163. Josh Shipley on Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, Marvel, and Disney Kingdoms

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The world of theme parks continues to evolve as technologies change and new stories emerge. Imagineer Josh Shipley has been a close part of those updates during the past few decades. Josh is my guest on this episode of The Tomorrow Society Podcast to talk about his career. As part of the Disney College program, he started on the Great Movie Ride at the Disney/MGM Studios. Josh’s theatrical background fit perfectly with playing a gangster on that classic attraction.

Josh talks about his long road to join Walt Disney Imagineering in 1996. His work as a figure finisher for Countdown to Extinction led to production design roles at Tokyo DisneySea and DCA. Josh next created the digital show production role and worked on countless attractions. During the podcast, we talk about that technology and challenges being on the forefront. A great opportunity arose with updates to Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln in 2009. Josh worked with his mentor Tony Baxter as a creative director on the new version of the classic show.

In 2009, Disney’s Marvel acquisition introduced possibilities for attractions and other cool projects. Josh describes his work on the Disney Kingdoms series on comics like Seekers of the Weird and Figment. Also, he collaborated with Joe Rohde on Marvel and tells a fun story of taking Joe to Comic-Con. We next talk about Josh’s recent work as Chief Creative Officer at Evermore Park. The mix of immersive theater and a traditional haunt intrigues me. Finally, Josh talks about his current role at the Hale Centre Theatre in Utah. I really enjoyed the chance to talk to Josh about his awesome career.

Show Notes: Josh Shipley

Follow Josh Shipley at Twitter and Instagram.

Learn more about Hale Centre Theatre and watch a promo for their Ken Ludwig’s Treasure Island show.

Listen to Josh Shipley’s appearance on WDW Radio with Lou Mongello.

Note: Photos in this post were used with the permission of Josh Shipley.

Transcript

Josh Shipley: If you listen to the beginning of the Lincoln show, the swell of music that begins is from America The Beautiful. Well, it now feels natural to me because hey, that’s been in the Lincoln show for over 10 years, but for the longest time, we had the hardest time listening to the beginning of this cut because we’re like, ooh, that’s Circle-Vision. This is really hard to listen to. That’s the beginning of Circle-Vision, but it eventually became our Americana piece and then getting in, there’s a whole story behind getting “Battle Hymn of the Republic” approved and all that kind of stuff. At one point Tony turns to me and he says, I don’t know if we’re ever going to get this approved, but if not, at least we’re going to have the best version for us to listen to in our cars.

Dan Heaton: That is Josh Shipley who’s here to talk about his extensive career working for Walt Disney Imagineering, including Great Moments for Mr. Lincoln, Marvel projects, so much more. This is going to be awesome. You’re listening to The Tomorrow Society Podcast.

(music)

Dan Heaton: Hey there. Thanks for joining me here on Episode 163 of the Tomorrow Society Podcast. I am your host, Dan Heaton. Hope you’re all doing okay out there. It’s really tough out there with some of the news, but well, I hope that you’re able to get some enjoyment out of this interview, which was such a blast to do with Josh Shipley. Josh is someone who just seemed tailor-made for working at Walt Disney Imagineering through his background in theater and his interest in Disney, and he has so many great stories. You heard a little bit of him talking about working on the updates to Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln with his mentor, Tony Baxter.

He also has a fun one about going to ComicCon with Joe Rohde, started on the Disney College program. He was actually a gangster on the Great Movie Ride, so he has some fun info there. Also talks about the Disney Kingdom series and the Seekers of the Weird comics and Figment and how all that came together. Josh just has a really cool story of his time from Disney to Evermore Park to his current role at Hale Theater.

Just a lot of great stuff and I really enjoyed the chance to get to talk with him, and it was just sometimes it’s just fun to spend 90 minutes just talking about theme parks and a really interesting career, and that was definitely the case here with Josh. So this is a pretty long one, so I want to get right to the interview. Let’s do it. Here is Josh Shipley.

(music)

Dan Heaton: Josh, thanks so much for talking with me here on the podcast.

Josh Shipley: Hey, thanks for asking me to be on to talk to you. I mean, I’ve been listening to you for a while now, so this is a pleasure.

Dan Heaton: Oh, well, excellent. Now your name comes up probably as much as anyone else. When other people talk, they’re always like, and I did this with Josh Shipley and I’m like, man, there’s a lot to cover here, so it’s good. People always say nice things.

Josh Shipley: I hope I can repay the compliments.

Dan Heaton: Well, I am sure you can, but I wanted to talk too, because your family I think has a really interesting background with theater and with music, so I had love to know a little bit about your family’s history working in theater and show business and everything. Just kind of as a start.

Josh Shipley: The hardest part for me is to figure out how to use our time well and not monopolize it entirely, but on that question, yeah, I do come from an entertainment family. We owned and operated a small theater in Southern California, which over the course of time was 23 years with only two weekends dark.

I was born early on in that I was not there for the full 23 years, but my mom actually was a performer in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s on a TV show called Cliffie Stone’s Hometown Jamboree that would broadcast live out of Hollywood, and then she released an album with a song that was played quite a bit on the radio called “He’ll Have To Stay”. So she was quite well known in those regards as a performer, my dad, an actor director, was given special permission to perform at the Old Globe and a lot of acting there.

Unfortunately, they separated in our adult years as children. They separated and my mom ended up getting remarried to somebody she knew from Hometown Jamboree days, and his name is Billy Strange, and he’s known for guitar and playing with the Beach Boys. Part of the Wrecking Crew, wrote a few songs for Elvis, like “Memories” and “A Little Less Conversation” and I should say co-wrote.

So even though, yeah, that’s my stepdad, there’s still the entertainment influence there, and I picked up and ran his online profile for quite a while before he passed away and have had a lot of very interesting interactions over the years in entertainment purely because of my stepdad and going to lunch one day and being introduced to Plas Johnson, who’s the well-known saxophone player, played the Pink Panther theme, that kind of stuff. I mean, it was notables all around the table and then we’re joined by Nancy Sinatra and I’m like, I don’t know if I belong here. But point being is those kind of situations where you go, this is definitely an interesting life and it’s not lost on me.

Dan Heaton: That makes a lot of sense. In terms of what you went into just with theater and with theme parks and entertainment and everything, but how much were you interested too in the specific Disney and Disneyland and all that? Was that a big part of growing up along with all the other entertainment that you just mentioned?

Josh Shipley: Yeah. Disneyland was a major influence in my life. I mean, really hopping on the freeway with my older brother driving or me eventually a trip to Disneyland was maybe 40 minutes away, and so we grew up spending a lot of time there. I mean, whether it was as family when I was really little, just frequent trips or starting to get into the teenage years where I was old enough to start having an annual pass and those kinds of things, Disneyland was a major influence, and I mean other than the fact that I just love it as we do, there’s a lot to praise and talk about when it comes to Disneyland, the theatrical side of me being backstage, constantly growing up with that theater, like I said, 23 years dark, two weekends, that tends to permeate everything that you do throughout your week.

Disneyland truly did become an extension of that stage as was often referred to how Van Arsdale France set up the whole system with the park being a stage on stage, backstage, all of that was very much in my face, even as a kid. I related it as such. I would go to Disneyland and I would see it as a familiar thing from the theatrical standpoint, and it just was a place I felt comfortable and really loved being at.

Dan Heaton: So given just that interest, I mean, was there a point when you realized maybe not I want to work at Imagineering, but this is, I mean, a lot of kids including me thought, wow, it’d be cool to work at Disney, but actually really focused on it as I want this to be a career more than just, it’s a cool place to go?

Josh Shipley: Yeah, I mean, back to the theater thing, like I said, I wasn’t there in that whole 23-year span. My parents were looking to sell it and I mean they were just getting tired and all that kind of stuff. They were looking to sell it. When I was in my later teenage years growing up, I had that this is a trade. My father’s a director and my mom’s doing the producing and all this kind of stuff, and I’m like, this is what I am going to grow up and do, and I will run the theater someday. That’s the kid side of me. And then in those teenage years when all of a sudden it was, Hey, we’re thinking of selling this and moving and this isn’t going to be our daily life anymore, that’s when that panic button hit a little bit.

I’m thinking, oh wait, hold on a second. I think I was being kind of a lazy kid here thinking, I’m just going to stay in the family business. I mean, that’s not a crazy thought, but the idea that the family business wasn’t going to continue, I’m like, what am I going to do? It kind of seemed like a natural blend at that point where it was like, well, I’m either going to keep performing in some regards. It’s a good hobby, or I need to put food on the table for my eventual family, and that could probably be done through these theme parks that I love.

