131. Disney Imagineer Jim Clark on the Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast

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Much of the world of theme parks has stopped during the past year due to the pandemic. Exciting projects have been delayed or even shelved, and many parks remain closed. All the news isn’t sad, however. A remarkable trackless dark ride opened in September 2020 and wowed both guests and online fans. The Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast was the centerpiece of Tokyo Disneyland’s largest expansion. Former Disney Imagineer Jim Clark was senior creative producer on this project and led the creative team of talented individuals that made it happen.

Jim is my guest on the latest episode of The Tomorrow Society Podcast to talk about this expansion and much more. He worked at Walt Disney Imagineering for more than 20 years beginning in 2000. We begin the conversation talking about Jim’s background and interest in Disney. After joining WDI, he worked with the museum community on developing exhibits with Disney. Jim also worked directly with Marty Sklar as an ambassador representative for three years. I talk with Jim about what he learned from Marty and what it was like to work with the Disney legend.

The second half focuses on the Tokyo Disneyland expansion. Jim describes the evolution of the project during the seven years needed to complete the 12-acre development. His descriptions of the Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast help explain why it works so well. The ride vehicles essentially dance through memorable scenes from the film. Jim was also involved with Minnie’s Style Studio, which goes well beyond a typical meet-and-greet. Beyond Tokyo, Jim also discusses his work on the Disney Kingdoms with Marvel, Disneyland Adventures game, and Memento Mori Spirit Photos. I really enjoyed talking with Jim and learning more about his career.

Show Notes: Jim Clark

Follow Jim Clark on Twitter and Instagram.

Learn the background of the Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast on this video from the Disney Parks Blog.

Experience the full queue, pre-show, and ride of the Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast on this video from WDW News Today.

Transcript

Jim Clark: It’s real Imagineering. It’s true Imagineering because it’s a collaboration between the animators who understand the movement of the human body and what looks right and what works and the engineers and then kind of going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until you’ve created something that just, it’s breathtaking. I’m so happy with how it turned out. Everyone was happy with how it turned out. I was in Tokyo when it was completed and animated for the first time, and we saw it on video. It was still being built in the United States in Glendale and just the applause that everyone broke out into when we all saw it animating the gasps; it was a wonderful moment. It was a wonderful moment to see that.

Dan Heaton: That is former Disney Imagineer Jim Clark talking about the incredible Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast attraction, which opened this past September as part of the massive Tokyo Disneyland expansion. I’m really excited about this show. You’re listening to the Tomorrow Society Podcast.

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Dan Heaton: Thanks for joining me here on Episode 131 of the Tomorrow Society Podcast. I am your host, Dan Heaton. I hope you’re all doing well and staying warm, especially people in cold climates like here in St. Louis where it is nearly zero, not my favorite time of year in terms of weather. But regardless, I am super excited about today’s podcast. My guest is Jim Clark, who worked at Imagineering for 20 years and was involved with a lot of cool projects, including the huge Tokyo Disneyland expansion, which just opened up this past September.

And part of that was the Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast trackless dark ride where the vehicles basically dance through familiar scenes and there’s just so much to it. It’s immersive. There’s a lot with the shops and villages around the main attraction and just has been super popular in Tokyo. I’m a little jealous here looking at it from the states and thinking, wow, that would be so amazing to see.

But either way, I really appreciated the chance to talk to Jim all about the development of this attraction and some other elements of the expansion, including the Minnie Style Studio, which is a very cool meet and greet where I almost feel bad saying it’s a meet and greet because a lot it, lot of small touches. Jim also worked directly with the museum community in bringing some really cool exhibits to Walt Disney World, like the American Heritage Gallery at Epcot and a lot more there and worked directly with Marty Sklar for three years.

He has a really interesting perspective as someone who worked so closely with Marty towards the end of his career, and we also talk about Jim’s background and how he got interested in Disney, and I really appreciate that I had the chance to talk to Jim about his career and all the things he’s worked on so far to this point. Let’s go talk to Jim Clark.

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Dan Heaton: My guest today was an Imagineer who worked at Disney for 20 years, beginning in 2000. His roles included working directly with museums on culture exhibits. He worked with Marty Sklar for three years. He was also Senior Creative Producer of the recent massive 12-acre Tokyo Disneyland expansion, including Minnie Style Studio and the new trackless dark ride, the Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast. It’s amazing. It is Jim Clark. Jim, thanks so much for talking with me on the podcast.

Jim Clark: Hello. Yeah, thanks for having me. This is great.

Dan Heaton: Oh, yeah. I’m so impressed by the recent expansion in Tokyo, but also just a lot of things you’ve done over the years. So I would love to just talk about too, just getting started with your background, so how did you ultimately get interested in Disney and even in theme parks when you were younger?

Jim Clark: Well, I am one of those people who wanted to be an Imagineer at a very young age. I can pinpoint the moment. It was on a visit to Epcot when I was 12 years old. I had actually started reading about Disney and reading about Imagineering when Epcot opened because I grew up in Florida and it was all over the news and Imagineers were being interviewed on television and local channels, and I grew up in south Florida about 200 miles south of Walt Disney World, and I’d gone to Epcot about three times, I think, and on my fourth visit when I was 12, I just decided, this is it.

This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to create places like this, places that inspire people, places where people feel like the world can be better and people can be better, and all that corny stuff. That was my goal in life, and I think from that point on every decision I made was about getting to Imagineering.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, so that’s interesting because some people have that and then others kind of learn much later that that’s something they’re interested in. For you, I mean, what did you do with school or even with what you were trying to build in terms of experience in order to prep for then ultimately going to Disney?

Jim Clark: It’s such a difficult thing, and it’s funny because people ask me today, how do you get a job at Imagineering? And I find myself reciting the exact same words that were said to me back then and it’s such a difficult question. I started, I cold called a bunch of Imagineers that I had heard about and I had some nice long conversations with a few who gave me some good advice. Bruce Gordon, I remember having a long conversation. Rich Vaughn had a series of conversations with me and they kind of directed me towards theater, and I got involved in haunted houses when I was in high school, and I got involved with theater when I was a freshman in college, and one of the pieces of advice that I heard from Marty Sklar said, learn as much as you can about whatever.

You can just be curious and absorb information about the world, and that was kind of my mantra, and those were my marching orders, so I went off to learn about theater and film and computer programming and creative writing. Those were at the teenager stage. That was my broad focus.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I mean, it’s great that you were able to get some input from current Imagineers because yeah, I know that that’s something that still even comes up today, like you mentioned where everyone’s, what should I go into? It’s like, well, it could be a lot of things. There’s so many specialties, but I know when you ultimately started, one of your earlier jobs was like I mentioned, working as a link between the museum community and the Walt Disney Company and working on certain exhibits. So what was that role? That sounds really interesting.

