Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
It’s easy to just focus on Disney’s latest offerings at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. That only tells part of the story, especially when you consider incredible locations like Tokyo DisneySea. I really enjoy learning more about Disney’s other resorts, and former Imagineer Joe Lanzisero is the perfect guest for that project. He returns to The Tomorrow Society Podcast for a second appearance where we delve even further into his work.
On this episode, Joe talks about designing Splash Mountain for Tokyo Disneyland, which varied considerably from the original. We also discuss the changes with creating a second version of Mickey’s Toontown in Japan. Joe provides some great stories about the differences when installing those familiar attractions into a new spot. The set-up of the park and the cultural differences played a role in how those additions were placed in Tokyo.
Joe led the creative development for Mermaid Lagoon and Arabian Coast at Tokyo DisneySea, and he goes into detail about that design process. We also talk about Hong Kong Disneyland, include the Iron Man Experience and challenges to add Marvel into existing lands. Joe also designed the children’s areas for the Disney Magic and Wonder, and we talk about how that process happened at Disney Cruise Line. It was a real thrill to explore Joe’s career even more during this episode.
Show Notes: Joe Lanzisero
Learn more about Joe Lanzisero’s work at his official website.
Listen to Joe’s first appearance on The Tomorrow Society Podcast on Episode 75 (July 8, 2019).
Check out the Spirit of the Time Zoomcast with Joe and Ryan Harmon on YouTube.
Transcript
Joe Lanzisero: We’d go there and they worked countless hours trying to eliminate as much of the splash from Splash Mountain as possible, which I thought was funny. The irony in it is as the years went on, the Japanese really enjoyed any show or any experience where there was water. I remember laughing. I was telling somebody the story and not too long before I left, when I moved on from being in charge of Tokyo, they actually did a show in the Castle Forecourt where they turned hoses on the guests, basically got the guests wet, and I thought, oh, how ironic. We spent all that time working to get the splash out of Splash Mountain and now look at what it’s become.
Dan Heaton: That was Joe Lanzisero talking about Splash Mountain at Tokyo Disneyland, and you’re listening to The Tomorrow Society Podcast.
(music)
Dan Heaton: Thanks so much for joining me here on Episode 95 of the Tomorrow Society Podcast. I am your host, Dan Heaton, and the more I learn about Tokyo Disneyland, Tokyo Disney Sea, Hong Kong, all the parks that I haven’t visited yet, it makes me want to go to these parks even more, especially with Disney Sea.
I don’t really need a lot more motivation to want to get there, but when I learned behind the scenes stories that explain things better and give some really cool background, I think, man, I have got to get to those parks, and that made it really fun to again, talk to former Disney Imagineer Joe Lanzisero, who was so involved both as a designer and then as a vice president over Imagineering with Tokyo Disney Sea, Hong Kong, Tokyo, so much with Disney Cruise Line. Joe has done a lot for Disney and isn’t as well known as I think he should be.
I first talked to him last July on Episode 75 and we dug into his work on Mystic Manor and Mickey’s Toon Town in Disneyland and so much more, and I feel like we barely scratched the surface of what’s there from Joe. He has so many good stories, and so I was really excited to have the chance to talk to him again. This time we dig into his work on Splash Mountain in Tokyo, like you heard in the intro, more Mickey’s Toon town in Tokyo now also the Iron Man experience in Hong Kong. Plus just some great insights about how several lands in Tokyo Disney Sea came together. It’s just a lot of fun to learn more from Joe about how theme park design works and what it was like for him to work at Disney for such a long time.
So this was a blast. I hope that I get another chance to talk to Joe in the future because there is still more to cover each time he answered a question, I kept thinking of more things I wanted to know, and Joe was kind enough to answer them all here on this show. So let’s get to it. Here is Joe Lanzisero.
(music)
Dan Heaton: Well, last time we dug into your background. You started out as an animator and this time there’s so much more to cover, so I’m really excited to talk with you, and I figured it a good place to start. I know last time you mentioned that while you were still at feature animation, you did a few projects like parts of Meet the World and there was a film for the Seas and American Journeys. And so I would love for you to talk a little bit about that early experience and what it was like for you to kind of dip your toe into Imagineering.
Joe Lanzisero: Yeah, and in fact, I think we mentioned it last time was that was actually how I got, well, I knew about Imagineering and I was always interested in Imagineering, but that’s how I really got introduced mostly to the people there. And I love, as I’ve mentioned, I love working with people and they were great people to work with.
There was a special projects unit in animation and it actually grew me to something bigger later on, but at the time, I don’t even know if it was even formal at the time, and we would help out on short films for the parks. I guess at one point Disney Animation actually had a commercial unit too, so it wasn’t new. I mean, over the years they’d always done that kind of stuff and I don’t know how, I guess I just showed an interest in it.
