202. Eli Erlandson on EPCOT Center, Disneyland Paris, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom

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When Eli Erlandson joined WED Enterprises in 1975, it was a different place from the Walt Disney Imagineering we know today. Iconic figures like Marc Davis and Harper Goff worked alongside young designers on the next phase for Disney’s theme parks. During more than 30 years at Walt Disney Imagineering, Eli has worked closely on major attractions over several eras. Eli is my guest on this episode of the Tomorrow Society Podcast to talk about her career and more.

During this interview, Eli talks about her work as an architectural designer for the original EPCOT Center, including concepts for an unrealized Israel pavilion in World Showcase. After departing WED to earn her architectural license, Eli returned to Disney in 1987 and worked on Disneyland Paris. She talks about that experience of living in Paris with her husband (also at Disney) during that project. We also discuss her later work on Disney’s Animal Kingdom and the research trips put together by Joe Rohde for the team to help inspire that park.

Eli’s projects include designs for the Walt Disney Studios in Paris, which faced significant budget restrictions at the start. She also worked closely on the original Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure and describes that experience. We conclude the podcast by talking about Eli’s ideas for the Women of Walt Disney Imagineering book. Released in March 2022, this excellent collection covers the stories of 12 Imagineers and their fascinating work with Disney. I really enjoyed the chance to talk with Eli and learn more about her career and projects.

Show Notes: Eli Erlandson

Purchase a copy of the Women of Walt Disney Imagineering book from Eli Erlandson on Amazon in the hardcover and Kindle version.

Check out past episodes of the Tomorrow Society Podcast with Imagineers Peggie Fariss and Karen Connolly Armitage.

Make a one-time contribution to the podcast and buy me a Dole Whip!

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Transcript

Eli Erlandson: Doing research and books, you can get mental knowledge quickly, but going to a place that is foreign to you that you haven’t experienced, it really puts you in the culture. Basically the peoples, the smells, the environment, the feel of things, the proximity or distance of things get defined better.

Dan Heaton: That is Eli Erlandson, who’s here to talk about more than 30 years of her career at Walt Disney Imagineering and a lot more. You’re listening to The Tomorrow Society Podcast.

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Dan Heaton: Hey there, thanks for joining me here on Episode 202 of the Tomorrow Society Podcast. I’m really excited for you to hear this conversation I had with my guest, Eli Erlandson. You may know the name because she was the originator of the idea of the Women of Walt Disney Imagineering book, which brought together 12 Imagineers to each talk about their careers in a chapter. If you have not read that book, pick up a copy. I highly recommend it.

But beyond that, Eli’s had a super interesting career working at WED on designs for Epcot Center in the 1970s, being closely involved in France in the development of Disneyland Paris. Also worked on Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Ratatouille at the Walt Disney Studios Paris, a lot more, and just has had a very cool career, both at Walt Disney Imagineering and beyond. I really enjoyed learning more beyond even her chapter in the book about Ellie’s career and what she’s worked on. So I think you’re going to find this really interesting, just a lot of great material about what it was like for her working at WED in the ‘70s and then a lot of very cool projects. So let’s get right to it. Here is Eli Erlandson.

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Dan Heaton: Eli, thank you so much for talking with me here on the podcast.

Eli Erlandson: Thank you, Dan. It’s a pleasure to be here. Looking forward to our conversation.

Dan Heaton: Oh yeah, I’m excited to talk with you. You’ve worked on so many cool projects and then also just to learn your story too, which I think is really interesting based reading your chapter in the book. So I’d love to start with just how you got interested even in pursuing architecture and kind of leading that into your career.

Eli Erlandson: Yeah, there is a background to that for sure. I was interested in art since I was a little, little kid. Everything I did was art-oriented. I made models, I made even show sets. I didn’t even know they were that, but that was out of my imagination; I sketched, I painted, everything was art and I wanted to study art, but both of my parents, Europeans, one of ’em with a doctorate in electrical engineering and the other one was studying medicine and they both said, nope, you’re not studying art.

That’s not a profession. You can do that on the side. So I thought, okay, so what do I do? And the thing that amazed me is when I was 10 or 11, I went with my father to a friend’s construction site in Brazil. He was building a beautiful home up on a hill. The plans were there.

I had never seen architectural plans before or any plans before. I sat there in the middle of the concrete living room. That’s all it was. I started leafing through it; I loved the drawings and I was surprised how I understood to read the drawings. I knew how to read them; I knew when something was in the living room, where it was and the relationship between. So I started thinking of architecture. I was 10 or 11 and that really didn’t change until I went to college and studied architecture. I was happy to study art history is part of it too, to study architecture and of course design and a lot of drawing and hand drawing, which I love. So that’s what I did and I stuck to it.

