114. Imagineering Roundtable with Andy Sinclair-Harris and Don Carson

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There are so many great stories about people working behind the scenes on theme parks. That’s been the focus of many episodes of this podcast. I also love the chance to talk about topics facing the industry. It’s the idea behind the Imagineering roundtable shows. In the first episode, former Imagineers Don Carson and Joe Lanzisero offered cool insights on a wide range of issues. Now it’s time for the second installment.

Former Disney Imagineer Andy Sinclair-Harris joins the conversation along with Don for this episode of The Tomorrow Society Podcast. We start by talking about exciting projects that each of them have started recently. Don has been working on a VR ride-through of the 1958 version of the Alice in Wonderland dark ride, and it’s incredible. Andy has started the Sorcerer’s Lounge podcast with Rob Yeo, and their first episode covers Tomorrowland.

The main roundtable begins with a discussion about unheralded Imagineers, including Sam McKim and Chris Runco. We also talk about strong theme park design outside of Disney like the Warner Bros. World and Silver Dollar City. Other topics include advice for designers aspiring to work in the industry, IP in the parks, and future VR possibilities for exploring theme park attractions. It was amazing to have the chance to speak with Andy and Don once again on this roundtable.

Show Notes: Imagineering Roundtable

Check out Don’s Alice 1958 VR Ride-through and other work by subscribing to his YouTube channel and follow Don on Instagram.

Listen to the first Imagineering Roundtable on Episode 99 of The Tomorrow Society Podcast with Joe Lanzisero and Don Carson.

Learn more about Andy and Don during their first appearances on The Tomorrow Society Podcast on Episode 89 and Episode 91.

Transcript

Andy Sinclair-Harris: I think there’s a really interesting market which Disney, I’d love Disney to get into, that if they could say, “We’re going to release rides that no longer exist, but still have a place in people’s…” If I could go on Delta Dreamflight right now, and if Disney wanted to charge me $50 to buy it, to have it as a piece that I could own, I would happily pay that and probably more probably, but let’s not tell Disney that, but I would love to see that.

Or a subscription to it. I mean, imagine that through Disney Parks Plus, and it’s something you can go onto and you can, as Don said, Disneyland, you go through, you cycle through at night in the morning, walking to an energy, you cycle through these things, watching the fireworks. And then Disneyland, you scroll through 1958 and you see how the park looked and if it was digitally recreated and then you scroll down and you have extinct attractions and you do 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and it’s a recreation like someone like Don has done where you can move around it.

That to me is, there is a huge…it’s still not going to stop people from going and doing the brand new attractions or the ones that exist, Pirates of the Caribbean in reality, but it’s a fantastic way to engage people from home and is a really great monetized way for Disney to utilize that.

Dan Heaton: That is Andy Sinclair-Harris, who’s here with Don Carson for the second Imagineering Roundtable. You’re listening to the Tomorrow Society Podcast.

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Dan Heaton: Thanks for joining me here on Episode 114 of the Tomorrow Society Podcast. I am your host, Dan Heaton. Back in the ancient times of April 2020, there was an idea to bring together Imagineers for a roundtable to talk about big subjects on Disney, theme parks, the industry, so much more. And we did it. Don Carson and Joe Lanzisero came in for Episode 99 and it was great. And we’re back doing it again here with Don Carson and also Andy Sinclair-Harris here for the second Imagineering Roundtable, which I am super excited for you to hear.

It’s a detailed conversation about so many different aspects of what happens with theme parks, underrated Imagineers, VR experiences of old rides, IP in the parks, the types of attractions we miss that we don’t see anymore, advice for aspiring Imagineers, so much more. Those are just a few of the topics. And I want to dive in and get right to it because it is a long episode, but in the best way possible. Let’s get to it. Here is the second Imagineering Roundtable.

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Dan Heaton: Welcome to the second Imagineering Roundtable podcast. I am thrilled to introduce today’s returning guest who have been on the show before. My first guest joined Walt Disney Imagineering in 1989, was the lead show designer on Splash Mountain of Walt Disney World. Also worked on designs for Mickey’s Toontown at Disneyland. He’s worked on developing concepts as a freelancer for Cars Land and Wizarding World of Harry Potter. So much more. It is Don Carson. Don, thank you so much for returning to the podcast.

Don Carson: Well, thanks for having me. This is always fun.