I’m trying to remember back how I was asked to do it, but I started, the first thing we worked on was some animation for Meet the World, which I think I mentioned last time was it was ironic that that was one of the first Imagineering related projects that I worked on because later on I was instrumental in having it bulldozed at Tokyo Disneyland. Then we did some animation for was the PSA pre-show for the CircleRama at Disneyland.
That was fun because it was using Orville, the Albatross from the Rescuers, which was I thought one of the better animated films that was done after Walt’s passing and before kind of the Renaissance. So that was kind of fun to be able to work on that and then some work for Epcot, and that was really what got me introduced to some of the Imagineers who ultimately became my champions and I got to work with later on at Imagineering, we did a little piece for the Imagination Pavilion with some Figment animation that I helped on.
But then the bigger thing that was the “Suited For The Seas” movie, which was a short little film that I think later got taken out for Turtle Talk, but I actually got to do quite a bit of work on that, almost got to direct it. We were using some existing live action footage, some really fun old footage from one of the films that Ward Kimball had directed. Ward Kimball be one of my favorite animators, and I admired his kind of crazy wild out there style and we got to emulate a little bit in the additional piece of animation we got to do for the Seas piece. So it was through that I was introduced to some of the Imagineers that ultimately led to me heading over there and ultimately getting to work with some of them.
Dan Heaton: Well, getting to do anything with Ward Kimball’s work is always, that had to be great, and I could totally see the connections between what you did in the future. So you eventually of course went on to Imagineering, but to doing those, you mentioned getting to connect with the Imagineers and being an animator. So what do you think it was about your style or what you did that maybe made them more interested in getting you to be transitioning to Imagineering?
Joe Lanzisero: It was actually Tony Baxter who brought me over, and it was through a mutual friend introduced me to Tony, and one of the things that Tony said that they were missing at the time he said was kind of that, and I always hate to make the comparison because I said it last time, I’ll say it again. Marc Davis was the tops for me, and I was fortunate enough to get to know Mark and actually call him a friend and visit his home.
I actually have some original Marc drawings that he gave me actually of a pirate that was never used in the pirate ride, but what Mark brought to the parks was that animation sense of humor and the understanding of staging gags nobody and absolutely nobody is will probably ever be as good as Marc at staging a gag. You looked at the drawing and you got exactly what he was trying to communicate, and it was funny, it was clever and it was inventive.
So Tony was looking for that kind of sensibility. They had just started on Euro Disneyland and of course they were going to be replicating a lot of the attractions from the original Disneyland. So I think his hope was bringing me over that I would bring some of that with me and looking back on all I did, I do think I brought a little bit of that too, just about everything I worked on. I always tried to look for the sense of humor in things, always tried to focus on good staging, making sure whatever we were putting in front of the guests was clearly communicated and there was no doubt in what we were trying to say.
So like I said, I was fortunate to have learned from Marc and the animators and the things that those guys emphasized were clear staging, clear communication, simplicity. I think we’ve lost a little bit of that and some of what’s what I’m seeing these days that there’s sometimes too many ideas, but it’s a real art and hopefully it’s not a lost art.
Dan Heaton: I mean Marc Davis, like you mentioned, to be able to interact with him and then to have some of, I mean Jungle Cruise and Pirates and so much more. It’s interesting too because one of the early projects you worked on was Splash Mountain in Tokyo, and to me, Splash Mountain definitely has that classic feeling, all the different versions where, I mean, it’s held up so well over the years because it has that, it has a lot of things in it, but it doesn’t seem to be packed with everything. So for you, what was it like to work on that project, especially it already happened to Disneyland, but now you were able to go to Tokyo and kind of do your own version in a way for that park.
Joe Lanzisero: I learned a lot doing that project. I did a little bit of work on the Anaheim version, mostly on the area development. Tony had me create a lot of little vignettes and things when they were turning what was Bear Country into Critter Country.
So I designed these critter benches and they want to build critter houses in the bushes and some graphics and things and some of the signage, in fact, the Critter Country sign that has the bear and the little mouse and the fox and those characters on it, it’s still there today. That was my design, and I’ve been told it’s one of the most photographed pieces of graphics in the park. So I had a little taste of why I started getting into the sensibility of what the whole Critter Country thing was about and what Tony was trying to do with it in Anaheim.
Then I got the great opportunity to be the lead concept designer for the one in Tokyo. And Tokyo was quite ambitious. They knew it was very popular and they also needed that a lot of capacity in the park. So they were looking to build a restaurant, a very large restaurant merchandise shop. In the initial plans we had actually a children’s play area that never got realized in the ride itself. It was great.
I was able to learn from what they did in Anaheim and we also, it was fortunate because, well, I had a little more creative leeway because Anaheim basically, they just used all of the figures from the America Sings show for the figures in the right and then staged them to work for the new story. And I think they made just a few new figures, mostly bear and the Brer rabbit, whereas when we were doing the one for Tokyo, we had to build all the figures brand new.
