool (See: The Haunted Mansion, just across the ailing Liberty Square Bridge at Florida's Magic Kingdom Park). Stitch attempts to do exactly that, and fails in a less than spectacular fashion.

The entire last half of the show is audio. We are shown the gorgeous, reality-enhancing Stitch AA figure and it is then abruptly removed from our field of vision, cast out into the audience as a wave-length that relies on multi-dimensional sound. The show that Stitch replaced, Alien Encounter, used audio to maximum effect. The guideline, you see, is that audio should never be used alone because it frightens and confuses the guests, and even more so when it is used in dark and enclosed spaces.

Alien Encounter used its audio tracks in dark and enclosed spaces to do exactly that: frighten the guest. It worked better in that show than it had in any since the original incarnation of The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.

Another productive tool in the designer's toolbox is smell. Soarin' (Over California or not) uses this tool to its maximum effect- and it doesn't break the rules. Interestingly, the smell guidelines have been broken before, namely in the retrofit of Journey into Imagination at the lower-case Epcot, where we are forced to sit through the smell of a skunk.

Stitch decides to run along a similar line and force us to smell his burped up chili dog- not that chili dogs have the faintest thing to do with the mythology of the character, or made any mention or appearance in the film, but then we are talking about breaking all the guidelines at the wrong times, aren't we?

In a nutshell, Stitch's Great Escape and Journey into Imagination do something to the guest that completely pulls a 180 from the original concept of themed show design: these are attractions that place the audience in unpleasant situations without giving them a payoff.

Observe several more successful attractions:

Indiana Jones Adventure: Guests are menaced by snakes, rats, bugs and a giant boulder.
Payoff: Guests escape the boulder and get to live the moment as Indiana does in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The Seas with Nemo & Friends: Guests are menaced by a forest of Jellyfish and a scary Angler fish.
Payoff: They get to surf the EAC with Crush and....they find Nemo!

Expedition Everest: Guests are menaced by a Yeti high on the Forbidden Mountain, and are thrown backwards through the tunnels and caverns.
Payoff: Guests escape with their lives after a fantastic view of the Yeti and have gained a new understanding of the creature as the protector of the forest.

In short, themed design is all about putting our guests in highly emotional and unexpected situations, perhaps related to the content or characters of their favorite films or television shows, and seeing just how far we can take things before we have to follow the natural story arc and give them the payoff they've been waiting for.

This is the only way the story moves forward. If the Magic Kingdom were filled with lackluster pieces like Stitch's Great Escape, the Magic Kingdom's story arc would not arc at all. It would be a flat line on a boring blank piece of paper.

And we all know how scary those can be!

In the same way that The Cadets didn't design The Pursuit of Happiness within the form, the designers of Stitch's Great Escape neglected to supply their story with the proper foundations. There is a term at WDI that is used more and more often, and to less and less effect. When an attraction is removed, there is often times a war that goes on between different factions of the Disney elite- Creative Entertainment, which sucks up valuable real estate and installs wonderful productions that very rarely fit with their surroundings or have any significance to the story (Finding Nemo: The Musical, anyone?). Walt Disney Imagineering itself, which still puts a great deal more thought into what it places where, and Park Management, which usually makes even further ill-advised decisions because they aren't designers.

It's really a three way street. A theme park is an extremely complex mechanism that couldn't operate without all of these working parts. At the same time, it is impossible to make everybody down the totem pole happy. If you're going to please marketing or park management, good luck pleasing the Imagineers, and if the Imagineers are happy, marketing generally is upset with the outcome.

The term used when an attraction is removed but a new show is placed in the old show space is "Retrofit." Stitch's Great Escape was retro-fitted from "Alien Encounter", which in itself really didn't jive with Tomorrowland or the Magic Kingdom, and really didn't have a place at the Magic Kingdom.

There are lots of different views in regards to what should go where. Certainly, Stitch in Tomorrowland should make sense....but certainly, placing Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor there made no sense at all, because it has no relation to Tomorrowland or its central story. Never mind that, though, because obviously our guests want Monsters. They don't care where we put them. It isn't important.

Well, there is a simple and unfortunate fact that designers and management alike tend to overlook. Our guests are going to enjoy whatever we give them, almost. The meaning of this is not that our guests are stupid. Far from it, actually. It's a fact of human nature that once you've established a name in any entertainment field, there are always expectations, but there are also reverse expectations: the kind that mean audiences will pay to see a film just because it says "Disney".

The "almost" comes in often when classic and beloved shows are ripped out in favor of something new. Throughout history, it has often been the case that guests become extremely upset when a show is removed. The current situation with Pleasure Island is no exception. Many claim to be extremely devoted to the enterprise of saving Pleasure Island. The problem is, they aren't here to show Disney. They cannot make good on their claim. However, if they don't come back because Pleasure Island is closed, and maybe they choose to visit somewhere new and exciting and fresh like Dubai on their next vacation...well, Disney just lost business.

Themed Entertainment isn't a business where business results are immediate, yet most of the current big cheeses think and act the way any MBA would think and act: we want low cost, high-profit, immediate return solutions. Sooner or later, I think they will have no choice but to realize that by retro-fitting attractions or shows into places they don't belong they are not only upsetting and losing their best designers, they are upsetting their paying public, and just because they aren't there to show their support doesn't mean they will forget it and choose to return to a Disney park for their next vacation.

The very essence, the thing that separates a Disney themed show from a standard Six Flags ride, is that we tell stories. It's been banged into the heads of anyone over the age of three that The Walt Disney Company is and always has been in the business of telling stories. Our guests are going to take whatever stories we give them. The very first Imagineers knew this, and they chose to look at the situation in a positive light and used this fact as inspiration to do their absolute best.

This relates directly back to John Hench's experience with a film director from another motion picture studio who commented that his audience "wouldn't know the difference, anyway". It relates directly to the fact that once they are in the gates, we already have their money. This relates directly to the entire concept of Imagineering:

There are two ways to look at a blank sheet of paper. It can be the scariest thing in the world, because no one has put anything on it yet, or it can be the greatest opportunity in the world because no one has put anything on it yet.

If we think of our guests' experience as a blank sheet of paper, we can either choose to view it as the scariest thing in the world (or the most unimportant thing) and not do our best work and provide them with the best show, or we can choose to take it as an opportunity and give them more than they expect. Even, sometimes, more than they can comprehend.

There is a whole new world of Designing within the form waiting. It is the choice of the designer to tell the best story that can be told, or to simply give in to the marketing and management teams that attempt to shoehorn their ideals into a business that has, for nearly 55 years, chosen to disregard them as standard business practices because the goal was the creation of a brand new standard.

Drum Corps is also an activity where storytelling is paramount. Lets not forget that one of the most esteemed titles is the Spirit of Disney award (Phantom Regiment won the Spirit of Disney award for their 2008 program, "Spartacus", pictured above).

Regardless of the form, if we don't stay within the guidelines we risk losing our audience (or our guests). The Cadets risked it this year, and it didn't pay off. Stitch's Great Escape, Journey into Imagination (Redux) and The Enchanted Tiki Room: Under New Management have all risked it in the past and it didn't pay off.

There is only one other thing more terrifying than a blank sheet of paper, and thats a show that breaks the form in the wrong places and provides our guests with experiences they'd rather not remember.

The End of the World (as we know it)

2008-08-20T13:15:00.003-04:00

Atleast thats how some people feel about the changes currently taking place (or rumored to be taking place) at "it's a small world" in Anaheim.

At EPCOT Center, for years and years before the travesties of EPCOT '94 and now Epcot, we were treated to an opening narration set to the music of "We've Just Begun to Dream."

The narration stated the facts about the park that changed Walt Disney World from a resort destination into a science, education and entertainment capital:

"Walt Disney was a dreamer and a doer, a man who believed in the world and it's problems. He believed that people could develop solutions to problems, if equipped with information and technology."

The Latest in Hostile Fannitudes!

Though the debate has died down considerably while the actual rehab on "it's a small world" at Disneyland progresses, I'd like to take a few minutes and discuss the devil's advocate position on the "proposed" changes to the attraction.

First of all, no one ever said that Mickey and Minnie Mouse would be added, that the rainforest would be replaced or that the scene replacing it would be a tribute to America's cultures and architecture.

These rumors swirled in the rumor mill of the internet until they churned out the other side and straight into Glendale, where they fueled some serious hostility amongst the Imagineers. If your paying public is disowning you the way these people claimed to be, you've got not only some serious creative pitfalls but also a major business problem...

But that was just the thing. These rumors came from the "other side". The so-called "Disneyana" community read into the situation and posted their opinions and thoughts, as internet bloggers (myself included) are prone to do. They may or may not have been accurate in their statements, but it hardly mattered because some of them made a huge fuss and created a serious controversy.

Now, WDI isn't entirely innocent here, either. To add to the speculation, they decided not to respond at all. When they didn't respond with Florida's Mr. Toad and Submarine Voyage, or the Country Bear Jamboree at Disneyland, it meant curtains for those beloved attractions. The "changes" that were "proposed" for "it's a small world" were considered by most to be accurate depictions of the future. They were delivered by a group that, for better or worse and whether I personally agree with their sentiment or not, is rapidly becoming a serious concern to WDI and The Walt Disney Company as a whole: the bloggers.

A few weeks after the Small World debate had really died down, another incident regarding the Florida version of Toy Story Midway Mania fueled serious opposition within the ranks of the Imagineers. A blog posted an article regarding a serious problem with the audio in the attraction, and condemned WDI for not paying enough attention to the details. This opinion was posted just a day or two after the cast previews for the attraction had been completed, so the Imagineers were still very much in the test and adjust period, and were still in the process of handing Toy Story over to park operations.

The Imagineer's response was less than pretty. It was issued to the offending website and to the Orlando Sentinel, who ran the story and created a minor stir. The Imagineer in question called out the Disney "Fan Community" and stated that WDI is not concerned with these people because they aren't the paying guests.

I'd call this response right and wrong. As a company, you should be concerned with every member of your audience. You should care what they say to a degree. When WDI says, though, that they don't build attractions for the "Disney Fan Community", they are 100% correct. As a business, Parks and Resorts caters to families. Disney is still a family entertainment company, like it or hate it, for better or for worse, forever.

The Disney Fan Community may have its share of interested fathers or armchair Imagineers, but the diehards are mostly not from that particular arena. This isn't good or bad. It simply is what it is, and when the Imagineers say they build their attractions with their audience in mind, they are telling the absolute truth. Otherwise, we'd have seen amazing things like WestCOT and Port Disney come to life.

The major issue at Walt Disney World is that less than 5% of the guests there are repeat visitors or from a local audience. The majority of guests are vacationing families, many of them coming from international destinations, so WDI has to adjust what they do in Walt Disney World accordingly. The audio problems in Toy Story Midway Mania were really just the straw that broke the Florida camel's back, and sent WDI over the edge and into an admission that they no longer cared a nickel for what this particular faction of the Disney audience had to say. This was probably because everything they've done in the past fifteen years has been lambasted and thrown into the garbage can by this same group of people.

This is because the audiences' needs have become different from the needs of a repeat viewer. For the same reason film and television are now regarded as two very different mediums, Disneyland and Walt Disney World have different audiences and require different business practices and creative initiatives in order to stay alive.

The sad part is that most of the times in the past fifteen years that Imagineering, and the company in general, has been put to the gallows by the fan community, the fan community has had the opinion that has made more sense. The really, seriously even more sad part is that the paying customers- those aforementioned families and their character-hungry children- haven't agreed often with the fan community.

There was a time when there was no faction. Disneyland, as John Hench stated, "is good for you." It was good for everybody. Disneyland, in fact, still is good for most people. Disneyland's management has made far fewer mistakes than Walt Disney World's, and the reason is as plain as day:

Disneyland is not run as an outpost of the empire, under control of people who make their decisions without taking into account what their "superiors" in Burbank and Glendale might want or think or how they feel...they simply do. Until recently, Disneyland executives had a handle on things that was so in tune with what their superiors in Glendale wanted that there was barely a moment when both parties not only knew what was happening, but they agree that it should happen.

Mary Blair presents a mural to two nuns at the hospital across the street from the Walt Disney Studios, Burbank, 1943. The Mural remained in the Hospital Nursery for many years.

A Designer's Perspective

Thats really where our story begins. There are only a few key points I'd like to make on the creative side of things.

Imagine for a moment that you are an Imagineer. Imagine that you are a WDI Creative Executive. You've been told to look long and hard at Disneyland. While California Adventure has been placed in the more than capable hands of MGM Studios designer Bob Weis, Disneyland has been placed in the care of Tony Baxter and his team- of which you are a member.

As you review Disneyland's overall story concept, its thematic structure, and study long and hard all of its genius elements of placemaking and theory that have been put into place over the past five decades, first by Walt Disney himself and then by three generations of the most creative Imagineers the world has known; you begin to notice the displacement that took place after the conclusion of the 1964/65 World's Fair at Flushing Meadows, New York.

After the fair, Walt (as promised) moved three of the four key attractions intact to Disneyland in Anaheim and moved key set pieces of the fourth to a shed along the Disneyland Railroad. His test for Disneyland East had been successful, but it would still be another three years, an amount of time surpassing what Disney had left, before any land would be purchased east of the Mississippi River.

For now, the UNICEF pavilion desperately needed a home at Disneyland. It was placed near the conclusion of Disneyland's story, between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. It isn't until late 1992 that this becomes a serious problem. With the January 1993 opening of Mickey's Toontown, the "Small World Promenade" becomes misplaced. It used to lead guests from the fairy tale realms of the imagination into the exciting conclusive statement of the future that was Tomorrowland.

