155. Imagineering Roundtable with Ethan Reed and Joe Lanzisero

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What makes a theme park attraction connect with us emotionally? How do characters stand out when we’re zooming by them in a fast-paced dark ride? There’s no easy answer to these questions, so I’ve brought in two experts to help. Ethan Reed and Joe Lanzisero are back for an Imagineering Roundtable on this episode of The Tomorrow Society Podcast. We tackle these questions and a lot more about the world of theme parks during this fun chat. Joe and Ethan both studied character animation at CalArts and worked closely on classic attractions for Disney around the world.

We delve into why the characters of Mystic Manor connect with us as brand-new characters at Hong Kong Disneyland. Joe led this excellent project, and Ethan animated Lord Henry Mystic and Albert throughout the attraction. Joe describes the ways that we bond with these characters and understand their emotions as chaos ensues. It’s the perfect example of a theme park experience that shines on its own merits. Ethan also explains how the Monsters, Inc. characters were set up well inside the DCA and Tokyo attractions.

Looking beyond their own work, Joe and Ethan also give examples of recent attractions from Universal that have used effective character animation. The industry has expanded well beyond Disney, and that shift should continue based on changes during the pandemic. We conclude the roundtable by looking to exciting trends we should see in upcoming years. I really enjoyed talking with Joe and Ethan again on the podcast. Both are very talented artists who have accomplished so much during their careers at Imagineering and beyond.

Show Notes: Reed and Lanzisero Roundtable

Listen to the first podcast appearance by Ethan Reed in Episode 140.

Check out Joe Lanzisero’s appearances on the podcast on Episodes 75, 95, and 99.

Learn more about the Spirit of the Time Zoomcast hosted by Joe Lanzisero and Ryan Harmon and visit Joe’s official website.

Follow Ethan Reed and Joe Lanzisero on Instagram.

Note: Photos in this post were used with the permission of Ethan Reed.

Transcript

Ethan Reed: I think there’s a brighter future for theme park design now than there was two years ago. Because what happened at Imagineering, because a lot of people were let go due to the pandemic, and I think they’re out there now and they’re able to push the medium forward and competition always leads to better product for the people, right? So that’s what I’m excited about because there’s going to be another Mystic Manor. Is it going to be at Disney; is it going to be at Universal? Is it going to be at Ubisoft land; is it going to be Six Flags? Who knows? But that’s exciting to me.

Dan Heaton: That is Ethan Reed, who is back this time for an Imagineering Roundtable along with Joe Lanzisero; you’re listening to The Tomorrow Society Podcast.

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Dan Heaton: Hey there, thanks for joining me here on Episode 155 of the Tomorrow Society Podcast. I am your host, Dan Heaton. Hope you’re all doing awesome out there as you get ready for the holidays. I’m really excited to be back with another Imagineering Roundtable. These have been some of my favorite shows that I’ve done here on the podcast, and this one is no exception. Like I said in the intro, we’ve got Ethan Reed. We’ve got Joe Lanzisero, and they’re talking about a lot of cool issues relating to theme parks including character animation. Both of them went to Cal Arts to study character animation. Joe was an animator for Disney for quite a while. They talk all about attractions and animated characters, what makes good characters, how they fit so much cool stuff.

I’m going to introduce both of them during the main interview. All I’m going to say before we go to it is if you have not checked them out, go back and listen to Episode 140 with Ethan Reed, awesome interview. He was so much fun. Talked about all the things he’s worked on, and three episodes with Joe Lanzisero, Episode 75 and 95 where we talked about his career and then he was on the first roundtable with Don Carson. It’s so cool to have both of them back on the show. Two of my favorite guests that I’ve had throughout the run of the Tomorrow Society Podcast. So let’s get right to it. Here are Ethan Reed and Joe Lanzisero.

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Dan Heaton: Welcome to another Imagineering Roundtable. I’m really excited about both guests here today. My first guest worked as a show animator, concept artist, and more at Walt Disney Imagineering for more than 22 years, beginning in 1998. His career has included work on attractions like Mystic Manor, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Roz in Monster’s Inc. attractions, Duffy and Friends, and a lot more and is currently a character artist at Just Play. It is Ethan Reed. Ethan, thank you so much for coming back to the podcast.

Ethan Reed: Hey, Dan, it’s great to see you. Thanks for having me again.

Dan Heaton: Oh, totally. I’m excited to talk with you more because I really enjoyed our last discussion about a lot of things you worked on. And then my second guest started at Disney as a feature animator in 1979. Moved to Imagineering eight years later, was the Show Producer for Mickey’s Toon Town led the creative development for the Mermaid Lagoon and Arabian Coast lands of Tokyo DisneySea, led the team behind Mystic Manor, and then as a Senior Creative Vice President oversaw Disney Cruise Line plus the Tokyo and Hong Kong resorts. It is Joe Lanzisero. Joe, thanks for coming back for a fourth time on the podcast, if you can believe it.

Joe Lanzisero: No, really that many. I guess I’m having a good time. Keep coming back for more.

Dan Heaton: Oh yeah, it’s always awesome to have you on the show. And Joe, I wanted to briefly ask you too, because I’ve noticed that you started doing what’s called a Zoomcast, Spirit of the Time with Ryan Harmon. You’ve had some amazing guests on there, and I was just curious a little bit of how that got started and what it involves.