So I was able to go in and at least restage some of ’em, pose some of the characters. We moved some of the scenes around, and actually we had to make the flume bigger because in California it was inline seating and there were cultural issues in Japan. The Japanese didn’t feel comfortable with the inline seating and asked us to change the ride vehicle to side by side seating. So that immediately triggered a whole bunch of changes. I mean, as soon as the flume got bigger, then the actual ride path had to change. We actually had to add some additional scenes and things because it got bigger. It was also a really interesting engineering challenge, something that most people don’t know. In Japan, they have that piece of property that Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo Disney Sea sits on is landfill. That was mostly created land.
A lot of it from rubble from the second World War was brought out there and they filled in the bay, so it’s very unstable land. So everything that’s built there, they usually have to put very deep piles into the earth. And you can imagine doing a water gravity ride where the water has to maintain a certain water level and always has to go from a high point to a low point. So what they did, they actually built a flume within the flume was in the Disneyland version, and most of those flume rides, it’s a fiberglass flume in some places it’s poured concrete and then the boat just flows through it.
While in Tokyo, they actually built first a concrete flume that was waterproofed, and then there’s a second flume that sits inside there that’s on turnbuckles because they had to be able to adjust for the differential settlement as the building settles into the earth, which all the buildings in the park do that if one end of it got higher than the other end, they would have to go in and physically adjust the flu for the water flow.
So it was a huge engineering task to work all that out. Then one last fun story, I don’t want to go on too long about Splash Mountain, but at the time there was this belief that the Japanese do not like to get wet, and most of that, it was born out of the fact that when Tokyo Disneyland opened, there were still women wearing beautiful kimonos and men wearing yukatas to the park. So it was more about not wanting to get these beautiful pieces of clothing wet or ruined. So we had to build a mockup of the drop number five drop, that’s the big drop.
The ride vendor that was doing it for us in Tokyo had a site, a mockup site, not too far from the park, and we’d go there and they worked countless hours trying to eliminate as much of the splash from Splash Mountain as possible, which I thought was funny. The irony in it is as the years went on, the Japanese really enjoyed any show or any experience where there was water. I remember laughing, I was telling somebody the story not too long before I left, when I moved on from being in charge of Tokyo, they actually did a show in the Castle Forecourt where they turned hoses on the guests, basically got the guests wet. And I thought, oh, how ironic. We spent all that time working to get the splash out of Splash Mountain and now look at what it’s become.
Dan Heaton: That’s great. I’m still kind of befuddled by the idea that the buildings are all settling and I feel like I could just veer this off and ask a bunch of questions about different attractions and how they adjust for that. But it’s crazy. They have to do so much.
Joe Lanzisero: Well, I’ll tell you this, the front portion of the small world building and the back portion, the water level is significantly higher in the back than in the front.
Dan Heaton: Oh boy. It’s the things you don’t think about because it’s easy to think about Imagineering, even though engineers in the name as all creative, all design, and it’s like that’s the fun part, but then you have all these other things, which can be fun too, but I’m sure a big challenge, but I appreciate that each Splash Mountain, even Disney World’s ended up being different for kind of items like that that weren’t expected.
Joe Lanzisero: It was kind of fun because we were doing Tokyo and at the same time they were doing Walt Disney World. Don Carson, one of my favorite theme park designers and good friends, Don is amazing, done such incredible things both for Disney and on the outside and in gaming and all kinds of things. Don and Don’s one, I think one of the, I’m not going to say unsung heroes of the industry because a lot of people know about him, but if you don’t know about Don Carson lookup, Don Carson.
Dan Heaton: Oh, I talked to Don last month, I talked to him.
Joe Lanzisero: Oh, did you? Fantastic.
Dan Heaton: He was great. It was fascinating to talk to him.
Joe Lanzisero: So he was in charge of the concept design for the Walt Disney World Splash Mountain, so it was fun and I love collaboration, so Don and I were able to bounce ideas off each other and kind of build off of what each other was doing for the two different parts. And then it was great. It was right after Splash Mountain that I got the assignment to do Mickey’s Toon Town, and of course one of the first people I went to was Don Carson, who was one of the key designers for me on that project.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, it’s so interesting after talking with Don, I talked to him about Splash Mountain and Mickey’s Toon Town, and now I’m talking with you. It’s like I’m getting all the different sides of the story. It’s great. I like it. It was unplanned this way, but it’s great. So Toon Town, I know we talked about a lot on our last podcast, but one thing I’m interested about is that you did it in California and then it was done again for Tokyo. I know it was meant to be pretty similar, but I’m just curious, I kind of wonder when you do that, when having to do the land again in a way and possibly very similar, what’s that when you’ve spent so much time on the one in Disneyland and then are doing it in a different park?