Jim Clark: Yeah, that was an unusual role that kind of came about after I’d been at Imagineering for less than two years, and that opportunity came up and I interviewed with Van Romans, who is a very unique person in the history of Imagineering. He helped start the gallery program at Epcot, so if you’re familiar with the galleries in Japan, Morocco, China, Mexico, and Norway, he helped create all of those. He established those and it was sort of central to the Epcot philosophy that if you go to Epcot and you go to World Showcase, the cast members working there are all from those countries.

That lends a really significant level of authenticity to that space. But part of the original charter for EPCOT and for World Showcase was to have real authentic artifacts on display and that program and Van managed that program for well over 20 years and working directly with Marty, that was definitely a pet project of Marty’s, and so I went to work for Van and I started off as his assistant, but Van was honestly the best mentor anybody could have had because he gave me the opportunity to get up and pitch ideas.

I had a background in theater, I had a background in creative writing and I could draw basic layouts and plans and things. I had some set design background from the University of Florida and Cal Arts, and I got up there and I gave presentations and pitches to Marty for the most part because Marty was definitely the grandfather of that program, and it was a spectacular experience. So the way I still remember from the interview with Van, he said 50% of our job is, and 50% of our job is relationships with the museum communities, which meant we lent artifacts, Disney artifacts out to them, and it was a reciprocal relationship, and we built relationships with the Louvre and we built relationships with the Smithsonian, and then sometimes we asked to borrow artifacts from them and display them in the parks and beyond World Showcase.

We also did the Hall of Presidents pre-show with all the artifacts from the various presidential libraries. We did the lunar rover at Mission Space when it first opened and just all kinds of things. And we even built another gallery while I worked there. We added the American Heritage Gallery at the American Adventure.

Dan Heaton: Wow. And that was the one I was thinking of right off the bat from the last time I was there, the American Heritage Gallery, because it’s such a large gallery and at the time, I know they’re switching it up now, but at the time they had some Native American artifacts and everything with the exhibit, which I found just fascinating. And of course, I love the Stade church in Norway and just so many of the other spots, which like you mentioned with someplace like Epcot, where it becomes about more than just the attractions and the rides, and that sounds really interesting to be able to work on that side of it because it’s a theme park, but you’re doing something that normally wouldn’t be considered part of working for a theme park.

It really fits with Epcot, and I’m glad in some cases that it’s still there because I think it adds a lot to the park. One of the projects too, I believe there was a very large collection of African art done with the Paul and Ruth Tishman, the African Vision is what it was called. And I’m curious if you could talk a little bit about that project and what was involved there.

Jim Clark: You’ve done your homework. Yes, so that’s quite a story. I think that it goes back to the early days of Epcot, and I don’t think I’m telling anyone anything they don’t know. There was an equatorial Africa pavilion plan for Epcot that’s I think well known out in the Disney community, and one of the elements that was supposed to be included in that pavilion was the Tishman African art collection. So Disney purchased, and I remember Van always described it as one of the most important African art collections in the world, and this is Sub-Saharan Africa, equatorial Africa in the south, and it was supposed to be one of the centerpieces of that pavilion, but of course the pavilion never happened.

Elements of it happened in other parts of Walt Disney World, but that Tishman collection was the property of the Walt Disney Company, and it was cared for by Walt Disney Imagineering for many, many years, and it was in a special vault just created just for the collection, and it was loaned out to museums.

We had, when I was worked there, we had a registrar by the name of Kristen McCormick who was responsible for caring for the artifacts and making sure that we upheld the rigorous standards of the museum community, and we would loan them out. They were loaned out to the Louvre frequently. They were loaned out to reputable museums around the world, and shortly before Michael Eisner left the company, he wanted to display the collection at Walt Disney World. There had been attempts to display it in the past, but it’s such an important collection and the amount of climate control and humidity control and light control and secured a gallery for it.

And it was Marty who directed us to build that gallery at the American Adventure, which I will be honest with you, we were all pretty surprised that Marty wanted us to put an African art collection for the first exhibit, which was called Echoes of Africa, and the exhibit was how African art influenced American art, and it turned out to be a really truly remarkable exhibit.

We found several contemporary American artists who were clearly inspired by African art, and we had a curator, Lizzetta LeFelle-Collins, who selected African art from the collection and found American art that was clearly inspired by that type of art, that genre of African art. So that exhibit existed, I want to say for about three years, which was typical three year turnover for these exhibits. And then shortly before the exhibit ended, the Tishman collection was donated to the Smithsonian.

So we were responsible for once that exhibit went closed, getting those pieces out to the Smithsonian, but all of the other pieces that were not exhibit went directly to the Smithsonian. We were actually responsible for pre-assessing the collection and it’s on display in Washington DC and I was there three years ago and I went to see it. So a small portion, a very small percentage. It’s a massive collection, but a small percentage of those pieces are on display at the Museum of African Art in Washington.

Dan Heaton: Well, that’s great that it’s still able to be seen even a small portion of it and that Marty Sklar was so interested in presenting it. And that kind of leads me right into another role that you had where you worked directly with Marty Sklar as an ambassador representative. And I’m curious, what was it like to work with Marty fairly late in his career, but it sounded like still very involved in a lot of things either with Imagineering or with related projects. What was it like?

Jim Clark: I got to know Marty through because he was so interested in the exhibit development group and the cultural affairs department, and when Marty stepped down as Vice Chairman and Principal Creative Executive and became the ambassador, the Imagineering ambassador, he asked me to join him in his office and basically be, I don’t know what to call it, he called it Ambassador Representative. That was a title he made up, which was just fine.

I think I’m the only person in the Walt Disney Company ever to hold that title. And for three years I worked very closely with Marty. I was with him probably 10 hours a day, five days a week at least. We also did presentations in the evenings and on weekends. So I spent a lot of time with Marty and it was the end of his career. He was no longer the creative head of Imagineering at that point.

I had worked with him as the creative head, and I learned a lot watching him from that vantage point. But in those last few years, it was really about sharing the knowledge, sharing the knowledge with other people within the company, sharing knowledge with young people that were interested in becoming a part of Imagineering or becoming a part of the Walt Disney Company. We did a lot of speeches and presentations and all over the place. We did some exhibits. That was part of the reason I think Marty wanted me there because his idea was to do several different exhibits that I had experience doing.

And of course besides doing the cultural exhibits at Epcot, we also did in the cultural affairs department, we also did the traveling exhibits on the history of Disneyland and on Disney architecture and that sort of thing. And so I had a bit of knowledge about Disney history, and so I think that’s part of the reason Marty wanted me around. But it was an extraordinary experience, just kind of watching Marty share his wisdom with the world and helping him do that in any way that I could.