Joe Lanzisero: There’s a lot of great podcasts and Zoomcasts out there. A lot of them are by people that are interested in the subject matter, but I don’t know if there’s very many peer-to-peer kind of things going on. And both Ryan and I know and have worked with so many amazing people, some of them getting up there in age. Some of ’em I feel like are unsung heroes.

There’s a lot of great people that did amazing things in the industry, but it always seems like the same five or six are the ones that you end up hearing on these podcasts and on the Disney Plus and those kinds of things. And we said, you know what? Their story needs to be heard and it needs to be heard through the lens of people that worked with them. So we’re kind of sharing war stories in some ways.

So it’s been really great and I’ve got to hear, I mean, even people that we had Gordon Hoops, not very many people knew who Gordon Hoops was, but this guy had an amazing career at Disney and he was actually one of the first people I got to work with at Imagineering when I was working on Splash Mountain for Tokyo. My first business trip to Tokyo was with Gordon. But it’s great not only to exchange these stories, but to learn more about the things that they did. I mean, Disney has made so many parks and has made so many attractions. There’s so many great people out there. So our mission is to make sure their stories are heard, and in some cases, setting the record straight too. You’re not always getting the straight story from The Imagineering Story on Disney Plus and these other things.

Dan Heaton: Oh yeah. I mean, that’s the thing too, because I’m aware of a lot of Imagineers and a few, you talk with Rick Rothschild and Tom Morris, but then there’s others like you mentioned, where I’ll see a name and I’m like, I haven’t heard that one as much. And it’s someone who’s done so much. So there’s so many people out there as I continue to learn that worked on such important attractions and parts and lands and everything that aren’t as well known. So it’s awesome.

Ethan, I wanted to mention you being a creator, maybe the creator of Duffy and Friends characters that recently, another character that you were involved with premiered, which is LinaBell, which I’ll admit I don’t know that much about, but I think it’s cool that they just keep bringing out new characters that you were involved with. I’d love to learn a little bit from you about the character. I don’t know much.

Ethan Reed: Well, yeah, well, we’ve got Joe and Joe is the guy who started the whole Duffy Universe, so that’s amazing. And I didn’t join Duffy and Friends team until after I finished work on Mystic Manor. It was like almost immediately after I got off the plane from Hong Kong finishing up Mystic Manor. I was whisking to a meeting with Oriental Land Company.

We’re brainstorming new friends and we came up with Gelatoni, StellaLou, and CookieAnn in those meetings, and they, they’re all beloved by fans. People love them, ‘Olu Mel, and then excitement just kept growing. And then Shanghai Disneyland, they wanted their own friends. So we worked with the merchandise team in Shanghai and worked with all the partners’ sites. We had this whole Duffy family, and it was a really fun group of people, and we just brainstormed and came up with a character that people really love.

She’s got this big fluffy tail and she’s a detective. She’s always looking for something new. And something I learned at CalArts was you can make a cute character and you want these characters to be cute, but they need to have a personality and they need to be different from each other. We don’t want them to be completely interchangeable. So each friend that we developed, like Gelatoni is an artistic cat. Duffy wasn’t artistic at all. He learned to see the world through an artist’s eyes when he met Gelatoni, same thing with StellaLou. She’s a dancer.

She’s not the best dancer, but she’s always out there practicing, trying, working on her craft. And then cooking. Ann, she is a cook, she’s a chef. It’s so funny, we were talking when we were developing this character that every single one of the new characters that we developed, including ‘Olu Mel, he’s a musician, they’re all artistic. So LinaBell is the first one who she’s like’s really smart, she’s a detective, so she looks at things introspectively or it is like she’s the more logical of the friends, if that makes sense.

Joe Lanzisero: Ethan, I just got to say I’m listening to you and it enjoys me to hear you talk about the process you guys went through and that it’s story-based, because there are a lot of, there’s thousands of plush characters out there and they’re cute and they got the big eyes and they’re soft and they’re fun, and there’s a certain level of appeal to those.

But the fact that you build this whole universe of characters that is expanding, and I love the idea that you’ve expanded the universe but has stayed true to the core story, that they’re friends and that they’re artistic and that now Duffy sees the world through an artistic lens because of them. That’s fantastic. I think that gives so much more resonance to buying a toy. That’s just a cute thing. It’s a cute thing that’s connected to a bigger story and an individual story as well.

Dan Heaton: I think that leads well into kind of what we’re going to talk about today with a lot of the topics relating to character animation and what both you have done, which is bringing life to these characters, into these lands and attractions. I know both of you studied character animation at CalArts and ultimately ended up working on theme park attractions. So I’ll start with you, Joe. You ended up going to Imagineering a bit later after you’d been an animator, but what made Imagineering and working on attractions, how did that end up being a good fit for you to work in that zone of theme parks?

Joe Lanzisero: I think I’ve told this story before, I might even told you in one of our past discussions. I think different personalities work better in different roles, animation, at least in time. When I was doing it, and as an animator, it’s a very solitary experience. You would get your assignment from the director, you got your layout and you got your X sheet that had the timing on it.