After the addition of Toontown, the attraction sits between a natural extension of Fantasyland and the hulking mass of Space Mountain in Tomorrowland, and it didn't make a whole lot of sense.

If we look at Disneyland as a continuous story experience, we see that the majestic Matterhorn provides us with our final vantage point within the story. It is the last high point before we venture out of the realm of America and into the realm of our futures as people of the world. "it's a small world" made the perfect transition point. It's thematic message was very clear: You've been through turn of the century small town America. You've seen the jungles through a scrim of 1930s American romanticism. You've experience New Orleans, the queen of the delta, the American Frontier and the forests of the Pacific Northwest where animals can talk. We've shown you the stories that are central to our pathos as Americans and as children.

Now, here are the other nations of the world, and as we cross into Tomorrowland, here is what our future together can bring us. With the addition of "it's a small world" to Disneyland, Walt not only had a highly entertaining, high capacity attraction with a knock-out hit song, he also had a point of transition that was setting up what he wanted to do with his new Disneyland East project. The themes of the World's Fair weighed heavily on Walt Disney, and he saw the promise of tomorrow as a major opportunity to create new things; new cities, new experiences in entertainment, new destinations where people could live, work and play without ever getting behind the wheel of their own car. Small World introduced, for the first time in the history of Disneyland, the Global Concept.

Walt Disney stands at the scale map of EPCOT inbetween takes. According to Marty Sklar (WDI Ambassador to the World), the joke here was "If this map is to scale, that makes me 6 1/2 miles tall!"

Fast Forward to 1993. Mickey's Toontown now exists as a natural extension of Fantasyland. Here are the classic fairy-tales from your American childhood (not inconsequentially all retold and put in new forms by Walt Disney and his company), and here are where the most classic of all those characters actually live. Mickey's Toontown is a fantastic story extension onto the whole of Disneyland. After all, in the mythology, this is really Mickey AND Walt's park, and it turns out Mickey was the one who went so far as to offer Walt the land next door to Toontown to build Disneyland!

However, now "it's a small world", with its brilliant but non-specific design, is now a transitional element dropped into the middle of a scene. If we think of Disneyland as a motion picture, where the attraction once served as the fade and the statement between the world of fantasy and the world of tomorrow, we've now taken that fade and dropped it into the middle of the World of Fantasy scene. Not a good thing!

The Official "Seal" of Mickey's Toontown, which opened behind "it's a small world" in 1993 and changed everything.

The Other Side

I'm going to play devil's advocate. While I agree that the inclusion of any sort of "Up with America" tribute scene in the attraction is a major mistake, as is the addition of Mickey and Minnie when so much thematic space is devoted to them just fifty feet beyond Small World's door, I think the addition of some link to Fantasyland is a wonderful idea.

"it's a small world" has sat in a very difficult location for fifteen years. To make Disneyland's story cohesive, and avoid the same issues that have plagued Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom in recent times, something needs to be done to link the attraction with its surroundings. You don't see Space Mountain towering over Fantasyland, and you don't see Splash Mountain plopped down in the middle of Fantasyland.

The Arguments

Argument: You are ruining Mary Blair's brilliant designs!

Answer: The additional Disney characters will be similar to the ones employed at Hong Kong Disneyland, and the dolls will be in the original style of the brilliant Mary Blair.

Argument: Adding Mickey and Minnie is a ploy to sell more toys.

Answer: First of all, Merchandising and their lack of coherent attraction-specific merchandise design is an issue for another post. Secondly, at this point, we are being told that Mickey and Minnie will not be added to the attraction.

Argument: The rainforest is the most brilliant piece of design in the show! You can't remove it!

Answer: I Agree. Removing any part of the show for the addition of something that breaks with the transitory theme of the attraction and compromises its place in Disneyland's story arc is not a good idea. At this point, we've been told that the rainforest sequence will also remain intact.

Argument: Adding an "Up with America" tribute in place of the rainforest is sacrilegious!

Answer: Lets keep in mind where this particular rumor came from. The Hong Kong version of the show, the first to feature characters from the animated films, is in Hong Kong. When bridging cultures, as we saw with The Haunted Mansion's transition to Phantom Manor for Disneyland Paris, Imagineers must alter attractions to reach the cultural limitations of the area the attraction will be constructed in. For example, the French don't relate to ghost stories in the same way that we do, and they associate ghosts more with the old west of America than with the south. Because "it's a small world" is now being placed in a different cultural environment than the one it was designed for, and because in China "Disney" is synonymous with "America", an America scene in Hong Kong is totally appropriate where the same scene in America might not play. In short, its all about the guests and what they can and cannot relate to.

Argument: Any change to Disneyland (or its "classic" attractions) should be prevented in the spirit of preservation.

Answer: (the oldest trick in the book, but its still in the book because it works)

"Disneyland will never be complete. It will continue to grow as long as there is Imagination left in the world."

But the simple fact is this: As a dreamer and a doer, Walt's dreams had the thing that allowed them to become reality.

They had the ability to change.

Formatting Issues

2008-08-19T21:00:00.002-04:00

Authors Note:

In regards to the article entitled "The End of the World (as we know it)", I would like to make you all aware that the post was actually completed about two weeks ago.

Due to serious formatting issues and the anti-user friendly blogger editing system, I was unable to post the article until this evening.

Much of the formatting is still rather off. Be aware that the formatting tools employed by blogger do not work very well for their intended purposes.

Thank you all for your understanding, and I hope you enjoy the article!

"Icon-O-Class"

2008-08-03T04:15:00.000-04:00

Ah, the Disney icon.

The "Weenie", according to Disney-Speak. Weenie was actually an old carnival term, and the meaning is derived from the idea that a dog is drawn to a hot dog the way a person is drawn to a large, central object. Of course, at the carnival, this was always the roller coaster or chief attraction, and also the most expensive. Usually the Ferris Wheel was the tallest attraction in a traveling carnival, so it would be placed closest to the roller coaster in order to draw people in that direction. The idea, after all, was that upon reaching the weenie, the "customers" would spend their hard-earned cash.

Disney took the term and applied it to a narrative, story-based infrastructure, so that it became the central point of their overall story: Sleeping Beauty Castle was the very first Disney Park icon, at Disneyland. Walt wanted the castle to be the centerpiece of the park because it was the centerpiece of the idea of the park's primary attraction, Fantasyland (at that time, the only land to look and feel like anything close to complete).

Sleeping Beauty Castle, interestingly, underwent a last-minute name change for promotional purposes. The castle was originally called "Snow White Castle"- it is unclear if the name implied ownership to Disney's first princess- and in 155, Sleeping Beauty was well under way. To help promote the film, Walt renamed it to Sleeping Beauty Castle. If you look at the actual castle from Sleeping Beauty, it looks a lot like Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom. Is it pure coincidence that the restaurant inside that castle, upon its opening, was called "King Stefan's Banquet Hall"? King Stefan, aside from supposedly being "Walt Disney's favorite character", was the father of Princess Aurora, not Cinderella. This particularly story has never been discussed by anyone with access to the information, and its entirely possible that the reasons have been lost to time- or atleast to a vault somewhere on Flower Street.

Anyway, Sleeping Beauty Castle is 77 feet high. The Matterhorn, added to Disneyland in 1959, towers above the castle, but the placement of "Holiday Hill" where the Matterhorn was constructed was ideal because of the angles it could then use to play off of the castle. That way, the architecture blended seamlessly with Fantasyland, provided a unique backdrop for the Submarine Voyage (let us not forget that Mt. Prometheus served as thw backdrop for the real Nautilus in Jules Verne's story), and looked accurate with the castle's immaculate charm.

Alas, an entire book can (and, now, has been!) written about Disney's mountains, so we will save that topic for another day. The question is, if we are a designer at WED in 1953- we've just come over from animation, and Walt has charged us with figuring out a design for Disneyland's castle that works with the surrounding ideas and architecture. What do we do?

The answer turned out to be the combination of several key historical sites. The castle Neuschwanstein in Bavaria was a major influence, as much as architecture from classic fairy-tales. The blending of real life and fantasy locations created Sleeping Beauty Castle. Disney Legend and Imagineer Herb Ryman was the man charged to create the look of Sleeping Beauty Castle. The design wasn't quite right until Herb turned the top portion of the castle around backwards, so that the front actually faces Fantasyland's main courtyard.

Little did the Imagineers realize at that time, but Sleeping Beauty Castle would only be the very first Icon. The grandfather of them all, so to speak. More were on the rise, literally and figuratively.

When Walt began to plan in secret for his "Florida Project", referred to at one time as "Project X", the theme park was viewed as a means to an end. It was not to be a direct copy of Disneyland, but his focus was on something far more grand than what he had achieved in Anaheim. Walt wanted to create an working, living, breathing community in the heart of Central Florida. He wanted to call this futuristic place EPCOT: the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.

We're getting ahead of ourselves. In December 1966, Walt Disney passed away. Prior, the theme park at Walt Disney World would have been far more similar to Disneyland. Now, not only did "Disney World" become "Walt Disney World" in honor of the man who started it all, but the theme park became the center of development. For many years, Disneyland was referred to as "Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom", a term Walt first used while promoting Disneyland in the early 1950s.

Florida's Magic Kingdom Park would have the same central layout of Disneyland, but would feature a castle far grander in scope and scale than the Anaheim original. Walt had always wanted Disneyland's castle to be small, so as to not appear imposing to younger guests. John Hench, Walt's premiere art director at WED and a master of color, set out to design Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom.

In his wonderful book Designing Disney, Hench talks about the idea of ceremony and ritual and how those concepts have a heavy bearing on the way guests experience a Disney show. In one interview, Hench talks about what he refers to as "Sensory Information". He stands with his interviewer in front of Cinderella Castle at Florida's Magic Kingdom, and discusses the minute detail of several gargoyles high on a distant windowsill: Hench uses the gargoyles to make his point clear.

If they are there, the guest understands that everything feels right. There are a thousand tiny details in the Castle Hub area and if any one of them, from the balloons to the music to the gargoyles high and nearly invisible on the castle weren't there, the guest wouldn't quite notice it, but they'd know that something wasn't right. This, in Hench's definition, is the true art of Imagineering. The details of a show are what make it blend cohesively with reality and in many cases become the reality.

Disney's version of "reality" is of course enhanced, and it differs depending on which experience the guest might choose. At Animal Kingdom, the enhanced reality needs to feel natural and flowing, at EPCOT it needs to surround us and tower over us, to bombard us gently with beautiful ideas and visions and sounds of the future and the world we have created.

At Disney's Hollywood Studios (formerly Disney-MGM Studios), the enhanced reality must feel as though it has stepped directly off the silver screen and into the world around us. At Disneyland Park, the reality must present us with a view of America and its history and future through the eyes of a wonder-struck child. At Magic Kingdom, the reality must be the fantasy that was embedded in our lives at a young age. The great challenge of the designer is to walk in the shoes of a guest experiencing stories, ideas, locations and characters beloved to them, and to be able to successfully create the reality for each of these things.

The Disney Icon must embody the central theme of a themed entertainment experience. In example, Grauman's Chinese Theatre at the Studios park in Florida was the very thing that one might expect to see at the far end of an idealized Hollywood Boulevard. A giant movie palace of the 1930s, replete with spires and window displays and a courtyard touched by a million young stars and starlets. It had what designers refer to as a "payoff". Payoff, in terms of design, is the opposite of contradiction.

Now, when guests reach the end of Hollywood Boulevard, they are met with an image that is by nature contradictory; They don't make hats that big, and one certainly doesn't make much sense at the end of a 1930s idealized version of Hollywood Boulevard....

Or Does it?

If you look at the prototype icon of Sleeping Beauty Castle as Disneyland, it really doesn't "make sense" in "reality" to find a fairy tale castle at the end of a turn-of-the-century Main Street, USA.

Next time, we'll look at the concept of "Enhanced Reality" as it relates to Disney's Icons, and how the development of Spaceship Earth provides the first example of a "thesis attraction" for a themed environment. We will also discuss how perhaps the problem with the sorcerer hat isn't the lack of image, but the lack of payoff and the inherent contradiction it creates from longshot to close-up.

Thanks for coming to the very first Icon-O-Class!

Future Magic

2008-08-02T19:15:00.001-04:00

Your comments and constructive criticism are what will inspire Foundations of Magic for future articles and discussions!

If you are reading this, please feel free to leave a comment or suggestion.

If you would prefer, you can also email us at: foundationsofmagic@rocketmail.com

So Much More (In This Whole New World)

2008-07-28T00:20:00.000-04:00

It was supposed to have been so much more than what it was. Now, we're standing on the balcony inside this relic of a building- a building where art was created, where a second renaissance was nearly begun- and asking "so, where does it connect to the attraction?"

Feature Animation at the Walt Disney Company is about to undergo a serious renaissance. Along with the coming changes at Imagineering (more on that rebirth soon), the animation division is about to do things it hasn't done for nearly five decades- namely, its about to produce a feature length traditionally animated film (The Frog Princess) and a brand-new Goofy "how-to" short (How To Hook Up Your Home Stereo):

Feature Animation's closure in Florida is a subject few have covered accurately- in fact, the only account I've seen that provides a spot on version of the story is the nine (ten? It's big!) part series over at Jim Hill Media (http://www.jimhillmedia.com). Feature Animation Florida is a place that saw the near-coming of a rebirth of the form that brought the company into existence, and the form that Walt himself grew exhausted with- which ultimately led to the creation of Disneyland.