Dan Heaton: I know you were also, you mentioned your parents being European, but you were an immigrant who had lived in South America. So I’m curious how that was for you and then ultimately how you ended up moving to the United States and getting into what you did.

Eli Erlandson: My parents ended up in South America before they had children. They were young newlyweds, literally, and they wanted to come to United States; they applied for entry, but it was right after the war and us had closed borders, so they couldn’t come. They tried Canada, it was similar, and Canada, they wanted people who did manual labor and my dad was a fragile man.

He could not convince them that he would do well with manually. So his friends and her friends, they were all students, newlyweds, and they wanted to leave Europe because some of them married Jewish ladies who did not want to stay in Europe. This group of students literally tossed a coin. There was a ship going to Brazil and a ship going to Australia. They tossed the coin, Brazil one, they went to Brazil and that’s where my sister and I were born.

I have one sister and we grew up there and my parents got the papers to come to the United States seven years into being in Brazil. By then, they were really well settled. They were doing well. We were living well. Brazil accepted with open arms, people that had degrees, good positions, everything was going well, and they decided maybe they should just stay in Brazil when we were, I was almost a teenager when we came here and my sister was a teenager, that’s when our parents decided, no, we’re going to go to the U.S. and it will be better for the girls, more opportunities. Which is true.

At that time that was true because in Brazil you became, you either became a married woman, mom, or you became a secretary, and there weren’t options in the engineering or whatever fields, medical fields. So we came to the United States and didn’t know a word of English, not a word. And one of the stewards has tried to teach us, I don’t speak any English, and the other one said, I do not speak English.

So my sister and I kept debating practically through the whole fight, what’s the difference between the two sentences? But that was our first sentence that we learned when we came, we landed first in New York, stayed there. It was between Christmas and it was right before Christmas actually, and it was cold, snowy, and my dad put us all back in a plane and we came to California.

It was interesting to learn English. I wanted to learn it fast, and I did, so did my sister. We were really intent on that. In high school, people knew we were not American because we had really strong accents, Portuguese accents. But when I was in college, it was almost gone, which was nice. I was happy about that, but it doesn’t mean I was happy about losing my identity. I know I’m foreigner, but when you think of it, everybody in this country is a foreigner. It just depends how many generations of foreigners you have in you or not.

Dan Heaton: I know you ultimately, after you went to school, you ended up joining WED Enterprises at kind of a really interesting time in the mid-‘70s. So I’m curious how you ended up joining WED and what led you to working there?

Eli Erlandson: It was thanks to my father because at time people did not know that WED existed. Even Walt Disney had his chosen few from the studio that he moved to WED in Glendale and it still doesn’t have a sign saying “This is Walt Disney Imagineering”. And it was a very core group who basically designed and built Disneyland as you know, and then Walt Disney World. I came right in at the time when Walt Disney World had been built just at the cusp of it, my father and my graduation day from architectural school handed me an envelope as a gift.

So I opened the envelope and inside is an application to WED Enterprises and I thought, what is WED Enterprises? And my father said, well, that’s Walter Elias Disney. You always wanted to do art and work with Disney, which I did. He knew since I was a little kid, everything Disney was, I was so impressed with the quality of the animation and the work and everything. And I told him, but dad, I studied architecture. What you do.

He goes, you’ve been to Disneyland. Who do you think designed those buildings? I went, oh, no. So I applied and I was very happy that I heard from them, even though it was months later, I thought they didn’t accept me, actually, I thought they just put the application on the side and I wasn’t going to get employed by them. And I accepted a position at a construction company very close to downtown LA that was building warehouses. Very exciting work.

But I told them, I mean, I still had a lot to learn about construction. Definitely I had a lot to learn, not still, I had a lot to learn. So it was a good thing to do to work in a position like that. But I told them when I started working with them that if I heard from Disney, I would leave from the get-go.

I was honest and they accepted it. So months later I heard from Disney, I went for the interview and it went really well. The interview I thought and made me feel really good. Bill Martin was the person who was my primary interviewer. He called in all these old timers into his office. It became really crowded. I mean, I didn’t have elbow room to move. They were looking at my portfolio, which was mostly schoolwork and my side artwork that I did on the side. They asked me various questions and each one of ’em said, goodbye. Nice meeting you.