Then you went back to your room, you closed the door, and then you would spend hours and hours animating the scene, then show it to the director. He’d give you notes. You’d go back to your room hours and hours making corrections or doing the next scene. So it’s a very solitary experience and some people find that very, very satisfying. Then at some point I got a taste of being able to sit in a story meeting and I started doing some storyboards and doing some story development.

Then I got to do some, I became a directing animator, which was more working with people. And I discovered I loved the experience and the energy you get from working with others, and Ethan will attest to this. Imagineering is a very, very collaborative place. And what you have to do in order to get those attractions built is work with a lot of different people, with a lot of different points of views, a lot of different disciplines from writers, producers, model makers, character designers, and everybody brings a little something different to the table. So it really fit my personality better, the act of working with others. And I think as I moved through the ranks, for me it was easier to let go of having hands-on control of things.

When you’re an animator, you’re controlling that little piece of that story or that movie. At first, when I started doing the show design as a show designer, I would get a little piece of the bigger project, but it was easy for me to let go because I enjoyed the process of working with people and knowing and really falling in love with the idea that there were people that were smarter and more talented than me and that I could still influence.

In fact, I could influence more by being able to work with people like Ethan that I just felt a hundred percent confident that, Hey, Ethan, let’s work on these characters for Mystic Manor. And wow, he would bring in the drawing and go look at that. That monkey is right on. That’s just what we wanted. Long answer to your question, but I think for me it was about my personality type. It fit what ultimately became a role that in Imagineering, that allowed me to work with others and enjoy that process of working with others.

Dan Heaton: So Ethan, why do you think, I don’t know how you can follow that up, but I’m curious for you, what made Imagineering a good fit? Was it something similar or how did it work out for you where your skills, like Joe mentioned, ended up working out?

Ethan Reed: So well for me was I thought I would follow a path similar to Joe and start at feature animation. I was at CalArts and I wanted to do 2D animation, and I loved going to Disneyland. My wife and I, when we first came down to Southern California from San Francisco, we had annual passes at Disneyland, and we would go every weekend and we would just, I’d bring my sketchbook and I’d sit on a bench and I’d sketch people in the park, and I would just have a great time doing that and just people watching and then go on Pirates of the Caribbean, the best attraction ever made.

So I would do all that stuff and then I’d go back and I’d up to Valencia and work on my film at CalArts, and I was pretty happy. Then I was almost immediately offered an internship to learn how to animate audio-animatronic characters at Imagineering.

So I thought I was going to have to spend 20 years at feature animation working my way up through the ranks. Marc Davis didn’t start at Imagineering until his late fifties, I believe. So for me, I thought to get to Imagineering, you had to be Marc Davis good. And I obviously am not, right, but what happened was I got in and it was because there was so much work happening because Tokyo DisneySea, because there was Arabian Coast and there was the Sinbad attraction, and there was hundreds of animatronic figures that needed to be animated.

So I was brought in to learn how to animate those figures. The way that you were recruited into the show programming department back then is you had to do what was called the three-day test. You had your demo reel, you had your portfolio. They looked at that, but then they basically threw you in the pool and said, can you figure out how to animate this humanoid animatronic?

And that’s what I did. I took, we had this CD and it was called Pieces of Eight, and it had ten-second clips of audio from different park performances. So I took the Wicked Witch because Wizard of Oz had just been released in the theater, and I love Wizard of Oz, right? Margaret Hamilton has such a great performance. So I just sat there and animated this ten-second piece of the Wicked Witch of the West.

And that’s how I got in. I was still at CalArts, and I was going in two days a week to Imagineering. I quit my job at the Disney Store, and Imagineering was paying me way more money. And I was like, I’m in the mothership. I’m like, I’m in Imagineering. I was so over the moon, and I thought it was just going to be a 12-week internship, but it turned into 2,000 weeks or something like that.

But I mean, it was fun and I got to animate, but I was animating these animatronics. And at the time that I was leaving CalArts 2D animation was starting to really not be as big as it was when I decided to go to school and CG animation, like computer animation with films like Toy Story that really took off. So this was a new frontier of animation that hadn’t really, some people had explored it, but it needed more work. It still does. So I went down that path, had a lot of fun, did really cool figures, but show design and art directing all those things that Joe said, I can do a garbagy sketch, hand it off to a sculptor, and they’ll make it amazing. If any of the sculptors I’m working with at my toy company here that they’re like, yeah, we agree.

Joe Lanzisero: In other words, Ethan, you enjoy, I think that Imagineering is a process. There’s a process that happens there, and you have to appreciate the process and appreciate the process to thrive there. And you obviously did both understood and appreciated.

Dan Heaton: That leads me well into, both of you talked about how you ended up in Imagineering and why that seemed to be good, but having that background in animation, I’ll ask you, Ethan, what about your, you mentioned going and sketching at Disneyland and all that. How do you think that may have made you a better theme park designer or just benefited you when you went to try to figure out how to animate characters?

Ethan Reed: Well, it’s like you see people, it was one thing that I’d like to do, and I used to do this in San Francisco. I had met, when I worked at the Disney Store, there was an animator, I don’t remember his name, but there was lots of animators on Sleeping Beauty in the 1950s. This guy who came into the store, and he told me, I was in the animation gallery, he told me, oh, I was an animator. I said, we got to talking. And he’s like, oh, what you should do is when you’re sitting on the train on Muni or whatever in San Francisco, take out your sketchbook and draw people as you’re going by because you’re going to get that quick read of what they’re doing. So this guy told me this, and when I’d go to Disneyland, I’d sit on the train.