I do say theme parks in general because yes, we tend to put a big spotlight on Disney, but really it was all theme parks. I mean, growing up for me, it was not and universal, and going to the L.A. County Fair as an extension of more entertainment and zoos and all that kind of stuff, that became the, hold on a second, maybe I need to actually gauge how I’m thinking, especially when I’m having to think about knowledge in college and things like that. Theme parks became that pursuit and Disney really was that number one pursuit. So there were a lot of steps in a lot of years that led to that, but it was at that point of realizing that, Hey, you know what? I’m not going to have the theater as my playground forever.

Dan Heaton: That makes sense, especially just given that you did good to bring up that there’s obviously a lot of people that love Disneyland, love Knotts, and many go to Magic Mountain or so many other parks, but if you’re thinking, what do I want to do for career? It is a little bit Disney stands out in that way. So ultimately, I know you ultimately ended up joining as a cast member at Great Movie Ride in the early ‘90s when that park was only a few years old and was totally different than now, but really cool. How did you end up joining Disney and ending up doing that, which sounds like one of the better places you can end up as a frontline cast member.

Josh Shipley: Yeah. Well, you know what, this goes back to not monopolizing this time that we have together because we could spend, I get chatty and I could spend this entire time talking about just this one question you just asked me, and we don’t want to do that, so I’m going to try to shorten it if I can. But growing up in Southern California, you tend to, your life as a kid exists in a bubble.

The only thing I really knew about Walt Disney World was from coloring books and things like that. I knew Disneyland in a crazy way; I mean, it was obsessive even as a kid, but Walt Disney World, Magic Kingdom obviously in particular, it was like that’s on the other side of the world as far as I’m concerned. I mean, no kid’s going to hop on his big wheel and get to Walt Disney World.

That ain’t happening. So I just never thought that it would happen. But then I had an opportunity to go on a flight voucher of all things. It was the summer before my senior year in high school, and I went with my brother and some other friends to Florida, and that was my first trip to Walt Disney World. And I just remember thinking, it was like, this is crazy cool, and stepping into Magic Kingdom, and it was like, this is my fever dream of Disneyland.

It’s like, it’s familiar, but it’s not. Epcot I had a hard time grasping. It was so huge, and you’re there on a quick blitz of a trip, and Epcot is not meant to be taken quickly. You have to leisurely consume Epcot, which I was fortunate to learn later. So the part that really stuck out to me was at that point in time, it was Disney/MGM Studios being the name.

I was just enamored with it, which is kind of funny because I grew up in Hollywood and here’s this totally fake Hollywood, but it’s in Florida and there’s all this, and Great Movie Ride just kind of was this amazing thing to me because it was a blend of wait, live action, like a Jungle Cruise, but audio-animatronics.

If I can back up just a second, growing up as a kid, my favorite attraction at Disneyland was America Sings. And I’ve talked to some legacy Imagineers over the years who have been like, America Sings didn’t belong in Tomorrowland. I’m like, hey, as a kid, all I saw were all these robotic animals that could move to music. And that was super cool. Again, it was a theatrical mindset even as a kid. So looking at the Movie Ride, I’m like, you’ve got all these audio animatronic features and there’s gunfights and there’s fire, and there’s these weird crazy genres that you keep flipping in and out of.

I just came away from that going, I don’t know that I fully grasp or understand that attraction, but I think I really love it. That was me as a guest. So then by that point in time, the majority of my family had actually moved to Utah. We’ve had family there on and off over the years. They had moved to Utah, and I saw that they were going to be coming through the college I was going to for the College Program.

And it was at that point in time, it was like, wait a minute, I could go and work in Florida. The place that I never thought that I would see that I just barely experienced, I could go and work there. So I applied, and in short, that’s how I got hired is I went in and they said, I’m a theater major and I would really love to be on attractions, and I would love to be on a spiel attraction.

Most times, myself included, you going in, it’s like, whatever, I mean, you hire me, that’s cool. But in this case, I was like, I really would like to be on a spieling attraction, and you get the, well, we’ll see if you make it through. We’ll see, we’ll see. And it went that way all the way through, and it was like, you’ve been hired in attractions at Disney/MGM Studios. I’m like, oh yeah, I love that part. Cool attractions. And I get out there and I’m talking to management now. There was no specific assignment, and they’re like, okay, we’ve got this attraction, we’ve got this attraction this. And I said flat out. I’m like, yeah, but I’d really like to work on the Great Movie Ride. Even there on site, it was like, yeah, that one’s a little unique. You have to audition for that one.

And I’m like, okay, cool. I audition. I don’t mind doing that. What do you want me to sing? And they’re like, well, we’ll see how this goes. I did get lined up to be able to go in and do a cold read with other people, and this was right when we got there, but still, I had expressed the interest and the desire, and somebody fortunately in the timing of it all was listening to those words and allowed me. And I ended up getting put onto the Great Movie Ride for my College Program experience. Then you get trained in as a tour guide. Again, this was early on, this was ‘92, the park’s been open three years.

There’s still a lot of stuff that’s just fresh and new, and then eventually getting trained as a gangster, which was like a bonus even the whole time at that point it was the gangsters were males, bandits were females. There was that, and for me, I’m like, dang, I wish I could be a bandit because I’ve never looked old enough to be a gangster, but it didn’t matter because I got to do what I was enamored with when I was there as a guest. I got to have a gunfight with audio-animatronic figures and blow things up and all these kinds of things. I’m like, this is the coolest job ever. So I don’t know if that gets us to an answer for what you’d asked or not, but…

Dan Heaton: It totally does. Yeah, that was more, and don’t worry about being chatty because I always away from the recording, I always say, we’re never going to cover. I’m always way too ambitious with what I think we’re going to cover. It’s great that you’re chatty, so it’s all good. So I have to ask though, so then you get to work on Great Movie Ride, you get to be a gangster. Does the luster remain when you’re working on it? When you’re doing that over and over, is there some point where you’re like, I really don’t want to do this gunfight anymore. I just can’t. Is it still fun?

Josh Shipley: It’s funny that you would ask that because we’re talking about something way back, right? In terms of what I experienced, and we’ll cover this, I know a little bit near the end, but I’m involved still with theater. I was in a production, this is related. I was in a production of A Christmas Carol this last season, and over the month of December, we did the show 37 times; we’re double.

So there were a total of 73 performances, but my cast did it 37 times. And that is a question that comes up from a performance standing. It’s like, how do you ever, do you get to the point where you’re like, I’m just kind of sick of this and maybe I don’t want to do this today. I mean the human being and the reality of it. My answer to you is, well, yeah, of course.

So relating back to the Movie Ride, I just want you to know that there’s a performance mindset that’s in here, but relating back to that, there’s also, this is my heart and my passion. For me, from a personality standpoint, we all have those days where maybe you don’t want to quite go through all the steps, but there’s also a, I love this so much, and I was very fortunate to actually be allowed through the doors that I was pursuing at that point in time to not take it for granted.

So I really can say that I loved being there the whole time. I mean, yeah, you’ve got bad days. I’ll just reiterate that. Yes, you’ve got bad days, personalities may clash, right, or whatever it may be. Or a guest may be having a bad day and they take it out on you. But overall, at that point in time, I loved being there. And now as a memory, I loved my time being there.

There would be several of us in gangster rotation because of the way that the vehicles would flow through. There was one day where, and I’m going to say right off the bat is a no-no, but myself and another one of the gangsters wanted to see how many shows we could get in that day, which meant that the other two that just happened to be in rotation with us up there so that nobody’s getting overworked or hurt or injured. Were sitting back as the two of us were going down hijacking a vehicle. You get to a newbie, you go up, you get fried at the jewel, you run back.

You have to replace your blanks as fast as you can with barely enough time in that rotation of only the two of us having this competition to go running back out and creep down onto that porch again and just barely make it. We did get a stern talking to from our lead that day. We weren’t trying to be problematic by any means, but what we were doing was something that was brought about by excitement. It wasn’t about how many shows can I not do today? It was, how many shows can I do today? That was the kind of energy and excitement that I had on the Movie Ride.

Dan Heaton: And I’m not trying to pry. Oh, it was bad. I was just curious because having not worked there and stuff.

Josh Shipley: There’s repetition.