Then Bill Martin gave me a summary of the interview and said, this went really well and I think you might have a good future with us and we’ll let you know though. We’ll let you know. Okay, thank you. We felt very positive, yes, and time passed and time passed and time passed and then I got that phone call and went to work there as an architect in the architectural department, not as an architect because I wasn’t licensed yet, but in the architectural department doing very lucky to be doing designs for Epcot and World Showcase.

Very, very fortunate. That is practically unheard of for somebody coming out of school to be able to do that. So I really was having a very good time, met so many good people, did such good work and loved, absolutely loved the research that was required to do this work. It was just there was no timeframe for me. The days just flew and I was having fun. I was having fun.

Dan Heaton: What was some of the research you had to do? I believe you worked on an Israel pavilion that didn’t end up happening and some other designs, but I’m curious to know what kind of research you were doing because Epcot changed so much during the ‘70s, even World Showcase.

Eli Erlandson: You did mention Israel. So I did design a complete Israel pavilion and under the guidance of Harper Goff, who was also teaching me to draw. So you could see the whole pavilion as if you are a bird flying over it. This is all by hand. This is pre-computer time. The research I did on Israel had to do with its history, basically. Its history, its art, its people, and as you know, it’s a very old history. There’s beautiful art and musicians and just a lot of accomplishment by the Jewish people.

It just was wonderful to also research. I wish at that time they didn’t send people to see places, but I would’ve loved having been to Jerusalem at the time and to the old architectural places that still existed within Israel. So that was very comprehensive research that I learned a lot. And yet it also is, on the other hand, I did research per example for Epcot.

I was working with Jack Martin Smith on the Energy Pavilion. So I did research on energy. I learned so much and he wanted me to do a design for the entry of the pavilion, the outside area entry that states this is the Energy Pavilion. And I did a beautiful design, which was at that time a new idea, a huge, huge disc that was on rails and also a rail that followed the disc form that would allow it to turn in any direction the sun was in to maximize the collection of the sun.

I was hoping to collect enough energy with that thing to possibly power some of the right system, something like that. So at that time it was really, really innovative thinking. But as we all learn working on, for example, tomorrow, anything you want to do that is futuristic, is not futuristic. By the time it’s built, it’s a challenge.

And so that was scrapped, but boy did I learn a lot, so much science research and I got to speak also with astronauts and it was just wonderful to, it was incredible that I was able to do that. Other research was like that was a little later for Animal Kingdom. There were four of us who were sent to Africa, and this one particular trip for about a month, and that was, I’m thinking of John Shields, was landscape. Then Mark was producer, Ben Tripp, the creative person, and then myself as the creative architect. And we were sent in Africa to do research of specific areas that Joe Rohde wanted us to see.

One of ’em was in Kenya, and it was the old architectural sections of Lamu Island more specifically. And then we also went in different areas of Africa, not only Kenya, Tanzania, but in South Africa. Botswana was in camps where they took us around to see the landscape and the fauna and the flora basically, and learn about it.

It was an amazing learning experience; it was at a time when the company already accepted that people could go and do research personally, which was probably, that trip is one of the things that will stay in my mind till the day I die. It was so beautiful and the comradery that we created as a team together was wonderful.

Dan Heaton: I’ve talked to a few others that did similar trips, not that trip in particular, but similar trips to Asia and Africa for that park. How important is that, especially when you’re working on a park like that or designs, I mean, how does that help you to do that where then you can come back and beyond just being an amazing trip, but come back and do and help to work on the park itself?

Eli Erlandson: It is so, so important. Doing research and books, you can get mental knowledge quickly, but going to a place that is foreign to you that you haven’t experienced, it really puts you in the culture. Basically the peoples, the smells, the environment, the feel of things, the proximity or distance of things get defined better. When I did Israel, it was designing parts of an old town and for the pavilion, it would’ve been good to have been there to really excel in the design.

I was told that design was excellent, but still I didn’t feel the same way about it as I later felt about having gone to Africa for the African band and then designing the Harambe Village was a very personal thing for me, and it was easy to also explain to a team what I experienced with the photographs and get ’em into the mood of what they’re also designing a team design effort, this whole thing. Yeah.

Dan Heaton: Well, I definitely want to circle back to EPCOT, but since you mentioned Harambe Village and Joe Rohde and that park, I would love to know a little more just about your experience on that park and that village is so, I mean, it looks so lived in and so I don’t know, it’s one of my favorite areas in the park. I’m curious getting the chance to work on that and develop it, how that went for you. Just that experience beyond the trip, but just actually working on the design.