I learned so much from him. Still to this day, any time I make a decision, any time I make a choice, I hear Marty’s voice in my head and I think about, I don’t ask the what would Marty do? I don’t have to because I spent so much time with him that I think I already know what Marty would do. He was a remarkable person. He truly was.

At the time that he retired, he worked for every CEO in the Walt Disney Company and reported to most of them directly, not all of ’em. He was a person who understood what his boss wanted, but also understood what the guest needed. And he lived at that interesting little pivot point between the two and always found a way to satisfy both, which I think is a remarkable skill, which most people don’t fully realize. To me, that’s what made Marty an extraordinary person.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I mean the fact that he was able to work with Walt and then with leaders after that and Michael Eisner, then Bob Iger, it’s that’s a lot of different types of leaders, and the company was so different at the time. What do you think it was about him? Because so many people that are very smart and very talented aren’t able to bridge what you described as that gap between the leadership and the guest and everything. How is he able to do that?

Jim Clark: There was, we might still be there, but there’s a graffiti hallway at Imagineering, and there was for the longest time, a drawing of Marty on the wall. I wish I knew who did it. It was a caricature, and it said underneath the drawing, they think, therefore I am. Which is wonderful because I think it really, and Marty loved it. The man really set his ego aside in a remarkable way, and he understood that. He understood it because he saw, he worked directly for Walt Disney and Marty understood the environment that Walt Disney created. Part of the reason Imagineering was in Glendale was because he wanted a separate location where creative people could function.Marty just understood that that was part of doing the job. He saw that as his role. He saw that as his primary purpose, and I think that’s an unusual characteristic.

It was a product of his life experience and learning to adapt every time there was a new group management with a new vision, and Marty genuinely he would say, and he had this list, Mickey’s 10 Commandments, you might be familiar with that, but he actually had 40 commandments altogether. He had four sets of 10, and the fourth set, he called his followership list.

And that was something I think he developed the time that I knew him and I was involved in him giving this presentation and he would say things like, one of those commandments was there’s only one name on the door and that name is Walt Disney. So all of us just need to step back and we need to push the vision forward. That is Walt Disney. And when Walt was alive, he was obviously pushing forward Walt Disney’s vision, and then after Walt passed away, it was the Walt Disney Company’s vision, but Marty would find a way to tweak it.

Marty would find a way to fulfill the vision of the company that always worked and was always satisfying to the creative people who were making the creative decisions. I just don’t think people really realize that’s what he was doing. Some people do, obviously, but I think the general population who knows who Marty Sklar is don’t realize that he was doing for all those years. It’s a remarkable skill. He knew that he had to adapt and change, and he did a Walt Disney, he did a remarkable job of staying true to core philosophies and changing as times changed one foot in the past, one foot in the future, and a remarkable man.

Dan Heaton: What he was able to accomplish in that role. And even at the end, like his books, like you referenced the 10 Commandments, his books are really interesting to me as someone who’s just viewing it from the outside. There’s a lot of great details just about his career, and I think they probably just scratched the surface of what he did. Well, I want to talk about some of the projects that you worked on at Imagineering, and I recently talked with Daniel Joseph and he mentioned one of his favorite projects was the Spirit Photography, which was at the Memento Mori gift shop in Walt Disney World. And I know you also worked on that and have referenced it being very, very fun. So I’d love to know from you what it was like to work on that project.

Jim Clark: I think that was the first time I worked on something in which I felt like an Imagineer up until that moment because when you’re 12 years old, you concoct this idea in your head of what an Imagineer is. I don’t think I really truly felt like I was doing that until that project. And what was great about that project, and Daniel and Brian Crosby and I started that project together.

I believe we were having lunch at Taco Bell. I wish we could say we were at the Tam O’Shanter, sitting at Walt’s table, but we weren’t, I think it was Taco Bell. We had another project that we had pitched a Blue Sky project that didn’t go forward, and this was sort of an offshoot of that. This was sort of a subset of that, and we thought, well, maybe we could do just this.

Maybe we could do just this one piece of the project. And it was one of those, I say one of those things is if this happens all the time, this never happens. This was really unique where no one asked us to do it. It was not assigned to us in any way.

We were not given any funding, and we just thought this was a really cool idea. All three of us, tremendous Haunted Mansion fans, and we just thought it was the coolest idea, get your picture taken, and in just a few minutes have this lenticular portrait handed to you of yourself transforming into a ghost, a Haunted Mansion ghost, even very Marc Davis looking Haunted Mansion ghost. And at the time, facial recognition technology was just getting to that point. I think it opened in October 2014 and we started working on this years before that. We kind of did it on our own time in addition to our regular projects.

It was getting to the point where facial recognition technology could actually create this in a quick enough turnaround to make it financially viable. We had to create a proforma. We had to convince everyone that this would actually work and we could turn around enough of them and have high enough capacity in the store to make it worthwhile. Then we had to develop the look.

Brian Crosby developed the look of the ghost based on Marc Davis’s designs, and then we had to make it and we made it happen. And eventually a lot of other folks joined the team. Once we got funding, Doug Fidelio was responsible for the facial recognition technology and he did a spectacular job and it was awesome. It was just a little tiny, itty bitty project, complete passion project, and we did it because it was fun and that was it. What a great thing to just do something because it was fun.

Dan Heaton: Oh yeah. And especially I think the Haunted Mansion is one of the best examples. I mean, the fact that it has its own gift shop, which is not calling it a gift shop, is almost unfair to Memento Mori. It’s so much more. And because their fans are so passionate, I feel like this product is so different in that way, and it seems like it’s very rare that something like that could happen where you’re creating something so far apart normally I would think Imagineers, I mean, you’re not as involved in the merchandise, so I think it’s really cool that you’re able to do that, and especially because the Haunted Mansion being so important, I suspect played a big role in doing this on its own.

Jim Clark: Yeah, absolutely. I think the Haunted Mansion is such a special, we are Haunted Mansion geeks, and it was such a special thing to be involved in a project that had some tangential relationship to the Haunted Mansion. I mean, that was a dream come true.

Dan Heaton: And on a similar note, I mean I know you were involved with the Seekers of the Weird Disney Kingdoms comic book, which with Marvel, but it’s connected of course to the unbuilt Museum of the Weird, which with Rolly Crump and others working on that. I’d love to hear a little bit about what it was like for you to work again on something connected to the Haunted Mansion, but obviously in a very different format.

Jim Clark: That was actually an idea, believe it or not, Brian Crosby, again, Brian and I had the idea to do a comic book like that even before Disney purchased Marvel. Part of our goal was just to get the Museum of the Weird IP back out into general population. It’s true that if these concepts are forgotten, then they just kind of go away.

