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I spent a lot of time at theme parks as a kid, but most of it was at destination parks like Walt Disney World. We did venture to our local Six Flags and regional spots like Silver Dollar City. Even so, my knowledge of the industry was limited. The rise of podcasts in the mid-2000s helped to change my perspective. Entertaining shows like Coaster Radio and The Season Pass Podcast (especially) revealed a world of other spots that were new to me. We visited regional gems like Holiday World because I heard raves on those podcasts. The Season Pass also introduced me to behind-the-scenes figures pivotal to the industry’s growth. Hosts Doug Barnes and Brent Young have an insider’s knowledge yet always keep the content understandable.
Brent is my guest on this episode of The Tomorrow Society Podcast, and we talk about his background working on theme parks. He is the president and creative director for Super 78 Studios, a new media design and production studio formed in 1997. Brent’s experience on attractions around the world gives him an up-close perspective on what’s happening today. Our conversation focuses on big issues affecting theme parks, including reliance on intellectual property and challenges for regional parks. We cover Brent’s key projects throughout his career plus his current work on Flying Over Indonesia.
Brent is also a project director and founder of the Walt Disney Birthplace project in Chicago. This restoration of Walt’s childhood home is challenging but so important to preserving Walt’s legacy. Brent has a passion for keeping Disney history alive, and that enthusiasm carries through to his work at Super 78 and on The Season Pass. I really enjoyed the chance to speak with Brent and hear his insights about theme parks.
Show Notes : Brent Young
Learn more about Super 78 Studios at their official website.
Listen to Brent, Doug Barnes, and Robert Coker on The Season Pass Podcast.
Discover more details about the restoration of The Walt Disney Birthplace in Chicago.
Related Podcasts
Doug Barnes of The Season Pass on Episode 12 of The Tomorrow Society Podcast
Ricky Brigante of Inside the Magic on Episode 48 of The Tomorrow Society Podcast
Transcript
Dan Heaton: Hey everyone. Today I’m doing a deep dive into the world of Disney, regional parks, dark rides, and a lot more with Brent Young of Super 78 Studios and the Season Pass. You’re listening to The Tomorrow Society Podcast.
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Dan Heaton: Thanks so much for joining me here on Episode 54 of the Tomorrow Society Podcast. I am your host, Dan Heaton. So I grew up going to Walt Disney World regularly, family vacations during the eighties and early nineties, and my fandom for theme parks really grew from those trips. We did go to Six Flags Over Mid A merica, but I knew very little about all the different parks around the country and beyond, and the people behind the scenes to make that happen. And one of the ways that I learned a lot was in the 2000s listening to the Season Pass Podcast with host Doug Barnes and Brent Young.
Brent Young: And I was mentioning that we’d go down to the Disney World and we went to Disney World just a couple of years after it opened. Then we actually, one of the pictures that I found, you could see the steel for Space Mountain and the cranes in the background building Space Mountain, which is pretty cool. We went to Six Flags over Georgia. I went to Six Flags over Texas, so we would do a lot of theme parks.
I went to in Branson, the Lil’ Abner Park, which was, oh geez, I forgot what it was called. It’ll come to me, but you can find it online. It’s like an abandoned one of those crazy abandoned parks that’s been just kind of overgrown now. But just a lot of my parents, my dad, I think specifically was kind of into the theme park thing, and he would take us as kids that did a lot.
That inspired me. That was part of it. So my journey started very young when we’d go to these parks and to be honest with you, then the second biggest part of it was music, and specifically the band Kiss. So the band Kiss was probably the right. You’re like, wow. Yeah, I don’t think I’ve talked about this much at all, but that was probably the single biggest influence for me in this experiential, this idea of building an experience or going to a Kiss concert where you would see these guys make up larger in life, breathing fire and these massive sets and the lights and the show.
It was a huge, huge influence on me. And I’m looking right across my office right now, and I have this kind of abstract Gene Simmons statue that still sits right across from me because I look at that and just, it reminds me of the influence that they had on my career. I actually sneak little things into every ride that I do that are part of my little homage to Kiss. So it might be a dinosaur that blows a fireball over the queue, and that’s my Kiss fireball. So it really has influenced my life, and I kind of give them credit for a lot of that.
Dan Heaton: That’s really interesting. It makes sense because a lot of what you’re doing is visual media and such. Which kids, I mean, could you think there aren’t that many rock bands that are more theatrical with makeup and like you said, fire and everything. So I could see the connection. It just surprised me. I’m not used to hearing that type of story, but it totally makes sense. So when did you decide, okay, I’m going to work in entertainment, in themed entertainment, or even just possibly in music? How did that go?
Brent Young: Well, that’s when I decided, right? I was seven years old and I got my first Kiss album and listened to Kiss Alive. And I said to myself, I want to be the superhero. I want to be this superhero; I want to be one of these guys. I want to be a member of Kiss. So I was that kid that Kiss army kid. And so then I picked up the electric guitar, I started playing, I put a band together.