Dan Heaton: Oh yeah, I’m really excited. We talked earlier this year, you were on with me and then with Joe Lanzisero, and I know there’s a lot more for us to cover here, some really cool topics. Well, my second guest was a concept designer at WDI who worked on attractions like the Fairytale Forest and Jungle Cruise: Curse of the Emerald Trinity overlay at Hong Kong Disneyland. He also worked on the design for Dr. Who: The Experience in the U.K. It is Andy Sinclair-Harris. Andy, thank you so much for returning to the podcast.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Hello. Thank you very much for having me back. Thank you. Nice to be here.

Dan Heaton: Well, it’s great to have both of you back. So we have some really fun topics to talk about on this round table in terms of theme park design and just some favorite things we enjoy. But before that, I wanted to ask each of you about some things you’ve done more recently. And I’m going to start with Don. Don, very recently you released what to me is just an incredible virtual ride through of the 1958 version of the classic Alice in Wonderland dark ride. I did not experience that version, but from what I saw watching it, I felt like I have now. So how did that come together?

Don Carson: Well, I started the pandemic with a lot more time on my hands than I normally do. And so big projects that I had customarily sort of put on the back burner because I knew I didn’t have time. I always hadn’t had time. And one of the things I’d always wanted to do was to publicly show people the process of designing a dark ride.

I can’t do that with anything that I’m being paid for because those are mostly under non-disclosure agreements. So I’d have to make up my own. And I did a thing that turned out to be a thing called Pumpkin Town, which was just me going through the steps of creating a dark ride. And the end result was I did a 360 ride-through video that’s on YouTube and you can ride through my little pretend dark ride. So it utterly fulfilled what I needed it to do, which was it showed the steps of building a dark ride.

But then my good friend, Daniel Singer, who goes by Rover, he and I worked in Imagineering back in the 90s and he is a huge aficionado of Alice in Wonderland, the whole world of it, not just the Disney aspect of it. He messaged on Facebook, “Gosh, I really wish someone would recreate the 1958 version of the Alice in Wonderland attraction.” And I said, “Daniel, you’re a dimensional designer from Imagineering. Why don’t you do it? ”

He said, “Don, I don’t do computers.” So I said, “Well, I do them.” I just had this experience doing a dark ride in the computer. So I said, “If you do a lot of the heavy lifting as far as research, a lot of it was his memories and there’s not a whole lot of information out there for these original dark rides.” So he started to map out the attraction and he started deciphering from the few photographs we had, the show set drawings from these bad, bad, grainy photographs, and we got our hands on sort of a grainy version of the plan drawing.

And that was just enough to start building it. I didn’t know how close to finished we were going to get. We were just going to do the best thing we possibly could, but as we were working on it, sort of angels sort of stepped in and helped a little bit with a little bit of audio here and a little bit more information there.

Then the initial intent was that Rover was going to do all the color and I was just going to be the computer guy. And then Rover admitted that he actually is having arthritis in his hands and wasn’t going to be able to do it. I realized that meant I got to do all the color. So I reached out to some people that I worked with in Imagineering, Karen Thompson and Heidi Hirsch, all incredibly seasoned colorists and they also were in the middle of a pandemic.

So they said yes. Everybody did it for free. We started talking about doing this June 14th and by mid-August we had a complete ride through version of it with audio and the works. And so it surprised us as much as anybody else. It’s been really probably one of my favorite things I’ve done for years, just getting to work with these wonderful people I love and work on this for all intents and purposes, utterly extinct attraction, and being able to share it with everybody.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. I loved seeing the reactions too, because it’s one of those things where especially given that we’re all at home, things like that are just, everyone’s just so excited to have a way to kind of, wow, I get to go because Disneyland isn’t even open and Disney World, very few of us are going to. So to go to, and also our past where it’s not even the same. And I know, I think there’s going to be more steps, right? Is there like more things you want to do with it in the future beyond this?

Don Carson: Right now I’m taking that version, which had no animation. The doors didn’t open, the props didn’t animate. I’m bringing that into a program called Unity and we’re going to export the 360 VR version, which should come out in the next few weeks. And then that will wrap it up. I would happily redo all of the classic attractions. I certainly have time, but I would certainly need like more information than we did on Alice, like the show set drawings and things. So I don’t know what’s next. I’ve got lots of things sort of bubbling on the surface. It won’t necessarily be Disney-based, but it will definitely be continuing to explore this idea of creating virtual rides for people to experience.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. I mean, I really enjoyed the Pumpkin Town, just the whole steps you took. It was really interesting to me seeing it on Instagram and everywhere. So I think it’s really cool. Whatever you end up doing like that, there’s really an audience for it.