Eli Erlandson: I worked mostly on the design of it. I took it to a point where I had also samples for the construction of it, for the materials to be used because there were specific stones in some of the elevations that had to be just like the ones in Africa. So I did the research to find him and bring him into the office, have him shipped to the office type of thing. Working with Joe Rohde, I mean, he is an amazing man. He had this vision for a total park, and yet he allowed people to design. He was not a hovering designer on top of everybody saying, no, no, this is mill. I want it this way.

He would actually allow people to design and flourish, and I think what helped him allow that is that he got us all to the environments where we could understand what his vision was. I think people who worked on Asia felt that way too. Very much. The Asian land is fabulous. I mean, Animal Kingdom is a fabulous park.

Dan Heaton: Oh yeah. It’s one of the, if not the most beautiful parks that Disney’s ever done that I’ve been to, I haven’t been to all of them and so unique. I want to circle back a little bit to Epcot. I know you mentioned in the book that you were involved in some blue sky sessions for Spaceship Earth, so I’d love to hear a little bit about that because I feel like the development of that attraction is really interesting.

Eli Erlandson: That has a good story to it, because the reason I was even pulled into it is because I have good handwriting, good printing, I print really well, and somebody saw in my area the storyboard I had done for a ride system for a ride show, not system, I shouldn’t say because it was not the technical part, it was the visual part, and I had put storyboard cards underneath my images and somebody saw it and said, we need you in the conference room for Epcot. I thought, okay, I’ll do anything. And I walked in. I remember so well the first time I walked in and I kind of went, Ooh, alright.

There was Marty Sklar was seated at the table. There was the big model there. Marty Sklar was seated at the table or it was a model in development. I shouldn’t say there was a big model. It was a model, working model. Ray Bradbury was in the room, Decuir Jr was in the room, and Matt McElroy, who was an architect, was in the room. Then I came along and walked in and there were two people painting these huge images of prehistoric times and futuristic times. That was John Olin and Claudia Matzo. When I saw their art, it was like, oh my goodness, who said, artists don’t have professions.

It was like, oh, wish I could be doing that. Not that I could do it at the level they were doing it. They asked me to write an index card form what they were talking about for the storyline so that they could then put it on the wall. And so there I was listening to them and writing, and that’s how my involvement with Epcot started and it was good. It was an example of accept anything you’re asked to do. You never know where it’s going to take you because in the meantime, I got to meet all these illustrious people that they would discussing things well known, and I also got to speak with everyone.

Eventually even I was asked, what do you think? Do you think? What do you think? Which is a very Imagineering thing to do. You ask, don’t ignore people. They may be at a lower level than you. No, ask, what do you think? What do you think? So I was asked, and then there was an empty idea there for the core of Epcot at the early design stage, and I asked, what do you think if I do a design for that? And John Decuir Jr, who was in charge of the architectural design said, go for it.

So I did. I went for it, and I actually built a model, also a little model of my idea and present it to him, and he liked it a lot and they all saw it, but it was not constructable. It was not constructable. If it was constructable, it would’ve taken away from the design. It was a really huge glass bubble basically. And you could do it like you did the geodesic domes in glass, but that was not the idea. But it was also a lesson in that I learned that you don’t limit what you design because of constructability. You need to design. That’s it.

Then if the design works really works for everybody who’s involved with it, then there’s a way. So that was a good learning lesson for me. The other learning lesson I had, which took years and understanding is that it is very, as an architectural designer, it is very important to understand constructability of things. I became a better and better and better designer because I, through the projects I did and the experience I got through the construction sites, I learned more and more of how things are put together and I could directly apply it to design in the front thinking process. I think that’s an advice for whoever is an architect out there who wants to do great designs, understand constructability is important.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, definitely. Because it’s great to look at some of the concepts like you mentioned and go, wow, that would be amazing. But they have to be able to, in a theme park, to be created in a real world, not just in theme parks, in whatever you’re doing, whatever place. Well, I wanted to ask you too about the fact that you joined in the ‘70s.

One, it’s like it was a weird, interesting time because you had all the Harper Goff, you mentioned old guard people and then some new younger people, but also the fact that like you mentioned in the book, it was a very male-dominated profession everywhere. So I’m curious what that atmosphere was like for you coming in the ‘70s and being young and also just with the way the profession was at the time.