I had bands in junior high and high school and met a group of guys that kind of followed all through my life. I just had a big birthday party, a big milestone birthday party, and I played a show at the Viper Room here in Hollywood. And I had everyone that I had ever been in a band with from the time I was in junior high all the way through the band that I was in here in Hollywood.
So when I came out to Hollywood, and we’ll get to that, I was in a band and we played all the clubs and the strip here, and the only club we didn’t play was the Viper Room. And so that was the idea we’re going to play the Viper Room. So all these guys came out to play in this show. So that’s really what I wanted to do. And so that was a big part, but all of our shows, all the bands that I was in were very theatrical bands.
So we all had costumes and the songs were always kind of a little quirky. And really I found myself as kind of band leader. I would be either the singer, the singer, guitar player in that role. I really played up the theatricality of being the front man and still to this last show I put on probably the best show of our lives just a few months ago.
So it was great. It was great. And so that’s how I knew. I knew at a very young age, this is what I wanted to do; I wanted to entertain people. I wanted to be a rock star at that time; I mean, that’s what I wanted to do. But transitioning over the years when I got to Hollywood, you need to make money. So in college I did a video show. So on the local television cable network, I had my own program that was kind of like an MTV meets sketch comedy show.
I knew how to edit video, I knew how to run a lot of equipment. So I was a bit of a nerd. I was into computers. I had one of the first Apple Twos and Vic 20 and Commodore 64; I knew how to program. So when I got to Hollywood and needed a job, there was a visual effects company that was into this new computer generated imagery thing, CGI.
I started working for them, a company called Rhythm and Hues. What was cool was they had a little theme park division and they were doing expos, world expos, and they were doing computer simulator rides for theme parks. And then we did, we worked for Universal to do a big ride called Safari, and that was one of the first really big simulator rides. Then we did Star Trek, the ride out in Las Vegas and raced for Atlantis in Las Vegas. And then they went on to do Tough to be a Bug and all this other stuff. And I worked on Ellen’s Energy Pavilion back in the day. So I really loved it and it brought me back to my childhood. It brought me back to Six Flags. It brought me back to the Magic Kingdom. I was like, this is what I really love to do.
I really love this. It brings all my favorite things together in one place. I am still in a band at that time, but it’s not talent, it’s timing in this town. So you’re out competing against a thousand other people trying to do the same thing. I’m getting older, I’m making good money at doing visual effects, and I’m starting to really love what I do. Doing that. I met Dina, who’s my long-term partner and wife and owner of Super 78 also. And I met her at Rhythm and Hues and we started our own company, Super 78.
That was 20 years ago. We started doing that with, we were determined to kind of focus on the theme park industry, but we also did a lot of video games and commercial work and just a little bit of everything to keep money coming through the door. Then as time progressed, I really personally started to just take only the theme park work because I just loved it so much, and the other stuff just kind of went away. Now we’ve been doing exclusive theme park work for at least the last decade, if not a little more.
Dan Heaton: That’s amazing that to go from that job you took first at Rhythm and Hues and then it seemed like it was kind of fate that you ended up working so much in theme parks you just took to it. So when you were doing Super 78 early on, and like you mentioned you just started doing theme parks, what was it that excited you so much about that versus the other work you were doing?
Brent Young: Again, I think it all goes back to your passions, what really gives what sparks you. And I think that idea of creating experiences that live for a very long time, right? Media for other films, even if you’re working on a big film working on commercials, it’s very disposable. It’s in and out. It’s like junk food in a way. And I feel like the work that we’ve done in theme parks, there are attractions that we did 12, 15 years ago that are still running every single day.
I just went to see Donkey Live at Singapore a few weeks ago. The show had kind of transformed, blossomed. There was 150 people in the audience having a great time, and that show’s been there for 10 years. I’m like, this is great. Every single day, every 30 minutes, 150 people come in here and are really entertained and have a great time. I just feel like I’m very proud of that. It excites me to be involved in this industry because of that.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, I mean I can imagine that because even, I mean, yes, there are a few movies and TV shows that kind of linger, but even shows that might be popular now or some sort of anything, most have a shelf life and a lot of ’em are six months or I think about it, something I loved a year ago. I may not have thought about it since then. So it’s great that you’re able to connect that way.
So let’s talk about some of the things you guys have done at Super 78. One of them that I never got to experience in person that looks stunning to me is Curse of DarKastle at Bush Gardens Williamsburg, which is a 4D dark ride. That to me is a precursor to things like Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey and some of the things we’re seeing now. What was it like to kind of work on that attraction?
Brent Young: Well, that was kind of a watershed for us because that was the first major attraction that we worked on, and I will give a lot of credit to the people at Busch Entertainment and the leadership at Williamsburg for allowing us to do that because we didn’t really have a deep track record on doing things of that magnitude and that complexity. So there were a lot of major studios going after that work, including people at the time. It would’ve been like ILM level studios, some of them not existing anymore, but even Rhythm and Hues, who we used to work for, Dina and I were in the mix on that, and they had several hundred people and we only had a handful of people. We worked really hard to develop artwork and a test that showed that we understood the shifting point of perspective.