The "new" Disney Studios at 2719 Hyperion Avenue, Los Angeles.

Here is a man who has been turned down and shut out all his life. A man who created Feature Animation because he wanted the audience to be able to lose themselves as much as he wanted to watch the picture and lose himself within it's boundaries. He wanted a world- a perfect world. That was the entire problem. His animations could not have been more perfect. There was not the time or money or personnel to toy endlessly with them- but a place? A three-dimensional environment? That tells a story? Now we're onto something!

Disneyland can be seen as the next step- a realtime version of animation, and one that never has to be released. It can exist and change all around the audience, and its total immersion provides something (indeed, provided something for Walt) that the animations could not possibly provide: the complete immersion of a world literally created to tell the same stories.

That said, while Disneyland and its 11 brothers and sisters worldwide are the evolution of storytelling, Animation itself has completely ceased to exist today. Traditional, hand drawn, two-dimensional animation suffered one of the worst fates in the history of American entertainment. It is, in fact, the only cinematic art form to have been created and killed in the same century.

Walt, Roy and their girlfriends (later wives) at the "Disney Brothers Studio" in Los Angeles.

The Walt Disney Company was founded on animation. Walt Disney had wanted to be a filmmaker, and animation caught his attention and didn't let go from 1937 until atleast 1950, possibly a few years later. The heritage of "Disney Storytelling" that captures both the corporate and entertainment worlds was essentially created by Walt's pioneering usage of cartoon form. He wanted films that the entire family could find appeal in, and while many took that to mean that he wanted films that appealed to children, it really meant he wanted to make films children could enjoy that could also appeal to adults.

Animation, if it wasn't about telling the stories that seemed to possess him, was about the same thing Disneyland and his television projects would be about: Control. Walt Disney longed for a world he could control, because his early life had been so thrown out of control, and beyond his own abilities to control it.

In 1988, The Walt Disney "corporation" kicked the animators out of their burbank studio, where they had been since its opening, and they landed on Flower Street in Glendale- next door to the creative trust of Walt Disney Imagineering. Here, those that were left created The Little Mermaid, and the renaissance of animation began. Soon enough, the company responded by opening a brand new building for them- dubbed affectionately "the hat building" by the animators for the giant blue Sorcerer Mickey hat that marks its entrance. The structure was designed by post-modern architect Michael Graves (who would go on to construct the Swan and Dolphin hotels at Walt Disney World among other high profile projects for Eisner). The animators themselves were not thrilled that management had decided to construct the building, though most were moderately happy about moving back onto the Burbank studio lot.

Many feared that being once again under the noses of the corporate leaders of the company, their art would be torn to pieces as it had before the move to Glendale, and subjected to close and unfair scrutiny. After The Lion King, the studio began construction, and split WDFA into two factions, so that each of the "units" could produce a feature film at the same time. Initially, the building was met with acclaim by the animators..until they got inside. Then, they realized that the structure had never been intended for animation. It had been intended as a corporate office, and the real reason they had been moved back to Burbank was so that management, as predicted, could have excessive control over everything they did. One animator claimed "I don't think the company was ever built for animation. It was built for the company to advertise animation."

The "Hat Building", which was supposed to have provided the sight for the animation renaissance to continue into a new golden age.

Soon enough, the animation unit was in far worse trouble than anyone had realized. A decade later, announcements began to trickle down the food chain that Disney was no longer going to invest anything in traditional animation at all. Many didn't believe the harsh words, thinking it would be like Einstein proclaiming electricity unecessary, like Universal Studios denouncing monster films, but it was closer than any of them realized. Feature Animation was disbanded- the very best (or should we say highest up on the chain) of the animators were then hired on a project-only basis, just like the rest of Hollywood.

Now, if you ask the executives responsible for these decisions, they will tell you that WDFA (now Walt Disney Animation Studios) never went anywhere at all. That it is, officially, the "oldest animation studio in the entire world." The company did not, in effect, shut down the studio itself. Instead, they followed suit with the competitor they had (at that time) lost a partnership with, our cousins up in Emeryville, Pixar. The Walt Disney Feature Animation of yesterday ended with Home on the Range, a lackluster production probably in part because most of these folks knew it was over. After that picture was released in 2004, the announcements and pink slips began to fly. First, Burbank's studio was converted into an all-CGI studio, meaning that instead of continuing the traditional hand-drawn style of animation that the company's founder had pioneered, WDFA would now follow suit with Pixar and develop projects like Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons.

Next, and perhaps most tragically and unforseen, the Orlando animation studios (located on the backlot of Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park, and the only animation building built with anything like animators in mind at all) was shut down. There were ten days of rumors, a weekend, and the following monday the animators inside were told to pack their things. They would not be transferred, mind you, but layed off. No chance was given. Barely did they get even notice of the events. The Orlando studio had just come off producing a string of Disney hits, including Mulan, Lilo and Stitch and Brother Bear, and were working on an animation project called My Peoples- which executives had already butchered the script for and renamed A Few Good Ghosts, due to the relatively minor supernatural events in the story. '

2005 brought the closure of Australia's WDFA, the last hand-drawn animation studio operating within the empire....and the rest, as they say, is history.

Almost..

You see, many of the animators refused to give up on the idea that these productions could not make money and all the while be relevant as works of art. They believed in their work, to the point where they formed their own studios (Project Firefly, an Orlando-based traditional animation studio, still operates today). Some even stayed on at the company and forged ahead into the new field of CGI. Animation was changing, as Disney saw it, and they wanted to change, too.

Today, even as we speak, there is an animation renaissance underway. Right under the mouse' nose, somewhere in the city that M. Mouse built, there are animators being employed by the Walt Disney Company who are working on a spectacular short film given greenlight by Bob Iger himself. You see, one difference between Iger and Eisner is, Iger believes the same as those animators that refused to give up. He thinks there is a lot to be said for the heritage and history of the company...though getting rid of Eisner's minions hasn't been an easy task, and he still has decades of work before all the damage control is completed (see the recent announcement of the 1.1 Billion dollar, three-phase, ten year expansion and re-theming plan for Disney's California Adventure).

The new short film starring Goofy, entitled "How to Hook Up Your Home Theatre". It's a newborn example of those wonderful shorts from the 1950's that were deadpan instructional videos, based on the styles of UPA (later adopted by Jay Ward), which featured marvelous minimalist animations starring Goofy and things going horribly wrong as he attempts simple tasks.

Goofy's latest short, with Andreas Deja leading the way on the animation, brought the idea of short subjects back to Iger's attention.

While Pixar has continued to produce wonderful, popular short subjects for each of their feature films, Disney has only recently started to grasp the concept of full entertainment at the movies.

Someday soon, it will be time for Mickey and friends to bring the same concept to their designers. When that day comes, it will be a whole new world all over again.

Hopefully.

A History of Form

2008-07-21T01:32:00.000-04:00

All art forms represent interpretations of language. In the most essential form, art is a translation of the language of human thought- inspired, arguably, by the divine, or by some other spiritual presence in our lives. Some call this presence God, while others simply refer to it as energy- and others still choose not to refer to it at all, and instead point to their own egos for the answer to their inspiration.

The "language" of the cinema began development when Edison first introduced the film camera to the Americas. One can even point to the previous, jarring work of the Lumiere Brothers in France, who began recording films possibly as early as 1895. Max and Emil Skladanowsky had begun showing projected images on the first of November that year in Berlin, but because the Skladanowsky's projection system was considered primitive, the official birth of the cinema as we know it today occured on December 1, 1895 in Paris. That day, at the Salon Indien du Grand Cafe, the Lumieres showed ten short films to a paying audience using a projection device called the Cinematographe, which was invented by Leon Bouly.

(Scene from "The Arrival of the Train")

The audience was said to have jumped back in their seats at the sight of the approaching train, in a short film entitled "The Arrival of the Train". Because the jarring nature of "cutting" was still years (and countries) away*, these films weren't much more than moving images of singular events projected onto the wall of the cafe.

*Sergei Eisenstein discovered the concept of Montage in the early 1920s. He and Lev Kuleshov pioneered the concept, and Eisenstein called it "the very essence of the cinema".

As the cinema evolved, so did its interpretations and its interpreters. By the time D.W. Griffith began making films like Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), the form was well on the way to becoming a "master" art form; that is, a form that combines all others for the most powerful tool of communication ever discovered. More than any others, these two Griffith epics were the ones that paved the way for narrative cinema.

As the Cinema evolved, it led to yet another combination of forms: the drawing or painting and the moving image itself. When combined and projected at any steady rate, it made the drawings capable of movement. Since drawings didn't have to be subjected to the laws of captured footage, animation was born as an art form. With animation's birth comes into the picture a young man born in Chicago at the beginning of the last century, and raised on farms and in small towns across the midwestern united states. This man began drawing at a young age, and though he was never very good at it, he had a talent of creative leadership that few have been able to meet and none have been able to surpass.

Walter Elias Disney started to become interested in drawing and particularly in animation for many reasons. He stated many stories to reporters and television shows- most notably his own, which aired its first broadcast on October 27, 1954. We can only speculate, but like so many other American Dreamers of his generation, he came to Hollywood with nothing in his pockets but a few quarters and some lint, and built an entertainment empire that rose first from the green hills of Glendale, and later from the orange groves of Anaheim.

Walt was constantly interested in the next thing. He cared never to repeat himself, because he saw this as fear, and said that fear usually meant failure. Because Animation nearly drove him to the brink of insanity, Disney moved down a new path, and into a new form. As he had revolutionized short cartoons, invented and then revolutionized feature length animated films, and was in the process of revolutionizing television, Disney wanted to revolutionize the idea of family amusement. He wanted to build a new concept in the form, called a "Theme Park".

Before Walt Disney, Amusement parks consisted of dirty, unkempt ride supervisors and noisy, unsafe machinery. They often attracted unsavory elements, and many of these unsavory elements stayed on long after the show had left any particular town. Disney wanted to provide a place where people could have fun in a safe, quiet, controlled environment. In short, he wanted to bring the same language and form he had used to create animated films for the entire family and apply it to a three-dimensional space. This being Walt Disney, of course, that wasn't enough.

Walt, without knowing it, created the new "master form". The way that cinema had become the ultimate form of expression, his theme park would find a way to bring the screen to startling life, and to place people in the middle of a true cinematic experience. Disney formed WED Enterprises, which later became Walt Disney Imagineering, on December 16, 1952. WED's designers had begun life in the grammar of film. Most were set designers and craftsmen from rival studios, and a few story men came from Walt's own studio.

These were the men that would take the roadside carnival and reinvent it. They would give new life to an ancient form of fun, and making fun would, by their hand, become far more than a national pastime. Human beings are storytellers by nature. To take the physical world we live in and bring the stories that make our souls more soulful out into it was an art form that had yet to be explored. It was a combination of film and architecture, and the languages of those two worlds meshed in a way they never had before.

If we trace the roots of the word itself, "Imagineering", we find numerous uses throughout history. The first recorded usage comes from a rural Alabama newspaper article from January 1942. It references the word in presenting the idea that "war brings new words-- or atleast brings old ones back in new attire". Another early reference comes from an advertisement for the artist Arthur C. Radebaugh in an Ohio newspaper in 1947.

(The work of Arthur Radebaugh, who called himself the first "Imagineer".)

Walt Disney never claimed to be a master of invention, but he was quite the entrepreneur when it came to reinvention. Here was a man who spent his life doing two things. He would attempt feverishly to outrun himself and then attempt to reinvent the work he had just outrun. Time and again he pronouced to his brother and his family that he was done with animation or with television or especially with striking workers or money men, and time and again he turned his energies to his frustrations and literally outdid them. When he became frustrated with the state of his animated short cartoons, Disney created the world's first animated feature-length motion picture. When he grew incensed at the Hollywood Studios' view of television, he created "Disneyland" (later Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color), which in turn saved his dying business results at the box office.

When Walt became agitated over his sunday outings with daughters Sharon and Diane, he turned his energies to creating a perfect environment where "children and parents can have fun- together".

Or so the story goes.

Much like the persona of Walt beamed into viewer's living rooms every sunday night on his television program, much of the myth surrounding Disneyland was as concocted as the place itself. We'd all like to believe that this was the truth, but the real truth is actually shrouded in a somewhat more abstract and indescribable emotion. Walt Disney created Disneyland for the same reason the Lumiere Brothers projected images of "The Arrival of the Train". As all humans do, he had an intrinsic need to create.

Disneyland was the one project that Walt never became upset enough to outrun. He loved it from its very inception, in a locked room at the Studio. He loved it through the difficult times during its construction and especially the financing of the park, which Disney nearly broke the bank attempting to secure. It was Walt's love that created this new art form, and the people he lovingly chose to carry out his dream that invented the language to carry the new master form through the next half century, and with a little luck, beyond.

Epcot 25

2008-07-16T02:35:00.000-04:00

October 1, 1982. EPCOT Center, the third theme park Walt Disney Productions has created, opens to an anxious public in Florida. EPCOT sits right at the center of the massive WDW property, and right at the center of the new philosophy: That with technology and each other, humanity can create a better world.

October 24, 1982, Card Walker makes the dedication speech on a stage IN FRONT of Spaceship Earth. Future Corps (or an early incarnation thereof) is present, and they play the park's new anthem ("We've Just Begun to Dream"). This is going to be not just a return to form for WED and Walt Disney Productions, but a renaissance of everything Walt had dreamed of doing. The company poured more money into EPCOT Center than any project in their history. It literally took everything they had to complete the project for opening day, much as Disneyland had in 1955, and Horizons still wasn't ready!