Joe Lanzisero: Just like with Splash Mountain every time or any of the attractions when they say we’re going, there was a term at Disney, so we’re going to lift the attraction. That was their hopes that they could take the drawings out of the drawer and hand them to a new contractor and have it built, which was never the case because there’s always local code considerations or like I mentioned in the case of Splash Mountain where we had to change the whole ride system, there was always something that, and there’s kind of a domino effect.
As soon as you touch one thing, something else has to be touched and something else has to be touched. Pretty soon you’re doing a whole bunch of redesign. So it was always kind of a false economy when they say, well, we’re just going to take and lift out of traction and put it in another park. So with Toon Town, we inherited kind of an odd site. It was kind of very long and narrow in Tokyo Disneyland, and it wasn’t large enough. In fact, we had to take part of the Grand Prix Raceway and cut off, I think it was one of the last loops on the track there, and it was because of the site and the way the site was that we ended up flipping the land.
So in California, when you enter into Toon Town, you have Mickey’s neighborhood on the left side and the Roger Rabbit ride and downtown, downtown on the right side in Tokyo, it’s flopped. It’s the other way around because we didn’t have enough room for the show building for Roger Rabbit on the right side. So basically we were finished with the model in Anaheim. So we literally, we just took the model and chopped it up and reconfigured it best we can to try to make it work with the new site. And then it was off of our chopped up model that the architects and planners came in and made whatever changes they needed to make the plan work for the new site in Tokyo.
Dan Heaton: Well, it’s interesting too. I’ve been sticking with Tokyo for a while here, but I even just recently watched the Imagineering Story and there was a lot about the Oriental Land Company and we look at parks like DisneySea and even the original Tokyo Disneyland and marvel at them from the States here, and just think about how the Oriental Land Company works where I only know from what I’ve heard, but I’m curious from your experience, you worked on a lot of attractions when you were a designer and then later when you were Vice President, what’s it like to work with them when you’re putting together an attraction? How does that vary from maybe how you’d be working on something in the US?
Joe Lanzisero: First off, the Oriental Land Company has always wanted to do the best of whatever Disney attraction, whether it’s new or whether it’s a live familiar to the other parks. I mean they always wanted the best and I think the guests came to and have come to expect that. So it drives them to continue to try to do the best of whatever they’re doing there. It’s also part of the Japanese culture. Japan was an island nation and so for thousands of years they just looked inward.
They didn’t look to the outside, they didn’t go exploring. So it’s a country that goes deep into and is very introspective, and so when they do something, they go deep into it and they really think hard about it and they think of all the Disney guests. I think maybe the Japanese guests are the most demanding in terms of wanting to know the backstories, wanting to go deep into the stories, and OLC knows that and they understand their audience and their audience is very, very loyal, very dedicated.
At least the statistic when I was working on the park was that they had 90% of the guests that walked through the gate, came through the gate on any given day were repeaters. They had been there before. They had people that it was almost like a religion to them. It also has a lot to do with culture that is not is about the group and not about the individual. I’s also a culture that is kind of a serious culture again, because for so many centuries they were about looking inward.
So I think Disney had a special magic formula there. It brought kind of a freedom of expression to them, allowed them to celebrate creativity in a different kind of way. So I think there was a lot of special components about the way that the culture worked with the Disney brand that allowed us and almost kind of demanded the level of detail and the level of quality that we were able to put into everything we did there. Of course, the crown jewel example of that I think is Tokyo Disney Sea. There’s probably no other part with that level of detail and thought and just incredible amount of smarts behind what was being done there and a lot of innovation. I mean, I could go on and on about TDS.
Dan Heaton: Well, I’m going to ask you more things about it actually. You were so involved in two lands there, the Mermaid Lagoon and Arabian Coast, and I am fascinated by this park and really hope to get there at some point in the fairly near future. But I’m curious even too, you worked on putting together the lands. I mean not just you, it was with the team obviously, but when you’re putting together a land like that because it’s brand new, this is not a case where you’re adding an attraction or even the park was new. This is different than Toon Town for example. How do you go about putting together a lineup of attractions and laying out the land? I know this is a question you could probably do a two-hour response on, but just in general, how do you put that together?
Joe Lanzisero: Well, the Tokyo DisneySea team led by Steve Kirk and his brother Tim Kirk, and they had some really great people working with them, but Steve and Tim are very thoughtful and deep thinkers and they also involved, they brought operations to Oriental Land Company, operational people and the Disneyland operational people into the process early on to help really work through the basic park programming. So really looking at the park and how much food merchandise, where to put it, the kinds of rides, the types of rides, understanding the demographic, understanding the Japanese audience.