Eli Erlandson: Back then, I never really thought about it. I just did my work and I wanted to do it. Well, everybody else wanted to do it. Well, the guys wanted to do it well too, and I never thought of myself as a woman in the architectural profession. I thought of myself as a person who loves to do architecture and wants to do it really well and progress in it. And I think that helped in that. I never, never, I don’t know how to explain that. It’s an important thing though.

We are people who have talents, who have education, who have experience, and it doesn’t matter what sex you are, it matters what’s in there and what’s in your heart and what you can contribute and how you contribute it. That’s also part of learning to be a team member. And in Imagineering team membership is so important because really it is at the end of the day, everything is created by a team and it’s excellent in its creation because it is not the creation of one person.

The thing that I’m going to take it a little bit off in that the thing that I did not realize that was recently just before I started writing the book and I was mentoring young architects, 99% of them women, one guy. I was mentoring them on design, WDI culture and all that, and I found out from the women that they were facing some prejudice that I thought was gone. I really thought I was not aware and I was shocked. So they’re the ones who asked me to write the book.

Going back to prejudice, I had, and I think that’s going to be historically history of humankind. As a young, young person in the architectural department, one of the very accomplished people started harassing me what would be called today’s sexual harassment. And it was not pleasant. It was awful. And I was young and I did not know what to do about it.

Being a very young person, and I believe I mentioned in the book, I visited the idea of possibly leaving the company because I could not enjoy my work anymore. This guy was not going to go away. Maybe I needed to go away because that would be the solution. And then I thought, no show set design is growing and they need people. Why don’t I volunteer for set design? And I did volunteer and I was taken immediately with wide open arms. George Wyndham, what a man. He was fabulous; he loved all his, we were a small department then. He loved us all and he wanted us all to do really good work and show set design and grow and a good man.

So I ended up in show set design, which I thought, I’m not sure this is good for my architectural career, but why not? And it actually was very good for my architectural career because in show set design, I learned the theatrical tricks basically of creating environments that look either further or larger than they are or whatever. It’s the false perspectives and applied it to buildings later on. And that’s where I learned it and got to meet wonderful people. That’s where I met Harper Goff too, and Jack Martin Smith. And that’s from where I was pulled to go to work on Epcot in that conference room, the magical conference room.

Dan Heaton: That’s great. I’m glad that worked out in that, like you said, it ended up helping you with your career, but you did for a short time ultimately leave and I believe get your architecture license and work a little and then come back to Imagineering in ‘87. So I’m curious, what made you decide to do that and then ultimately how you were able to return and then work there for so long in that time period?

Eli Erlandson: I don’t know how the laws are today about getting your architectural license. You had to have a degree in architecture from an architectural school, and then you had to work two years, was it two or three, two years I believe. And then you could apply for the architectural licensing exams exam and take the exams, and if you pass them, you then take the oral exams and if you pass those, then you get your license. Well, when I applied for my architectural licensing exams, the written ones, I got a letter back saying, you don’t qualify because you are not working in a firm owned by an architect. That was a requirement back then.

I went to Bill Martin. I remember going to Bill Martin saying, I have a problem here. And they said, let me look at this. The company actually ended up sending to the architectural board a letter saying, the company is not owned by an architect, but she’s working with so and so and so and so. They are licensed architect and designers. And they said, sorry, that’s the rules. Until we change the rules, we can’t do anything about it. So then it was decide to stay where I was doing really well or leave and get my license. That was a hard decision too, because I knew if I stayed, I would do fabulously. Well, I knew it because I already was on the road there.

But I also knew that I would regret not having an architectural license. It’s almost like a step of, I need to prove to myself I can do it. I know I can do it, and I need to others that, yeah, I can do it, to have that basically in my pocket, that license. So I would much regret left the company, went to work in a small architectural firm again, I was so lucky. I was so lucky. That ended up working with a man who had a small firm, and he did thematic design restaurants, which was a new thing back then. Totally new. Nobody had thematic design yet.

And we got as a client, David Tallichet from 94th Aero Squadron restaurants, and he was crazy guy, but he really liked theming. So I got to work on themed restaurant site, but from the very beginning to the very end, it was like the whole process for the permits, for the inspection site inspections, write-ups on it and everything besides having designed it. Then the construction documents out to bid contractor and so forth. So it was like a whole process I learned because of what we were doing, and we hired a few other architects to work with us. We got so much work.

He wanted me to become his partner in the business. And I said, oh, no, no, no, no. Oh, he’s also the man who told me when I went to interview with him, I don’t hire women. Oh, he said, I don’t hire any women. And I looked back at him, I said, and I’m not any woman, and he hired me, so he wanted me to become a partner. I said, no, no, no, no, because my husband already had his own architectural firm in Anaheim Hills. If I was going to partner with anybody, it would make sense to partner with him.