To keep in the "original spirit of the park", the name was changed in early 1994 to "EPCOT '94". The idea was, the name would change each year, thus bringing EPCOT closer to it's heritage as a permanent World's Fair. The plan was a disaster, and, after one additional name change to "Epcot '95" a year later, the name went to just plain Epcot. A word, not an acronym.

World of Motion was the first original pavillion to be closed. This slow moving omni-mover trip through the history of motion, from the invention of the wheel to the transportation systems of the future, closed in 1996.

Journey into Imagination (the original attraction), which featured EPCOT Center's two signature characters (being Figment and The Dreamfinder) went away forever on October 10, 1998.

Horizons shut down in 1998, and was removed entirely in 1999. The building, the actual structural supports, were unsafe and were sinking into a bottomless sinkhole. Not only could the attraction (in which guests rode into the future and chose their own ending) never reopen for safety reasons, the building itself was condemned.

October 1, 2000. With the 15-month long Millenium Celebration in full swing, 18 years after Epcot (Center had, by this time, been dropped from the name) opened to an excited, hopeful public, mistakes are being made with the park that will cost it much time and money in the near future. A giant "Sorcerer Mickey Wand" is erected on a tower that rises next to and curves over Spaceship Earth. Atop the tower is a glittering "2000". Many wondered if WDI was pulling an "Epcot 94".

The Millenium Celebration brought many positive changes to World Showcase, but Future World continued to suffer. "Leave a Legacy", one of the final show designs by Imagineering genius John Hench, provided contrast to the Spaceship Earth entry plaza, but for some reason never quite fit with what was being done. Spaceship Earth became more and more outdated, a problem that would not be fixed until late in the decade. Wonders of Life went seasonal in early 2004, and opened rarely for the next few years.

Eisner's era- specifically, Eisner and his crew of executives- did more damage to the mouse house than any other group of executives in the long history of the company. Their effects were felt strongly during the Millenium Celebration, and while Disney continued to grow and change as a company, it was during this turbulent time that Eisner began to generally distrust the Imagineers and their capabilities to produce winning attractions without supervision.

Some of the visible effects of Eisner's later years in the parks can be seen via the giant Sorcerer Mickey hat at Disney-MGM Studios, the "Magic Wand" that was erected next (and hanging over) Spaceship Earth at Epcot, and the general decline of Disneyland itself via the installation of Paul Pressler as a president, followed by the equally unconcerned Cynthia Harris.

All that said, Uncle Mikey started out believing in the parks, and believing that there were great things on the horizon. He attempted to begin projects like WestCOT and Disney's America, and tried to expand Walt Disney World with a fourth gate (which eventually became Disney's Animal Kingdom, in a somewhat trunkated format, minus the giant Beastly Kingdomme that executive designer Joe Rhode had wanted to build).

Eisner eventually became more interested in Disney as a brand- essentially putting hotels into production for WDW at an unprecedented wait. It's thanks to him that we have award winners like the All Star Resorts now in our midsts- set right on Disney property, in an age when Disney had already lost most of its class due to the failure of California Adventure and the decline of attendance levels at the florida resort.

All was nearly lost. Finally, Eisner made a final blow. After a battle royale with Feature Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg (who ended up staring Dreamworks SKG with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen), Eisner announced he would be downsizing the animation unit- and removing them from their offices at the original animation building on the Burbank Disney Studios lot. The animators were devastated.

They retreated to a parking lot less than a block from Walt Disney Imagineering on Flower Street in Glendale. It was in those trailers that the spark that had made pure magic for the studio in the early days was once again ignited. Here, they could concentrate on their art without Disney management (who had all but decimated the Animation unit, and looked on those who remained as meaningless) breathing down their necks. Here, the renaissance of animation began.

Eisner, busy concentrating on opening his Disney-MGM Studios to help compete with Universal's new operations to the north, ignored what was happening in the Glendale parking lot. His absence gave rise to The Little Mermaid, and a new Golden Age of Disney Animation.

Eisner's effects were felt at Epcot, too- but Epcot suffered from problems with its fundamental nature, which undid many of the original pavilions. Having left the price tag for most of future world (and World Showcase) up to corporate and political sponsors, many of the pavilions were now in neglected states. The problem was, the sponsors didn't have a grasp on how to run a theme park. They hadn't the faintest idea. All they knew was, their name was plastered up on the signage together with a name that could sell an empty can of paint to a master painter: Disney. Most of them were happy to be a part of the project, but few understood its ramifications. The exhibits they sponsored would assuredly need upkeep. WDI and the maitenance folks at the park would need funding- continued and relentless funding- to help the attractions in Epcot's Future World stay in the future.

Reportedly, when the president of United Technologies saw the concepts for the building's exterior, he gawked, and complained to WDI that he wanted the entrance area to be affixed with "six bright white panels." Imagineering legend John Hench, who was a lead designer on the park, explained that the Florida sunshine would reflect off those panels and blind the guests as they approached. The UT man refused to listen, so Hench set a date for them to visit the site. As they stood, hardhatted at the construction site of the new pavilion, Hench revealed a color palette, and asked the president of UT to select the colors he thought would work best with the coloring on the rest of the structure. At this point, the man's wife, along for the tour, leaned over and asked Hench in a very confused tone, "Why are you letting Harry pick the colors? He's colorblind."

So, there were major problems with corporate sponsors. Future World excited corporations because of the chances for advertisement, so though very few of them grasped the meaning of the deals they struck, they were all excited to jump on board. World Showcase was another matter entirely.

Early in the planning stages of EPCOT Center, WDI had a weekend retreat for many of the leaders of countries they had contacted to participate in the project. The retreat was held mostly at the Contemporary Hotel, near the Magic Kingdom Park. The dignitaries spent a day touring Magic Kingdom and then called on the Top of the World Restaurant (now called the Grand Canyon Concourse) at the Contemporary's glass skylight for dinner. Here, they watched the fireworks over the Magic Kingdom.

The next day, a large meeting was held in a conference room at the hotel, where the concept plans and artwork for Epcot were shown to the dignitaries. Many of them were excited, but few of them immediately decided that their countries would be involved.

Sponsorship having been an issue in the past, the Millenium Celebration, with its themes of world peace and togetherness, brought a whole new generation of sponsorship, and allowed for the extensive refurbishment of several pavilions. This included the construction of Mission: Space in Future World, the Millenium Village exhibition at World Show Place (the entertainment venue between the UK and Canada), and the new parade and laserlight show Tapestry of Nations and Illuminations: Reflections of Earth, respectively.

Epcot seemed to be coming back strong. The intervening years have been a long, difficult transition. EPCOT Center was originally envisioned by Walt Disney as what he called "The community of tomorrow, where our children can live, work and play." He wanted a thriving city, complete with several expanded versions of Disneyland's popular transportation systems, to be the heart of the florida property. What it had now become was a permanent World's Fair, and what had been added to the mix, particularly during the Millenium Celebration, was the focus on Disney.

Epcot was now to feature the traditional Disney characters within attractions for the very first time. It would have its own character meet and greet constructed in the building on the far side of Fellowship Fountain Plaza. Epcot was changing, for better or worse. Soon, celebrities also started to endorse projects, and appear in the attractions themselves. Mission: Space got Gary Sinise, Universe of Energy recieved the ill-advised "Ellen's Energy Adventure", starring Bill Nye the Science Guy and sitcom star Ellen Degeneres.

Finally, in 2005, Epcot recieved a gift worthy of it's name. Soarin' was constructed within The Land, and the Nestle corporation poured money into the project, which led to a revival of the entire pavilion. Soarin' was the first attraction added to Epcot that had come from another park which actually themed with the area it had been constructed in (while Mission: Space replaced Horizons, the previous attraction was about the promise of tomorrow, not space travel specifically, and Test Track focused on speed and thrills instead of the much-broader topic of the history of transportation from World of Motion.)

The Living Seas became simply "The Seas" for a time, after the addition of Crush to Turtle Talk (which brought the first "Disney Character", Figment not withstanding, into an attraction in the park), and eventually recieved a million-dollar makeover into "The Seas with Nemo and Friends", which featured a plethora of experiences designed around Pixar’s hit film Finding Nemo.

As Epcot continued to navigate away from its intentions, longtime fans began to ask about the reasons. They weren’t as complex as one might think, and actually, it boiled down to two people put in charge at the Walt Disney Company that perhaps should not have been.

The first was Epcot’s previous president, Brad Rex. He focused on profit, and neglected everything in the park into a state of decay, much the way Pressler had done with Disneyland. One need only to have taken a trip aboard Spaceship Earth in its final months before rehab to see the kind of trouble Epcot was really in.

The second was Mike Mendenhall, the vice president in charge of marketing for Parks and Resorts that had Eisner’s backing and a tremendous effect not just on Epcot, but on the entire Parks and Resorts division. It was Mendenhall who frightened WDI into total submission to synergy with his antics. To explain, he felt that all blue sky attractions needed to go through a “Marketing Review” before it could be put into production. Any attraction that failed Disney Design Group's Marketing Standards would be shut down immediately and put on the shelf.

Imagineers lived in fear for years of Mendenhall and his terrible policies. Finally, he stepped down and left the company. Two days later, new Epcot president Jim MacPhee announced that Epcot would be having an official twenty-fifth anniversary celebration. In effect, it was the beginning of a new era for Epcot, and for Walt Disney Parks & Resorts. While Jay Rasulo remains at the helm, so far things are looking pretty solid. Spaceship Earth has undergone a massive rehab. Project Tomorrow, the new postshow area at Epcot’s thesis pavilion, reopened to rave reviews earlier this year.

The new management at Walt Disney Imagineering is certainly making things change, and making many in WDI uneasy at the moment. Everyone agrees, though, that there are positive changes on the way. When SSE reopens, it will be an entirely interactive experience. The American Adventure recently added scenes, under the direction of WDI veteran Rick Rothschild, to update that opening-day attraction into the twenty-first century.

With Mendenhall gone, MacPhee (who had been a transportation guest service manager at Epcot when it opened in 1982) and company were quick to announce that Epcot would have a proper celebration- or as proper a celebration as could be compiled in the little amount of time that they had. With less than six months to prepare, everyone sprang into action.

October 1, 2007. I had the privilege to be a guest at the park, from open until close, and what a day it was. While many were disappointed, I was ecstatic that the company had decided to do anything at all. The first signs were evident at the toll plaza, where big posters had been erected with an “Epcot25” Logo. The cast member there seemed unnaturally happy, and actually smiled and waved at me as I went through.

At the entrance, “Listen to the Land” played, while excited cast members admitted folks through the main entrance. Spaceship Earth, though not open itself just yet, had the wart (Wand. I mean wand.) removed from it’s face in the preceding months, and it glowed in the beautiful Florida sunshine this morning. The original pavilion themes played out at the entrance, and it was a truly special moment in history to walk through those gates on that day. Inside, we beelined for the special commemorative merchandise, including the special t-shirts designed by an up and coming artist at the Disney Design group, after Mendenhall’s departure.

There was also a very special ceremony featuring MacPhee, Marty Sklar and a special group of frontline Cast Members from each of Epcot's pavilions, and of course Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

Years of neglect at Epcot seem to be coming to an end with the changes in personnel. One can only hope that the words used to rededicate the park will be acted upon:

“When the park opened on October 1, 1982*, a live band played an original piece of music that became Epcot’s unofficial theme**. Many remember the music, but few knew the name of the song. It was “We’ve Just Begun to Dream.” (Tracy Wu, a Test Track frontline CM)

Next, Epcot designer and WDI Ambassador to the World Marty Sklar:

“Today, we rededicate Epcot, and ourselves, to a new future: A future that begins now.”

If the twenty-first century really began on October 1, 1982, then maybe our new future began on October 1, 2007. Here’s to the hope of a better 25 years, Epcot.

*For clarification purposes, the park DID open to the public on October 1, 1982, but the actual dedication ceremony took place at the front side of Spaceship Earth on October 24, 1982. A stage was erected there just in front of where the giant white spires once stood. During her speech, Erin Wallace, VP WDW Operations, stated that it was a thrill for her to be standing on the very stage where the park was dedicated 25 years ago on that day. This information was intended, no doubt, for nostalgic purposes, but is historically inaccurate.

The actual dedication ceremony featured E. Cardon “Card” Walker, the CEO of the Walt Disney Company at that time, as well as Lillian Disney (Walt’s widow) and the “first family” of Epcot. At the close of the ceremony, cast members released balloons into the skies above Spaceship Earth (a practice that perhaps began with the opening of Space Mountain at Magic Kingdom in 1975) and Card then invited everyone to join him in an inaugural voyage aboard Spaceship Earth.

**Also, “a live band”, though not called so at that time, was to become Future Corps, the live entertainment group that frequented Epcot until the mid-1990s. Future Corps was a Drum & Bugle Corps founded in 1982. They competed in Drum Corps International’s world championships for several years and won several titles there. They also toured Japan and recorded several albums, which used to be sold at the park. The band that played on the day of the park’s dedication, I clarify, was not Future Corps, though it probably became Future Corps shortly thereafter. Based on the most accurate information available, it appears the piece was originally composed by Steve Skorija, Gregory Smith and Jack Eskew.
The title of the piece played on that day was, indeed, “We’ve Just Begun to Dream”. It became part of Epcot’s opening music every morning in the early years, and had accompanying lyrics (see below) and a dance troupe that performed alongside the live musicians. There was also a narration that ran each morning after the instrumental opening and before the lyrical portion of the tune.