But if they somehow enter the zeitgeist and somehow enter into the public consciousness, then they have a chance of living on and going forward. That was one of our thoughts about a Museum of the Weird, which eventually became the Seekers of the Weird comic and complete luck that Disney purchased Marvel and Brian and Josh Shipley had connections at Marvel. Tom Morris got involved, and I know he’s been on your show before, and it was just a wonderful experience. For me it was all about how can we just share this Museum of the Weird story with people who might not have been exposed to it before?

We got to work with Rolly Crump, which was another dream come true. I’ve had a lot of wonderful experiences, Disney Legends, but that was fantastic. Then after that, we did the second book was Figment, which again, it was, we were using characters and elements that had existed in the original attraction that we loved, that we thought needed to be remembered. So that was my reason for, I was just speaking for myself. That was my reason for being involved in the Disney Kingdoms comics to get some of those lesser-known properties more attention out in the public and get people excited about them.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I mean, Figment for example is really interesting because Figment technically is still in Epcot, but obviously Dreamfinder and Figment as it originally was set up is not. But so many people have an interest in that. But how interesting was that in terms of for the group that worked on it kind of coming up with, I mean because Dreamfinder has a name and it’s working a science lab and it’s so different in that way, but also still has connections. How did the group find a way to honor the attraction in such a different environment and setting?

Jim Clark: That was a challenge. It really was. Our question is, it’s kind of getting back to that conversation we had just now about Marty and Walt with one foot in the past and one foot in the future. It is a challenging thing because you want to kind of honor and respect what the fans love about the characters and their perception of who the characters are; however, you want to make them relevant for an audience today, the Marvel films do a phenomenal job of that, right?

You’ve got to respect the audience, respect their perception of the character, but you can’t tell the story. It’s the 1960s. You have to tell the story like it’s today or I guess in the case of Figment and tell a story, it’s the 1980s. You want to tell a story that’s more relevant and more interesting for people today in order to keep it alive and keep it going forward.

That’s a tough tightrope to walk. But it was great having Tom involved in the project who had been involved in the original Journey into Imagination and giving us a lot of the background and history on that. So that was, yeah, and of course we also had Marvel, right in the end. We didn’t write the comic and we didn’t draw the comic that was actually done by Marvel. We were the folks who started the project along and we were the folks who provided them with a lot of the information and kind of guided them and made suggestions. But at the end of the day, it was a Marvel product.

Dan Heaton: No, that’s a good point. Because yeah, it still has to work as a Marvel product in itself. It’s not just as something that Disney is putting out on its own to honor an attraction. So that even makes it seem a little more complicated, but I think it worked out really well. So speaking of another form, I feel like we’re just going through different forms of media here, but you also worked on some video games for Disney Interactive.

I wanted to quickly mention first during this pandemic, my daughters and I have discovered and spent a lot of time playing Disneyland Adventures on our PC, so I know you were involved with that. So I’d love to start there about, I believe you and I think Tom Morris were also kind of experts who helped guide that to make sure Disneyland looked right. So I’m curious about that game and some of your other work.

Jim Clark: The Connect Disneyland ventures, and that was just so much fun. And the Disney Interactive team, specifically Keith McKay and Sandy Ave, who were the two folks that we worked with the most, did such a brilliant job. I just loved how that turned out. I mean, it really looks like Disneyland. It looks like Disneyland. What year was that circa 2013? I can’t even remember exactly.

Dan Heaton: I think it was around there. Yeah, like 2012 or so. Yeah, it looks different.

Jim Clark: It looks a little different. It’s changed since then. But at the time that the video game came out, it was such a beautiful rendition of the park and Keith deserves a lot of the credit because he kind of sat in that role where he was kind of making sure it was a video game and that it was fun to play as a video game, but also staying true to representing Disneyland as accurately as possible.

Tom Morris would sit there and say that railing isn’t the right green and then it’s not. And then Keith would try to dial it in and get the exact right green. We went down to those details and I’m so glad we did because it is an remarkable experience. You feel like you are visiting when you’re running through that park. And it was fun. It was a fun opportunity.

We’re gathering photos and gathering images of the park and giving the Disney Interactive team the sort of the history of the park and why things existed a certain way and getting drawings and diagrams and giving them all the information they needed to create that park. Then also getting to make a couple of creative suggestions here and there about how characters were represented or how different aspects of the park were represented and things you had to include because it was important to the history of the park or things that when you had to make a decision because everything is controlled by budget and schedule, what things maybe you don’t need to include. But that was a blast. That was an absolute, I loved that and I’m eternally grateful to Keith and the team over at Disney Interactive for being so open and available to us.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, the main thing that I loved about that, I mean the game is fun and you meet the characters and everything, but just like you said, just walking around there, especially given how things are right now, being able to just kind of stroll through the little corners and on Main Street and you walk down one little side alley and everything, and granted, I don’t know every inch of Disneyland, but for me it just turned out really well. And I think as a fun way, like you said, to document what it was. Then pre Galaxy’s Edge and some of the latest changes that are in place.

Jim Clark: It is. It’s a wonderful little time capsule. I’ll go back and visit it anytime.

Dan Heaton: Well great. Well, I want to make sure we have time to talk about the big expansion that you were very closely involved with for Tokyo Disneyland, which really I think turned out very well. And I’d love to know upfront just about your work on the early development of that concept, how it started and evolved into what ultimately ended up happening.

Jim Clark: Well, that’s a big one. So that was seven years. I started on the project in 2013 and we turned it over to operations in March of 2020. So that was a long time. It’s hard to really kind of summarize that experience. And I should say, I noticed as I’m talking, I keep throwing out names of people that occurred to me, and I want to make sure I acknowledge this. There were over 500 people who worked for Disney who worked on the Tokyo Disneyland expansion, and that doesn’t include all of our vendors, and that doesn’t include OLC and all of their contractors and vendors.

There were thousands of people who made this project possible. So as I’m talking about it, I want to make sure I feel bad if I forget anybody’s name who might be listening because it was truly a team effort. If there ever was a team effort. And everyone says this every project, it’s a cliche, we had the best team, but you know what, damn it, we had the best team. It was such a phenomenal team and everyone did such an amazing job and I’m so grateful to all of them. So that’s my disclaimer. Sorry.

Dan Heaton: That’s okay.

Jim Clark: But your question was how did it get started? So it got started, the first name I must mention is Rob’t Coltrin. It started with Rob’t. I think that Rob’t started noodling this idea probably in 2012. I think the project officially started moving forward in earnest in March of 2013, and then I joined in June of 2013.