So I told him, I thanked him profusely for the offer, and I told him I wouldn’t take it. And I said, you know, run your own firm. You know that sometimes you don’t bring home a paycheck. I said, when my husband’s running his own firm, I’m not working with him because then sometimes both of us will bring home a paycheck.

He understood, and I continued working with him, and I continued working with him longer than I had ever expected. I had given myself the timeframe to get the license and get back to Disney, but I really was having a lot of fun working with this man and what we were doing, the projects and the people we hired, helping some people grow in the profession. And it was just a good experience.

But at the time came when I started itching to go back to Disney, and then I got a phone call from a friend, Tori McCullough. She’s one of the authors in the book who said, Eli, we’re doing Euro Disney, you’ve got to come back. We need architectural designers. And I said, well, let me think about it. Then after that I got a call from Eric Weston and from Joel, and they were pulling it really hard for me to come back.

And I talked to my husband. We were living in South Orange County versus Glendale. It was a big distance, and we had a little son. I talked to him and I said, I really want to go back there. He goes, well, if that’s what you want, that’s what you got to do. Just go. And I said, okay, are you sure? He goes, yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure. Also one thing, do not expect me to go work with them because I have my firm. I like what I’m doing, and we’re not going to live in France. Eric Weston is such a good negotiator.

He kept on inviting us out to dinner and Ed was always saying, no, let’s go. You can meet this wonderful man. And he did. And that was it. That was it. Ed sold his half of the company to his partner, and he came to WDI. WED at the time, 1987, the two of us were the first ones who were sent to France as far as from WED with Carolyn who was a mechanical engineer.

Dan Heaton: What was that like in France for that project? I mean, working together, but also just being an entirely different place.

Eli Erlandson: It was our first international relocation, so there was a big learning curve to do there, and we were there about a year ahead of the reinforcements that came from at the same time wed became WDI. At the time, Marty Sklar was amazing in that he really supported us. He was there, I could call him anytime, and he was there to talk and listen and suggest solutions to certain things, things. We were working with a company who was managing the project that was not a Disney company. They didn’t want us there. We didn’t care what they wanted or didn’t want.

This is what the Disney company wanted. They wanted us there. So we did our work and we did a lot of coordination work between the designers that were here in Glendale and the designers that the company had hired, the different, they’re called bets. We wrote the two offices and each one of ’em had their architectural and engineering branch, and we worked with all of them, all of them.

It was so much work for two people that we literally split the park at two, and Ed took part of it, and I took the other, Ed was my husband, is my husband, and we did that until the reinforcements came in, and then it got a little bit easier because people came for each land. We didn’t have to take care of every land and all the subterranean stuff and the landscape. That’s what we were doing, everything.

And I was working also with a company in England for the landscape design and coordinating with Terry Palmer, who was the lead landscape designer here in Glendale for the work that was being done here and there. And it was just, that alone was massive, let alone all the lands. It was like, yeah, we were busy. We were very busy.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I mean, that park at the time especially is it’s still amazing to go, but at the time was even so like you mentioned the designs and the architecture and all that. I mean, I’ve went there once. It’s a beautiful park and just stands out because there was so much effort put into the little parts of it. The details I think is amazing. But later on, I know you worked on designs for the second park there, Walt Disney Studios, which was a bit different, a little different when it started. So I’m curious, you referenced it in the book too, working under more limited restrictions and your work on that park.

Eli Erlandson: Before we go to that park, I wanted to mention one thing on Euro Disney. That was really unusual to be asked to do, and it was with Bill Evans. I think everybody knows that name. Bill Evans and I with two engineers, we walked the site of Euro Disneyland before anything was there when it was still fields. And we took samples, soil samples that we gridded on a map for then the engineers to be able to plant apart. The way we took the soil samples, let me tell you, I was never so sore. At the end of a workday, we had these big pipes that big round empty in the middle that we had to hammer into the soil and get the dirt. Wherever we hammered it, we would mark it on the map.

We put the dirt that’s in the pipe, in the plastic bag, we tag the bag. This is where in the map it is. And we did hundreds of these in a day. We took turns and it was, wow. It was interesting though. I never knew that that was a acceptable method of getting soil samples for a whole park, but that’s what we did. So going to the second park, I did not need to take soil samples for that park because I’m sure we already had done that years before.