And Spider-Man had come out a couple of years before that, and Williamsburg wanted a Spider-Man. Now, I got to give a lot of credit also to Cecil at Falcon’s Treehouse for being able to convince the leadership at Busch Entertainment that he could pull that off because you’re looking at a hundred million dollars. At the time, maybe it was $60, $70 million attraction for Spider-Man, it was completely unique. That changed the whole industry.
That was a game changer. Everybody said, holy crap, that is a unique attraction. No one’s ever seen anything like that. He had the chutzpah to go to Busch and say, I can do that for $20 million. Let’s do it. And went out and got vendors like Oceaneering, Super 78. So put ’em all together and actually did something that was pulled off a really great attraction. I’m actually really bummed that it closed this year. I know. Such a bummer. But again, running, I think it opened in 2005.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, that’s what I have from now.
Brent Young: Yeah. So what is it, 13 years? I mean, that’s a good run. Or 12 years, something like that. That’s again, a long time. Millions of people got to experience that attraction, and I am happy to be a part of it. But that did open up a lot of doors for us. It was to show that, and it also got us in trouble with Universal for several years. They were not happy about that at all, but it put us on the map, let’s say, as a contender. So that was a great attraction for us, and thank you for recognizing that.
Dan Heaton: Oh, it saddens me. Well, I’m a little personally sad because I didn’t get to ride it and it closed though. I had 12 years, so I should only blame myself for that. But it’s cool that you bring up Spider-Man, because I have ridden Spider-Man multiple times even recently, and it holds, I know they’ve recently redid the visuals, but even before that, it held up so well. But you bring up a good point with the money, because Williamsburg is a, I mean, it’s a regional park though, not in the same level of a Six Flags park. It’s bigger than that.
But local Six Flags, they added this Justice League attraction, which I know is showing up at a lot of Six Flags parks, and it’s good to see dark rides showing up at parks like that, but at least in St. Louis, it breaks constantly. I wrote it this summer and the effects were all down. So dark rides in general. I know you guys love dark rides as I do. Is it possible given the technology that needs to be there for them to really work at a non Disney, non Universal park on that scale?
Brent Young: This is very interesting that you’re bringing this up. Yesterday I had a conversation with an analyst from Fidelity. What they do is they validate certain assumptions that they’re putting in for their bond holders and the people that invest their investment groups. So they’ll ping industry experts about what the forecasts are and what the strategies are for these park groups. Who’s a fascinating conversation that I had with this gentleman who had done a lot of research on Cedar Fair and Six Flags and top of the conversation.
He said, we see the growth in Comcast in Universal and the Disney Studios, but different class, obviously destination class, and obviously a different, that’s not their only business, right? Comcast isn’t primarily about theme parks. It’s a bigger business, but Six Flags is about Six Flags. He said, it seems to us that dark rides and heavily themed attractions plays a big influence on the success of these parks.
Do you feel like parks like Six Flags or Cedar Fair are missing? The audience are not generating the kind of numbers that they could generate if they invested more heavily into dark ddes? And do you think that that’s something that they could actually pull off at the budget levels they have? So exactly. Your question came from an analyst that is probably looking to write hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bonds for these corporations. And I said, yeah, absolutely.
They’re missing in the 20 years that Super 78 has been in business, Six Flags management has never called us about doing a dark ride, about doing a themed attraction for them. Yet the developer who’s building a new park in China or Indonesia, will come over to the United States, go do a park tour, and he’ll come to us and say, I want what Universal has, or I want what Disney has.
He’s not saying I want what Six Flags has. So clearly someone who’s no experience whatsoever gets that heavily themed attractions, not just IP based, but media-based attractions or a dark rides offer a different level of immersion than a rollercoaster offers. A rollercoaster offers a very limited audience a thrill. So you’ve got a kid who’s maybe eight years old to 30, that’s probably their sweet spot, or 35, probably less though, probably closer to the eight to 18.
Those are the folks that are really excited outside of Robert Coker, who’s across the hall from me who are really excited about the big new coasters, it seems a little bit mind boggling. I talked to this guy at length about, well, what were his thoughts about it? And I gave him my perspective. My perspective is it’s decentralized. They don’t have a central kind of planning creative group.
They’ve got local park GMs that have limited amount of CapEx to go out and do an attraction, and they know what can get ’em a bump at the gate every year. It’s like, okay, I can get a little bump if I throw in a new big coaster. But it seems to me like a strategy that isn’t a winning strategy because that’s what they did when they went bankrupt. I mean, Six Flags not too long ago was done, and then they kind of had a rebirth after they went through bankruptcy. It doesn’t seem like they’ve changed their strategy at all.