But it was really Rob’t from the beginning, and there were so many different versions and so many different iterations of Tokyo Disneyland expansion that happened in so many attractions that came and went. But the one thing that was there from the very beginning was in Tale of Beauty and the Beast, and Robert had this idea, really a brilliant idea of taking a trackless ride system and making the ride vehicle dance. We’ve done trackless ride vehicles before. In fact, in Tokyo, one of the really the first trackless dark ride was Pooh’s Hunny Hunt with which Rob’t also worked on.

But the difference here with Beauty and the Beast, the reason we wanted do we already have Pooh’s Hunny Hunt in Tokyo, we want to do something different. It can’t, every experience can’t just be the same. So being the Beast was going to be a dancing ride vehicle besides having the motion base, the transport base that actually moved the vehicle around like the transport base at Pooh’s Hunny Hunt, there was also a motion base up top.

If you think about the Indiana Jones Adventure, Indiana Jones Adventure has a motion base that controls the motion of the guest cabin. So Beauty and the Beast was going to be the first ride that really had a true motion base and a transport base on the same vehicle. And the way Rob’t always explained it is think about when you’re dancing, you’re moving your legs, but you’re also moving the upper part of your body.

So we’re going to make these vehicles really dance. And that was, and what better film to associate it with than Beauty and the Beast with that beautiful Howard Ashman, Alan Menken music, and in such variety, there’s a lot of variety in style of the music in Beauty and the Beast. So really sort of a marriage made in heaven or in Rob’t’s brain that started this whole thing off. And I was lucky enough to be able to join the team really early on because everything else changed over three years, except Beauty the Beast, Beauty, the Beast, Rob’t’s basic core idea never really changed. And I’m so proud of it. I’m so proud of how it turned out.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I mean it’s one of the more exciting dark rides that I’ve seen. I haven’t seen in person, but that I’ve seen out from Disney in a while. And just because like you said, it’s using the trackless technology, but to me it’s very different because I mean, you’re kind of used to, well, it was something like Mystic Manor or wherever where you’re kind of going to a certain part of the room, then you’re going to a different part of the room and it’s amazing.

But in this case, again, like you said, it’s like all the vehicles in some of those scenes are kind of dancing with each other and going around and almost, I feel like it fits really well with the movie. But I’m curious too now that when you have that technology and you’ve decided you’re going to make them dance, how much does that influence then the scene you use? Because the movie is very, you could show so many different scenes from the movie, but did that zone in on which ones you really focused on for some of those big rooms basically?

Jim Clark: Yes, absolutely. I think that, I’m sorry, another disclaimer. If you watch the video online at home, you’re really, it is not really giving you the experience. Obviously the experience of doing there is very different. But I think for this attraction in particular because of the motion of the vehicle, because the entire attraction is about the motion of the vehicle, that is the primary experience. So when we chose the songs and we chose the scenes for the attraction, we chose the scenes that were specifically take place in the castle.

So if you go to Tokyo Disneyland today, you will see outside in the land Maurice’s cottage with a little bridge over the brook, and you could follow Belle’s path that she takes in the morning and you could walk over that little bridge and into the village and you can pass the bookshop and you can pass the Hat Shop and Gaston’s Tavern, and there’s the fountain in the center of the square and all of that part of the story, we don’t have the song Bell inside the attraction because that takes place outside.

Once you cross that bridge and you’re in the castle, all the scenes that take place inside the castle are the scenes that are on the ride. We don’t ever want to teleport you back out to the village to hear Gaston singing in his tavern. We’ve got the tavern well-represented guest on as well-represented out in the tavern. You are an enchanted object, and this is, by the way, not something I ever expect a guest to understand. This is just a device that we use to kind of inform our choices. So you’re seeing all of these things from the perspective of the enchanted object. And so the enchanted objects don’t know who the villagers are, they don’t know who Gaston is. There are a bunch of people who’ve come to kill the Beast and they need to try to protect the castle and protect their master.

So you’re looking at it from their point of view. We even have one scene in particular that’s staged in such a way with the enchanted objects, Lumiere, Cogsworth, Feather Duster, Mrs. Potts, sorry, not Feather Duster, but Chip are in the foreground, and Belle and the Beast are in the background, which is mirroring the staging from the animated film. And you are the other enchanted objects that are watching that scene just like the other enchanted objects would.

You’re watching it from their point of view. So that was another kind of consideration. And then of course, we wanted variety, Be our Guest. You can’t not have Be Our Guest in the attraction. That’s really central to I think what people remember about the film. But the guest was a very, Robert always described it as a Busby Berkeley number. You had sort of geometric dances and kicking and that kind of thing.

Then we have something there, which is an ice skating moment. And then you have the mob song and the attack in which the vehicles are frightened and then determined to help defend the castle. Then you have the wonderful waltz in the ballroom to be our guest. And we did do sort of a waltz version, I’m sorry, not be our guest, but the title song Beauty and the Beast. We did sort of waltz version of for most of that scene for the ballroom and it’s different experiences. And because this whole attraction was about the movement of the ride vehicle, having different types of music informed, different types of movement, and created variety in each scene.

Dan Heaton: That’s a really great point. And just the idea, there’s so many things you covered there I could dig into, but I think you’re right though that we do experience it. Everyone consciously may not realize, oh, this is the village, this is the castle and everything, but the general thought is it all feels correct or it feels right in the scene and just it fits with then you don’t have a jarring change where you’re like, wait, why are we here or something. It all kind of fits together, which I think is really important.

And I wanted to ask you too, you just mentioned the waltz. I know before this came out and everything, the animatronic Belle and then well, the Beast, but the human version or dancing, and that really is an impressive feat, and I know was presented of them looking like they’re actually dancing people would across the room in a sense. How challenging was that to do something that we really haven’t seen, at least to my knowledge, in another attraction.

Jim Clark: There’s probably 50 people I should name, and I apologize. It was in consultation with Walt Disney Animation Studios, Roger Gould and his team, and kind of advising on the movement of the figures. And of course, we also had our animators from WDI, I’m just going to keep naming people. Mike Iana and John Nguyen and Toaster, everyone calls ’em Toaster, but Steven Gregory, it was a collaboration, honestly, very much. I think it’s real Imagineering. It’s true Imagineering because it’s a collaboration between the animators who understand the movement of the human body and what looks right and what works and the engineers, and then kind of going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until you’ve created something that just, it’s breathtaking.

I’m so happy with how it turned out. Everyone was happy with how it turned out. I was in Tokyo when it was completed and animated for the first time, and we saw it on video that it was still being built in the United States in Glendale. And just the applause that everyone broke out into when we all saw it animating the gasps, it was a wonderful moment. It was a wonderful moment to see those figures working. I really apologize if I missed someone’s name because it was really a tremendous team effort.