The lyrics to "We've Just Begun to Dream":
A new creation (it's all around you)
A celebration (a celebration)
A new sensation (it will astound you)
An inspiration (a fascination)
A celebration (a celebration)
A celebration (a better nation!)
Imagination! Celebrate! As we create! A new Tomorrow!
Celebrate! A dream is made! A new Tomorrow!
The world awaits, celebrates
A new creation
We've Just Begun (We've just begun) to dream!

Epcot’s principle designers from Walt Disney Imagineering were a group of young Imagineers and a group of legendary veterans, both eager to try something new. The primary designers were Tony Baxter (Journey into Imagination), Randy Bright and Rick Rothschild (The American Adventure), Marty Sklar (Overall direction), Marc Davis (World of Motion), Barry Braverman (Journey into Imagination and The Seas), and John Hench (Spaceship Earth).
It was Herb Ryman who changed the course of World Showcase, when Marty commissioned him to do an overhead of the area, and he provided a view of three of the countries which helped them conclude that to lay the pavilions in a circle and face the architecture right up against itself (each pavilion visually colliding with the next) would work as a design aesthetic. Hench worked closely with Ray Bradbury on the design of Spaceship Earth, and referred to Epcot as “his baby”. Barry Braverman later left the company, after many of his concepts and ideas for the WestCOT project (i.e. the version of EPCOT that was to have been placed in the old Disneyland parking lot in Anaheim) were systematically eliminated by management. Braverman did a series of interviews for the opening day coverage provided by ABC, where he explained his design choices and the overall philosophy of the project.
The park was imagineered by the brightest stars WDI has ever known, and it showed in the early years. Today, many great Imagineering talents continue to be involved in Epcot and its future.

With great projects like the all new interactive Spaceship Earth, the expansion plans of Project: Tomorrow and possible updates coming to Wonders of Life and Universe of Energy, Epcot's future may (hopefully) be brighter than its recent past.

Contact via Rocket

2008-07-15T22:49:00.002-04:00

Along with a promise to start posting here more frequently, I'm glad to inform you that you can now email questions, inquiries and story suggestions to the following address:

foundationsofmagic@rocketmail.com

I hope to soon post some interesting stories about the history of Pleasure Island, and the first article in an ongoing series on Disney's Icons, as well as to wrap up the story on "it's a small world".

Foundations

2008-05-06T01:21:00.000-04:00

Today, I've changed the official address of The Dreamport.

This site can now be found, as you have all no doubt discovered, at http://foundationsofmagic.blogspot.com

This change is to better reflect the founding idea of the site: that this place should become a forum and a place for aspiring designers to meet, talk and learn from one another.

The new address is a tribute to the wonderful article written by Sheila Hagen on Mouseplanet (find it here). Sheila wrote the piece upon John's passing in February 2004.

John Hench was a master Imagineer. He furthered the art of the show more than any of those who came before him- in fact, he invented the term "art of the show"!

While Mary Blair brought style, Blaine Gibson brought detail, Marc Davis brought humor and character, Sam McKim brought those wonderful maps and Bob Gurr brought motion to Walt's creative form, John seemed to bring a mix of all these things, and something perhaps more important: the art of story.

Hench is the designer behind Space Mountain (most famously), but also the original Moonliner TWA Rocket at Disneyland's Tomorrowland, The Enchanted Tiki Room and Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom.

In his wonderful book, Designing Disney, Hench tells a story about working for another studio animating a section of Jason & The Argonauts wherein the studio producer explained that the audience "would never know the difference."

Perhaps we can thank him the most for the antithesis of the this terrible attitude.

"Liking the guests is the key to everything we do."- John Hench.

Some Not-so-small Background

2008-05-03T11:00:00.000-04:00

Walt Disney knew that the secret to creating the best entertainment was to hire the best artists for any particular genre or style. When he moved his animation studio to Hyperion, he hired 8 of the world's top animators. These men, under the tutelage and guiding hand of his old friend and technical animation guru Ub Iwerks, would go on to create the first series of Mickey Mouse shorts as well as the revolutionary Silly Symphonies.

When Walt decided it was time for a new revolution and he set his eye to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt eventually ended up hiring his famed nine old men of animation. Les Clark, Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas, Eric Larson, John Lounsberry, Ward Kimball, Milt Kahl, Wolfgang Reitherman and Marc Davis would have their hands (though not all of them for every project) in most of the major releases from 1937 until The Rescuers in 1977.

Finally, in December 1953, Walt Disney had decided that his dreams had outgrown the two-dimensional plateau of the motion picture screen, and it was time to create another brand new genre of entertainment. This time, he would have full control. There would be no one to cede control from him as Charles Mintz and George Winkler had with Oswald. There would be no Pat Powers, no executives in New York trying to purchase not only his chief characters but his entire studio. Walt Disney had been thinking in three dimensions.

The story goes that on sunday afternoons, Walt would take his two daughters (Sharon and Diane Disney) to Griffith Park- a sleepy, sprawling public grounds located on the far side of Mt. Lee in Los Angeles. Minutes from the studio and close to the family's home, the park was convienent and provided relaxation to a stress-ridden, snappy Walt Disney.

On these afternoons, Walt would sit on the bench as the girls rode the carousel (which is still there today). As the legend goes, he began to consider making a place where he could have fun with his daughters. A place where the parents wouldn't have to just sit on the bench and eat peanuts- a place where families could really spend time together that was fun and clean and provided a new kind of entertainment.

At first, Walt's new dream occupied the site where the Walt Disney Feature Animation Building now stands- across the street from the studios in Burbank, on a site called Riverside Park. Today, the famous and iconic hat building stands where Walt once envisioned his "Mickey Mouse Park". Even in those early drawings and ideas, the park was to be surrounded by a train.

Soon enough, Walt's overactive imagination needed a bigger place than Riverside Park to hold it, and Walt sent agents scouring the area for a site large enough to hold what he was now calling Disneyland. The term had originated with Disneylandia, a series of scale models that Walt had created, and he intended to tour his pint size view of turn-of-the-century America across the country. Disneyland, before it was a theme park or a television show, was a traveling exhibition featuring trains and tiny moving models. Disneyland was growing.

Walt's scouts came back with an answer: Anaheim, a bustling little town off Interstate 5, forty minutes south of Los Angeles. In what was previously an orange grove, Walt Disney announced two milestones in the history of entertainment: He formed a new division of the company, WED Enterprises, and announced his plans to build Disneyland, a new concept in entertainment altogether.

"I want it to be like nothing else in the world, Herbie, and it should be surrounded by a train," he quipped to Herbert Ryman in a moment of intense reflection. Herbie would create the first view of the park from the air over a single weekend in September 1953. Walt phoned Ryman on friday evening and explained that he had a new idea, and would Ryman please come down to the studio for a meeting.

"I'd very much like to see the plans, Walt. Where are they?" Walt laughed. "You're going to draw them."

Ryman had left the studio in a dispute sometime before, and his answer proved his bullheaded nature: "No, I'm not."

Walt walked to the corner of the room where the two had been talking. He stood for a moment with both hands on his hips, before turning slightly back to Ryman. "Like a little kid," he turned and asked "Will you draw them if I stay here with you?"

Walt was in the throes of his new idea. He was a man who had constantly to reinvent himself and his product. Disneyland was just the latest in a string of ideas that had been changing the entertainment industry since the mid 1920s- but Disneyland was going to be the first enterprise, the first idea, that belonged entirely to Walt.

WED Enterprises, which in December 1952 consisted of a handful of artists and art directors hand picked from the studio staff, holding up in a locked room on the lot at Burbank, was the company formed personally by Walt to build his dream. Also concerned- mostly at Roy's urging- to the rights of the name Walt Disney and who they belonged to, and for the first time recognizing his own name as a brand, Walt gave the rights to WED. The name of this new company were, after all, the initials of the man responsible for that brand: Walter Elias Disney.

In February 1965, the rights to Walt's name and two attractions at Disneyland that he owned personally were transferred to Retlaw, Inc, an entirely separate entity from The Walt Disney Company and from WED Enterprises. Until 1982, Retlaw controlled the Disneyland-Santa Fe Railroad and the Disneyland Monorail, and Retlaw was a separate company with separate staff and leadership from Disneyland or WED. In 1982, The Disney family sold Retlaw's remaining divisions to the company, as well as the rights to Walt's name.

All of this is important to our lesson today primarily because these lessons in history make it clear that Walt was extremely concerned about his legacy. He wanted the rights to his name to be in the control of people he trusted- no one better than Retlaw, which was a private company with no stockholders. Walt had to strike a balance between what he did to preserve that legacy and what he had to do to achieve the creation of his dreams.

The Walt Disney Studios, Disneyland (The TV Show), and the entire image of "Uncle Walt"- the homespun, kindly old uncle that appeared in a trillion living rooms in the fifties and sixties, were all very much bargaining chips that helped Walt secure the resources needed to create Disneyland and continue to add to it as the years passed.

Walt hired the very best people to turn his imagineerings into reality, and one of the very best people was an artist named Mary Blair. Mary came to the studio as a conceptual artist in 1940. She and her husband Lee Blair, an animator who had worked for both Ub Iwerks Studios and Harman-Ising Studios before migrating to Disney, spent time in 1942 traveling with Walt and Lillian in South America as part of a Presidential Goodwill Tour, and created concept art for Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros.

Mary went on to earn credits on Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan for "color styling". She is also credited for work as Art Supervisor, Background and Color on such classics as Song of the South, Make Mine Music and So Dear to My Heart.

Mary resigned from the studio in 1953, after the completion of her work on Peter Pan, to work as a freelance graphic designer for numerous major corporations and destinations worldwide. Walt, however, had grown fond of her, and her sense of color was second perhaps only to John Hench. Walt invited Mary back to lead the design of the UNICEF pavilion for the 1964/65 World's Fair in New York.

Mary's sense of color was inherent, and it came very naturally to her. Walt recognized this talent, and knew that Mary's sense of placing odd colors together would work perfectly with the new show, where the children of the world would unite to remind us of the idea that the commonalities we share are far greater than the differences.

Mary Blair led the design on what would become "it's a small world". Her color palette was so odd perhaps because she was color blind, which had a lot to do with her unique sense of style. Mary brought her geometric sensibility to the new attraction, and combined odd colors to create a very unique feeling for the show.

She went on to work as an Imagineer many more times over the years, returning to WED to create the entrance murals for the new Tomorrowland in 1967, and murals for Disney's Contemporary Resort near Florida's Magic Kingdom in 1971. Mary passed away suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage 26 July, 1978. Her sense of design and color was responsible not just for "it's a small world", but also for the look and feel of Disney's animated features from Saludos Amigos through Peter Pan, a time when most of the Disney classics were created.

Fast forward to the 35th anniversary of Florida's Magic Kingdom Park. Imagineering Ambassador to the World Martin A. Sklar hosts a question & answer session in the remnants of the Walt Disney Story Theatre in Orlando. Here, he reveals plans WDI had yet to confirm to the media that "it's a small world" would soon take up residence at the new park in Hong Kong. In order to make the story relevant to chinese audiences, Sklar tells those in attendance, Hong Kong's version will feature dolls (still in Mary Blair's distinctive style) modeled after important Disney characters.

Hong Kong's official numbers are 220 dolls and "over 200" toys. Of these, 38 will be Disney characters. They will be placed in their countries of origin.

Now, WDI has a publicity nightmare of Toad-like proportions on their hands, as rumors swirled all around the internet that not only would the "refurbishment" of small world turn into a "re-imagineering" of the famous world's fair attraction, but that in addition to the Disney characters, Imagineers would also be removing the rainforest section of the ride, adding Mickey & Minnie Mouse, and replacing the rainforest with an "Up with America" tribute scene.

Perturbed fans have been posting in their blogs for weeks what a travesty of commercialization it would be for the Imagineers to "desecrate" Blair's artistic masterpiece. Re-Imagineering - perhaps the best and most informed Disney-related web log on the internet, even provided quotes on the situation from a large number of animation professionals.

While I hate to disagree with the views published in the online journals I revere as being some of the finest in terms of current writings about this industry and it's leaders, I think a clear examination of the facts of our current situation is order, before we can jump to any conclusions about whether or not the proposed changes to the classic attraction are warranted.

At the conclusion of the 1964/65 World's Fair in New York, as was always the plan, Walt Disney set a plan in motion to relocate three of the four attractions he had developed to his family fun park in Anaheim, California. Technically, some piece of all four attractions made the trip: the "Primeval World" sequence from Ford's Magic Skyway pavilion opened on the Disneyland Railroad track in 1966.

The Carousel of Progress found a new home adjacent to the diorama in Disneyland's Tomorrowland, Great Moments with Mister Lincoln took up residence (somewhat ironically) in the Opera House, and "it's a small world" took up residence in a newly constructed show building at the back of the park, in the far corner of Fantasyland.

Walt Disney never took a step backward. He was enamored and humbled at the same time by the lessons he and his staff learned at the World's Fair. Many have viewed the fair, perhaps accurately, as a "field test" for Disney styled entertainment on the east coast. As soon as the fair became successful, many of Walt's most talented Imagineers began work on "Project X', later "The Florida Project". Housed in a locked room at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, planning for Project X included a theme park element that was initially referred to as "Disneyland East". The main thrust of the Florida Project of course, was EPCOT. The last media footage Walt Disney ever appeared in was a film was a sequence scripted by Marty Sklar for The Wonderful World of Color television program, in which Disney described his Florida-based plans for a futuristic city.