Dan Heaton: I think that’s really fun though, especially given like you said, your interest and how you were able to do it. So I know you ultimately reached Imagineering, but I know there were steps in between. So how did it go, the progression where you worked there, then you did some other roles and then ultimately were able to get to WDI a few years later?

Josh Shipley: Well, I did know at that point, I knew for quite a while that I did want to be a part of Walt Disney Imagineering, if at all possible, whatever that meant. I knew that I wanted to be a part of that. And even when I was on the College Program, the courses and classes that would be offered for us while we were there, I would always put emphasis on, I got my doctorate in management Disney style, but I would take all of my side courses In imagineering level stuff. The guest speakers would come in and present this week and teach this week, and it’d be about this.

And I always made sure that I was going to things that were Imagineering focused because that was my interest level, but I didn’t exactly know where that exact path would be. And yes, it was confusing then. Yes, it’s confusing now. I mean, a lot of people still ask, and I try to answer as best as I can, but it’s not an obvious path to Imagineering. So for me, it was okay putting together this resume of my skillset. I’m like, man, I’m still really theater and theater management based. I mean, if I’m not performing, I’m on the backstage side, management, tech, tech crew, all that kind of stuff. And one of my really good friends that was also on the College Program, Jason Hintz, he was on the Jungle Cruise while we were out there.

He had started working over at Feature Animation in Burbank, and he actually had said, he goes, a lot of the things on your resume are very much aligned with a lot of the things here at animation. And I’m like, I agree. Even if I were to start pursuing something over there as a PA or anything like that, I mean there really seemed to be this natural fit of your resume is going to get the attention of those at Feature Animation. So he was coaching me along with that, and I started interviewing crazy with Feature Animation. The way that it was happening is my interview would never be like, well, get out of here, kid. You got no future. It was, hey, you really should talk to so-and-so. I’m like, oh, okay. I would love to talk to so-and-so.

This continued on several different productions and over and over and over, and I’m just meeting with person after person and they would always say the classic question being asked in an interview, where do you see yourself in five years? I’d say, oh, well, Disney Imagineering. And they’d go, well, then why are you interviewing for Feature Animation? And I had say, well, because nobody’s interviewing at Imagineering, I’m going to start where my strengths will get me in. Well, I kept getting passed along until I’m sitting actually in the office of, at that point in time, it’s Vice President of Feature Animation, Tom Schumacher, who’s head of Disney Theatrical right now, but I’m sitting in his office because he was looking for an assistant, and it was supposed to be, I don’t know, 15, maybe at most 30 minute.

I don’t know if he was even a 30 minute interview. We ended up sitting there talking for a little over an hour mostly about theater. At the end of that interview he said, I think I’ve gotten to know you pretty good in talking to you. There’s a lot of relatability because of the theater side and all that. He goes, but I’m going to ask you an honest question. He goes, the job that I am hiring for is somebody that needs to do a lot of copy work, copy runs, stapling actually assistant level work. I need to know.

He goes, if I were to hire you right now today on the spot in that position, would you be happy? And I said, oh, I said, you put me in a bad situation because you just asked me to be honest with you. He goes, yeah. And I said, well, I would love to be hired. I said, but I wouldn’t be happy doing that. And he smiled and he goes, I know you wouldn’t be happy doing that. He goes, you need to be on the floor doing the work, getting your hands dirty. You need to be doing it. You need to be out there.

And I said, yeah. He goes, look, I’m not going to put you into a position that you’re going to hate. He goes, so let’s just stay in touch. I would say that was my door open to Imagineering, but it wasn’t. That actually just created, and this is going to be important, I hope at some point in our conversation that actually created a network of people and conversations that to this day, I mean, I still maintain conversations with Tom Schumacher even to this day, but it started this internal network within the Walt Disney Company, especially on the corporate side that I didn’t understand the value of at that time. But I’m like, oh, I’m starting to know what these people are looking for, how they are talking. I was asked a lot. I’m like, do you think you could work with eccentric personalities?

Because we have a lot of moody artists. And I would laugh, and I’d say, I grew up in the theater. I mean, I’m around eccentric personalities every day of my life, of every age, every gender, every race. It’s across the board. I said, I think I work with people on a very large spectrum very well.

But getting to know that kind of vernacular, so to speak, eventually became important as I was working with the Disney company proper, the actual foot in the door with Imagineering, even though I was telling everybody I see myself there in five years, my brother, my oldest brother is a scenic artisan, and he had been picked up at Imagineering doing just scenic artwork on various projects. And yes, I was jealous. I’m like, I can’t believe it, man. I’ve been wanting to work there. And you’re over there and the foot in the door, ironically, and it came from my brother.

He was working on a couple of different projects at the time, Animal Kingdom, can’t remember all the variations of names that went through, but Disney Fest Asia, which was a touring show that was being put together, they’re both being constructed at the same time at the North Hollywood building. He calls me up one day and he said, hey, do you think you could get here tomorrow? We could use some help. And for me, I’m thinking he’s doing the scenic stuff and I really don’t know. I said, do you think that’s, am I the right person? And he said, he goes, it’s just like painting sets with dad getting ready for the show.

And I went, well, when you say it like that, I could totally do that. He goes, yeah, do that. So the next day I’m showing up not knowing if I’m going to be there for a week or less or hopefully more, but that very first day I show up and I’m standing out in the North Hollywood sun out back fireproofing backdrops for either something for Disney Fest or Animal Kingdom. I have no idea. I was just fireproofing. And I also didn’t care. Like this is cool. I’m surrounded by a lot of really cool stuff that I can’t talk about. Well, I can talk about now because stuff’s opened years later,

But still the environment was, and I’m like, in a way, I’m working for Imagineering. I mean, I was, but still, I didn’t know if I was going to be there very long. And that started a snowball effect of one thing after another. And I would say from that point in ‘96 forward was 21 years of, oh yeah, totally. I can do that for you. Or I can’t believe I get to do that, 21 years of not knowing if I was still going to be there the next day or not. I mean, I’m leaving out tons of details. I’m just you and your listeners an idea of how that all came about.

But what was funny is within that first month of being there, and I only was fireproofing backdrops for a few days before all of a sudden being trained on figure finishing for Animal Kingdom and dinosaurs and all that, but I actually was reached out to by Tom Schumacher’s formal assistant at the studio, and she goes, hey, just checking up on you. Tom was wondering how the interviewing’s going. And I said, well, I’m over at Imagineering right now and it’s kind of cool and I’m having a good time and I’m working and it’s fun. She’s like, well, that’s amazing. Keep us in the know how things continue to go. That’s why to this day I’ve continued to have random little conversations over the years here and there.

Dan Heaton: Well, you mentioned that’s great that you were able to get there that way. I don’t mean through your brother, I mean just able to work on that and something cool ultimately the dinosaurs. So you mentioned just not knowing if you’re going to be there the next day, which I know is very common in this industry, but early on, how do you then build up and just take on additional jobs and find roles or how did that go for you? I’m not looking more for advice, but how did it go for you where you ended up being able to evolve from fireproofing to kind of a more permanent or specific role?

Josh Shipley: I don’t have the ultimate advice to be able to say, this is how you do it, kids, this is just how I did it and this is how I do it even today, if it’s something that you want to do, I mean, that’s one thing. I mean, we go back to the passion thing and being on stage and performances letter. If it’s something you want to do, then hopefully you innately have a can-do attitude.

I think that brings enormous value to the table in this industry or in any industry when somebody says, hey, we need this, or we’re looking for a way to do this. For me it was always like, oh, I’ll totally figure that out for you. I mean, I try my hardest to do that to this day, and my hardest days on anything that I do are when I am held back from being able to jump in and problem solve and be a part of the solution.

I think that’s what led to one thing after another; I mean, the painting of the dinosaurs was because silicone paint was new in the industry at that point, and a lot of the journeymen that were there in the building didn’t want to touch that because as far as they were concerned, it was a toxic system and could cause health issues. No, we don’t want to touch silicone. Then you’ve got this kid who doesn’t know any better who’s saying, I’ll totally do that.

That sounds like fun and it’s dinosaurs and that’s awesome and I’ll do that. But it’s the can-do mentality if you’re willing to say, no, I don’t want to do that. Well, okay, not only do you not get that opportunity, but there’s a possibility that you’re not going to have the next thing or whatever it may be. Hopefully you’re passionate about things that you’re saying yes to, but saying yes, instead of saying no, going to an improv theory, yes, and how can I help you?