I mean there was a lot you can imagine building a park from the ground up and having it next to a park that was already super successful and super popular. How do you compliment that and not cannibalize from it, which they considered a lot about. There were a lot of discussions I remember about what would be exclusive to Tokyo DisneySea, what characters they would focus on there.
So they weren’t competing with what was already in Tokyo Disneyland. I was working on Tokyo Disneyland at the time when, well actually when early on I was just working on Tokyo DisneySea, and then later on there was a point where I was put in charge of Tokyo Disneyland before getting Tokyo DisneySea, and there was continuing conversations about making sure the two parts balanced each other. But getting back to the question about how do you start from scratch on a land, we knew the subject matter Mermaid Lagoon, and we knew with Mermaid Lagoon we wanted to do an indoor attraction because not that the weather is terrible, terrible in Japan, but it is severe, it gets cold enough for the snow.
The snow doesn’t often stay on the ground and the summers are very warm. We knew this was going to be an area for a little kid, so it made sense to put it in a box and to create an incredible theatrical in a box experience, which it’s completely light controlled, which means we had complete control over how the various areas were going to look in terms of lighting, we used some black light, we used some traditional lighting in there.
Then programming, we knew we wanted a certain amount of play experiences in there. They wanted some small go-round rides, food merchandise, a big show. There were some, at one point we had a little fish coaster that was out in front. We actually had that at one point it was going to go inside and outside of the building, but there were some engineering and weather concerns that made that difficult to do. So we had to change that. So you have this understanding of the kinds of things that you want to do in that land.
Then for Arabian Coast, we knew that wanted to age up a little bit, and also that land had a larger merchandise component and food component in it. So again, it was this overall understanding of the park programming and what they wanted to do parkwide and then how that translated to your little piece of the park. So you had that kind of road map to follow as you were making your choices as to what was going to be in the various areas.
Dan Heaton: Right, because if you have this big indoor area, you want to then combine it with some really amazing outdoor areas and balance that out. Like you mentioned with merchandise and kids attractions and everything, it’s almost like mind blowing to think about all the different considerations that go into a park like that where everything seems to fit together so well land by land, and it doesn’t just feel like a bunch of lands dropped into the same park. I can’t imagine trying to figure that out. Even land by land, it’s mind boggling.
Joe Lanzisero: Well, that’s why it’s a team effort and had a lot of great teams and there were a lot of choices that you make along the way. Some of them are conceptual choices, some of them are design choices. That’s why you build models too. They did a beautiful model, both a working design model and then a finished show model, really understand transitions from land to land, how you juxtapose one land to another land.
So even color palettes, Arabian Coast has more neutral colors, more sand colors, and then that of course then transitions into the Lost River Delta where of course it’s much more green and there’s a lot more stone there, gray stone. So there’s a lot of consideration as when you’re designing a park from the ground up, how each of the various lands are going to play against each other. It’s kind of the same thinking when you’re doing a dark ride.
You want to make sure that there’s always a nice sense of variety, a sense of contrast that you’re going from big space to a small space, from a light space to a dark space, cool colors to warm colors. The result of that is it makes it feel like there is more there and it makes people feel like they’ve really been on a journey that I’ve moved through a whole variety of things. If you’re good and you’re smart about it, and the Imagineers are, they’re really masterful at being able to manipulate all those design devices in the way that supports the story and supports the overall feeling and mood that you want to get out of a park experience.
Dan Heaton: Especially with a dark ride, I think about being younger and even now where you go on something like Haunted Mansion or Pirates and it feels like what’s behind that corner, what’s over there, and it’s done so well where you always have that. You never have this thought behind there is an exit door or whatever, or behind there is a maintenance shed and a bathroom. You never think that way. And it’s so fascinating to think about, there’s one attraction I wanted to ask you about just because I’ve seen shots of it and I’m still kind of amazed by it. That’s the two story carousel called the Caravan Carousel at Arabian Coast. How did that come together where it ended up being that style of carousel?
Joe Lanzisero: Well, I was doing the initial little sketch of the land and we needed a weenie, and I’m sure you know what weenies are. Weenies are some large iconic element that draws you the castle in all the parks is like the prime example of a weenie. When you look down Main Street, you see a medieval castle at the end of a turn of the century Main Street, and that’s the device that draws you down there. So we needed some big element and some kinetic element, and again, park wide programming, they said, well, we want to have a carousel somewhere.
So I said, gee, why don’t we do a really grand carousel there, plus the actual forms. A lot of the forms in that Arabian architecture have dome shapes and open round columns. So it kind of logically it didn’t look out of place there, even though you could think of a carousel as kind of a carnival like thing because we housed it in this piece of architecture that worked just perfect with a carousel inside, but also worked well with the other architectural forms that made up Arabian Coast.