Most of the time there was a berm and stuff, but you’d get to Toon Town Depot and things like that. Or you’d go to the train station at Disneyland and you’d see people and I would just do a real quick 32nd sketch and you just get the essence of what you see the people doing. That really did help for doing design for ride-through attractions. That pose going to read when you’re going by a moving vehicle, is it going to be a strong silhouette? Is it going to be that fruitful moment where everything is happening?

Joe Lanzisero: I would say that was probably the main thing I took away from animation as well, is that there’s 24 frames per second, and you have 1/24th of a second to when you’re coming up with a pose and it has to tell a story or at least convey a performance. You have to be able to think about how does the character feel by staging him this way? Is it going to really show off his temperament or that certain moment of storytelling, how that character feels? So you really have to think about it has to read really quickly and it has to breed really strong, and it can’t be ambiguous.

You take that same kind of thinking then and you apply it to when you’re designing a ride for the very reasons Ethan said, because in a movie theater, you have an audience that’s sitting there and watching something on a screen, but in a ride, they’re going by two feet a second, three feet a second or faster if it’s a coaster like the Snow White Mine coaster that you worked on, Ethan. So you really have to think about the economy of storytelling, being able to quickly communicate an idea and make sure that it works with the bigger story and that it’s not ambiguous and people know exactly what that character is doing, how that character is feeling, what that character is thinking, and how it works in the larger context of the whole ride experience that you, you’re working on.

Dan Heaton: How do you boil that down? Because I think about the best examples, you think Snow White, but then there’s other examples. I mean, I’m not picking on any attraction in particular where you go by and you’re like, I think I saw something it went by. I’m not trying to ask you just to go through your whole process, but I’m just curious, what is a factor that allows that feeling and emotion to really come out when you’re doing something like that?

Ethan Reed: Part of it is enjoying theme parks and going on attractions and knowing that if you’re going in a ride vehicle and you’re going straight ahead, the last thing you want to do is crane your neck and look over your shoulder. That is not comfortable. That’s not a good guest experience. And I’ve seen some shows where they’ll put a character over there and if it’s like when we did Monsters for California Adventure, Rob’t Coltrin, who we both love and worked with for years,

Joe Lanzisero: Another one of those unsung heroes, by the way.

Ethan Reed: He is a Disney Legend, though they did make him a Disney Legend, finally.

Joe Lanzisero: They should have.

Ethan Reed: But anyhow, when he laid out that attraction, he had to fit everything into the old Superstar Limo show building. So he was limited. So where Smit and Needleman are, it is a look back, but we didn’t put any functions in them because we knew it was going to be a lookback. But Chris Runco and I, when we were working on it, we put a portrait of water noose on the wall because water noose didn’t appear in the attraction at all.

And when you’re riding through, it’s like, okay, I’m going to look at these guys, but something has to be on this big blank wall that we’re staring at when the door opens. So we contacted Pete Doctor like, Hey, Pete, can you send us that file from the Monsters, Inc. film? And he did. We had a friend print it up and Jodi McLaughlin, our producer, put it in a frame.

We went out there with drills and just drilled it into the wall. That’s Imagineering, and that’s the type of stuff that I love. So I think for the most part, most attractive, I mean, nowadays you have virtual ride throughs. So when we were doing Mystic Manor, I would do quick sketches. Joe would do quick sketches of staging of these characters, but we got to look at it in the dish at Imagineering and pre-visualize the whole thing and make sure that the decisions we were making on the poses on the characters was correct before we were on the site.

Joe Lanzisero: In that one, it was particularly important because it wasn’t a known IP, it wasn’t based on a movie, but we were trying to tell a movie like story that had a beginning, middle, and end, and the character arc of the monkey really went from, he was curious. He discovered that he opened up this box and then the effect that box and the music dust had on him and everything in the mansion, and you had to see him go through this change of going from just kind of amused, this amused little monkey that, oh my gosh, this thing’s out of control.

I’m in danger. I’m going to get killed, and then I got to stop this thing and then redeem himself at the end. I mean, that’s a pretty complex arc of emotions. Ethan did an amazing job of staging him coming up the different poses in each of the scenes, so you knew exactly, well, in this scene, he’s curious.

He just popped out of the organ and he’s looking around and now, okay, he’s just poking at this big plant monster, but he doesn’t realize that the mom’s ready to eat. And so as it progresses, and we always talked how the monkey was kind of our surrogate, we were kind of being faced with all these perils and getting close to being caught in the perils, but the monkey was the one that was actually experiencing them. Because monkeys are so, it was easy to translate those emotions to ourselves.

We could see, oh my gosh, that could be me, but it’s the monkey. So it was really a complex level of things that were going on. But all going back to what we learned in animation about understanding the character, who the character is, what he’s going through, and then making sure he’s staged in a way that’s clearly communicated to the audience.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I mean with Mystic Manor, I would love to know too, because you mentioned it, Joe, that these are original characters, Lord Alfred Mystic and Albert, and to me, they stand out so well, and they’re so memorable, but I know that it may be more challenging. You have to do a lot of the things you mentioned Joe, and introduce them and explain what they are. But is that also kind of freeing where you don’t have all that story, you’re doing more, creating something? I don’t know, Ethan, for you, I mean, did you find that not having that IP or how did that end up working out where you’re doing something that for the time was fairly rare?