Dan Heaton: Oh yeah. And I definitely, I’ll just say that I’m aware that this is a large group that worked on this because anything this immersive and just involved and with high tech, I’m sure there’s so many people that worked on it. But I agree, and again, I am viewing it not from seeing it in person. I can’t imagine because for something to translate as well as it can, just from what I’ve seen, I can’t imagine how well it works just in the large scale because some of these are very large rooms and just very, a lot of details that you can spot.

And even part of it too that I should reference before you even get on the vehicle is I think that the queue experience is really impressive, where you walk through all the hallways and then there’s the scene with, they have the stained glass windows, and then the images of the Beast and Belle show up. So I’m curious too about that side of it, because I feel like it’s not a case where this is just pre-show and ride. I feel like it’s all a giant experience and how that evolved or the thought process there,

Jim Clark: Honestly, the attraction experience, it’s hard to define. Does it begin at Maurice’s Cottage? Does it begin at the bridge; does it begin in the pre-show? But it definitely begins before you get on the ride because there is so much, we have more figures and more effects in the pre-show than some entire attractions. And our most sophisticated figures by far are the walking Belle and Beast in the pre-show. It is an extraordinary experience.

And yes, it is very Haunted Mansion where you have a bit of queue that sets the tone and sets the atmosphere. And then by the way, and in that portion, that first part of the queue, Lumiere and Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts and Chip and Hat Rack are all hiding from you because just like when Maurice first goes into the castle, they’re kind of hiding from him and pretending to be a candelabra or a clock.

We have fun little gags where Footstool the dog, he doesn’t know he’s supposed to be hiding. He’s a dog, so he’s wagging his tail. And then Chip is a little kid, so he knows he’s supposed to hide, but he can’t help it. He’s got to peak. So we have a little bit of animation from some of those characters in the queue. Then you get into this tremendous pre-show, which is just extraordinary.

And we do the whole, we’re going to tell you the story. If you don’t know Beauty and the Beast, if you don’t know this film, we’re going to give you the entire backstory. And oh, how convenient. The Beauty and the Beast film opens with this wonderful prologue when they tell you how the Prince became a beast and how he was cursed. And it’s all done with stained glass. So of course we’re going to do stained glass.

It’s one of those things where, well, of course we’re going to do that. And it worked out beautifully and the staging that Robert came up with, and it’s just extraordinary. It is wonderful. Again, that was another thing I left before guests where I didn’t actually see the attraction with guests, but we were able to show those scenes to our partners at OLC.

And when Belle and the Beast came out and the gasp and oh, it was so much fun to see people’s reaction to that for the first time because extraordinary. And one of the neat things about this project is this is the first time we ever recorded the lines in Japanese first and then animated to the Japanese. They had done this for Finding Nemo for the Sea Rider Attraction in Tokyo Disney Sea, but this was the first time we did it for physical audio animatronics figures.

So all of those emotions that you see in the characters, we didn’t animate it in English and then dub in Japanese, which is what has been done in the past and then maybe tweaked a little bit. In this case, it was animated from day one to the Japanese. So when the characters’ facial expressions, especially Lumiere and Cogsworth, because they have projected heads, so they have a lot of emotion in their faces and their response to the Beast growling is so comical.

When guests, again, I didn’t see it with guests, but I saw it with the OLC team members, the original operations team that opened the attraction when they saw it for the first time, they were laughing so hard. It was so wonderful. And our writer, we had, again, several writers started off with Tom Child, ended up with Charlie Watanabe, but Charlie is Japanese, speaks fluent English and Japanese and French by the way.

Charlie actually sat with the animators and gave them some direction and some suggestions on how to make the reaction more authentic, authentically Japanese. And so when Lumiere and Cogsworth are reacting to the beast, it works. It works with the Japanese dialogue incredibly well, and the comic effect is extraordinary, which by the way, that’s a very scary scene.

Beast is pounding on that door, and he’s shouting at Belle to come down to dinner, and she’s shouting back at him. It’s a very frightening sort of moment. And this is an all ages attraction. There’s no height requirement. We want little kids to go on this attraction. That was the point from the beginning. But what we did was we staged Lumiere and Cogsworth in the foreground and made them very comical. So it took the edge off of that scary moment. So it enabled us to have the scary scene, the scary thing happening, but also the fun, lighthearted, comical thing happening closer to the guest. And I’m so happy with how it turned out. It’s just wonderful.

Dan Heaton: It worked out so well. And also too, that’s a really interesting point because unlike, let’s say if you were porting over an attraction that was created here for one of the parks in the United States, and then this is one that is unique to Tokyo Disneyland. So the fact that you were able to animate in Japanese and to do it that way, I think is great because this is their attraction. I mean, you have that massive castle, which is even different than there’s one in Florida, but it’s in the background kind of behind be our guests, where here it’s like your entrance point. The land is so impressive too. So I just think there’s a lot to make this special, but also unique to this park, which is always something that’s fun to see.

Jim Clark: I think the one thing that perhaps hasn’t been articulated in the past about this that I think really makes it special and really makes it feel like Disney is, if you think back to the very beginnings of Disney, think back to Steamboat Willie. And when Walt was animating Mickey Mouse for the first time, and he was animating Mickey Mouse to sound, that was what made Mickey Mouse special and unique.

Obviously he had pathos and he was a character that you cared about, but the fact that it was animated to sound was the gimmick, was the thing that made it extraordinary. And Walt was always thinking about sound and music. You think about Fantasia synchronized shapes and color to sound, and if the music was evocative of the images and the images were evocative of the music, and that’s very Disney. And in fact, in the old days, if you animated something to sound in a very obvious way, it was referred to as Mickey, right?

Because Disney, there’s something about that mixture of audio and movement that is viscerally enjoyable when it comes together in a pleasing way. It compliments itself artistically. I think the same thing whenever I ride Space Mountain at Disneyland with the audio track that goes in time with the ride vehicle, it takes that attraction to another level and enhances the experience in such a way.

And I think the Beauty and the Beast attraction does that. The Beauty and the Beast is it’s so quintessentially Disney because you have the movement of the ride vehicle, but then in the ballroom, everyone’s waltzing and everyone is moving in time to the music as if it’s a waltz, and it’s a different atmosphere. But it’s this idea and all going back to Rob’t’s original idea of dance, right? Everything is, it is just so perfectly Disney. And I think from hearing the guest response from a distance from Japan, there’s a lot of excitement over this attraction, and it does feel very Disney, which I’m really proud of.