Then of course we had the Aladdin characters and the Genie and the Flying Carpets and all those things that have movement and a sense of movement in them even when they’re in a static single pose. But then when of course you combine them all together and put them on a carousel, the thing had a great sense of life to it. It felt alive and had a great energy to it. So at first blushed the idea of, oh, a carousel in a land in the Arabian Coast was kind of not fully embraced.
But when we started talking about it and after I did the initial sketch and everyone understood its purpose in the land, either when you enter either from the Mermaid Lagoon side or if you’re coming from the lost riverside, you’ve got this big iconic element that has kinetics to it that draws you into the land and makes a statement about the land too. Even though the land wasn’t a cartoon land like a Toon Town or with the Mermaid Lagoon, it still had a nod to the Aladdin films and to kind of the fun of that, but still done in a more realistic style. So I felt like we hit the right balance with that.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, because my first thought with a carousel is again, like you mentioned, it’s kind of Fantasyland or it’s an old kind of midway idea. And to think to see that and to, like you mentioned, it’s got characters, it’s got this whole Arabian theme to it and it fits, which that’s the challenge. I’m impressed that it pulls together so well and it doesn’t seem like, oh, they dropped a carousel into that just because you needed a carousel. It seems natural there.
Joe Lanzisero: Well, thank you. That was our intention.
Dan Heaton: Good work. I want to jump ahead a bit here and mention a little bit about Hong Kong. I know we talked a lot about Mystic Manor last time, but I’m curious a little bit about that park because I know when you were involved with more than just Mystic Manor, I know that was the time when there was so much expansion happening to the park and now there’s more expansion coming too with Marvel and Frozen and everything. So I’m curious more about that park and kind of adding those lands and what you were trying to do there. But also I know that parked open without as many attractions, but what’s that kind of like to look at a park and try to expand it and try to figure out what you need to do there and focus in on that?
Joe Lanzisero: Well, there were some physical challenges about expanding the park because the decision was made to put the railroad around the park like the Disneyland. That was Walt’s idea to have the train that circled the park. But I remember, and I wasn’t involved with the initial planning of the park, but it was during the Paul Pressler era where a lot of decisions were made not because they were the right decision, but because it was the economically, or at least they considered the economically prudent way to go.
I know some of the Imagineers that worked on the design to park, and they were really pushing to have the railroad outside, like the original Disneyland. I mean, they’ve moved the railroad a number of times, but I knew they were thinking about creating expansion pads and having the railroad go on the outside of the expansion pads.
But then the decision was made to build the railroad as tight as they could to the opening day park. That to me was the biggest challenge, especially because the railroad faces one direction, the seats on the cars. So when you go through our expansion area, in some cases your back is actually to the back of it. You can’t say, I know there was some discussion too, both at the time when I was involved with it and who knows, they may have even gone back and done it.
I’ve been away from it for a while now. But there was talk about changing the configuration on the seats so that as the train went around the park, you could actually look into the expansion area. So the challenge of having to build on the outside of the train track, that became a little bit of a challenge.
We kind of used it to our advantage a bit in Mystic when we made it part of the story where we said the train was actually Lord Henry Mystic’s had had a special spur off the train track, and we actually built that. There’s a little depot that has some artifacts on it, and then we made it look like the train track actually went into Mystic Manor and in Grizzly Gulch, that actually works really well too to have the train going through because it’s a period looking train going through a period land.
So I guess we tried to use it to our advantage as much as we could, but that I think is the biggest challenge with that park is that it really wasn’t designed with expansion in mind. Even when we were doing, one of the last attractions I worked on there was the Iron Man Experience, and again, it was hard.
We wanted to have some kind of large iconic element that drew you back to the ride building again. We had to put the ride building on the outside of the railroad tracks and you actually had to go underneath the railroad to get into the ride building. So we put the large iconic Iron Man kind of like a tower that had the Iron Man emblem on it and then put the merchandise store and the meet and greet in front of the track.
Again, it was having to work with the configuration of the property there, but still creates something from when you’re down a guest level, it seems pretty seamless that you’re not aware of the fact that you’re having to go underneath the railroad track and have this railroad that’s kind of circumventing and cutting through many of the attractions. So I think that’s going to continue to be a challenge for that park, unless at some point they decide to move the railroad completely, which that’s one of those things where you have to spend a lot of money and you don’t get a lot value out of it.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, it’s an infrastructure move that no one’s going to be like, I want to go to the park. Well, not no one, very few people will say, I want to go to the park just for that different spot where the railroad is. I want to ask you about Iron Man real quick because it’s a, Marvel is now becoming such a big part of Disney. I know you’re not currently working there anymore, but what’s it like when you have that kind of gargantuan property and you’re trying to create something that fits with that but is also a good experience, just that big IP attraction?
Joe Lanzisero: I got to say, if I’m going to be completely candid with you, I was a little disappointed in what we ended up with there only because for the very reason, for the very reason what you just said, it’s such a huge IP, and we actually had some bigger ideas about what we’re going to do and remember, I think that was the first Marvel attraction done for a Disney park.