Outside of putting a Justice League in, which is a great, the one here, I went on Magic Mountain when they opened. We did a big event out there, and I thought it was great. I thought what the guys over at Sally put together was a strong move for Six Flags. But they really need to take a more aggressive, not only they’re working on their food and beverage offerings, which is really important for them, for their per cap, they need to do that, but they need to take a more aggressive look at doing themed attractions, and they really need to get involved in a serious way with our trade organization, the TEA, and tap the people int EA to give them their opinion and consult with them on what they should do because we know what to do.
So that’s the thing. And it’s funny, I had this same conversation yesterday about the genesis of these theme parks and about Six Flags and what they used to be and how they used to be so great, what happened to these theme parks. So they’ve been struggling, and I think they’re going to continue to struggle until they really start to embrace immersive attractions like what the destination parks offer.
Dan Heaton: Or even you see parks like a Dollywood or Silver Dollar City that regional parks, but that do have some dark rides and that are doing things at such a high level that it makes a difference. But yeah, I don’t get it because even personally, just as someone with kids, I’m not even thinking in terms of analyzing the industry. I look at parks that have more dark rides, and I say, that’s better because my five-year-old daughter, sure, she’ll ride Big Thunder Mountain or something, but she’s not going to ride Mr. Freeze or some example. So it makes a huge difference. And I think it’s interesting that somebody who’s analyzing the industry is kind of thinking in the same way.
Brent Young: And that was his first observation. We want to talk for an hour and a half about the industry, but that was the number one observation that he made and that he posed to these different theme park groups. I mean, it seems obvious. It seems obvious to the Chinese developer, and it seems obvious to the investment analyst. There must be a systemic issue with that, with them starting to create a more family destination that’s a regional family destination. Because like you said, you’re in St. Louis, you should be going with your kids all the time to Six Flags, right? And enjoying that, but there’s not enough diversity in the offerings.
When I was a kid, you had shows, you had animal shows, you had smaller coasters, you had dark rides, you had boat rides, you had flumes. There was just a ton to do for kids. That’s a sad thing. And I think when you make those investments, 20, $30 million into these steel coasters, it’s a little hard to get them moved out of the way and put something else in.
Dan Heaton: Especially like we mentioned some of these parks, they had that stretch where you look at the years and it’s like every other year they were putting in another steel coaster and they were seeing good crowds, but there’s a point where you just can’t keep up with that. But I wanted to ask, you mentioned IPs, which are obviously a big part of what’s going on right now, especially with Disney, but I wanted to talk about how you worked on an attraction for theme two, SpongeBob SquarePants. I was curious for you coming in and doing that where it’s an existing IP that is very well known. Were there extra challenges for you to work from such a well-known property and create an attraction?
Brent Young: There are always challenges with IP because especially a brand like SpongeBob that is the Mickey Mouse of Nickelodeon, that is the golden goose. So there’s a lot of eyeballs on that, and you have to be very careful how you treat brands that are that valuable. The big challenge there was SpongeBob, there was a 4D movie that was done years ago, but it was done in a style that, an aesthetic that was true to the television show.
So it was a kind of tune shaded line art version that looked very much like the TV show, but it was a 4D experience. So what we did was the first 3D true dimensional 3D rendered, 3D, realistic SpongeBob, and there was a lot of fear around doing that. And we had already done Dora and Diego, so we had translated the 2D characters of Dora and Diego into 3D.
So there was trust that we had built with the studio with Nickelodeon that we could do that because Dora was another one of the crown jewels. There was a worry that at the time, 4D rides, you couldn’t bring four year olds into a 4D ride. They didn’t get it. They’d get too scared. And so really, Dora and Diego 4D was the first kind of targeted attraction for a younger audience and to specifically go into zoos and museums.
But it also, we built it so it was a component ride that could be a simulator attraction, like a very mild simulator attraction, or it could be in a standard 4D theater. So we look at these things because this was going to be distributed worldwide to many, many locations as something that you have to build out for a lot of platforms. So we built trust with the studio, but still, that was the hardest.
That was the biggest hump. That was the hurdle was to get buy-in from all the stakeholders and get alignment with the studio, with the executives and the creatives that we could pull off SpongeBob in 3D without it looking like the SpongeBob character that you see on the show. Then soon after that, they did the SpongeBob movie. At the time, the SpongeBob movie was going to be a 2D movie. I’m not saying that Super 78 was the reason why SpongeBob then became a 3D character that came in the real world and then became a 3D asset.
But let’s just say that after they did the 4D ride that we did, they rewrote the movie, they went complete rewrites, and then you see the movie that is there today. But that same team was involved with the SpongeBob 4D ride, and I think there was an influence, let’s just say, and what they saw and what we could do with SpongeBob.
Dan Heaton: I think I can buy that. I mean, obviously they probably at minimum saw it and went, huh, maybe what we’re doing is a little behind the time. So I think you could take a little credit for that. I’m good with that.
Brent Young: Thank you.
Dan Heaton: I’m a very important source here, so it’s important that you have my approval.