The land purchased by the company in Florida amounted to an area twice the size of Manhattan Island. When Disney passed away on December 15, 1966, the dream of his futuristic city was already crumbling. Faced with serious implications of an already announced project, the company began a period of intense grieving. For several months, there was uncertainty as to whether the company- particularly WED Enterprises (known today as Walt Disney Imagineering) could or would continue to exist.

As fate would have it, WED decided to move ahead with the Florida Project, though in somewhat abated form. Now, the main attraction for opening day would be a grander, larger, more exquisite version of Walt's original Disneyland. For many years, in a term that can be traced back to Walt Disney himself, the park was called "Magic Kingdom". From 1971 until 1979, Walt Disney World was the official name of the property, but it was also typically referred to as "EPCOT", and plans weren't fully abandoned for the city of tomorrow until planning began on EPCOT Center, the theme park that would be a permanent World's Fair, to be constructed at the center of WDW property.

Among the attractions in the Magic Kingdom available to guests on October 1, 1971 was a nearly full version of "it's a small world". This was to be a rarity in the Magic Kingdom: due to budgetary constraints, lack of firm leadership (atleast not as firm as Walt's leadership) and most importantly the serious creative strain that the Imagineers were placed under. Most of the attractions in the park were sliced down versions of the shows to be found at Disneyland. There were no Pirates at all, and none of the major mountains guests the world over associate with Disney today had yet been created*.

*From 1958 until the 1975 grand opening of Space Mountain at Magic Kingdom Park, the Disney Mountain range consisted of one solitary peak: The Matterhorn at Disneyland.

With the opening of the Magic Kingdom, the Imagineers finally proved to themselves that they could design a relatively successful themed environment without Walt at the helm; however the park is even today the most problematic version of Disneyland ever created. To begin with, in order to accommodate more guests, the scale and size of the pathways had to be enlarged. One of the reasons Disneyland was (and continues to be) so successful had to do with finding the perfect scale. Disneyland surrounds you, and provides an idealized version of small town America*, where as Magic Kingdom Park's scale is almost the same size as that of the outside world. This results in almost no dramatic tension, no suspension of disbelief- you've essentially passed beneath the berm and come out in a world much the same as the one you just left!

*While many scholars as well as official company history will point to Marceline, Missouri as the inspiration for Main Street, USA at Disneyland. While Marceline did have profound effects on the young Walt Disney, who spent four of his earliest years there, Main Street is actually based on it's primary designer's experience. Harper Goff was an artist and designer at Walt Disney Imagineering and is perhaps known best for his design of the Nautilus submarine for Disney's live action production, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

So, the version of Small World placed at Florida's Magic Kingdom does lack slightly compared to the Disneyland (World's Fair) original.

As our brief case history has proved, the Walt Disney Company- Not, mind you, Walt Disney Imagineering, but the company itself- has a tendency to gloss over the truth and facts of a situation for an idealized, alls-well-that-ends-well viewpoint. It was this viewpoint that concealed the real reason for the removal of Mister Toad's Wild Ride in Florida (Money) and the real reason behind the Haunted Mansion's recent refurbishment (Not story or creative purposes).

This seems to be a culture issue: after all, it is an entertainment company. The idea that Mary Blair's artwork is being relished and treasured makes a wonderfully happy ending, which is what any entertainment company wants- but to the legions of forum writers and bloggers and hostile "fanatics", adding anything to "it's a small world" is ignoring the real problem of its continued upkeep and refresh rate. Assuredly, they would like you to believe that The Walt Disney Company is trying to create another happy ending.

Beginning with last year's considerable re-imagineering of Spaceship Earth, Walt Disney Imagineering has begun its long awaited turnaround into a real themed design firm. What we are seeing here is the same renaissance climate that occurred in the late 1970's with EPCOT Center, where young Imagineers meet with the legends and create something beautiful. Now, though, park management and corporate interference hasn't subsided. It simply didn't exist the way it does today- this being a product largely of the Eisner/Pressler era that never went away- and therefore the Imagineers of yesteryear had it a bit on the easy side politically speaking, compared to the current crop of young hopefuls.

We are seeing things that we've never seen: the biggest sign of an imminent Renaissance is California Adventure's recent approval for 1.3 BILLION dollars in funding to recreate the experience across the esplanade and make it flow and fit. 1.3 Billion dollars is a sum that even Bill Gates might find hefty, and for Bob Iger to approve such an astounding budget presents a first in Disney history: they've now admitted that they have made a mistake. A very, very big mistake.

The idea that a time of extreme change at Walt Disney Imagineering really began to be publicly visible last year, starting with the promotion of Bruce Vaughn and Craig Russell. Vaughn was previously the executive in charge of research and development at WDI. That says a lot about where the company plans to take its themed experiences over the coming years.

The next major announcement triggered euphoria for Disney fans and all aspiring Imagineers- the genius designer behind Islands of Adventures’ Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man attraction was coming to Imagineering. Not only would Scott Trowbridge be coming to Flower Street, he'd also be taking Vaughn's old job, as the Vice President of Research and Development. Next, WDI did something it should have done a trillion years ago- it put Spaceship Earth on the re-imagineering list and set some very talented show producers to work on the project.

Meanwhile, Toy Story Mania designers Kevin Rafferty and Chrissie Alley- the former a show writer and the latter a show producer- were digging in their heels on the most interactive, high technology experience yet to be imagined in any theme park-- and the project would open at roughly the same time on both coasts.

For all of these good moves, Walt Disney Imagineering did take a few steps backwards in the first months of this year. First of all, they still seem to find difficulty into controlling the accountaneers at Walt Disney World. Perhaps of all eleven Disney theme parks, the three that are in the worst amount of trouble are at Walt Disney World. Disney's Hollywood Studios (though similar placemaking plans to California Advernture in scope seem to be floating around, for which Toy Story Mania is a proving ground) continues its identity crisis, Magic Kingdom continues to languish and be less about fantasy as a theme and more about t-shirts as a marketing tool, and Epcot...well, they just haven't got the faintest idea about what to do with Epcot.

At DHS, plans have been announced for an American Idol attraction. Talks swirled among the Imagineering-faithful that plans had once more been dusted off for a themed attraction based on Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, which would have occupied the space now buttonholed for American Idol. For a show whose popularity ratings continue to fall, and for what most journalists and reviewers deemed would pass as a fad, why would WDI want to place such a show into an already confused theme park?

They wouldn't. They didn't. Simply put, with the new financial structure, WDI-Florida is still very much in contractor mode. In California, due to their physical closeness, they have always had a much more easy control factor. In Florida, the parks are owned by the park management and the moneymen. Because of that fact alone, Imagineering has a very difficult time proposing its new ideas. Executive Management seems to have taken the stance of "We'll call you if we need anything..." but what they fail to understand that Imagineers have a clear grasp on is that the Studios, like any Disney Theme Park, isn't a "family park". It isn't a venue for their wild merchandising schemes. It isn't a giant store, and it most certainly is not a place with the time or energy for fads like American Idol. The Hollywood Studios is a story environment. Every detail, every place and thing within the space, is designed and placed specifically to tell a story. Disney-MGM Studios' original story was "The Hollywood that never was, and always will be..."

The Hollywood Studios story is broader in scope*, but has filmmaking as a major component of that story. Now, the park is about entertainment as a whole: as an industry that built the city, but its also about television (The Twilight Zone), music (Rock N' Roller Coaster) and theatre (Little Mermaid, Playhouse Disney). American Idol is about television. Studios is about entertainment. But American Idol is also about to take up the prime real estate of the park, and its about to make things even more confused in an already unclear environment. This will be the subject of a later post, but here, I'd just like to use it to make a point.

*It is nonetheless a wonderful sign that the logo itself didn't try to go for "hip & edgy". Perhaps we can look to California Adventure's Hollywood Boulevard for a lesson in why to avoid that design aesthetic.

At the Magic Kingdom, characters and meet and greets run rampant. They are attractions within themselves. Increasingly, they are the only attractions. Characters have themed costumes for every single special event, most of which are very expensive and time consuming to maintain. In addition, instead of paying the power bills of a new attraction, we now must pay talent fees.

I point to just one pointed example of the burdgeoning issues at Disneyland East, wherein for the past two consecutive Holiday seasons, Magic Kingdom president Phil Holmes has axed the budget for the Country Bear Christmas seasonal overlay. The resulting saved funds were instead appointed to host Mickey's Pirate and Princess Party- which will most likely not see a fourth run because the event has failed to so much as return its investment.

Within the company, California is a long, long way from Florida. Florida has isolated itself, and Jay Rasulo has installed his heads of state and given them power in ways that would seriously frighten most of America. The year of a Million Dreams runs rampant- as evidenced by the apparently bargain basement last ditch attempt at marketing the "event" that involves ruining beautiful sightlines like the one down Sunset Boulevard towards the Tower of Terror with awful blue dreams lightpost decorations. One cannot traverse a street or plaza inside or outside any guest area in Walt Disney World without being confronted by hundreds upon hundreds of these terrifying banners.

The Oasis area outside the main entrance of Animal Kingdom, the plaza, monorail station and kennel at Epcot, and every inch of ground on the approach to Magic Kingdom and DHS are covered with the horrendous blue diamond banners that portray a set of "dream-blue" mickey ears and the YOMD logo and typeface. I've never seen an advertising campaign run quite so mortifyingly rampant as this one has, and its not a pleasant thing to see.

The most vexing problem with the banners? The guests don't care. To open a new attraction like Everest, one may just as well host a movie premiere. In effect, we need to take our cues from the guests. Hard selling didn't work at Carnivals. The guests are already here. If we really want to make them feel special, use seasonal entertainment based around the YOMD theme. The Dream Squad is a wonderful idea, one of those treasured highlights of a Disney vacation much like the Golden Horseshoe at Disneyland. We're ignoring the fact, though, that the guests are already there. They have already been convinced by the marketing campaign to pay their hard earned dollars to enter the parks in the first place. The payoff has to be unique, immersive experiences (Toy Story Mania and Spaceship Earth are wonderful examples at WDW, as the Nemo Submarine Voyage is at Disneyland)-- not blue banners. Not people giving away prizes. Certainly, the latter should be something thats done all the time- a piece of extra magic that plusses the experience and doesn't require advertising to bring people in.

Saying my peace on the Year of a Million Dreams, we don't go to the movies for the popcorn. We go for the film. We don't go to the theme park so that people will be nice to us and offer us special prizes. We go for the attractions. If you're like me, you go, too, for the previews...which, in effect brings us to "it's a small world."

*Overall, the idea of seasonal or live entertainment in the parks is an undeniably important part of the experience, and so is the "general atmosphere" (see John Hench's "Disneyland is Good for You"), but these things are not the main show, and should not be looked at as such. They help to achieve a balance in the designs that could not otherwise exist.

Imagineering Ambassador to the World Martin A. Sklar issued a letter to the public stating his beliefs and the reasoning that Tony Baxter, Kim Irvine and himself have used as they have imagined a new, updated "it's a small world." There are no points in Marty's letter that I disagree with. I'd like to point out just a few of the more pertinent ones now.

1. Walt Disney was the greatest "change agent" ever to walk down Main Street, USA.

2. Let us not forget that the entire team at Imagineering was responsible for the success the attraction enjoyed at the World's Fair. Rolly Crump, Marc Davis, Blaine Gibson, the Sherman Brothers and Harriet Burns all combined their talents with Mary Blair's and without each one's contribution, we'd have no "it's a small world".

3. This wasn't an overnight situation. Tony Baxter has been working with Marty Sklar for the past eight years on this project. Just because the public has only now been informed of whats happening doesn't mean that considerable thought hasn't been put into the project already.

4. Rumors of the addition of Mickey & Minnie, the removal of the rainforest, the additions of dolls that break with Mary Blair's artistic style and the addition of a tribute to America are all hereby refuted as being false.

Thank you for your patience. I know it has been a long time again since the last post. This one has taken quite some time to put together, but I hope you have found it enlightening and informative.

Next time, we will delve even deeper into the "it's a small world" debate, and hopefully shed some light from that one golden sun on the situation by exploring WDI's reasons for wanting to plus this prototype themed show.

Making it Bigger

2008-04-07T19:34:00.001-04:00

Well, as it happens, lots of events have changed the way things are done since I last had the chance to update this forum.

Walt Disney Imagineering finally appears to be making better decisions- perhaps the creatives are being pushed back into a position where they can, in fact, make their own decisions about what goes and what stays, and what gets built and what gets filed away for future Shaun Finnie books.

There will be more to come..including a new (and rather different) perspective on the current debate surrounding "it's a small world" at Disneyland.

Stay tuned, dear readers. Stay tuned.

"Play it Again, Sam"

2008-01-24T21:54:00.000-05:00

This site is not going to be a "bash Disney" site. It's just not. I enjoy the Walt Disney Company and most of everything they have done in the past fifty plus years of themed entertainment.

This one, though, deserved a special mention.

In the past few posts, we have observed the complications that come from the hard bottom line, from difficult creative relationships and missteps, and we have discussed some of the product that has come from it all-- from Disney's California Adventure to EPCOT Center, we have watched and observed how the branding and experiences have changed.

In a recent interview with a show director at Walt Disney Creative Entertainment, journalist David Iskra asked the following question:

How is this show different than most other rides/shows at the park?

The answer that was given is posted below.