How can I help improve this? I went from painting dinosaurs to then creating digital show production, which was in a completely new department to help with show production and bridging with carpentry and the scenic artisans with the paint and all that kind of stuff in a digital format. Now it just kind of seems natural, but got to understand not everybody had a computer, nobody had Photoshop. I had to bring in my own copy of Photoshop too and install it, but it was not only do I want to do that, but I can offer so many more solutions that maybe we haven’t even thought of. And that ended up creating an entire department, which ran under myself and then eventually some others over the years. Brandon, who you had on your show as even a part of that for a period of time.

Dan Heaton: He mentioned that when I talked with him. So for digital show production, you mentioned it that it was so new at the time and you kind of had a unique role. So how did that end up happening? And then I’m curious too, I know you ended up working on so many different projects. How would you describe a day in that job or how crazy was it because you were so singular in what you did?

Josh Shipley: Well, okay, man, I’ve squirreled my brain so many times already. If I think we can identify a level of A-D-D-A-D-H-D in a lot of us nowadays.

Dan Heaton: Yes.

Josh Shipley: Growing up, that was not an identifiable thing. It was, you are more trouble than that one to varying degrees. The reason I say that is because I felt like a typical day in this digital show production capacity, which I was in the process of creating and working with and collaborating with so many people on it felt like that. It felt like my ADD sides that would happen.

But on a professional work day in and day out where it was, I’m spinning so many plates one after another and doing everything I can to try and meet these deadlines, but at the same time trying to create the process because we haven’t done this before. And Bruce Gordon suggested this and I said, wow, I bet you we could do that if we tried this. Then having to work under a deadline to have that happen or, I mean, there’s so many little examples and stories like that.

So it never felt like there was a calm cool day. It always felt like running in with your hair on fire. And then my wife and very young kids at that point wondering why I hadn’t come home yet, because they’re like, I haven’t put out the fires yet. But that also is probably a personality thing on my part because to this day, I mean, I probably got home earlier today from the theater because we were going to have a conversation. We were going to have the talk on the podcast because for me, I’m like, I’m still doing stuff, but building this department, you had some people, and I had mentioned of these disciplines before, but you had some who were like, yeah, this is cool.

Let’s find a way to embrace it because this is offering us tools that we’ve never had before. And then you had others that were resistant saying, we don’t need that. Why would we want this digital aspect in our life? You’re a threat to us here. And then having to sit there and start working on the negotiation with personalities in the artistic realm to say, no, I’m not here to threaten you or take your job. I’m here to actually assist you and help you with your job.

So there was a lot of diplomatic type of work going on in the building of this department over all the years. Then at that same time, I mean, we get beyond Animal Kingdom and we’re launching straight into both Disney California Adventure and Tokyo DisneySea, which you’ve got some people that were assigned and in their areas for which park, which attraction, which land, that kind of stuff. But for me, who’s supporting a show production entity kind of across the board, I’m spinning plates for both of those projects.

Obviously there’s budgetary differences between how those two projects came about and existed and having to tackle those kind of things. That’s the not fun part. I like being creative and I like being artistic and all that kind of stuff, but when you’re having to do all of the businessy paperwork spreadsheet type stuff because you’re trying to keep things going at a certain flow with deliverables and all that, that’s the not so fun part. I would always wonder what it was like to be on a project.

If you are working on Journey to the Center of the Earth and that is your one show, your one deliverable, what is that like? Because for me, I’m like, I’ve got my dry erase board with everything written on it, and I’m just doing everything I can to try to chip away at it and make everybody as happy as I can.

Dan Heaton: It sounds like a challenge for sure. Well, you mentioned the network though. How helpful was it that you were building or had built such a good network there with everyone? Because you’re having to probably convince a lot of people of something entirely new that maybe don’t want to do that.

Josh Shipley: Yeah, well, okay. So I do believe network and friendship and the ability to talk to people is important. It’s not something that all of us have. I would say I have, depending on who you talk to, it would be a surprise to find out that I have a very quiet, shy, introverted side to me. And to have to network and negotiate and talk and work through feelings and all that kind of stuff, it’s not easy. And not everybody likes to do that.

But I think something, I don’t know if it was theater being on stage with so many different people of different types, or if it was growing up in a family with six kids or I mean what it is, but the ability to have the conversation I think is the most basic step. I mean, even to this day, that’s something that I’m preaching.

I mean, I’m not going back x amount of years to Walt Disney Imagineering to this day; I tell people the importance of just talk if you’re confused, if you’re upset, if you’re angry, how many of these things could have been mitigated if all you did was say, oh, hey, what’s going on?

That is actually a two-way street too. I mean, when you say that to somebody, you have to be able to get a response from them, because I’ve been in too many situations in this industry where I will have no qualms over saying, hey, so what’s going on? And have the person turn their back on me and walk away. At that point you’re like, okay, we’ve got a problem. So the ability to network and all that kind of thing comes to communicating. It’s like you got to be able to communicate and talk to people.

For the majority of my years at Imagineering, I had inherited, I don’t even remember from who anymore. I had inherited this little two cushion couch that would go with me from office to office. And at my title and level, that’s not something that I get to have from the warehouse. It was because somebody who had retired or whatever said, here, this is yours.

But it became the place where so many people day in and day out would come in and say, okay, I just need to talk and have a seat right there on the couch. And I mean, this is from many of my friends and colleagues that you’ve already talked to up to my mentor who is Tony Baxter. He would come in and he’d say, I need to shut the door. And he’d shut the door and sit on the couch. I’m sitting there going, why do you want to talk to me?

But get to the core of what I was saying. You just need to communicate. And sometimes when people find out that you’re the one that’s going to communicate where you’re going to hear the words that they’re saying, but also say things back, you become valuable. I don’t mean that in a smarmy, insincere way. I mean, when your personality becomes the one that they realize they can talk to and communicate to, all of a sudden that network starts expanding unintentionally. But it does start expanding because you’re having these conversations and the bubble of trust is expanding too. I’m kind of talking myself into a corner on this one, but there just is an enormous value in your willingness to actually communicate.

Dan Heaton: No, I think that’s great advice, and I’ll take us out of the corner, but I did want to ask you about, you mentioned wanting to have a project or what it would be like to have a project, but I know you worked on Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, which was kind of a big step in 2009 when they did the new show, I believe new animatronic really updated, used a new head used, digital technology, everything. So how did that project go? I’d love to know a little bit about that for you, getting the chance to really zone in on something and use a lot of your tools.

Josh Shipley: Yeah. Well, that became a situation where over the years and working on a lot of bue sky projects, a lot of what ifs with Tony Baxter, I mean, I did mention that he became my mentor and he became my mentor in the organic sincere sense of this is my friend who is imparting knowledge upon me and I cannot do enough to receive whatever he’s willing to teach me.

That to me is a true organic mentor. And we had worked on several things and we had pitched several things, including a very, very, very, very grand Harry Potter concept, which colleague of mine, Jeff Leatherwood and I had originally pitched to Tony, and then it climbed through the ranks. And then several of the people you’ve talked to, Ethan Reed, Brian Crosby, Jim Clark, I mean there are many of us who had touched down on this Harry Potter project all through Tony.

Well, as we had gone through several of these type of blue sky type of things over the years, I don’t remember the day in which we were discussing Lincoln, but we did know that there was an imminent threat of the show not being brought back because the Disneyland 50th anniversary show with Steve Martin was running in the Opera House and had run longer than originally intended, which would’ve been that year of the 50th anniversary. And it was getting to the point where I was like, I don’t know if there’s much interest in the show coming back.

There was a little conversation. I know a friend of ours, show producer Jim Clark, he came in with a concept that he put in front of Tony and Marty in terms of like, let’s save this. But Tony and I sat there and started talking about what would actually anchor this in such a way that not only could it come back, the show that we’re talking about that could have come back was the show that used the binaural headset was a bit of a departure from what had been experienced since the World’s Fair, different voice for Lincoln.

The experience was more based on the headphones. So we sat down analyzing, saying there doesn’t seem to be a lot of excitement about bringing that version back, which is why the 50th show seems to run, but the 50th show is continuing to be cycled to an empty audience. So what are the solutions here? And Tony said, well, I’ve always wanted to figure out how to do the ultimate love letter to the ‘64-‘65 New York World Fair in terms of what was Walt’s intent with the sincerity of the message and why did it reach so many people and touch them. But we also had to acknowledge that there was a novelty in ‘64 of not having seen this kind of thing from a technological standpoint before.