But I was pulled in by Chrissie Allen, she was the show producer to work on designs for that park, different areas at the park. So I did. I worked on the different things, and the budget was limited. Schedule was tight. It was not what you would call an easy project. Not that any of our projects are easy, none of ’em are. But it was challenging in a way that I hadn’t experienced before.

And I actually had to put my trust in the leaders, the creative leaders of WDI, that whatever we’re presenting as design falls within the category of the quality expected. I know when I started the design there, the idea had been to have only warehouses like a back lot. I didn’t, I couldn’t. It’s just I couldn’t. So yes, I did get chewed out quite a few times by project managements and estimators, but at least we don’t have backhouse boxes.

Jan Sircus was the lead architectural designer in that, and he had a certain vision that was towards the modern end of things, very, very modern, very contemporary, beautiful stuff. And parts of it could take that and parts of it could not. So I took on doing some art deco design for parts of the park, and that worked out for what it could be and needed to be.

And then the front entry is more like a studio entry that has beautiful architecture, and that was really fun to do. It was fun to do. It was very challenging because of visual intrusions, possible visual intrusions and how do you design them out of guest view and stuff like that. But it was a huge project in that there weren’t that many of us. So each one of us was doing a lot of work. A lot of work.

Dan Heaton: I like that entrance though. I think that it’s a cool way, like you mentioned, it feels like a studio, and I think the park has continued to evolve. I know you also were very closely involved as an architect on Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, which now is an Epcot, but originated at the Walt Disney Studios Paris. So I would love to know what that project was like for you and kind of what your role was on that.

Eli Erlandson: Yes, I was very closely involved with the project, but in a different way than I usually am in that the project was well underway with a full team here in Glendale, California, and also a partial team in France. And even the team had relocated a project architect from France who’s very, very good, Antoine, who had worked with us previously.

So he’s been there for quite a while, and also a couple of engineers, a structural and a mechanical engineer to get it all on the construction documents. What happened with that team is that everybody was working on Cad, digital media, and Raratouille being a very quirky architecture, the character of the buildings were not translating correctly to really show what we wanted.

So they pulled me in because I had previously basically insisted in different projects overseas and here even for Fantasy land in Florida, the new one, that the character facades need to be done by hand and need to really show the character correctly so that they can bid the packages correctly and also construct them correctly.

So they pulled me in and said, can you do that for us? And so I came in and started designing the facades. I did the facade designs and then pulled together a group of designers, architectural show set interior, and we all put together a package, a very extensive package defining each facade with its character. And we worked closely with Pixar on it. I mean, John Lasseter was in all our meetings on the facades and a couple of his other people too.

So it was a very extensive work and very gratifying because it’s easier to do on film the 3D illusion than in real life. And we had to find a way of doing it in real life, which would also work for Pixar, who did the excellent film. We did find how to do it, and we did it, and the package came together. I had I think 28 people working under me to get this done, and they were ace players. Amazing, amazing. And it was fun, even though it was a late start for us, and the completion date doesn’t change. So we got it done and it was good.

Dan Heaton: Well, I know you were working likely in the United States, but there was teams in France, so how did that work out where you have someone overseas and there might be multiple teams working on that?

Eli Erlandson: The nice thing about that is that the team, the Imagineering team in France is really a group of highly experienced professionals who worked with us on the first park. The agreement had been to get the drawings done in Glendale, then they go to France and they’ll be constructed. But there was an interchange of information and ideas with the Glendale team and the French team. It’s not like we did all the work here, and then we just gave it to them, not at all. They were involved in the process of even choosing the materials.

We’re going to use the finishes on the facades and what are they going to look like and what is their texture really going to be and what are they going to be made of, and stuff like that. So there was a definite interchange of ideas that way. Besides having the engineers and the project architect here who were French relocates to,

Dan Heaton: You mentioned earlier that you really insisted that some of the work was done by hand for New Fantasy land and then also for this. Why do you think that’s so important to have that done by hand in certain cases like those?

Eli Erlandson: Well, it’s actually historically, when you think of that with thematic architecture and show set design, there are certain things that fall apart when you try to show it just with computers, drawings, it becomes more rigid and it doesn’t show the character we wanted to have, not only on the drawings, but constructed. When we did the first park in France, EDL, Disneyland Paris, then we were kind of already doing, yes, Cad, but we also were teaching the French, what it was to do thematic architecture and design.

And we did that with hand drawings and they picked it up in no time, very artistic people. So that was good. And then eventually we became, from that time to today, we became totally digitized. Totally. So it came to a point where I remember I had to convince a team that we still need the hand drawings.