Before I answer how it is different, let me tell you how it is similar. Disney Parks' mission is to make every experience magical, filled with wonderful storytelling that hits on a number of emotions; it also must be great family entertainment that is designed to leave everlasting memories that families can share. "Immersive Entertainment" is a way guests can live out their dreams at Disney Parks. For example, guests also can join the fun of High School Musical at our theme park, and at the Magic Kingdom they can join Sheriff Woody from Toy Story in an interactive and entertaining "roundup."

Now, lets think here for just a minute. Disneyland? Created to be a unique venue in the world. EPCOT Center? Created as a unique project to showcase our world and the people who share it. Disney-MGM Studios? Created to celebrate the movies- something unique that had never been fully explored in any Disney theme park before. Are we seeing a trend develop here?

The entire purpose was to create rides, shows and experiences that were (and continue to be) unique in the world. We don't want guests to visit Animal Kingdom and have the same experience they have at Epcot....do we?

Apparently we do. The Year of a Million Dreams marketing campaign, however fascinating and nifty some of the prizes may be, has effectively stripped each of Walt Disney World's four theme parks of their individual identities. There are things in each that can never be taken away- things that Imagineers placed there that will never be made into anything else besides what they are.

In example, Spaceship Earth itself would have to be removed for Epcot's original vision to become entirely lost to cutesy cartoon visions of the future and Disney characters pretending to educate you about the countries of world showcase. At Disney's "Hollywood" Studios, the entire main street (interestingly built on a similar scale to Disneyland's original Main Street rather than Magic Kingdom's much larger scale version) would have to be removed and re-themed to destroy the classic invocation of 1930s Hollywood. Even though the chinese theatre is no longer visible, it would have to be removed entirely for "Hollywood Studios" to become just another "Magical Experience".

Mind you, its not Walt Disney Imagineering that is the problem. They are the kids, being forced to eat their vegetables by WDW Management; the latter seemingly brainwashed by the corporate juggernauts and the presence of Jay Rasulo, one of the final leftovers of the Eisner era. In turn, we recieve a marketing campaign that is pretensed as cause for a big celebration anchored on the "dream making magic of our cast members." The sun rises everyday, okay? Why don't we plan a marketing campaign around sunrise and sunset, too? That would just be pure "magic".

There is something just a little bit disturbing about the use of that word. Where dreams and magic have always been things that disney's parks embody, each project has been allowed to fluxuate within that form. There was a time when Disney characters were confined to the magic kingdom with the exception of related subject characters (i.e. Space Mickey at Epcot, Safari Mickey at Animal Kingdom), but now it seems guests can meet just about all the characters everywhere they go. Why are Mickey and his friends presented in classic attire in the old Epcot Communicore? Where is director Mickey at the Disney Studios? Indeed, now, magic seems nothing more than a buzz word. Even at Epcot's 25th anniversary, the line was read (and I do mean read, not recited or memorized) directly off a script no doubt prepared by whats left of the Accountaneers and Mike Mendenhall's marketing department:

"I'm absolutely delighted to be here at Epcot today, the place where dreams come true."

Epcot (lower case or not) is many things. It is a place where we can learn about who we are, and what we can do together. It is a place where We've Just Begun to Dream. It is a place where dreams come true, yes, but before those dreams were very specific. They were dreams of a better tomorrow, dreams of a world tour, dreams of harmony on Earth. Now, they are dreams. Better put, they are Disney Dreams with two Capital D's. And it just isn't right.

So, what are we to do? In Casablanca (one of the films represented in the original Disney-MGM Studios' classic thesis attraction, The Great Movie Ride), Rick wanted to hear Sam (his piano playing entertainer at Rick's Cafe American) play "As Time Goes By."

"Play it Sam. For old time's sake. Play, "As Time Goes By."

Again, the following is a quotation from a Show Producer at Walt Disney Creative Entertainment:

"Before I answer how it is different, let me tell you how it is similar. Disney Parks' mission is to make every experience magical, filled with wonderful storytelling that hits on a number of emotions; it also must be great family entertainment that is designed to leave everlasting memories that families can share."

Many of those things are true. The Walt Disney Company does want all its experiences to be fun and to be filled with great memory making moments. The fact is, it has become more important to make every experience "similar". Is it fear? Does the fear of rejection and therefore lack of funds cause this to happen?

Here is what Walt Disney had to say about fear:

"Sometimes I wonder if 'common sense' isn't another way of saying 'fear', and fear, too often, spells failure."

But why would we listen to him?

So play it again, Sam. Eventually this same trick- this dog and pony show of big "dream blue" buzz words and fairy dust- will have to end. Eventually, Sam's hands are going to get tired. Time does go by, and change is a positive thing...

But so is Identity.

A Verry Merry Un-Birthday!

2007-12-22T23:38:00.000-05:00

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Today marks the official 55th Anniversary of Walt Disney Imagineering. It was on this day in 1952 that Walt Disney officially moved several of his key animation staff to a new trailer on the studio lot, where they began design for his “Mickey Mouse Park”. The project became Disneyland, and the people became the world’s very first “Imagineers”, the designers who defined a new master art form, using “A blend of imagination and practical know-how”.

Since many of the Imagineers at WED Enterprises (as it was then called) came from animation and film backgrounds, they used what they knew and translated it using the languages of spatial design, architecture and human experience. The world would never be the same. Walt Disney once said about Disneyland a statement that holds true for all eleven Disney theme parks around the globe:

“As long as there is Imagination left in the world, Disneyland will never be finished.”

Perhaps the most profound quotation comes from the maestro himself in regards directly to his very special staff of Imagineers:

“We never get tired because we keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

Happy Birthday, Walt Disney Imagineering, as we celebrate our past and look towards the future.

We’ve Just Begun to Dream.

California Dreaming

2007-10-25T22:49:00.000-04:00

Where were we?

When we left our dynamic house of mouse, we were in the midst of the regrouping of a company devastated by its own public. It's important to realize that though the locals, in most of the cases, had a point to their arguments, the mouse was extremely hurt. Here is a company who, for so many decades, could essentially do no wrong. Everything Walt Disney touched appeared to be Fool's Gold, but turned into 24-karat by the time he had finished with it. Now, the same public that supposedly adored them had turned their backs on them. They adored them until the mouse wanted their support.

With Disney's America, WestCOT Center and Port Disney dead on the line, and a fourth gate for Walt Disney World in development but barely beginning the planning stages, Michael Eisner brought together the minds of the company in Aspen for a creative sojourn. The minds involved- namely Barry Braverman, the newly-installed Paul Pressler (president of Disneyland, and one of the worst things that ever happened to that edifice) and Eisner himself. Wanting an idea that could be built cheaply-- hold on.

Let's examine the claims against DCA for a moment. The intention is not to back up the decisions that were made in the wake of all the project cancellations, but to provide a background against which more informed judgements can be made. When people constantly criticize Disneyland Resort's second gate as being a cheap knock off of a theme park from day one, its because they haven't looked at the history of this project. The real issues with the park's current state lie mostly in the same neglect that Pressler offered Disneyland. The issues that made the park go from a full-day experience to a third of a day experience, or an "overflow park", as it came to be known, are mostly found in the actual construction of the park, and the constant budget slashing that plagued that phase of the project.

All that in mind, its not false information that they wanted DCA to be "cheap"- not in quality, but in funding. Eisner had already sunk buku dollars into new theme parks. Animal Kingdom was in development, and WestCOT, Port Disney and Disney's America (and, around this time, what came to be known as "Disney's American Celebration"- a scaled down version of the Prince William County resort that featured a smaller, "regional" park) had all absorbed money for the past few years. Eisner's budgets for Imagineering were no doubt being strained to their maximum at that time. He wanted cheap because he wanted to push his Imagineers...atleast, if someone wanted to defend the park, thats what they would say.

It's a difficult subject ot broach, just because Eisner began his career as the watch dog of quality. He once famously told the Imagineers "amaze me"- and they did, by designing the Disney-MGM Studios, itself having been a victim of budget cuts. They also, perhaps more importantly, designed the fabulous Disneyland Paris, arguably the most gorgeous themed environment in the entire world.

Anyway, by the time Aspen rolled around, the subject of WestCOT's sad demise became a major discussion point. The Imagineers and top execs present began to ask themselves, "what is the essence of California? Why did this project fail as a result of that very thing?"- And then, Eureka! That was it!

They would construct a theme park, a neighbor to Disneyland, across the promenade, that was about California. Clearly someone wasn't thinking too clearly. The park, remember, was to be a neighbor to Disneyland. Which was in...um, California. Why would we want to build a theme park in California whose chief idea was...California? Because Disneyland's audience was local. In the way that EPCOT offered perspective on our world, and WestCOT would have done the same, The California Adventure Park would provide a perspective on what made California great. And what was that, exactly?

That was a question very broad and difficult to answer. It proved a fatal question for the project, too, because many of the themes of "California" were already encased in Disneyland, and particularly the Hollywood angle belonged to Universal Studios, just up the road. Competition isn't a bad thing, not by any means, but to copy- directly- the idea of a movie studio- that was foul play.

So, what is it? Nature. Certainly, nature could play a part in this show. After all, CA is home to some of the most diverse and interesting ecosystems in the world, and its natural wonders are second to none.

Around this same time, Mark Sumner, a WDI Show Designer from the Blue Sky division, had been toying with his erector set one weekend at home. He had ended up constructing a glorious model of a ride system he'd been trying to convey on paper for several months- an advanced, imax-based flight simulation system that could be contained in a vertical structure. The erector set model provided the jumping off point for another element to be included in the new park that was central to the history and essence of California: Aviation.

The attraction became Soarin' Over California, and provided one of the three attractions at opening that could be called "E" Ticket level attractions. Soarin', interestingly, is the only DCA original that WDI has cloned anywhere in the world. At the time, Soarin' was truly revolutionary. It is still one of the great themed attractions ever created, because it follows the model that the rest of California Adventure ignored.

A comparison is drawn between Disneyland and DCA the same way we can look at Florida's Magic Kingdom and EPCOT. The Walt Disney Company was extremely hurt when Walt passed away, and to realize his vision of EPCOT would have been too much. It took WDI fourteen years to realize any version of EPCOT that could actually be constructed. The reason for the main differences in show quality between Disneyland and Florida's Magic Kingdom has a lot to do with the fact that WDI had completely lost all creative bearings in 1967 when Magic Kingdom was being planned. Luckily, people like John Hench and Marty Sklar stepped in and provided at least a shred of deceny and authenticity to that park, but it was a very difficult time and since Walt loved the theme park so much, WDI needed to avoid most of the design aesthetics that made Disneyland such a rich narrative experience.

Florida's Magic Kingdom is a park lost in its own image of fantasy. While Disneyland's narrative provides a view of America, almost from the outside looking in (or, better yet, from the inside looking in), Magic Kingdom looks primarily at fantasy and all the facets of that idea. We have many of the same ideas, but no longer are we telling a story about America. Now, we are telling a story about the Walt Disney Company. We are telling a story that helped ease the pain of knowing that the creative leadership had gone. Walt Disney World became focused on being a self-branded "vacation kingdom", and while a themed environment like Disneyland was always part of that plan, it was never meant to be the main attraction. Now, being billed as the main attraction, the theme parks in Florida are in the middle of a very serious identity crisis.

In California, the same problem arose. With the failure and rejection of Port Disney, Disney's America and WestCOT (as well as Disney's American Celebration after the original America plan failed), the company was in a difficult creative plummet, and they needed to find something to occupy them that they could be assured would be completed. The crucial decision came when Eisner, Pressler and Braverman partnered and went low-key. Sixteen years earlier, in the late 1970s when EPCOT was getting underway, the decision had been made to go High-Key. The company was in the unique position of having a gold mine at their disposal, and they chose to finance a project (EPCOT) that would have made Walt proud. In the early 1990s, the company no longer had that goldmine. The Lion King had not yet been unleashed on the world, and the company was still in financially difficult times. They knew they needed something to boost Anaheim, and WDI needed the creative assurance that whatever they decided to do would not be interfered with and murdered by the business men and town reps that had killed the other projects they had poured their hearts into.

It wasn't that they wanted DCA to be an unworthy companion to Disneyland. It was that they were low on time and resources, they were hurt creatively by the failures of several brilliantly designed projects, and they made a wrong decision at a time when wrong decisions were being made everywhere within the company. The wrong choice was, they didn't think Walt Disney mattered. His legacy, to these people, may have been "important", but it wasn't important the way it was all those decades ago to Hench and Sklar and the rest of the talented Imagineers that came before, and that knew Walt personally, and understood (as a result) his vision of what themed entertainment could be if they allowed Quality to "Will Out."

Well, they say, it was a different era. A different time with different ideas and the company was now truly a company instead of a collection of artists that were free to create wonderlands and let their imaginations soar. Now, it was about the bottom line. Eisner was spooked, and maybe he put the fear of God into himself by monitoring the financial performance of the company so closely.

The kicker- the big issue, the thing that basically killed the chances for DCA to become a great companion to Disneyland- was that if you give the public apples, they will enjoy apples. If you give them apples with worms, from the outside they still look like apples, and they will enjoy them. If you give them steak that has been prepared and aged and cooked wonderfully, then they will enjoy that. If you give them steak that was lean-cut and barely cooked, they may not know anything better, so they will enjoy that. The issue, really, is that themed entertainment in comparison to every other art form in the world, is a brand new medium. The public has expectations, but not the way they have expectations for painting or musical theatre. The experiences can be constantly re-invented, the perceptions changed, and the presentation altered a thousand times. People will still love whatever you give them, because there is no art form in the entire world that can replicate experience.