Then there were things out of context in terms of even just the speech and attention spans. And we were saying, okay, so you can’t just rewind and go back to what Walt intended, even though there’s a lot of heart in that version, it doesn’t relate to this audience now. So we just continued to talk about the But what if. Yeah, so he got a copy of the script, and started going through and kind of highlighting things that he either thought were emotionally important and had emphasis or maybe out of context weren’t understandable as much by today’s audience or may have just been boring in terms of timeframe.

So he’s going through and he’s making those cuts and edits, and then he has me look at it and I’m like, I’m like, okay, yeah, I’m liking this. Read through this, kind of get the timing of this. So then I said, well, what if I build it? Because for me, I mean I’m a jack of all trades, master of none type of guy, but I do have a really strong digital multimedia side to me. And I’m like, well, what if I just build this?

What if I just take the assets that we have and I just build it? And he was like, okay, what does that mean? So we found this little conference room that was unknown at the time and eventually turned into an office, but at that point, no one knew how to find me. I could sit in this conference room, this tiny conference room and sit in front of the computer and work in Final Cut, and I had requested every audio track, every recording, everything from Royal Dano, everything from Paul Frees we’re even talking, the stuff that was done for albums, not for parks that were created in that way.

Every separated audio track we’re talking thousands upon thousands of files. I just started to build what I thought the show was. Now in those files, I had multiple takes as well. So people who are familiar with the original album of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, they’ll know Pete Doctor up at Pixar.

He’s one of the people actually who called this out. He’s like, he doesn’t say Ohio the same way. And I said, that’s because I used a different take for Ohio, which you realize this because you’ve listened to it over and over, and it’s like something’s not right. The timing’s not right. Yeah, that was on purpose. I actually went through the different recordings and I chose different takes that I felt like were giving us a different drive and a different emphasis.

I know this is all crazy, but I mean, just so you realize this is kind of happening under the radar. It was funded by blue sky, but it wasn’t a project that Disneyland had requested; it wasn’t one that Imagineering had said we definitely need to do. It was all just kind of the we kind want to do it, so let’s try to do it and let’s pay for it with some blue sky development.

And so it was still very unofficial. But one of the things, and this goes back to America Sings, that type of thing, right? Things that influenced me a lot as a kid. It wasn’t just America Sings audio animatronics, it was music in the parks, Americana, Epcot ‘82, I mean the level of music that was an Epcot when that park opened, the importance of music and song and all of that, the version of Lincoln that came out in its midlife span, they inserted in “Two Brothers” from The American Adventure as well as “Golden Dreams” at the end took out Battle Hymn of the Republic.

And so it was the importance of music, but also the importance of Americana. Since we’re doing this as a tribute to Walt in terms of his interest in Abraham Lincoln and that attraction in particular during the World’s Fair, shouldn’t we be properly putting emphasis on Americana?

So I pulled all of the audio then for America the Beautiful out of Circle-Vision, and I started working in musical edits through there, working in “Two Brothers”. Again, just trying to get in musicality in as many different places as possible. For those that know the attractions, I mean if you listen to the current in whatever format you have online or whatever, if you listen to the beginning of the Lincoln show, the swell of music that begins is from “America the Beautiful”. Well, it now feels natural to me because hey, that’s been in the Lincoln show for over 10 years, but for the longest time, we had the hardest time listening to the beginning of this cut because we’re like, ooh, that’s Circle0Vision. This is really hard to listen to. That’s the beginning of Circle-Vision, but it eventually became our Americana piece.

And then getting in, there’s a whole story behind getting Battle Hymn of the Republic approved and all that kind of stuff. At one point Tony turns to me and he says, I don’t know if we’re ever going to get this approved, but if not, at least we’re going to have the best version for us to listen to in our cars. Because I mean, we’re putting so much into this. Okay, I’ve given you a lot of story about that. Fast forward, yes, we got the approvals. Yes, things were pushed through. Yes, the attraction opened. It does exist. And there were a lot of improvements made.

There were a lot of stories I could tell about that one. But at one point when we’re sitting in that theater, and it was Ethan Reed‘s doing the animation on Lincoln, and he’s running things in there, and I’m working on timings of the curtain drops and working with Craig on the, who was our lighting designer, the proper moments when this needs to hit.

And I mean, I’m just doing the whole thing as a director because on this effort, my unofficial title I should say, was I was the Creative Show Director creating this attraction. And Tony turns to me at one point during all of this directing, and he goes, you are really in your element right now. I said, I really love this. And he goes, it’s just a theater. You’ve got your stage, you’ve got your actor, you’ve got your orchestra, you’ve got your lighting, you’ve got sets, this is just a theater for you. I said, yes, this really is.

And then kind of a melancholy statement, he goes, and the sad thing is we don’t build this kind of attraction anymore. I said, I know, because I was having a hard time at that point in time, I was having a hard time really finding where I belonged because those kind of things were no longer getting even entertained or thought about. But I was so glad that he even acknowledged that I was feeling that.

But then to have him say that, I’m like, you’re right. You’re right. It is my element, and you’re right. I don’t have anything to go onto after this. And to kind of prove that is we open the attraction, it opens on time, it opens on budget, it’s getting a lot of publicity from everybody and the Disney Channel’s doing stuff here. And I, there’s all this talk about it, and I go back up to Glendale and I go to the head of talent development at the time, I won’t say the name. He goes, well, everybody seems to be liking that. I’m like, yeah, it was really good. So where do you see yourself? And I said, I, I want to be on the track with the Creative Directors, essentially.

I just directed this entire effort. I said, I created it and then directed it. We opened it and he goes, no, keep your head down. Go back to the digital show production stuff for a while, which I hadn’t done for quite a long time at that point even. But it was so disheartening to me because I just went, you’re supposed to be developing talent here. I am just opening an attraction. I expressed to you that this is what I want slash, hey, I want to work on the Movie Ride. Hey, I just did this and I should be on this track for development. And to have the actual answer be no, no, keep your head down.

But that goes into a topic that I don’t want to explore, and that goes into just dirty politics. So I don’t want to talk about that. That’s not fun stuff to talk about on your show. But still it was one of those like, huh, that’s interesting. I thought you’re supposed to take steps forward instead of steps back.

Dan Heaton: No, I understand, man. I love that Lincoln show, and I don’t go to Disneyland as much just coming from Missouri, but I remember going in, I was 2013 or so and going multiple times, especially I hadn’t seen it recently and being like, this is incredible and wasn’t just great that it’s still there. And I hope it stays because I think it’s a great achievement for sure.

Josh Shipley: I mean, I’m actually surprised it’s been there as long as it has because it is an attraction that tends to get a refresh or a replacement. I know it’s not open all the time, but the fact that it still exists, and I’m saying this out there, somebody is like, ah, we just had a meeting about this today to change it. But really it’s like, I’m glad it does exist. We never were fooling ourselves into thinking that it would be playing to a full house. No, that was never the point. It was, you’ve got a nice little group of people right there in that center.

In fact, when we were originally talking about the process, I reached out to Bob Gurr and I said, Hey, can we talk about Lincoln, looking at bringing it back? And I just wanted to get your thoughts on it. He goes, yeah, let’s go to lunch. So we go to lunch, and the thing that I’d asked him was, if you could be involved like we are right now, if you could be involved with having this show be developed and come about now, what would be some of the things that you would pursue or your advice?

He didn’t even miss a beat. And he goes, take out seats. I’m thinking of the show. He is like, take out seats. That theater’s never going to house the people. He goes, make it a more intimate experience. And I’m like, you know what? You are completely right. I mean, we obviously didn’t have that ability to do that kind of a thing, but I thought it interesting because we also knew, hey, we’re never going to have this place packed. And for him, he is like, take out those seats. Make it an intimate experience. It’s like, that would’ve been nice.

Dan Heaton: It’s an interesting idea almost the idea that you’re at a party and Lincoln’s there talking to you or something. That’s a really, I haven’t heard that before. That’s Bob Gurr.

Josh Shipley: Right? Like I said, he didn’t miss a beat. It was like he had the answer immediately.

Dan Heaton: Alright, well, I want to make sure we get to talk a bit about Marvel here. I talked to Brian Crosby and he talked about how the two of you are really big comic book fans and used to just go every week, every Wednesday. And then he explained to me his experience of learning that Disney acquired Marvel and all the different emotions. I’m curious for you, it was a little later, but similar sort of timeframe, what it was like to learn that and then kind of adjust to that given where you were.