Brent Young: I appreciate that very much. Then we went on after that just a couple years later to do the SpongeBob SubPants interactive character show at Moody Gardens, which stars Patrick Star as our beloved host and captain of our crazy vessel as we take a tour through Bikini Bottom, which was a really fun show to work on. We got a lot of accolades for that, for technology advancements that we made in interactive characters, and also just the overall theming of the attraction and how we integrated a lot of real animals and science and education into an attraction.
Again, this goes back to my roots going to Disney in the ‘70s and ‘80s and Epcot where I always felt that attractions were better if you got a little bit more education or you felt like you were better on the other side of the attraction than when you started. And it wasn’t just cotton candy, there was meat on the bone. So all of the attractions that we do, I try to bring in some aspect of whatever we’re doing, making it deeper. And so there’s a bit of a, you come out the other side learning something, just like Walt used to say, we’re not doing education here, we’re doing entertainment. But he was doing education. He was just sneaking it in.
But he knew you eat that good food, you eat sugar all the time, you don’t feel good, right? You’re not going to feel good, but you sneak in a little good food in there on top of it with the sugar, and you feel good at the end of the day, and you feel like you learn something and you feel better on the other side. I think that’s where Walt really knew what was going on, and I think why Epcot was so successful at the time, I think that Disney now has these giant IPs that they can, and that’s amazing for them. But I do think we’re losing a bit of that attractions that are actually good for you, seriously, where you come out the other side learning a little bit about something. And that’s where I miss Epcot, the Epcot 1.0. I want that back.
Dan Heaton: Me too. Yeah. I grew up, I was born in the ‘70s. I grew up in the ‘80s as a kid. So I remember going to Epcot Center when I think I was eight in 1984, and I still remember that trip. I mean, so you mentioned education also just being inspired because especially the way things were there. I mean, I don’t know if we’ll ever see anything like that again. Probably not. It’s interesting. I brought up the IPs. I was kind of leading this anyway; I mean, right now the trends for Disney are so pushed towards IPs and they’ve created some amazing things. Pandora is amazing. Cars Land is really cool.
They’ll probably do a good job with the things that Epcot with Guardians of the Galaxy and such. But this trend is going so much in that direction. I don’t know if it’s possible, but is there any way that we would even, would we even see an Expedition Everest at this point? Because I feel like we’re so far into this IP world. Could the trend shift? I mean from your perspective, seeing the industry side, is there at that level, a chance to happen?
Brent Young: Yeah, this is the painful thing. It’s painful for me, and that’s why I love what I do. I love my clients. My clients allow me to do Wings Over Washington, like the latest movie we’re doing flying over Indonesia where I spend 50 days shooting in Indonesia, all these amazing places. I get to create an experience that will allow people to learn about Indonesia, Indonesian culture, Indonesian music, Indonesian landmarks, the animals, everything. And they’ll have a flying experience over Indonesia, but at the end of the day, they’re going to see stuff that they could never see, and they’re going to feel better.
At the end of that, they’re going to go, wow, that was cool. And I love the music. I love all these different, I didn’t know that there was a giant Grand Mosque and a Hindu temple and a Buddhist temple and a Jesus on the Hill. Wow, there’s all these cultures and religions and music. How would you know that? That’s what I love, and that’s what inspires me. And I know from what we’ve done in the past that when people get off those rides, they are like, this was amazing.
This was transformative experience for me. I felt like I was flying and I got to see these locations that I’d never be able to see, and I learned something that I never learned. You could tell that’s a winner. I don’t know. At the destination park level, it seems like that the brands, I’m not going to say they do it just because it’s easier. I think what it is now, at a time when Epcot came out, you have to think back then that they needed the money to build the park and to build the park. They needed sponsors, so they needed to go to GM, they needed to go General Electric, AT&T, all of these different mega corporations that were the Fortune 500 companies at the time, to give Disney, which wasn’t a Fortune 500 company, the money to be able to build these amazing attractions.
Well, now Disney is the Fortune 500 company, so they are essentially sponsoring their own attraction. They don’t need the sponsors anymore. They don’t need to tell GM’s story.; they don’t need to tell AT&T’s story; they don’t need to tell Exxon’s story. And they don’t need to do that anymore. They need to tell their stories, which are Star Wars, Marvel, these are their stories, Pixar, Disney animation. They need to tell those stories. Those are the things that are fueling the Disney attractions. And I get it. I get it a hundred percent, and I think they’re amazing rides and Disney is the gold standard.
There is no one that could disagree with that statement. But at the same time, I miss original attractions. I think there’s value in those attractions, and I think that they are missing an opportunity. And I would say look at Hamilton and the success of that theatrical production as really not an IP that anyone would think was going to be a sensation, but the reason was it was unique.
It was a great music, but it told a story about our nation that we didn’t know. And on the other side at the end, not only was it great music and great sets and great dance, great story, but there was history there that was real, that when we came out on the other side, everybody’s like, it’s amazing. It’s not just amazing. It’s amazing. And it’s true. It’s real; it’s our history. It’s our roots of our country.