Ethan Reed: Yeah, it’s funny. I had talked about working on Monsters Inc. and for DCA, and that was the first time that I had been asked to do any art direction. So I directed all the characters and it was a very different, Disney had not purchased Pixar yet. It was kind of loose, and I could just call it Pete Doctor’s office, and he would pick up the phone. It was really cool. Then of course, it gets bigger and bigger, and then you have to go through more people and all that stuff. And I went from working on Monsters for California Adventure. Then I started working with Joe on Monsters for Tokyo, and then I started doing development on Mr. Potato Head, and then I was doing stuff for the other Pixar thing, Cars Land, I had started

Joe Lanzisero: Doing Cars Land, yeah.

Ethan Reed: Yeah, I had started doing sketches for Mater and how are we going to do Mater’s mouth and figuring out how he’s going to drive backwards, all that stuff. I was working on all this stuff, and it was funny because being from the Bay Area, it’s like I knew exactly what Pixar was; I hung out at Pixar when they were making the first Toy Story, and it’s like I felt like worked at Imagineering.

I feel like I’m working at Pixar and I love Pixar, but it’s, it was just like Pixar IP, Pixar IP, Pixar IP, Pixar IP, and then here comes Rob’t Coltrin and Joe Lanzisero, and they’re like, hey, we’ve got a brand new IP. In fact, we’ve got two, we’ve got Grizzly Gulch too. I’m like, I don’t want to be on that. So I remember talking to my supervisor and I’m just like, Hey, I don’t want to be on Cars Land.

I want to be on Mystic Manor and Grizzly Gulch because we’re developing something new. And as an artist, I had to have a lot more freedom. It’s like I wasn’t following exactly what was done in the film, which is fun and is a challenge. I found joy in it every time I worked on IP, but with a CG IP like Monsters, it’s especially today, it’s like, well, you can just take the digital data.

You can take the Mr. Incredible sculpt, have an animator pose it, and like, oh, look, there it is. It was something like Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. It’s like, okay, it was all 2D animation, and you look at the model sheets from the ‘30s and it’s like they’re not necessarily drawn the most solidly and stuff like that. So you had to go in and do a little design and update some things here and there and work with the sculptor. So that was fun. But yeah, just being able to develop in an open field, that’s what it was on Mystic, and it was just so much fun.

Dan Heaton: It really shows in the attraction, the fact that you were able to do that. Well, that leads well into another question I’ll have for you, Joe, which is both of you have been involved, you mentioned a lot of them so far, and just some of the really classic characters for theme parks, whether they’re originals or even they translate well from IPs to a theme park. So what makes a great character at a theme park, Joe? I mean, because it doesn’t always matter if they’re original or not, it’s just how do they work in an attraction? And it can vary a lot.

Joe Lanzisero: Whether it’s an established IP characters that, or whether it’s something that we created the characters for Mystic and for Grizzly and other things, it has to connect with the audience emotionally. You have to feel something about the character. I mean, there’s a lot of dark rides and even a lot of other attractions out there where it’s obvious that the people that design them, and there are even some things in some Disney park, some current stuff where I don’t feel emotionally to the experience and I don’t feel emotionally connected to the characters.

And the characters are your best device for emotionally connecting people to don’t experience. I mean, if it’s a cool environment, you can feel moved when if it’s very grand or if it’s dark or if it’s really bright. I mean, there’s certain emotions that you have when you’re in certain spaces too, but in terms of really connecting you emotionally to the experience, nothing does it like a character. And understanding that even when you’re working with an established IP, making sure that you’ve chosen the right moment from that IP.

When we were doing Monsters, making sure Boo was always engaged in something that you felt like either she was in peril or she was doing something cute, and then you immediately connected with her. Also, you had to realize too that when you had an established IP that not everybody came in with a complete understanding of that IP. So I always tried to approach things as I still had to think about that character.

If the guest didn’t know who it was, you still had to communicate how they felt or the way they were by the way they were staged, or the way you lit the scene so that the audience had a clue or a cue as to how am I supposed to feel about what I’m seeing? So for me, that was always finding how do I make sure that the audience is emotionally connected to this character or to this scene.

Dan Heaton: Another thing too is, and I’ll kind of lead this to you, Ethan, but is that we’ve talked about how sometimes you only have a few seconds or not very much time, so you have to make it really big. So something like exaggerating or caricature or something. So I mean, how do you go about doing that where it’s big enough, I could see something where it doesn’t seem like it has to be that big, but if it’s not, people will just blitz right by it. How do you go about doing that?

Ethan Reed: One of my favorite mentors would always tell me, keep it simple. He would always say KISS method, and his name was Andro, and I do remember we were working on Sinbad when we added the Hondu character into the Sinbad attraction.

Joe Lanzisero: I’d forgotten about that.

Ethan Reed: Yeah, no, and people love Hondu. I mean, Hondu is a very popular character.