So I think the company was still trying to figure out how to use the Marvel properties in the park and whether it was appropriate to use in the park. I remember we had a lot of discussions around why is Iron Man in Tomorrowland, and that’s where we came up with the whole conceit of the World’s Fair that Iron Man, the Iron Man Experience was more about Tony Stark bringing his technology into the park, and we were using the concede, well, when Walt did the original Tomorrowland, it was about introducing people to new technology.
It was kind of like a World’s Fair. He had the Hall of Aluminum and he had Monsanto, the House of Tomorrow. So it was about saying, tomorrow is going to be about these great new technologies. We kind of took that same idea and used it as a conceit as to why Tony Stark was there in the park. So it was a lot of talk about how to work Marvel into the park, and I know now they’re creating whole lands where you have a conceit from the get-go. It’s like another new land.
But here we were trying to make it work in an existing land, in an existing park. So we had some limitations, and like I said, it was a lot of still trying to find our way, how to work that brand, especially into a castle park, into a Magic Kingdom park. I think in a studio park or in California Adventure park, probably easier to do because of the way you can handle the subject matter. But that was the big challenge. And I think in the end it worked out. It worked out okay because it logically fit into what the story of Tomorrow Land is about and actually gave us kind of a little bit of a throwback too to the old tomorrow and what Walt was trying to do with the original Tomorrowland concede.
Dan Heaton: One thing, from what I know about that attraction that I like is the idea, like you said, it’s not even something like a Star Tours where all of a sudden you go indoors and then you’re in this experience. It’s like you’re in the park and then you’re going to this Expo and it’s like even it connects to you fly back and you’re back in the park. So there’s some nice connections there, but with Marvel, I still think that, I mean, I wouldn’t be too tough on it because even now, I mean who knows what the new expansions will be like. I think it’s still a challenge to really figure out how it fits in the parks. So I think it’s an ongoing thing. And also Marvel then it was big, but now it’s so much bigger.
Joe Lanzisero: No, oh my God. Yeah. My God, it just exploded. Yeah, because the thing, it’s a real world. Marvel takes place in the real world. It’s not even a made up world. It’s not like DC Comics where it’s Gotham City and a made-up city. I mean, Marvel takes Tony Stark, lived in Malibu. It takes place in the real world. So that’s the challenge of Marvel, of translating it into a park and trying to make it fantastic more about the characters. Well, some of the places now that they’ve gone to in some of the later films, but at the time when we were doing it, that was something we grappled with How to take a property that’s all about real world and happening in the real world and put it into make it something fantastic that’ll work in a Magic Kingdom park.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, and I think that’s always going to be with something like that, now they’re doing a campus and everything, they have to find some way to bridge it. It’s never going to be perfect, but at least there’s more connections there.
Well, I wanted to ask you just a little bit before we finish here, a little more about Disney Cruise Line, because I know before you, even later on, you oversaw the whole portfolio and some of the openings, but I’d love to know about when you were working on designing and the concepts for the children’s areas, especially on the Magic and Wonder and that process, especially then when those ships are not the newest ships and it was still being developed, how that came together and just how you do design for a cruise ship, especially like a kid’s area where you have to really zone in on what you want to do.
Joe Lanzisero: Yeah, Disney knew that they were going after a different market. At the time when Disney was entering the cruise business, there really weren’t any family cruises. There was the Big Rd Boat that had licensed Disney’s characters for a little while, and then when Disney decided to get into cruise business, they pulled the license and I think they had Warner Brothers characters on, but it wasn’t like the ship was purpose built for families.
And that was an innovative piece, I think with the magic when they really thought about the Disney family and wanting to create an experience where everybody would have something to do both as an individual group kids, the parents, and then the family together, and then really built the ship to support that idea. That’s why we said it was a purpose-built ship and the idea of rotational dining where we had three different dining rooms with three different levels of experience, an adult area, the kids area.
So it really, from the get go, we understood what we were going after in terms of the audience, the Disney audience, and how to service them. So the kids areas were going to be a big part of it initially because it was Disney development company that was in charge of the design initially later on, both on the dream and the fantasy, it was Walt Disney Imagineering that led the design and Disney development.
They were being a little cautious about how much Disney to put on the ship because they were concerned at the time, same thing. They wanted to capture this new family audience, but they also knew as a business, they didn’t want to alienate traditional cruisers, which were mostly older people and young adults. So when it came time to do the kids area, believe it or not, there was some trepidation about how Disney to make it.
Funny story, the first version of the kids area, some of the earlier versions, they really wanted me to play down the Disney IP. And I remember the meeting, it was with Michael Eisner and Michael Eisner walks into the room and we had the drawings up on the wall and it was just kind like a giant kid’s playroom, and it had some little nods to Mickey and some of the other characters. And Michael Eisner’s comment, he goes, we’re Disney. Where’s the Disney? I don’t see the Disney here, which was quite liberating for me.