And I think what, at the end of the day, not everybody understood it the same way, and you have to have, the creative people did understand it because it just doesn’t look like what we want it to look like. But when you have project management and construction management and estimating it, everybody may think you’re just going to prolong the process by putting hand drawings, which it’s not true. Drawing it baby, it takes a little longer.

But at the end of the day, having drawn it the way it really looks and detailed it so that they understand how they construct it, it saves time on site and a lot of money too, because you don’t want to fix things that are being built on site. You just want it right on the get go. And have the contractors understand what that means from the time they bid, not afterwards.

Dan Heaton: Well, I think the results and the fact that they then went and added it recently again in Florida shows how well it all came together. And I’m sure doing it hit by hand made a difference, it sounds like. For sure. Well, I want to make sure we have time to ask about the book a little more, but before I do that, I did want to ask you, we’ve covered a few projects you worked on, but I’m curious if there’s another memorable project or story or something from your time that we haven’t covered that was something that really stands out to you as being a cool experience.

Eli Erlandson: All of them were a cool experience. They were, I mean, they all had their challenges. They all had their difficulties, and they all, I mean, and then the teams you work with, and usually the question I get asked at the end is, what would you say makes an Imagineer? And I go back to Disney’s to Marty’s 10 Commandments. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, but in one of ’em, he states an Imagineer must be courteous, be confident, be courageous, and be consistent.

So I would say if somebody is in the midst of their career or wanting to start their career to examine themselves constantly on those four because it’s true. It’s like when I think of every woman who wrote a chapter in that book, they’re courteous, they’re courageous, they’re confident, and consistent. Consistent in it.

Dan Heaton: That’s great. Well, let’s close with the book because I want to mention it. I think it’s really cool. I’ve talked to two of them, Peggie Ferris and Karen Connolly Armitage, and both were amazing, but there’s so many cool stories. So I’m curious how the idea came together and ultimately what led to having such 12 great stories.

Eli Erlandson: The idea came together when the women I was, and the one guy I was tutoring in architecture at WDI asked me to write a book about my career. They wanted me to write a book, and I thought, okay, I can do that. I was thinking of writing something anyway for the family, so I thought, oh, I could do that for them, for the family. I never thought of it as published books. And I did start writing, and then it came to mind that this doesn’t make sense because nothing we do at Imagineering, we do alone. And here I’m writing a book about my career.

I want to include other women who were from the same time period and could talk about their careers and could give advice to young women who were retired from WDI who had worked at least 20 years at WDI. Of course, certain people worked much longer, but they also worked in other segments of the company, Disneyland, Walt Disney World and that, but WDI, 20 years minimum. So I started amassing this group slowly and asked them their opinion too as it was growing, who else? And we added more and we got to 12 and they wanted to add more.

And I said, time out, 12 is enough that will make a nice length book and 12 is enough. So that’s how we stopped at 12. What we noted and didn’t like is that no Asian person, no person of color, but then realized all of these women are still working there. So they came later than us, and they’re still working there. So we really hope they write their book too. We really hope because they will have amazing stories to tell. They will, and it will be a great book. So yeah, that’s how it came about.

Dan Heaton: Well, I think it’s a great book, and I’m glad because again, with imaginary, like you said, it’s always a team. We hear about Joe Rohde or Tony Baxter or whatever, but there are so many other people that have done amazing work like yourself and others, so I love that the book is out there to tell 12 more stories, and I hope there’s so many more to tell in the future.

Eli Erlandson: Yeah, I worked with Tony quite a bit because of EDL, Euro Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, and we befriended each other, and he’s a friend of ours, my husband and I, and Tom Morris is the other one I worked a lot with and appreciated his input to designs and stuff. And yeah, it’s been quite a run. I mean, really haven’t mentioned a hundred of the people I’ve worked with and had the privilege of getting to know him and be friends with forever.

Dan Heaton: Oh, yeah, Tom, I’ve spoken with Tom. He’s such a Disneyland history fan and just knows so much. He’s a real treat to talk with, great storyteller and interesting guy. But yeah, there’s way too many to mention and I just want to say thanks because this has been great to talk with you and learn a little bit about your career, Eli, and I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for being on the podcast and talking with me.

Eli Erlandson: Thanks, Dan. Thank you for calling me too, and it was fun talking with you, and I wish you continued success in what you’re doing. I think it’s a great thing you’re doing because even though it’s the future society, the future is based on a solid past and you’re touching those bases, you’re touching those bases and giving people where to create their foundations, which is great.