Joe Lanzisero: And also on a good example of he was a device that created emotional connection.

Ethan Reed: Correct. And then also having the music, right? Because music, it always brings us back to its emotion and what happened on, I just remember walking through the Sinbad attraction, it was drained, right? We were reviewing animation, and Joe and myself and another animator we’re standing by the Sultan and Sinbad in the India scene and the Sultan or whatever. He had this giant crown and all this stuff. And I remember Joe saying, see, you make things really big. So it reads, and it was just like, because I had animated that character before in the previous version, he had just a little tur in or whatever, and a little tiny gem, and you’re like, okay, he looks important ish, right?

But Joe was right. You bling it out, make it really big and obvious you’re not going to miss it. So that one bit of review that Joe gave has always stuck in my head.

Dan Heaton: That’s a perfect example because I think about big moments. You mentioned even the Wicked Witch of the West where when she appears in Great Movie Ride and it’s like, whoa. But how do you avoid going too far with that though, where you don’t want to feel like you’re attacking the guest? I mean, what’s kind of the middle ground there? How do you find that, Joe, where you don’t feel like you’re going too much into it? Or can you go too far? Is it just it’s always good to be big?

Joe Lanzisero: I think it’s always dictated by the moment, by the story moment that I hate to continue to use Mystic. But I think because that was something that we created the moment in the second to last scene where the monkey is trying to regain control and the wall blows out. I mean, that was a big moment. You’re caught in this kind of tornado of the room spinning around. The wall blows out, the monkey is trying to grab at the music box and get it back under control.

So I think again, it’s all about what the story needs at any given point and trying to push it as much as you can. So in that case, it was a super dramatic moment. You really want, the monkey was in peril, you’re in peril. Basically what we’re trying to say is that the magic had gotten so out of control that it was destroying the mansion and that he had to pull it all it all back together. Answer your question, if it’s appropriate for the story and for the moment, I don’t think you can go too far.

Ethan Reed: Can you overdo something? You can’t over animate, right? You can make something overly cartoony if it’s not supposed to be. I had to, I enjoyed animating characters like Sinbad and the Monsters characters, cartoon characters. That’s what I enjoyed. Animating Hall of Presidents Abraham, I enjoyed because I’m a fan, I enjoyed getting to do it. My dad has great memories of watching Lincoln at the World’s Fair in the 1960s with my grandparents, and so it was an emotional thing for me to get to work on that. But I animated Lincoln when they did the Road to Gettysburg show, when people got haircuts and stuff, and that was my first time animating Lincoln. I’m like, okay, that was fun.

I didn’t need to do it again. But then six months later, I’m in Florida, reanimating Lincoln for the Hall of Presidents. I’m like, okay, I’ve done this twice now. And then I did it again in 2009, and we were really, I was working with RD, we were really trying to push realism and stuff like that, and it started getting this weird uncanny valley thing.

And me naturally as a cartoony character animator, I’m like, I want to have arcs on every single thing and I want to blink the eyes. It’s like I’m going to put in all those little tricks that I learned in animation school on these characters, but then when you do it on a realistic humanoid like Abraham Lincoln, he starts to look like a cartoon character. So I’d find myself doing my first passive animation on something like Lincoln, and I’m like, okay, I’m going to take those blinks out.

I’m going to take that arc out, and I’d have one version which was all super cartoony animation, and then I had to pull it back because you basically rotoscoping. So for me as an animator, if I’m going to do a humanoid performance like that, just put somebody in a motion capture suit. I mean, let’s be honest, Walt Disney invented motion capture for audio animatronics with Wathel Rogers in the 1960s.

Joe Lanzisero: Oh, that’s right.

Ethan Reed: Right. So it’s like Walt said to do it that way, so they should do it that way.

Joe Lanzisero: Yeah. Ethan, you bring up a good point about that. The uncanny valley. I think in the case of some characters like the presidents, because everybody knows these are based on real people, but then I’ve seen some other applications where human characters, they do a human character, and I’ve had to ask myself or ask why did they chose to take a human character where it could have been something more fantastic. I think there are advantages to keeping things more caricatured, especially if it’s in a ride, as Ethan was describing, and I’ve been talking about, you’re going through these things quickly and you need to be able to have that character’s story point pose, read quickly.

And when it’s a human character, often as Ethan said, it can come off kind of insincere looking or not authentic because you’ve had to exaggerate it a bit, but the cartoon characters are always great. You could always take them and put them in the most extreme pose possible in the Monsters attraction in Tokyo, the one scene where I think Mike is getting stretched and we actually had his arms eight times big longer than they would normally be. I was like, oh, that’s fun. You can do that because it’s a cartoon character.

Dan Heaton: That’s a great example. I hadn’t thought about just the difference in terms of a Hall of Presidents or something where they have to stand very still. But I’m curious too, I mean both of you have mentioned plenty of great attractions involving characters, but is there, I’ll ask you, Ethan, is there another theme park attraction or others from any Disney, Universal, wherever that really use their characters effectively that have memorable characters?