I had, okay, so then we went back and we did the whole Peter Pan kind of fantasy ship with the Captain Hook stuff, and then we did the little buzz light year area and the Honey, I Shrunk the kids stuff. So we started brought in some of the IP that was popular at the time in the kids’ play areas, and of course then we really took it and ran with it when we did the dream and the fantasy with those kids’ areas being specific to all the Disney IP that was both popular then.
And it’s popular now to the point where we were, I think when we did the dry dock on the Dream, we added the Star Wars Millennium Falcon play area on there. I think that was actually the first Star Wars scene other than Star Tours. But the first kind of immersive little Star Wars thing that was done post Disney taking over franchise of Star Wars, the cruise ships was a very interesting exercise in how to balance the amount of Disney.
I mean, that was kind of an extreme case with wanting to downplay the amount of Disney. But even on the Dream and the Fantasy, I remember we always had a lot of conversations about where to put the Disney and how much Disney to assigned areas because in the theme park, you’re there just for a day or maybe a couple days. But on the cruise ship, we were always aware of the fact that people, a minimum we’re going to be there two to three days, sometimes five days, seven days, 12 days.
People made a choice. They’re on a Disney cruise, so of course they want what Disney brings, and that’s great storytelling. The Disney brands seeing the characters, but you have to be, you don’t want to overdo it. So we always thought about the adult areas are pretty much, which is part of the Disney brand, but they weren’t necessarily from a Disney movie. That was a very conscious choice.
We knew the parents might want respite from that and go just to a nice bar or to a nice restaurant like Pallo and just have a nice adult experience. So I think for me, having had done Toon Towns and Mermaid Lagoons and these more kid-centric, highly, highly IP driven experiences, that was one of the biggest challenges for me.
But once I got that understanding and I knew what we were going after in terms of how we were trying to do this purpose-built experience for everybody, and then that kind of became the filter or the understanding that you used to make your choice as well. Okay, this is an adult area, so there should be a little less Disney here. This is the kids area, so we’re going to have a ton of Disney here. Well, this is a family area, so we want to kind of have a mix of Disney here, and I think it worked.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, I think so. I have so many more questions I could ask about that, but I think there’s always more to ask. So it would be great to have you back sometime down the road to dig further into Disney Cruise Line and so much more Joe.
Joe Lanzisero: It would be my absolute pleasure. And you’re right, we have a lot more stories to tell.
Dan Heaton: Always. Well, I know you currently work as a creative consultant, and I’m curious just kind of what you’ve been doing. I know you probably can’t talk about specifics, but just in general and how that’s going for you.
Joe Lanzisero: You know what I’ve been enjoying, there’s always theme park work out there, and I’ll always pick up some theme park work here and there, but I’ve been enjoying applying my understanding of creating experiences to other kind of venues. Actually, I got involved, well, coming up on four years ago with a group in Austria called the World Usability Congress, and they’re a group of UX designers, and they have this huge conference there every year.
They asked me to be their keynote speaker four years ago. When I got the call from the mastermind behind the whole thing, and he wanted me to come and give the keynote speech. I said, well, I’m an ex animator and theme park designer. He goes, yeah. He goes, but you guys have been doing UX all along, and I didn’t understand UX is user experience. It’s grown into a whole separate industry where they have these conferences and they have societies about how do we think about user interface and a whole variety of things.
At his conference, they have people from the medical industry, they have auto designers, airplane designers, software designers, game designers, and it’s all about how the user is considered when you are designing things. So he was smart in asking me to come because the more I thought about it, it was like, yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing my entire career. It’s been designing things for the guests and understanding, just like I was talking about with the cruise ship, is a perfect example.
Understanding your user and how they’re going to react with your product, and the more you understand them and the more you think about ’em, and then you can design a better product for them. So I’ve been actively involved with that group speaking, not only at their confidence, but I was fortunate enough to do around the world speaking to or with ’em and collaborating on a couple written book and trend report and some other things for them.
So I’ve been finding it really interesting because I’m taking all the things that I learned through all my years designing for Disney, but applying them in a whole variety of different ways, but with the same end result of how do you create an engaging, in many cases, story-driven experience for the user.
Dan Heaton: ]Well, that’s great. And that’s the thing, the more I learn about Imagineering and what people have done, it applies to so much more, like you said, than just designing a straightforward attraction. There’s so much more to it, and that’s a great story and a perfect way to end, I think. So Joe, thanks so much again for being on the show, and hopefully we can do it again sometime soon.
Joe Lanzisero: Okay, Dan, an absolute pleasure as always, and thank you for thinking about me and inviting me back. Appreciate it.
Leave a Reply