This is how we got to where we are, and that’s what makes it so important, and that’s what elevated it up to the next level. So you can only eat so much junk food and so much cotton candy before, and it just doesn’t, doesn’t resonate deeply if there’s not something real there behind it. Even with Six Flags going all the way back to that part of the podcast, that river attraction went back into like, okay, this is the Spanish fort, and they’re protecting this.
There’s a spiel about, okay, I’m back in history and this is what happened. And there’s something real and tangible to it that I guess Walt knew instinctively that I think there’s DNA, and I think there’s people in the company that know that, but it just doesn’t make the money. It doesn’t bring in the, it’s not as attractive, and I think it would be a harder sell. I think you and I, I’m glad to hear you experienced Epcot when you were eight years old. That was probably the most amazing thing you ever saw in your life.
Dan Heaton: Oh, it was stunning the fact of, because I don’t remember every trip I took as a kid, but I still remember going into space of birth and we didn’t have the internet. My parents had barely told me where we were, what we were doing. And I just remember being like, what is this? This is, I mean, almost a little not scary, but just because there was so much unknown to it. I think that strikes the imagination too. That’s the other factor is you can make a great roller coaster with media and the whole deal or bring in Rati and have a really cool trackless ride system. That’s cool.
But that’s what I’m thinking. I just wish they tried a little harder. And I want to get a chance to ask you a little more about though the flying theaters with Wings over Washington and what you just mentioned with Indonesia. So how does that work? I don’t need you to give me a two-hour treatise, but just kind of what are the tricks with really making those types of attractions really click?
Brent Young: Oh, God. So I just got back from Indonesia last week, so I’m still a little jet lagged actually. So I get off on these weird tangents. I’m not always like this, but I am a little jet lagged, and we’re looking at the cut. We have 21 different locations and you got to tighten it up. Luckily, we have a lot of footage and we need to tighten things up and tighten the bolts. When you’re making a movie, the movie happens in the edit.
So you go out and you’re acquiring all these cool things and you’re trying to do, like we’ve got helicopters and drones and you, you’re going to these locations and you’re hoping this all works out, that somehow we’re going to be able to put all these pieces together and with some magic and some visual effects and some great sound. We are going to make this all work. But the first cut, which we’re just sending out to the sound today, that assembly is always a scary thing. You put it together and you say to yourself, how is this ever going to work?
So that’s where I am last night, and today I am just seeing the first assembly and I’m like, this is where the real hard work starts. It’s hard to get the job, it’s hard to do the job, and then it’s really hard to post it and put it together in a way that flows and makes sense. There’s some sort of story, there’s some sort of arc and you get all the flying sensations.
You don’t make anyone puke, and there’s so much work ahead of us. But I will say from a starting point, this film Flying Over Indonesia will be, and I’m going to just say it right now, the most stunning flying film at this point ever made, even beyond flying over the world, easily better as far as just the visuals, because we have locations with hundreds of costumed choreographed dancers in front of amazing palaces in, I sent you Jember Carnival, right?
Hundreds of costumes and floating markets and just these things that flying over the world is fun, but you’re so abstracted from the locations, you’re up so high. It’s like, okay, there’s the Taj Mahal and there’s a couple of people walking around, but we get down into it like a foot over these people’s heads with hundreds of people dancing and singing, and then we fly over one of the seven wonders of the world, and it’s not CG. It’s real; it’s a hundred percent real. And it’s going to be mind blowing when it’s done.
But it is scary at this point because there is a cadence to how you put these things together. There is a flow to how you get from one scene to the next as far as speed, the camera, how you’re moving forward. Everything has to just tie in. And when you put all these things together the first time, they don’t tie in, they don’t work, right? The camera’s moving faster here. The angle’s not right here.
This one’s going up, this one’s going down, this one’s going sideways. It just doesn’t go together. And it’s a scary point, not only for me, but for my client. So they’re like, what have we just do? What have we done? How is this going to work? And luckily, we’ve invented over the years, a piece of technology called Mushroom and Mushroom is using virtual reality to pre-visualize our attractions. So for our client in Indonesia, we’ve already built his theater. We already have the ride system in, we have the dome screen, so as we shoot, he can sit in that theater and watch the film develop. So there is no surprises.
What you see is what you get. And that is the amazing thing about this technology, because just a few years ago, you’d have to have a very expensive mockup. You’d have to have all the projectors, you’d have to have a scale screen, and you could imagine how much that would cost millions of dollars. So now we have the ability to take it. I think you saw one of the photos that I took where I’m sitting on a floating market in Borneo in the middle of nowhere with a village elder, and he’s flying for the first time.
He’s got this virtual reality Oculus on his head, and he’s over the river that he’s been managing as the village elder for his whole life. But he’s never seen him from this perspective. And he’s holding on, you can see in the photo, and there’s a guy standing behind him holding him because he was so amazed. He was flying over this river and he thought he was going to fall in. He didn’t know what was happening; he was completely immersed and lost. And then at that moment, I’m laughing because I’m like, this is going to work. This will work.
Dan Heaton: If it can work on that small scale, it’ll work.