Josh Shipley: I mean, that was right at the crux of when Brian and I were working the most together is when that acquisition was made. So I mean, even the news breaking, all of that was playing out in real time with the two of us. And the initial thought was, huh. I think a lot of people went through this. The initial thought was Marvel. That’s interesting how that plays for Disney, but that’s about the extent of how we talked about it. Because the two of us immediately went to what are some of the cool things that we get to do now.

Especially as comic book nerds who are going to House of Secrets every single week and buying our books. And I mean, it’s the routine over and over. Even before this point, before the Marvel acquisition, Brian and I had worked on a concept that we pitched to Disney publishing in New York to do a comic book series. And it was kind of met with a, that’s interesting. Let’s do it this way. And for us wanting, I was on story, Brian was on art, and it was for us, we’re like, that’s not what we pitched to you and we don’t want to do it that way. So then we took it to another third party comic book entity to try and get it produced there. And it was a little bit of a, we don’t know if we want to really get involved on the Disney side.

That’s politically dangerous for us because we already had some Disney contracts and that sounds iffy. So we had already been exploring storytelling in this way. We still have our pitch book that was created and very passionate about the story concept that we were running with. So then when the Marvel acquisition came along, that became an immediate, oh boy. And I will say, I mean this is going from point A to point Z in our conversation, but what eventually became of all of that was the Disney Kingdoms Series by Marvel.

Those stories are not precisely what we had done in our pitch book and had done those years before, but in terms of, for me, it’s like shepherding story through all of those books and the throughput with the characters and all of that. My ulterior motive, and it wasn’t ulterior that our buddy David Gabriel at Marvel was always aware of the fact that I wanted this stuff to tie together and thread together and be a part of a cohesive story. But there was always an end game that we never got to. And that end game is actually the story that Brian and I had pitched all those years before.

Dan Heaton: Well, I think it’s really cool. Those even, I mean, I know it didn’t totally hit what you wanted to do, but just all of those, the Seekers of the Weird and the Figment and Dream Finder comics and then…

Josh Shipley: We’re proud of ’em. We love those books.

Dan Heaton: They’re really cool. Even looking through knowing what’s happened with Imagination and that pavilion and looking through those, and it’s almost like my brain is like, I can’t believe they made this. They got this. This is incredible. The steam punk and the whole deal, I’m not kidding you. It was like a fan art.

Josh Shipley: We can’t believe that we made that either. And on those early books, Jim Clark was with us producing and then eventually Jim split off and went and has ended up producing and creating amazing things for Fantasyland in Tokyo and all that kind of stuff. But he was replaced by Andy Digenova, who’s now over with Universal and stuff, and Tom Morris was with us along the journey.

It’s a fun story to tell because we kind of had to play it careful because for one, why should Imagineering be pitching or making comic books, a lot of people have that opinion of I don’t get it. Why are you guys doing this? You’re wasting your time. Our original pitch for the concept of wanting to do this at all beyond getting the approval through Joe Quesada on the Marvel side, it was to Tom Staggs and I paraphrase the conversation in the pitch, but it was as simple as, so Marvel’s going to have artists do the books.

They’re going to hire writers, they’re going to pay to print the books, and we guide it along and it’s credited with Imagine Hearing’s help. Like yes. He goes, I see no risk in that. Go for it. It was kind of that simple. Again, I have to paraphrase, but it really was that kind of a thing where with Tom Staggs, he’s like, I don’t see there being a risk in this. He goes, if Marvel’s willing to actually put their muscle behind it, then you guys get your brains involved and you’ve got my blessing. I’m like, sweet.

But then we had to get the approvals through things because you had a lot of things out there that people want to immediately go to. It’s like Haunted Mansion. Everybody wants to go to Haunted Mansion. It’s the first one they all want to go to because we all love Haunted Mansion or Pirates of the Caribbean.

Well, yeah, but there’s all of these, we want right up front. And that gets back into some political stickiness because now you’re not just treading on ownership within Imagineering of people who want to be involved with certain things like a Haunted Mansion. But then you’ve got it further. You’ve got the studio’s involvement with things, and we’ve got this footprint out there with this and we’ve got this. And so right off the bat it was the, yeah, well, what if we do something a little more obscure? Brian Crosby and Jim Clark had worked on a little development previously on some Museum of the Weird notions we’re like, what if that’s the direction we’re able to go? And it really was just the right piece that was under the radar to have people go a Museum of the Weird whatever. I’m not going to lie.

Little bit of our intention was to get some of the people who would normally have those alarms go off, lose some interest, but to have the hardcore fans go, hold on a second. Wait, what is this? Unfortunately that did happen. Now the name, we weren’t able to call it Museum of the Weird because of an actual Museum of the Weird location in Texas somewhere. So we talked about the, well, the names. We finally landed on Seekers of the Weird, I gave a big passionate pitch about giving it a Wonderful World of Disney type of moniker. Let’s connect these. I like the connected universe thing.

I’m a fan of all of that kind of storytelling, but I said, Walt would say, Wonderful World of Disney this week we’re talking about Tomorrowland, dah, dah, he said, but everything always sat on the shelf under Wonderful World of Disney. And that’s where we landed on calling everything Disney Kingdoms. So everything would sit on the shelf as a Disney Kingdoms series book and then categorize under that. But to your point about I can’t believe this is getting done. I mean Museum of the Weird, okay, great.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, no brainer.

Josh Shipley: We knew that somewhere along the way we knew that we wanted to try and get something done with Figment and Dream Finder, but we didn’t know how comfortable do we need to be in this process? How much success do we have to find? And it was David at Marvel who’s like, let’s have that be our next title. We’re like, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to get that approved or not.

The meeting we had on that where we pitched it to a high ranking executive who I have not mentioned in any capacity and won’t ever made eye contact with us and was looking at their computer and their phone the entire time as we were presenting the idea of the Figment series and celebrating Imagination and creativity and the genesis, and it’s going to have this cool vibe to it and it’s going to steampunk and all that kind of stuff, no eye contact. And at the end it was kind of just a, believe me, I have no idea where the distractions were, but the distractions were in our favor.

I can tell you that much because it was like a, yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds great. We walked out of there and we did get one apology from a different executive saying that was a really odd thing, but for us it was more like high fives under the table going, hey, we just got Figment green lit, which typically would not have happened. And Figment gets released and is huge, massive sales. I mean, they’re selling out one print after the next just boom, boom, boom, boom. They can’t keep ’em in stock. They’re selling ’em in parks and they’re going like crazy. And we had already gone into pre-production by that point on Big Thunder Mountain, but even David of Marvel’s like, we need to do another Figment.

We’re like, you don’t have to convince us of that. We’ll do another Figment. But it was something that I think eventually helped the bigger brand of who Figment is to Epcot, because there was some waning interest just in terms of even how consumer products was able to push the character. And now you go to Food and Wine Festival and then Flower and Garden and all these different things, and there’s so much Gigment that’s present and can’t help but just smile a little bit and go, I hope that the comic book opened up that accessibility.

Dan Heaton: Well, I know there’s a lot to cover with your roles at Marvel. The thing that really interests me too is when they announced that Joe Rohde was going to be involved with Mission Breakout, I love Joe Rohde, Animal Kingdom, Aulani, so much cool stuff, but I never really thought, oh, that’s going to connect well to Marvel, but it ended up being so cool. So I know you had some workings directly with him. How did that go with Joe being involved in Marvel and then working with them on that?

Josh Shipley: It’s funny you should ask. I do have a direct story about that. Like I said, when the acquisition was announced, there weren’t that many that were supportive. Barely a handful of us comic book nerds who were wearing the t-shirts and displaying our nerd with pride and posting every summer from San Diego and just, it’s the nerd that we are. It’s the geek that we are.

There weren’t that many who were openly excited and onboard with the idea of Marvel. We knew that would eventually change because of the things that we knew in working with Marvel, both from entertainment side in New York and studio side in Burbank. We knew that, I mean, it seems like a long time ago now, but in looking at the timeline of events, we knew that once the Avengers hit, there would probably be a bit of a change in attitude.

And when I say change in attitude, I had direct confrontational negative remarks made to me because of my supportive for Marvel in my office, people that would come to me because I was a banner, not a Hulk Banner, but I was a beacon of the nerdom, and they would tell me about how awful this is, but we knew that would change based on what was in development and how things were being treated. Eventually the Joe Rohde announcement happens. Joe is seen as, yes, the Animal Kingdom guy, or as Joe would say it, oh, the earring guy.