Don Carson: I definitely had it. My agenda was definitely to communicate to the world in general that these tools exist. Some of them are free and anybody really could do what we did in the two months that we were working on Alice. So I encourage other people to try it as well.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: It could be the one good thing to come out from the pandemic, right?

Don Carson: Yes. Yes. Silver lining.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Whatever else happens, we have this.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, that’s true because I think too, everyone’s so focused on it now because we all are spending a lot of time just looking for things like that. So I think it’s great, Don. Well, Andy, I know you’ve also recently started working on a podcast called The Sorcerer’s Lounge with Rob Yeo. And I think it’s…I listened to the first episode about the design of Tomorrowland, and I’m really excited to see where it goes. So I’d love to know how you got started with doing this podcast and coming together with Rob.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Well, I think the geography helped us a bit. We both felt like being two UK-based designers that something should happen with that. Something in the universe should kind of bring us together. And we started talking about this, as we say in the podcast probably about a year ago, and what with work commitments and family, all that kind of stuff, it’s taken this long just to sit down and actually record it.

But we both said that we wanted to do something together. When we talked about, could we maybe do a podcast and put something back out into the community kind of thing. We both felt some of the podcast…I mean, all the podcasts are really good that are out there and yours included, which is great, but yours is nice and conversational and is interviewed, but we didn’t want this to be too much like a lecture.

We kind of wanted it to be something more conversational and the lounge kind of aspect to it helps that, I think, where you can just sit down and feel like you’re having a nice conversation with someone about theme park design and actually talk about theme park design, actually kind of deconstruct some of the elements and talk through them and possibly shed some light on things that people haven’t thought about. So yeah, like with Don, it was a bit of a labor of love really, bit of a passion to kind of sit down and think, okay, now we have more time on our hands. Let’s channel that kind of negativity back into something positive.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. I think the lounge idea is good because it felt like I was basically like, I had somehow stepped in and was just, you two were talking back and forth about design and I was just kind of hanging out with you listening. And I like that. That’s fun because especially when you’re getting into design, I think that’s really fun. So what topics do you think you’re going to cover in the future or on the show or would you like to cover?

Andy Sinclair-Harris: So now we’ve had some really good feedback from this first episode, which I’m really pleased about because I think when you put these things out there, you don’t quite know how it’s going to be received. And it’s been really good. The feedback we’ve had has been wonderful, but you almost feel like it’s the difficult second album from a music group. It’s like that second album people are expecting. And we’ve had some really early conversations about what we could talk about.

I think one of them we were talking about was kind of the use of screens and things. And I had an idea about doing 360 films and how screens have been integrated. So there’s a few topics out there. I won’t kind of spoil it too much, but there’s at least three we’ve got kind of bubbling around to possibly do for another one. And it’s kind of endless, isn’t it really? You could think about deconstructing everything. So that’s good. We’ve got a lot of topics we could cover in the future.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. There’s a never-ending selection of topics I think that you could dig into. I mean, I’ve learned doing this show even, it’s like, wait, I’m on Episode 114. I’ve talked to like, I feel like 1% of my…I have this little notepad with all these guests I might want to talk with their topics. There’s so much in. When you talk to people or when you learn more, it introduces like 25 other things I think you want to talk about a lot of the time. So I think that’s great. Yeah.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: And there’s a certain international kind of aspect to this as well. The fact that we’re both coming from the U.K. deconstructing theme park design generally and especially within the U.S. It’s interesting to see how we look at it. It’s a different topic usually kind of from a U.S.-based one. So that kind of brings an interesting aspect, I think.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think about just the fact that you’re so close to Disneyland Paris and then you have your local, Alton Towers or whatever, some local parks that I’ve never been to, but I’m curious about someday getting… I’ve been to Paris, but just having that perspective where you’re not just talking about all the same things that we hear a lot of times, it’s really good.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Yeah.