So, why not? Let the Imagineers be free...within the theme of "California". Let them design outstanding attractions (Eisner, if you'll recall, and his "Amaze me" edict that sent WDI's minds to Port Disney and WestCOT), but now they will have to do it within the budget. They were terrified of their own ideas from the very beginning. They misjudged that the public had higher expectations because of what Disneyland was to SoCal. They thought that people wanted another Disneyland, and they didn't have the confidence in themselves- after so many letdowns and failures- that they could provide a perception-shattering theme park the way they had done so many times before.

Instead, they stuck to the familiar. They chose a central theme and riffed on it to create an entire theme park. The theme was California. The riffs were Cheeky Tourists, Chinsy Hollywood, The massive and ill-advised "Golden State Recreation District", which incorporated Condor Flats and Grizzly Peak, and Paradise Pier, which is the most misunderstood themed area in any Disney park in history.

Disneyland, by contrast, chose not a theme, but a STORY- the story of America- and looked at it from many different angles within the context of childhood, innocence and eventually growing up to see the future. DCA would be about places, things, materials. Disneyland was about ideas. It was the furthest thing from a match made in heaven, because the last thing people want to see is "The Real California." They can see that beyond the gates...in the real California. If the public did have expectations, they wanted Disney to be Disney. They wanted more of that unique blend of whimsy and charm and great narrative that made Disneyland so special. They- WE - probably didn't want another Disneyland. EPCOT was not another Magic Kingdom Park. Disney-MGM was not another EPCOT. All three, though, share the element of being parks about ideas.

MGM comes the closest to being brethren to DCA, but MGM is still about the "idea" of Hollywood- "The Hollywood that never was." DCA is about California, but, in its current form, its about the real thing. EPCOT is about the "real world", but its thrust comes from an idea instead of a place or thing: EPCOT says This is who we are (World Showcase) and This is what we can do, together (Future World).

DCA just says "Here is California, the way we THINK you WANT to see it." It isn't the way Disney sees it, it isn't the way we want to see it. Disneyland says "This is how a child sees history and America and the future." DCA says "This is how tourists (you) view California (Which is where you are)....

There is no inherent contradiction to make the circle of story continue on forever (We begin and end in a cheesy tourist plaza, but we haven't seen anything but that for our entire trip through the park, so what does it matter where we start and end?). What people mean when they gripe that DCA contains no "Theme" in its "Theme Park" is that it has no perspective, no narrative structure the way Disneyland has the timeless and perfect and quaint yet massive historical angle on America.

They mean, if it had to be put in a word, that DCA really doesn't contain any Disney.

...To Be Continued...

California Sun

2007-10-21T22:00:00.000-04:00

Disney's California Adventure. What a troublesome entity it is. Before we delve into the stories behind its development, its problems, its opening, its lackluster first decade and now its 1.1 Billion Dollar expansion, lets review the history of Disneyland's fabled second gate. Maybe along the trail, we'll see the part of this theme park attraction where things went horribly wrong...

(Copyright The Walt Disney Company)

As a neighbor to Disneyland, many people make the connection that it should be equal, which is not at all what was intended. It should, however, be a solid companion experience- perhaps expanding in different directions of Disneyland's multitude of themes and stories. It does neither of these things.

Born over a three day executive retreat held by Michael Eisner (then CEO of the company) in Aspen, Colorado, the idea was born by Barry Braverman, Tom Fitzgerald, Paul Pressler and Eisner, and Braverman's involvement would later lead to his being relieved from his position at Walt Disney Imagineering altogether. From the beginning, it was his baby. By this time, he had been through the development of Epcot, Disney-MGM Studios, and Euro-Disneyland, and was to be the number-two man on this new project- the number one creative being Tom Fitzgerald, who would later be placed in charge of Imagineering (more on that later).

Looking for a solid way to make Eisner happy, the idea was concieved to do a "small companion park" on the theme of California. Well, if that isn't quite vague enough- like saying that Disneyland's theme is "America"- I'm not sure what is! Disneyland is certainly about America- its themes and stories are based around nostalgia for the worlds we knew as children- the jungles, the wild west, a jazz-soaked New Orleans, a back country bayou, and the worlds of Fantasy and the Future. It tells the stories of these different periods and places in American history- and tells the stories within each that made them what they were. To say that Disneyland IS America, however, is to commit an ultimate sin. "Disneyland is dedicated to the dreams, the ideals, and the hard facts that have created America."- That's what the entrance plaque said, and thats exactly what the intention was, and remains today.

In the Eisner-era, Disneyland didn't become about anything except neglect, because the company didn't understand what it was dealing with, much as Epcot was treated until recently, and much as Walt Disney himself was treated before Snow White proved itself and before Disneyland itself was constructed. Everyone looks at the mad genius as mad, until he proves himself a genius. That's precisely what Walt did, time and again, and doubtless would have done with his EPCOT Center if he had lived to see it to completion.

Now, then, regarding DCA. Disneyland had been aching for attention for some time- not as a theme park, as that portion was quite well off, but as a destination. To explain, Eisner wanted a resort. He was tired of watching Walt Disney World hog the attention (and the dollars) as the place people would center a vacation around. With so much more to see in SoCal, Disneyland had become a part of the appeal instead of a separate entity. When people thought about Disneyland, they thought about a portion of their vacation, a stop on the long road to fun in the sun. WestCOT was supposed to change all that.

The old Disneyland parking lot would be the sight of a fantastic Re-Imagineered version of Walt Disney World's EPCOT. It would be a bold move for a company whose last bold move had been almost twenty years before in the United States, and it would usher in a bold new era of entertainment design, and change the way guests to thought about and experienced Disney parks. WestCOT would have taken EPCOT Center and placed its elements in order, in a story sequence, sometimes literally (as with the "World Cruise", a 45-minute boat ride that would cover the entire park and tell the stories of each Future World pavilion and each area of World Showcase) and sometimes figuratively (the placement of Spacestation Earth on an island would have created a design metaphor that though our planet seemed lonely, there was so much to learn from one another and the world around us that we need only stay on board. This version would have been called "Spacestation", and would have been encased as a full pavilion by a 300-foot tall Golden ball).

WestCOT was the baby and brain child of Tony Baxter, a creative executive that still works for Walt Disney Imagineering, and also the man that brought us Figment, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Splash Mountain and the revitalized Disneyland classic Submarine Voyage, albeit with an overlayed Finding Nemo theme. Baxter is one of the true creative geniuses in the art of show design, having apprenticed with master animator and designer Marc Davis in his early years at WDI (then still WED Enterprises).

WestCOT was grand, on a scale unknown in the current realm of Disney theme parks. It was also trouble almost from its inception. Plans were formally announced to the Anaheim residents and government, and immediately they tore the project apart. Firstly, they didn't want all that traffic in their little slice of heaven- the heaven filled with with awful run-of-the-mill hotels and buffets that sprung up as a result of Disneyland- and they didn't want all those fireworks and all that noise late into the night, and they certainly didn't want that 300-foot tall Geosphere looming over their backyards during a summer barbeque.

Disney had to respond. Eisner ordered that Spacestation Earth be removed from the design, and it was, which shows that WDI and Eisner both had great hopes for the project. To remove its icon- its chief design element, entirely, without a fight, meant that they really wanted to see this thing go into that space in some form. The new icon would be a 180-foot tall White Spire, and if one sees the design of the 1939 World's Fair's geosphere, EPCOT and WestCOT both find their ancestory a bit more easily:

WestCOT took a lot from the Worlds Fairs on which Walt had honed his craft of experiential story. Anaheim having not responded well to the project, the company went with the other half of this postcard for the proposed icon of the park. It was still to include some version of the show that would have been found inside Spacestation Earth, but plans were never finalized for that version because soon after the entire project met its messy and destructive end.

All the while that WestCOT was dying on the vine, another project had been building momentum. South of Anaheim, in Long Beach, Disney had aquired an old airplane- one with a history ironically entwined with the company. Howard Hughes, late in his association with RKO Radio Pictures, had asked Walt Disney if he would like to take control of that motion picture studio. Disney purported that, in addition to his own projects and Disneyland in particular, "Why would I want another studio to worry about?"- Hughes was disappointed by the response.

Hughes, an eccentric Hollywood-cum-aviation millionaire, had created his own aviation company after a brief and extremely successful career making films. The company, Hughes Aircraft, was later aquired by General Motors, but in 1942 it designed and constructed the Spruce Goose. It took five years for the Goose- the largest "flying boat" design aircraft to ever be constructed. The Spruce Goose was made entirely out of wood due to wartime restrictions on metal and other raw material, and it made its only flight on November 2, 1947, and took off from the waters of Long Beach. The aircraft flew just shy of a mile down the shoreline before coming back down.

The Spruce Goose- formally called The Hughes H-4 Hercules- was aquired by the Walt Disney Company in 1988, under the tutelage of Michael Eisner and Frank Wells. They coupled the H-4 and another exhibit already in Long Beach, the Queen Mary ocean liner, and together they formed a historical navigation attraction that operated under the Disney company until the Hercules was purchased by the Evergreen Aviation Museum in 1995. That purchase post-dates WestCOT Center and the Long Beach Project by a narrow amount of time, but still post-dates it.

WestCOT was perhaps too big of a dream to be fulfilled in Anaheim. Disneyland already existed there, and to add something so grand as WestCOT was planned to be (there were also nighttime entertainment districts and several tremendous and opulent hotels planned for the revitalized Disneyland resort) would almost overshadow the real star of the show: Disneyland itself. Walt Disney's dream, and the only theme park to have been built while Disney himself was still in charge of his own company. The only park to have been built, in short, by a man instead of an empire.

WestCOT overshadowing Disneyland was not part of the reason the plans had been second guessed- that honor belonged entirely to the residents of Anaheim and the money-men that would later prove WestCOT an impossible venture- but it was certainly part of the reason that the company gave up with only a minor battle compared to how hard Walt had fought to get Disneyland through the pipe.

Yet WestCOT was only the very beginning. The earliest incarnation of a second gate for the company. They started to think that the overshadowing could have become an issue early on, and what resulted was a bidding war between Disney and the city officials of Anaheim and those from Long Beach, where Disney had proposed another, entirely different project: Port Disney.

Due to the company already owning the Spruce Goose/Queen Mary complex and looking for something to energize profits and tourism, it was initially concieved to place the attraction inside a greater entertainment complex. That entertainment complex started to look more and more like a full fledged Disney theme park...but Port Disney (as the project was titled) was to be not just a theme park (based on Oceanic science, lore and fable, this project would later come back to life as Tokyo DisneySEA) but an entire oceania-based center. Disney Cruise Line's main ports would be located there, as well as the "Future Research Center"- where real life scientists would study the ocean and its animals. Disney wanted not to give Seaworld a run for their money here, but to make it so that competition was entirely out of the question. Yet, it was competition that had given birth to the project at all.

So, the combination of the bidding war and the lacking profits of the Disney Long Beach investment with the Queen Mary sailing ship and Hughes' massive seaplane had led now to a brand new theme park-- Port Disney, also referred to as Port Disney Long Beach. The complex included many of the elements of DisneySEA, but also had its own unique touches...Below, the AquaSphere is the central icon of the park- a real, live multi-story aquarium.

(Copyright 1991 The Walt Disney Company)

Port Disney eventually lost the bidding war between the two cities, just before WestCOT encountered its death rattle in the form of the residents of Anaheim. Disney backed out of the project due to issues with the California Coastal Comission, as well as the longshoresmen that worked on the Long Beach docks- all of which would be shortly losing their jobs due to Disney's elaborate plans for the area. The entire Port Disney complex would need an additional 250 acres of open shoreline to be filled in and made buildable in order for the five themed hotels, theme park and cruise ship headquarters to become a reality.

By 1992, Port Disney was dead as a doornail. By late 1993, WestCOT had suffered the very same fate...

Both of these alternatives having failed, Disney turned its attentions more earnestly to Disney's America, a theme park based around American history, to be constructed as "a counterpart to the experience of our nation's capital"- much as WestCOT was to have been a counterpart to Disneyland.

By September 1994, all three projects were dead due to extensive problems encountered mostly with outside entities and the locals of both Anaheim and Haymarket, Virginia (in Prince William County, where the "America" and then Disney's American Celebration were both to have been erected). Eisner and company needed to reconvene. It was a time in the Disney company's history that had been tumultuous, and he scheduled a retreat to Aspen, Colorado in early 1995. It was at this conference, this meeting of the minds, that Disney's California Adventure was born.

First Impressions

2007-09-25T01:17:00.000-04:00

The Tiki Room (above). The first show to use Audio-Animatronics. I found it fitting for this first blog post.

A little about me and my world, the what I do and why I do it part. I live in Orlando, Florida. I am a screenwriter, and have been one for nearly nine years now, but steadily for the past three. I don't get paid to do it yet, but I love it, and I work every single day.
In the intermin, I also work for Mickey Mouse. I help him create memories for the thousands of folks that come to see us every day. Its a very fun job, most of the time, though its still a job. My ultimate goal is to become a show writer for Walt Disney Imagineering- a position and an idea/profession I value very highly, and one my sights have been set on for quite some time.
WIth this blog, I aim to help you, dear readers, understand the essence of the times we in the Magic Kingdom live in- what they mean, how they have changed, and how they will change. I have a generally positive view of the Walt Disney Company, I like my job, and I like who I work for and why. In other words, this will not ever turn into a complaining forum about the company or its many endeavors. Enough said!

So, with that brief introduction, I leave you to the madness...