Ethan Reed: I think it’s the most recent attraction I’ve been on, and it won the Theo Award for Attraction of the Year was the Secret Life of Pets at Universal in Hollywood. And it’s a really fun show. It actually reminds me a lot of Monsters in Tokyo. You’re going down the city street and there’s just fun gags happening everywhere, really great queue; I really felt that those characters were done well, and it was intimate. When I think of our reach envelopes and stuff, on every attraction, there’s a reach envelope, which means a six foot five guy like myself can’t reach his arm out of the vehicle with an umbrella and hit something.

So you have to put everything so far away. So when you have a larger vehicle, that reach envelope just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Then you feel like you’re going through Costco. And what I liked about this Secret Life of Pets attraction is it was like a two seater, and it’s a little box that you’re in. It stuff is so close to you, and I mean, it’s up, the ride track is upstairs, the queue’s downstairs, you go upstairs and then you get in this cute little box, and it’s a really well done attraction.

Joe Lanzisero: Wow. I have to go see it. I didn’t see yet, but everything I have seen of it, I did the virtual ride through, I would say yeah, really, really good staging of the characters. And again, those characters are so caricatured too. I’m sure they had, and it looked like they’d taken advantage of really understanding how to pose them. But I’m trying to think of, I like the way, and it’s a coaster, Hagrid coaster down at Islands of Adventure in Orlando.

There’s not a lot of characters in there, but I felt like it was a good use of characters to help tell that story. And especially on a coaster and the really well paced coaster, they were able to stop it, let you have a little character moment then send you on. So I think that’s a good example of something that’s out there right now, and I think they did a good job on.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I think those are both great examples. And the Secret Life of Pets, it’s too bad because when it opened, it’s one of those that I haven’t seen, like you mentioned, Joe, you haven’t seen a lot of people probably haven’t because with the pandemic and everything, it just hasn’t gotten the attention now winning an award. That’s great. And then Hagrid’s of course. Yeah. I mean, I love the idea that they’re taking physical sets and putting it with a coaster, which we, I mean, we’ve seen that before, not as much from Universal, and same with Secret Life of Pets. I mean, it’s great that they’re doing this kind of really intimate dark ride, which they’re trying to do some things that they weren’t doing as much in the past, which I think is awesome.

Joe Lanzisero: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think both those are great examples of them kind of making a conscious shift to get away from putting people in front of a screen and shaking them and then moving them to another screen and shaking them, which was kind of the hallmark of a lot of universal attractions. Now, I’m not saying that’s good or bad, it was just whatever it is. And I think because video is becoming ubiquitous, it’s everywhere. We all have one of these things in our pocket and we can watch movies on it, and there’s movie TV screens and supermarkets. When you pump gasoline, there’s a video screen in front of you.

Ethan Reed: I hate that. Me too.

Joe Lanzisero: So you’re not kidding anybody. When you put them in front of a screen on a ride and there’s something, it goes back to Pirates. And I think it speaks to why Pirates is still to this day, kind of the high watermark in a ride through attraction in this complete, immersive, theatrical world. That’s all real. It’s real stuff everywhere.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I agree. I mean you mentioned characters, all the different characters that we spend a short time with and you don’t notice and all of a sudden you’re like, what is that guy doing? I haven’t seen him before, and it’s everywhere in that ride. It’s wonderful. Well, speaking of just how things are going and looking at the future, I want to make sure we have time to talk about this. So I’ll ask you first, Joe, I mean, looking ahead mean, what are you excited about with theme parks like developments? It could be technology, it could be how rides are going, parks, wherever. I’m just curious for you, what kind of gets you excited about where theme parks are going in the next few years and even past that?

Joe Lanzisero: I think I’m more excited about what’s happening in the bigger industry with immersive experiences. There’s a lot of stuff out there, some of it good, some of it not so good. A lot of these projected artist experiences I don’t think are all that great. But then things like what Meow Wolf is doing, what Dreamscape is doing with VR, and I think I like seeing all these kind interesting things being done the outside, and I think they’re going to influence the theme park.

All those things were influenced by the theme park. So it’s exciting to think about this back and forth that’s happening between all these interesting smaller things that are out there. Then what the big guys are doing. I haven’t ridden the Mickey’s Runaway train again, I’ve just seen it on video and it looks really interesting because they put you physically in a real cartoon world.

Again, that’s a kind of combination of a lot of the things that this projection technology and immersive sets that have projection mapping on them. So it’s all really interesting to me, and it’ll be great to see where it all goes. I just said, I just hope that it all goes in an area that allows people to continue to be emotionally moved by it and in a positive way. I think we have a responsibility in this kind of crazy negative world we live in. And I think especially after Covid, I think our jobs is to entertain people and to elevate them for a moment, to take them out of their daily drudgery and give them a moment where they can forget about all that.

I think that’s important for the designers not to lose track of that. And I think a lot of the superhero stuff and the Star Wars stuff, I think it’s interesting, but I think we’re in a world I think that needs, that’s why I’m glad they’re doing things like the Secret Life of Pets. Of course that kind of stuff appeals to me too. And I’m not saying the other stuff doesn’t have a place, but I would just like to see more uplifting and more positive experiences being created. And hopefully I can do some more of that. But we’ll see.

Dan Heaton: I’m totally with you. I totally agree. I think that’s a great point. So Ethan, what excites you about what’s coming in the near or far future.