But he’s got his eccentricities and wild big talking about things, and he’s just smart on these cosmic levels of things that he says to the point where you go, I don’t know what he said, but I feel smart because of it. He gets assigned to Marvel, and for me, I’m like, I’m still not clearly 100% defined on specific projects at this point, but I have been involved with a lot of the Marvel stuff.

So I asked if I could sit down and have a one-on-one with him. I believe it was the day of the announcement. So he and I sat at a table and I said, here’s the reason why I would be important to your team on Marvel. And he told me, he goes, look, I have no idea what I’m doing with it yet because this is brand new, but I agree you’re my Marvel guy. I said, well, I mean I am a Marvel guy.

And he goes, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. He goes, but I agree, you should be involved with this. So that’s kind of what started that. And it was because we’ll go back to this communication thing. I could have sat back and said, well, I haven’t worked with Joe on a ton of stuff. Mostly worked with Tony on stuff, but not Joe on a ton.

I mean, he knows who I am, but I could have hemmed and hawed, but instead I sat down and I said, I really think I could be an asset to you on this. And fortunately he agreed. That opened up doors into the things that we were constantly in conversation about with which, well, Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout being the big one that Joe was a key figure on.

But all of that came about in that time, but it was also still, there was so much going on in trying to figure out what does this mean to parks? There’s stuff that I still can’t really openly talk about that Crosby and I worked on that the company’s aware of, but what does this mean to the parks? And Joe was right there in the middle of that. So in that first few days, quite literally those first few days of him doing this, I said, okay, we’ve got San Diego Comic-Con coming up soon and I think it might be to your benefit to go if you’re interested.

He goes, cool, let’s go. For me. I’m like, look, I kind of just threw it out there going no matter what, I always go. But then it became this, oh wait, Joe just didn’t even hesitate. He said, yes, let’s go to Comic-Con. And then my Comic-Con for that summer became making sure Joe is having a good time and meeting the right people and walking around.

I was so nervous that first day, because I’ve said this to a few friends before, I was so nervous because here I am just wanting to be with all my sweaty geek friends in San Diego. And I’m like, oh, now I’ve got to make sure that Joe is not hating me for pulling him into this situation with 130,000 people in the convention center, blah, blah, blah. When he first gets there, we walk into the exhibit hall, we’re in there less than five minutes, maybe five minutes just happens to be right where we’re at.

He points over at this artist that’s signing at this table and he goes, is that Jimmy Steranko? And then he boom, takes off, beeline goes to get in line to actually meet the guy, not to necessarily buy anything. He just needed to meet one of his favorite artists. I’ve got the pictures now of him gushing over him and smiling and shaking his hand. But I’ll say it was within those first few minutes where he reacted that I felt at ease and went, oh, this is going to be okay if he’s acting that way about Jimmy. Like, we’re fine. And we ended up having a really fun Comic-Con that summer. We were also repping Disney Kingdoms that same summer while we were there. So it ended up being a good fun relationship during that Marvel period with Joe.

Dan Heaton: That’s awesome to hear. Just because, yeah, I mean the results speak for themselves and it shouldn’t surprise me just knowing how he is on Instagram and everything where he’s just, it could be any topic, and I’m just like, okay, I’m going to set aside 15 minutes to read this and everything. And he’s like that for everything. Well, I want to make sure and mention you ultimately did leave Disney and move on to become Chief Creative Officer at Evermore Park, which I talked to Josh Steadman about this.

He had worked on it. And I’m very interested in just the idea of this park and just it being so different than it’s not that different from a lot of immersive theater and things, but it’s to the next level. So I’d love to hear a little bit about how you got involved and ended up there and then kind of what it was like to work in such a different type of place.

Josh Shipley: I mean even to this day, it’s hard to figure out how to talk about what is Evermore. I can definitely talk about what I created in the process of being there, but even in coming on board, it was not sure what this is. And since leaving, I look back on things that I’ve seen that are there and I’m like, I don’t know what that is, but I feel the same way.

But I can talk about what I did and I’m really actually quite happy what I did. That’s great. You talk about Steadman, he was working up here and I mean, we knew each other through Imagineering, even though he was on Shanghai, and I still knew him through Brian Crosby, but he was up here working and he wasn’t in deemed entertainment or entertainment anymore. And so I was able to bring him in early on with our show set design, which I’m really glad that he was here because here I am coming out of Disney and thinking of the way that we would fabricate and do things.

I know that in Utah, that’s not the same thing. We’re used to having the things within the creative environment of Hollywood and all that kind of stuff, and that stuff wasn’t here anymore. So it was really nice to have Steadman be here and to have his expertise on those matters, especially when it’s like we needed to be scrappy with how we were doing stuff. And he’s like, okay, I can do that. I can figure this out. Then he would.

But the way I got involved was my daughter actually came up to Utah and was going to BYU for college, and this was going back even further. I used to rattle this off and I would know, but I think it was in 2015 where she went to this Halloween haunt and she called me and she’s like, this is really crazy. She’s like, I haven’t seen anything like this before.

I mean, it’s a H, but it’s kind of like the Ren faire. It’s got this sense of adventure. And they gave me these cards and she was saying, I think you’d really love this. I’m like, I don’t know what you’re even talking about right now. I mean, I’m trying to grasp it, but the fact that my daughter, she loves all the things I love, and the Halloween, she had me there. I’m like, okay, theme parks. Okay, okay, interesting.

So that was the first introduction was somebody did a fun haunt. And Utah actually does a lot for Halloween. There are a lot of backyard businesses, fields, factory haunts, they’re all over the place. And so for me, I’m just like, okay, this just sounds like it was a big fun haunt and I wish I could have seen it. I tried doing a little research on it, could barely find anything at all.

So then fast forward Christmas 2016, daughter comes home, we drive her back up to school and spend New Year’s in Utah and on a whim, and I literally mean on a whim, it’s like, hey, what was that thing you went to tells me Evermore? And I’m like, okay. And so looking it up, and I finally found the right information on LinkedIn for the guy who was creating this, and it said something about how it was being revitalized and talked about again, but still not a lot of information.

I will tell you, theme park curiosity was one thing, and to be 100% honest, boredom in cold Utah at New Year’s was another thing. I’m like, we brought you up. Just go and I don’t know what I’m going to do. So I sent a note out to the guy on LinkedIn and I said, hey, I’m just bringing my kid back to school, wondering if I could hear more about what it is that you did.

I get an email back, says, yeah, I would love to talk for a half hour. Come on over, gives me the address. I’m like, okay, still don’t have any idea what it is that we’re talking about or I just was curious, sit down and talk. Talked for more than a half hour, talked for a long time, gave me kind of the idea of, hey, it was going to start as this big huge theme park thing.

We built a model for it, we were showing it at Salt Lake, all that kind of stuff. Budgetarily, it’s now scaled down to a garden park that we’re going to be doing. And I had a lot of questions just because I’m a theme park guy. Oh really? Utah. It’s cold right now. I hate being in the cold. How’s that going to exist? Oh, people love the cold. They live in Utah.

They exist in the cold. Oh, okay. If you say, so what are you going to do the rest of the year? Because everything you’re pitching is Halloween. Oh, we’ve got plans for everything that’s going for the rest of the year. Oh, cool. Alright. I mean my curiosity has peaked for sure, and even though I didn’t grasp entirely what it was, it was like you’re building something in a market that has tons of family, lots of kids, tons and tons and tons and tons of people in the state of Utah traveled to Disneyland year round. I mean, it’s a known pilgrimage out of Utah to go and hang out at Disneyland all year. So for me, I’m thinking it’s a smart market. I’m like, this is really cool. I wish you the best. And we, I’m walking on, he says, are you under contract with Disney?

And I said, no. And right at that time I had been in a transitional phase where they had put me under franchise to work with Marvel and franchise was a weird entity for me to work with from a business standpoint. I was under all of this creative development for so long and all of a sudden I’m sitting under this structure franchise. So I was literally a lost brain at that point in time.

I’m like, I’m not under any contract. He goes, let’s keep this conversation open. Long story short, by that end of that summer starting to go into the fall, we were relocating, moving to Utah because I had been offered and accepted to the role of Chief creative Officer to build this evermore park. And yes, I mean still head scratch or a little bit because it was like, I mean there’s a lot that sounds intriguing, but also it was, I think I can bring a lot to this, especially when it comes to the not knowing what you are, meaning we go back to the saying how much I love being a problem solver.