Brent Young: It’s going to work. That’s how it comes together. We have tools now that allow us a different level of being able to, I can pull the images off the camera. I have drones, so I’m not only flying in helicopters. Now, I have amazing cameras that can shoot at eight K resolution, essentially like an IMAX size frame on a drone in a package where I can run that camera for an hour where an IMAX, when they did Soarin’ over California, most people don’t know this, they had 32nd loads in Imax. So they get up, they could only shoot 30 seconds and then go land, take film out, and they wouldn’t be able to see until it gets processed.
I’m able to shoot 15 minutes on the drone and be able to watch 15 minutes worth of footage in virtual reality sitting in the theater. As soon as it’s done, I’m sitting in the middle of nowhere. I’m already sitting in the theater, virtually watching the takes that I just shot, and I’m able to send the drone back up and reset my takes, which you could never do before, the technology that we have right now that we developed. So it’s a pretty amazing time in the industry.
Dan Heaton: As we were talking about things that are kind of sad with the IPs, but you describing this technology, I’m like, wow, there are so many different ways that that technology can be used to create just amazing attractions, whether they’re flying theaters or things that we haven’t even thought of yet. Those kind of advances give me a lot of hope for what we’re going to see all over the world.
Brent Young: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think you’re spot on with that. And we need to, right? So the attractions industry, what’s really fun about this industry for all your listeners out there is that we’re on the cutting edge or the bleeding edge of technology, and sometimes we fail. Sometimes we go out and we do things that don’t work.
But the one thing we always do is we innovate, and I’m going to go all the way back to Walt and I still need to do a plug for the Walt Disney Birthplace because Walt really is an inspiring person. And if you haven’t read biographies like the Gabler book on Walt Disney, you should really go out and pick that up and Walt’s story, because Walt Disney was like an uber pioneer. He’s one of the crown jewels of the American experience, right, of the American dream.
He is a quintessential a character in the American dream story, and that’s why I always kind of go back to what Walt would do that what would Walt do, because he was operating on a level that I could only dream of someday attaining. He just had so much insight into the future and where I’m just blessed to be part of, and I don’t even feel like the owner or the restorer of the Walt Disney Birthplace, we’re only the keepers of it or the watchers of it, or it’s only in our hands now to make sure that it becomes what it once was, and it can inspire future generations.
But I don’t feel it’s too big for me to feel like I somehow own it. I don’t have that kind of ego, right? I’m only the guy and Dina and the team here we’re working just to bring it back to what it once was and then have it be there forever as a symbol of the beginning of an amazing story.
Dan Heaton: How is the restoration project going along? Can you give some updates on how you’re doing?
Brent Young: Yeah. Well, it’s taken a lot longer than we thought, and maybe that is partially the attention to detail that we’re doing on the inside of the house. Yesterday I got photos from the site where all the doors went in, but we of course sourced doors that had to be from the 1890s. We found ’em in Indiana. We had shipped them. Not all the doors fit, so they had to be shaved down to make work. But those are all in the amazing moldings, the transoms, all of that stuff. We’re all in, the floors are all in.
Now we’re going into paint. I had a wonderful experience with a top end, like the paint whisperer who seems to channel can go back in the past and has all these amazing books of Victorian era paint chips and paint colors. So we did all these paint surveys in the house, and she could take that and say, okay, well, let’s mix this with this.
So when the paint goes in, it’s going to blow people’s minds. It’s going to be, we don’t know exactly what the interior of the house looked like. We know that there was wallpaper in some of the areas. There was wallpaper around the ceiling, but it had been crusted over many, many, many, many years. So some of it is guesswork, some of it is science, but I can tell you, it’s going to be amazing. It’s going to be beautiful, and it will be. Most people that go into that home and go into the room that Walt was born in are visibly moved. You cannot not be moved when you go into that home, when you see how small it is, you say what a giant came out of this little small home. It’s incredible.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, it’s interesting. I recently finally made the trip to Marceline, Missouri and saw they have a museum there and a lot of the sites, and was surprised how impactful it felt for me, but to go to his house, his childhood birthplace. I can’t wait to get up to Chicago and see it once it’s all finished.
Brent Young: You know what, you just let me know when you’re up there. You can go anytime. We’ve got people working up there, and we’ll give you a special behind the scenes tour. And anytime, Dan, you want to go see it, for sure.
Dan Heaton: Well, excellent. I’ll take you up on that at some point.
Brent Young: Absolutely.
Dan Heaton: Well, great, Brent, I feel like we barely scratched the surface of things you’ve worked on at Super 78, and we haven’t talked about the podcast and everything, so I’d love to have you back on some time to kind of hit a lot of the things we didn’t discuss.
Brent Young: I would too. I hope this was interesting. I hope there was. Oh yeah, it was great. I ramble on a lot about a lot of stuff, and yeah, we spent a lot of years doing a lot of great attractions, and I hope this goes out and it inspires somebody to get into our industry. I always want people to know that are passionate about theme parks, that there’s a lot of openings, there’s a lot of jobs, there’s a lot of need for talent, but there’s a lot of need for people that are really passionate about this.