Ethan Reed: Now that I’m designing toys full time now? I mean, theme parks are just fun. Again, it’s not the job. So I can go back to just being a theme park fanSo I love that and have not checked out Meow Wolf very interested in that. So many friends have gone to Meow Wolf, and I’ve only heard great things about it, but Secret Life of Pets great.

The Mario thing that they did in Osaka, I mean, I grew up playing Super Mario Brothers. My kids Super Mario, more than they’re like Mickey Mouse. That’s what they grew up with. So I think this next generation of kids or the people who are my kids’ age, they’re going to gravitate towards video game experiences. I know they just announced they Ubisoft theme park with, I guess Storyland Studios is working on. So that’s pretty exciting. I think Jim Clark is working that on that, one of your other guests, close friend of mine.

So I’m very excited about what’s going on with that. And I think the pandemic has, we’ve all learned how to do things differently. I mean, Zoom calls all that stuff. It’s nice to just get out into theme parks. It’s nice to get out into public spaces around other people that are hopefully vaccinated. And so I think there’s a brighter future for theme park design now than there was two years ago.

Because what happened at Imagineering, because a lot of people were let go due to the pandemic, and I think they’re out there now and they’re able to push the medium forward, and competition always leads to better product for the people. So that’s what I’m excited about. There’s going to be another Mystic Manor. Is it going to be at Disney; is it going to be at Universal? Is it going to be at Ubisoft Land; is it going to be Six Flags? Who knows? But that’s exciting to me.

Joe Lanzisero: That’s very generous thinking on your part. Yeah, I agree.

Dan Heaton: I agree too. I mean, I think about the IAPA announcements and things that excited me and some of them, there was something in Iowa in Monterey Bay, and then there’s a coaster in Georgia. It’s not just, okay, I’m excited about Guardians the Galaxy or Tron, but there’s all these other ones where I’m like, oh, that’s only five hours for me, or that’s only a two hour flight, or whatever. I think it’s great. So both of your answers, I’m on board with them. I give them thumbs up. Well, great.

Well, this has been awesome. I could do this forever, but I would love to know from you if people want to follow Joe, starting with you. You’ve been posting some really great stuff on Instagram. I start reading them and then minutes have gone by and I’m not sure where they went, but I’ve really been that. So anywhere where people can follow you or anything you’re working on, I would love to know about it.

Joe Lanzisero: Yeah, just follow me on Instagram. I’m on LinkedIn. I post on Facebook. It’s funny, I was never a big social media guy and I’ve kind discovered that it’s a good way, again, kind of to set the story straight on a lot of things that I’m at a point in my career now where I’m thinking a little bit about my legacy and making sure, again, I watch these Disney Plus things with The Imagineering Story and the behind the scenes things, and they’re not always a hundred percent accurate, and they’re not always giving the credit where credit is due. That’s why I’m doing the Zoomcast, and that kind of dragged me into this social media thing, just so I have a platform to kind of get my story out there.

Dan Heaton: Well, I’m glad you’re out there doing that to tell the story and just its great information. Well, Ethan, welcome back to the theme park fan group. Now that, but I’m glad to have you, but anything, you also post some cool stuff, but any way you’re out there, I’d love for people to know about.

Ethan Reed: Yeah, definitely on Instagram under Ethan dot F dot Reed and during the furlough. During the pandemic, I would do a drawing a day. I can’t do that; I have a full-time job now, so I try and post something once a week. I try and it is great. Fans will send me notes and stuff. I try to answer them; I really do. I learned that from Marty Sklar.

He would always hand write notes, and I don’t have a red marker or a cool paper. I already did, but I do have an iPhone, so I will do my best to chat with say thank you or whatever. But it’s cool to interact with fans. I mean, I got to go to Paris the first time I got to go to Paris. I went to, it was a Duffy summit. It was a Duffy thing. It was like a Duffy event.

So Charlie Watanabe, one of our key writer and Daniel Jue, who runs the Tokyo portfolio, the three of us went out there and I met some really great guests. And there’s this one guy in Paris, and he goes everywhere with his Duffy, and he’s just the best. He’ll send me little notes here and there. I’m like, it’s great. And it’s super cool. I just love connecting with guests and Duffy, which Joe and Scott Hennesy developed, and all the Gelatoni, all the friends I developed with Charlie and stuff, those characters really hit people emotionally. They love them.

They’re like their own children, and that’s really special. So I’m just happy that the work that I’ve done at my time at Disney and the work that I’m continuing to do at my new company, just play that’s going to just bring joy to people. That’s what I’m here for. I just make people happy.

Joe Lanzisero: So we are the most fortunate of human beings, Ethan, that our job gets to make people happy and we should never lose sight of that. What a privilege that is and a responsibility, and you don’t take it lightly. And I never took it lightly, and I still don’t take it rightly.

Dan Heaton: Well, awesome. Well, both of you, Ethan, thanks so much for coming back. This was great to talk with you once again.

Ethan Reed: Awesome. Thank you.

Dan Heaton: And Joe, thanks again. It’s always great to have you, and I really appreciate both of you being on the roundtable.

Joe Lanzisero: And it was great to be here with Ethan. I always said I always stood on the shoulders of giants, and Ethan was one of those giant’s shoulders that I climbed up on.

Ethan Reed: I was the tallest guy in Imagineering for a while.