Dan Heaton: To me, this is totally a signature Disney attraction going back to ones that have been done for years that are classics now. Well, you also referenced to the Oriental Land Company, and I know that you lived in Japan for several years or year and a half, and then work directly with them. So I would love to know, I mean, we could probably talk for an hour about this, but I would just love to know as much as from your experiences, what is it like to work with the Oriental Land Company? Because I’ve heard so much kind of about how it’s different, but a lot of it is generalizations. I’d love to know for you personally, what it was like.

Jim Clark: Yeah, it’s a fantastic experience. I would work with Oriental Land Company again tomorrow in a heartbeat if I had the opportunity. The thing about Oriental Land Company is what’s challenging for me is it’s not a monolithic organization. And before I was on the Tokyo portfolio, I mean while I was at Imagineering, but before I was on the Tokyo portfolio, I was guilty of this. So everybody does this. I always read people say the Oriental Land Company does this, or the OLC thinks this.

That’s really absurd because it’s a very large, complex organization and getting to know folks on that team, they’re all individuals and they’re just as complex and dynamic as the Walt Disney Company. And there are different people with different roles and responsibilities and different objectives. So I could answer a question about what it was like to work with a specific person, but I don’t think I could, I would be afraid of making a generalization about working with the Oriental Land Company because it’s like once you get to know the team, it’s just like working with any other team.

They’re just as diverse as working with people at Disney or working with people at Walt Disney World or Disneyland. There are different people with different objectives and you have to work together as a team, as a corporate culture. They are absolutely dedicated to quality, and I think that the success of Tokyo Disney Resort is a result of an incredibly productive relationship between Disney and OLC. I think the skills found at Disney compliment the skills found at OLC and because think about this. This is what’s remarkable about it really, Disney and OLC both essentially have veto power over anything developed or added to the resort. It is amazing that anything gets done when you think about it from that perspective, but so much gets done and the reason so much gets done because goal to create the best possible guest experience.

Now, different people might have different opinions of what the best guest experience is, but I think the dialogue and the mutual respect between Disney and OLC that happens, results in a guest experience that satisfies Disney’s parameters and LCS parameters, think of it as a Venn diagram and we get the best of the best because it’s both the Disney values and the OLC values. Where do they overlap and create the best possible guest experience? And that’s what happens. And phases of the project take longer. There’s more back and forth, but once we agree and once we’re committed, we move forward and I think the results are always spectacular.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s where you look at it and you say with two entities like that, if one side even was not as collaborative or wasn’t as focused on building the best thing, it wouldn’t work even if the other side was, but the results, I mean Tokyo Disney Sea, and some of the great attractions that are unique like Pooh’s Hunny Hunt and Monsters Inc. And then of course your new attraction, a lot of those couldn’t work without both working so well together. So that’s a great point because it’s easy to look at the results and just say, wow, the OLC does this. But like you mentioned, even with your comment about 500 people, nothing is created in a vacuum. Everything requires so many different layers and steps that can lead to something this great.

Jim Clark: Yes, absolutely. And it really is a productive collaborative effort between Disney and OLC. And this project in particular within the Disney team, was an incredibly collaborative effort, and I think everyone who worked on it should be very proud of what they’ve done.

Dan Heaton: And I wanted to also quickly ask you about one other part of the expansion, which is the Minnie Style Studio. It’s a meet and greet, but to me, I always appreciate when you have a meet and greet. I mean, there’s also other examples that like Enchanted Tales with Belle or some of the more recent ones with Anna and Elsa that goes so beyond your typical thought of walk into a room meet character, and this one has so many cool touches, even as you walk through, I’d love to hear a little bit about just how this ended up becoming part of the expansion and how it came together.

Jim Clark: That was early on it from the very beginning. It was added a little bit later, but still fairly early on compared to most of the expansion elements. That was OLC wanted a meet and greet as part of the expansion. And at one point, one of the representatives from OLC came to us and commented on the need for a dedicated meet and greet for Minnie Mouse, because of course Toon Town in Tokyo has all the same elements as Toon Town in Anaheim. So if you’re familiar with Anaheim, it’s the same thing.

They’re kind of in a different order, but they’re basically the same elements. And so of course there’s a very elaborate meet and greet for Mickey Mouse. Well, in Tokyo Disneyland, Minnie Mouse is just as popular as Mickey, if not more so it makes sense for a Minnie Mouse to have a dedicated meet and greet as well.

And Minnie’s House already exists in Tokyo Disneyland. So we decided that for Minnie, we’re going to give her a meet and greet at her place of business. So instead of meeting her at her house, we go and see where Minnie works. And Minnie, we decided works at Minnie’s Style Studio. So you may not know this, but Toontown is actually laid out in very specific districts.

There’s the sort of industrial district and the residential district and the civic district. Well, we added a fourth district for Toontown in Tokyo, which is the fashion district. And so within the fashion district we have Minnie’s Style Studio and the design of the exterior building, which was done by our concept architect Oscar Cobos, in a way that inspired sort of loosely by the old animation building on the Disney studio lot, sort of that era streamlined modern architecture, but it’s all poofy and there are fewer straight lines, not zero straight lines, but fewer straight lines than you would find in real streamline modern.

So we called it Toon Town Modern, and it’s a really playful, fun space. Our first concept designer who original art director on the project, Janice Rosenthal, came up with this sort of mid-century modern kind of style for it. And it’s fun and playful, but it’s also sophisticated. It doesn’t feel cheap. It just feels high class and high fashion while still being fun and playful. It’s a wonderful cross. And Chris Merritt contributed a lot of the gags. Janice and Chris and Ethan have such a wonderful design sensibility. I can see their touches in everything. Ethan Reed, by the way, also created a lot of Duffy’s Friends. If you’re familiar with Gelatoni and you’re familiar with those characters, he’s got this really cute style that the Japanese guests love so much. And you can kind of just see Ethan’s touch into every aspect of Minnie’s Style Studio.

It’s so incredibly well done. It’s playful. We have Figaro popping up a little very simple art figure of Figaro popping up and his eyes kind of follow you. That was Ted Robledo added that. I’m just going to keep naming people. I apologize. That’s okay. Ted Rubledo is our executive creative director on the project after Robert stepped off. But Toon Town is so fun and so playful and sort of matching a high fashion style studio with Toon Town was such a clever sort of juxtaposition that it just resulted in all these wonderful gags and being to go back to the old shorts from the 1940s and early fifties and adding Figaro. Ethan also added Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet are hidden in there and some fun little gags.

Tom Child wrote hysterical, unfortunately mostly English language puns and jokes on all of the books and all of the things in the space. It is just so much fun to go through there. I’m so happy with how that turned out. It’s really a unique experience. It really took the character meet and greet experience up to another level.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, that’s something that I can definitely gather just from what I’ve seen of it that it feels really well fit to Tokyo too, because I know that you mentioned Duffy and Duffy’s Friends are so big in Tokyo and Tokyo just mean and greets. I feel like there’s a higher level expected because they’re just so popular even more than in Florida or California and that even that space just seems to really fit with that park and with the guests that go there.