So if you’re really passionate about theme parks, this is something you really want to do with your life, do it. Pursue it, reach out. Write an email, brent@super78.com. That’s my email. I answer emails to anyone who writes me and says, Hey, I’m passionate. What should I do? Please get in touch. Thank you so much, Dan. I really enjoyed our little conversation this afternoon.
They would go into what happened with the industry, especially because Brent worked at Super 78 Studios, which worked in the industry and created media, worked on attractions. The podcast also had a lot of Disney guests like Tony Baxter and many other Imagineers, but they would expand it further and not stop there and talk about Six Flags and Cedar Fair, Universal, pretty much every major vendor in the industry.
That’s why I’m so excited to have Brent on the show today so we could talk through his background and also dig into some of the big topics that are affecting the entire industry and not just Disney. And while those destination parks are driving what’s happening, it’s only part of the story. Brent is very knowledgeable from more than 20 years at Super 78 with what’s been happening and how things are going. He’s also a big Disney fan and is doing some amazing work with the project to restore Walt Disney’s birthplace in Chicago, which I think is going to be incredible. This was a pretty long conversation and I want to get right to it. So let’s go talk to Brent Young.
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Dan Heaton: Well, I am here with the President and Creative Director for Super 78 Studios, which has produced new media and design for theme parks and other attractions for more than 20 years. He is also a co-host of the Season Pass Podcast with Doug Barnes, and he’s leading the restoration of the Walt Disney Birthplace in Chicago. And it’s Brent Young. Brent, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
Brent Young: Oh, you’re dating me, but I started in this industry when I was 15, so I’m only 35. Right?
Dan Heaton: Oh, totally. Yeah, I’ll go with that. Yeah, so great. It’s great to have you on. And I wanted to start just talking a little about your background. I know even before we started, you mentioned that like me, I mean you were from St. Louis and so I’m curious to talk about upfront St. Louis. We have Six Flags over St. Louis used to be Six flags over Mid America. I was just curious, when you were a kid, did that spawn and interest in theme parks even that young?
Brent Young: Absolutely. That was, I call it my home park because Marriott’s Great America wasn’t open yet, which was in Gurnee. So growing up, my grandparents lived in a small town outside of St. Louis, about 60 miles west of St. Louis. We would go to Six Flags a couple of times a year. I would do the pilgrimage once every few years, we would go down to Walt Disney World. And I just pulled out some photos actually the other day where I have me at, I dunno, seven, eight years old. So this is really how old I am at year…I think two or three after Disney World opened. It’s pretty weird to see these pictures.
No, it’s just flat. There’s no area development. There’s hardly anybody there too, which is crazy. You can’t even imagine a Disney park without 30, 40, 50,000 people in it. So that was pretty weird. But I absolutely adored Six Flags over Mid America. I mean, that was what I would consider to be the first theme park that just said, this is something very cool, something very unique. I would go back and home and to my grandfather’s house and draw the map and get the maps, and I just loved it, I got to tell you. So yes, I have a big place in my heart and affinity to that park.
Dan Heaton: It’s interesting because I look back at that park and you talk about how exciting it was, and I see vintage photos of all these kind of cool attractions, like river rides and caves, and I go now with my daughter and I’m like, oh my gosh, the place is not my favorite place in the world. I’m like, why didn’t, I probably did go to that park because a kid, but why don’t I remember that park?
Brent Young: Oh, you know what, it was a true theme park. So each one of the lands was represented. There was Spain and Texas. It was the Six Flags that all flew over Texas at one time. So then all of those were broken down in different lands and they were truly themed. So the river ride, which I believe was a development boat ride just like Jungle Cruise, and it probably had a very similar layout because I believe the same folks that built Disneyland were building the Six Flags parks, but there was a full Jungle Cruise experience, but through Spain, and there was a Spanish fort that had cannons that would shoot at you.
It was just amazing. Of course, the Screamin’ Eagle, which is still there, but at the time, it was the fastest, tallest rollercoaster in the world built in that forest in the terrain. It was just incredible. But yeah, the shows, the Croft shows, the early Sid and Marty Croft theater shows, the Mine Train, the Arrow Mine Train that they had there was killer. It was such a cool, at the time, it was just neat. There was a lot of stuff to do that was for the whole family. So my grandparents would take me to this and there was stuff that they liked to do. It wasn’t all about coasters and what happened to Six Flags over the years. It lost that spark, that magic. But that’s what I remember. I remember that park.
Dan Heaton: It’s interesting because now you go and you see there’s an Arrow Mine Train still. There used to be two, there’s a log flume, there’s the Screamin’ Eagle. There’s a few things that are like that, but they’re smashed in with ‘90s steel coasters. Not even things that, there’s a few cool ones, but not things that you would say are the cutting edge or whatever. It’s kind of that old steel era. And so it’s a weird park. So I’m jealous that you got to experience so much of what it was like when it was still more unique.
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