It’s like, look, if we need to figure out how to patch this gap in the calendar and figure out what this means, I like doing that kind of stuff from a creative standpoint. Well, what that became was taking the intended haunt. And I will say I do keep using the word haunt because that is what the person, that is what they envisioned as a haunt. It’s what they were used to and it’s what they wanted.

But taking this intended haunt and turning it into a year round thing that had purpose and story and character and all that kind of stuff. Joe Rohde actually did come up at one point and did visit while I was there, and he pulled me aside at one point and he said, was this park built to be a haunt? And I started laughing and I said, yes. And he goes, it’s linear.

He goes, everything about it is a singular path that leads you through. And I said, yes, that is actually correct. That is what the development and the vision was for it. And I said, my job has been trying to expand it above and beyond that. So my whole thing was coming in and turning it into living theater, which was actually my youngest son. When I was explaining to him the intent of what I wanted to do with the actors and the improv and all that kind of stuff, he said, he goes, oh, you want to create living theater? And so after that point, I was like, that’s always how I referred to it was like living theater, okay, you are correct because we have people on the stage and all this kind of stuff. So that was from 2017 to 2019, we opened in 2018.

It was all about the creating characters and story in place that seemed to have some level of purpose and was not a linear haunt. The first weekend we opened, okay, I am going tell you a little bit of our rehearsal process to give you some insight on that very first Halloween season, which we did open in 2018, the driving intent from the owner was again a linear haunt, very much so.

It was, you’re going to start here. I want somebody to greet people and put on a little bit of a theatricality, and then they’ll go through because they’re about to get boo scared one place after another. And we had hired all of these actors to be different things, vampires and witches and all these different kinds of things. And we were rehearsing in a city park because the park, evermore park was still under construction.

We would be rehearsing and we would set up points in the park. This tree represents the mausoleum and this frisbee over here represents the fountain and this. And we would say, okay, we’re double cast at this point. We’re double cast. We’re going to run through one cast guests, the other cast you’re on, so you come across the vampires and blah, blah, blah.

They try to get some dialogue and be a little chatty in there the whole time. I’m saying, okay, I also want everybody to be prepared for the B show. The B show is nonlinear. The B show is if people walk in the gates of Evermore, they can choose to go left or right or forward or wherever they want, and they can choose to encounter whomever they want. And what does that look like because it’s all improv based on the character that you are developing right now.

That’s where they were all getting energized, like, oh, this is fun. This is fun. And you get a lot of the D&D types that were like, ooh, I know this world. This sounds exciting to me. So we would rehearse a show most of the time, and then we’d say, okay, end of night, end of rehearsal, let’s do a B show and we would do a free for all.

So we get to the opening week and it’s hay bales are set up all over the place making sure it’s a linear path. And okay, we’re doing a show and the guests that were coming into the park couldn’t quite figure it out, and they’re moving the hay out of the side and trying to not follow along, and they were confused. So I finally said to the owner, I said, you got to let me try this other version we’ve been working on.

And it was kind of a, well, okay, whatever. I don’t know if it was the next night or the next weekend, but I said, okay, we’re doing B show. And at that point it was no walls, people are coming in, what are they going to do? And it was a lot of improv, but there was no, what do we make people do other than tell them fun stories?

But there was an excitement to it, and that’s kind of where it started. It was the, Hey, you’ve got this interesting place with these interesting characters and interesting creatures and you can talk to ’em and interact with them and what does that mean? And we were trying to figure out what that meant. Part of my creative theatrical team came up with this idea of a bartering system with gold, and they found pebbles and rocks and spray painted them to actually be currency so that the characters would then all of a sudden have, if you do this, I will give you this.

And it started to evolve into that, and it just became bigger and bigger and bigger the whole time trying to figure out what it was. By that next summer in 2019, which was our Mythos season, I feel like that’s where we peaked because at that point we had reward systems in place. The characters knew what they were doing. We had cast only improv actors who all were rehearsing to interact and know each other and talked to each other in character forms and to send people on quests. And I mean, it really felt like it was firing on all cylinders, but without going too far into things under the hood.

Long story short, I think at the end of the day they still only wanted a haunt, and I was starting to get a lot of pushback. And like I said, long story short, fall of 2019, I drafted up my resignation and I left the company because it was not going to support the format in which I had created that format.

Dan Heaton: It reminds me of almost Skyrim or an open world computer game.

Josh Shipley: Absolutely. I did a lot of playing of Skyrim at the time.,

Dan Heaton: It totally does. But it makes sense. I love the idea, especially of the way you described it with it being so open and loving theater and it makes sense because you having the background with theater, and I know now you’re currently doing a role at Hale Center Theater, and I’d love to know a little bit about what you’re doing now and maybe just kind a related note, kind of what you’re looking, I’m not asking you for a five-year plan, just curious what you’re interested. I promise, very light, curious what you’re interested in right now or looking to do. Basically,

Josh Shipley: I wish I knew because when I actually decided that Evermore is not the future for me, we were literally on the cusp of what would end up being pandemic, but none of us had any indications that everything was about to go upside down.

So for me, I left and immediately was back on the phone and traveling and talking to Disney and talking to entertainment in the parks up at Disney, and I was heading out to Florida and I was talking to Universal a lot, and all of that in my mind was this is where we’re going, and I mean it shut down. And I mean, we all have our stories about what happened when all that shut down.

For me it was, I don’t exactly have any idea what I’m supposed to do because I’m a theme park guy. I’m a theater guy. The world just shut down and I’m living in Utah. I don’t know what to do. And as things shut down in the state of Utah, shut down and then started to reopen. One of those was Hale Center theater, which is a giant professional, beautiful theatrical venue just south of Salt Lake.

There’s actually some family history there. My dad actually used to perform with the founders of Hale Center Theater in California. He’s got old photos with them on stage. He dated one of their daughters before he was married to my mom. And so there’s actually this connection and I’m like, well, I do know theater, so while the world is hitting the reset button, I’m going to go and see what I can do at the theater. But at that point, I was still feeling hurt, scarred and betrayed by certain things in my professional life that did not go the direction in which I intended. So they hired me on to do a follow spot, and I’m like, perfect. I get to be up in the catwalks; I get to be in the dark; I get to be dressed in blacks; I don’t have to talk to anybody.

I mean, seriously; I was like a wounded animals that just wanted to do that. And I’m not going to lie, I was super happy, love doing spot. I’m like, this is awesome. This kind of goes back to many, many, many, many years. I’m like, I’m happy here. Then they throw me under their deck crew and they’re throwing me in the costume, and then they’re starting to find out, hey, wait, you did what? You worked where you built what attractions? I’m like, tried to stay quiet, but it was getting me to heal and open back up. And realistically it was helping me gain some trust back that I felt like had been taken away from me and things like that.

So now I am actually with Hale Center Theater in a full-time capacity, and part of their video team, right before they hired me into this role, they installed eight 4K projectors onto their main stage to do full projection mapping, which is still in install and developments and creative, embracing and almost feel like it’s back to the digital show production type of days where I’m like, you know what you can do.

So I was brought into be a part of that. We also oversee the promos that go out. So a lot of the little quick things that go out online for the theater, I’ll go out there and I’ll shoot ’em with Bobby, who I work with, and we’ll cut the videos together and put those out. So there’s that part of it. And then there’s archival. Just overall in general, being in the theater, it just feels so right. It feels so good. But it was a weird journey because it’s not how I thought things were going to be. So it’s not the five-year plan, but right now, especially as people are still trying to figure out which doors to reopen around the world, it’s been a good place to be because the theater is open.

Our main theater, our main stage is 911 seats, and we sell out almost every single show about eight shows a week. It’s huge. And this theater, I mean, if anybody if cares to look it up, Hale Center Theater in Sandy, it really is a theme park level venue. So it’s kind of this cool fit for somebody to me, like me to be able to go into.

Dan Heaton: Well, it sounds awesome and it really fits with a lot of what you’ve done, and I’m glad to hear that it’s going well, and that has been awesome. So Josh, thanks so much for talking with me. This has been so great.

Josh Shipley: Thanks again for having me on. Sorry, I just ramble and ramble and ramble.

Dan Heaton: Never. That’s perfect.

Just want to give a big thanks to Josh for being so generous with this time. It was so much fun to do this interview and also wanted to pass on thanks to Ethan Reed for helping to make this show happen. Thank you so much for listening.