Jim Clark: It does.

Dan Heaton: Alright, well let’s try to close up here. I have some larger overall questions for you about just a few here. I would love to know, you mentioned the Haunted Mansion of course, and then Epcot, but what were some theme park attractions at Disney or even other parks that really inspired you when you were younger and have even inspired you as you worked at Imagineering?

Jim Clark: Obviously, I think you can’t not acknowledge Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean because, and there would be times where when you’re going through different stages of the project and you have to make decisions about scope and what to keep and what not to keep. I wouldn’t go to Disneyland and ride Haunted Mansion in Pirates of the Caribbean and think about what am I seeing and where am I looking and what’s happening.

Then when you’re making decisions about whether or not to show set on your ceiling and when are you going to look up and when are you not going to look up. I know that sounds like a small detail, but it’s an important detail. And walking through the park just anywhere, anywhere at Disneyland, living in Southern California, while we were in the early design phases, that was what I would do.

I’d just go to the park and walk around and if I were to pick two attractions, those would be the two that I would pick. But I grew up in Florida and all my early Disney experiences are with Walt Disney World. And I think early Epcot absolutely inspired me more than anything. I think I talked a little bit about that already, but just the original attractions at Epcot worked so well together harmoniously.

And this is also something that Rob’t Coltrin and I share. It was sort of a fondness for the big shows, the really grand and miraculous shows. And when Epcot first opened getting on the Universe of Energy and the whole theater starts moving and the wall just opened up and as a cast member mostly on the Living with the Land boat ride attraction and just this sort of grand spectacle of it all, I think certainly inspired Beauty and the Beast in some ways.

Rob’t had this idea, it was very important to him that at the end of Beauty and the Beast that the music stops right at the same moment that the vehicle stops, right? The vehicle just the end of the melody of Beauty and the Beast plays and the last note hits right as the vehicle parks. And it was like, well, can we do that? Because usually on attractions you can’t do that because you’re waiting for the vehicles in the load station to advance. So you can’t control when the vehicles come into unload. It’s very, very difficult to do.

And I remembered, well, the Great Movie Ride does it because at the very end, having worked on the Great Movie Ride and been on it many times as a cast member and been on it so many times, that last note and cut and then the door is open and it’s this wonderful sort of rhythm and it’s just so much fun and it’s like it’s a different feeling. I can’t say inspired by the Great Movie Ride. Rob’t had the idea first, but the question from Rob’t was, can we do that? And I’m like, well, the Great Movie Ride does it, so how did they do it? And so they’re kind of inspired in that way by the Great Movie Ride.

Dan Heaton: That’s so interesting. Yeah, that idea with the Great Movie Ride where it starts up and it totally sets the right mood of that early Hollywood kind of idea and it wouldn’t work as well if that was just playing all the time. It would just kind of become a cacophony of sound. But because it’s with you, it totally fits. That’s really cool that it inspired a little bit that at least connected to what you were doing. And also too, you’ve already mentioned Marty Sklar, and Rolly Crump and others, but when you were at WDI, what were some of your mentors or people that really inspired you while you were there?

Jim Clark: Oh, I think I was really lucky because I had the opportunity to work with Imagineers who worked directly with Walt and actually spend time, if not work with them, spend time with just because I sought them out or because the opportunity presented itself. I got to spend a lot of time with Marc Davis and Alice Davis and Harriet Burns and Orlando Ferrante and Bob Gurr, Richard Sherman. So that was all extraordinary to kind of talk philosophically with all of them. But the mentor, the actual mentor sort of on the job training type of mentor, Marty comes to mind of course, and I mentioned Van Romans earlier, if I had to pick one mentor that kind of stands hidden shoulders above everyone else for me it was Van.

Van by the way, is now the president of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, which is a beautiful museum designed mostly by former Imagineers if you ever get a chance to go down to Fort Worth and see that. But Van was definitely the most dominant mentor while I was there. But also, gosh, Nancy Hickman and Jody McLaughlin and Daniel Jue and Trish Cerrone and Kathy Rogers, and there were a lot there, quite a few. I was there for 20 years. So a lot of different people I learned from.

Dan Heaton: Well, wow. Yeah, I’m sure that just scratches the surface. And even just the fact that you were fortunate enough to be able to interact with people like Marc and Alice Davis and Orlando Ferrante and so many others. That’s really cool. On the flip side, just kind of one last question. You already addressed this early on. There’s a lot of young people that kind of like yourself that are thinking, I want to become an Imagineer, or I want to work as a theme park designer in some way. I mean, is there advice you would give them based on your experience or what you’ve seen about not just education, but even just the kind of approach they should take when they’re trying to build the right experience to enter the field?

Jim Clark: I think the best advice is some of the things I said earlier with regard to Marty, learn about as much as you can, learn as much as you can about as many things as you can, I think is the way Marty put it, which is the best advice. But strategically, if you’re trying to get a job at Imagineering, you need to fill a job requisition, right? Someone has put out, there’s a job opening, and you need to be able to fill the skills that that job requisition has.

And sometimes, most of the time that’s just luck because it’s really hard to predict what that job requisition is going to entail. It’s hard to predict what they need today is not what they’re going to need five years from now. It’s not what they’re going to need to do 10 years from now. So I think that my best advice to people is do what you love.

Do what gets you excited, do what you’re passionate about. That needs to be first. That needs to be primary. And then there’s, as Marty always said, there’s 140 disciplines at Imagineering. Chances are if what you love is in any way related to entertainment, then there are going to be applications at Imagineering, but do what you love first. I think that once you have those skills and you have those really specific marketable skills that can fulfill that job requisition, that’s how you get in the door.

And then once you’re in the door, you’re a success because you have broad-based knowledge and you’re curious about many things. You kind of need to be both. You need to be a generalist who is interested in a wide variety of different things, and you need to be an expert who’s phenomenally talented and gifted at one specific thing. Then, yeah, that doesn’t sound too hard, does it? Then you’ll be a success at Imagineering.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I mean, that’s tricky, like you said, because if you’re too specialized, then you’re not able to do different things depending on what job is needed. But then you need to be specialized in something because you don’t want to just be okay at everything. I’m sure it’s totally doable, right? I mean, it’s easy.

Jim Clark: Sure.

Dan Heaton: Alright, well, Jim, this has been great to talk with you and learn so much about your career and the expansion in Japan and so much more. So I really appreciate it and thanks so much for talking with me on the podcast.

Jim Clark: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. It was fun.