Dan Heaton: All right. Well, let’s dig into our round table topics here. I’m really excited to hear your thoughts on all of these. So these are great. So I’m just going to dive in with my first question. We’ll start with you, Don. We hear a lot about certain Imagineers and designers. They’re amazing designers. Your Joe Rohde, your Tony Baxter, people from the past that, Marc Davis, whatnot, that have really gotten a lot of attention. But what are some of the biggest names for you or pivotal theme park designers that you think deserve a lot more recognition for what they’ve done in the past or even today?

Don Carson: Well, you asked this question of us a week or so ago, so I got to really think about it. And I realized I probably have a list of about a thousand people that I would love to call out. So much of the work that we do is incognito. I mean, as far as the public is concerned, there’s no rolling credits at the end of a dark ride or at a theme park.

So I was trying to think of, if I could narrow it down to just a handful, I actually picked four just to talk about, I could have picked so many others and I’ll just go quickly through them. These are people who you wouldn’t necessarily ever necessarily be interviewed or maybe necessarily be the feature of an article, but their work is so important. And I felt that all of them really, really exemplified what we think of as Imagineering and the quality of work that they do.

My first one is Bob Jolley, he was a mentor. I mean, he came in in the late ’60s, early ’70s. His background was completely film and character finish. He came in on Splash Mountain for us and sort of basically taught me how character finish is done on the train station and on the mountain itself. He was a seasoned veteran and for some reason decided to take me under his wing when I could easily have just been a young whippersnapper who didn’t deserve his attention.

And his ability to transform an area of Florida into the Caribbean in Pirates of the Caribbean, he worked on Cleopatra, he worked on so many famous films, and here he was in Imagineering doing that good sort of theatrical painting work on the attractions. Another person is Hani El-Masri, who I worked with in the ’90s. He is responsible for the design of Minnie’s House for Toontown.

He had just an incredible aesthetic; he had a huge amount of charm in his drawings. And he just really, really got not only how to create things with appeal, but also how to train those things into physical objects. He worked in a…It was back in a time where some of our offices had no windows and his door was always closed and always stick with cigarette smoke, always hand rolled cigarette smoke. And yet, despite a gruff exterior, his style was just so incredibly charming and wonderful. Another person is Arden Ashley, she’s a prop buyer at Imagineering, and the person that goes out there and fills these attractions with objects, when I was working with her, it was before eBay.

So her relationship with the outside world was she had the ability to carve anything from a train, an old steam train to a bucket, to a harp, to a cannon that she would find within the budget of the attraction and not only purchase items that fulfilled a wish list that designers gave, but also she understood that these objects needed to live in the same world as each other.

So her color choices and also her relationship with vendors where if she didn’t have the right canon, she would know where to take it to make it become the thing that we needed for the attraction. And she’s amazing. One last person to talk about is Chris Runco. Chris Runco retired a few years ago. Chris is a quintessential Imagineer, an incredibly talented sketch artist. There probably isn’t an attraction he hasn’t touched in some way. And yet for some unforeseen reason, he is not on the tip of everybody’s tongue when it comes to the work that he did.

Some of his most iconic sketching work was for Blizzard Beach. He did all the sketches that showed all the amazing things. And it’s just a wonderful hand with Penn and Ink, I’d say on par with Marc Davis as far as his skill as a draftsman. He just had decades and decades worth of work at Imagineering and deserves to be sung.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: I’m a huge fan of Chris Runco and I’m so glad you brought that name up. His sketch for Typhoon Lagoon is one of those iconic pieces of artwork where you just, it’s the quick line drawing and you see the people queuing up the mountain. It just says everything in that one sketch and you just want to go there. You want to go on that ride. It’s amazing.

Don Carson: He’s great.

Dan Heaton: Well, yeah, and I’m sad to say, I’m familiar with Chris and the other three I was not, which is great because that just totally reveals why, how many people are out there that we don’t know much about. And the props too, especially. I feel like whenever I see things like, for example, like the Animal Kingdom, when I see things about what they did to create those areas, I’m just flabbergasted by it. I think the fact that it’s that way for every park and for a lot of the resorts and everything is still something that I think, especially compared to a local park that might not have that, that those things are so different and just really show why some of the lands are so effective.

Don Carson: Yes, completely agree.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: I think it’s the icing on the cake. I think it’s something that a lot of guests don’t quite appreciate towards the end of that, that it really is that place making and the reality that makes something feel like it’s lived in or it’s been used or something that these prop makers come along and do this. And it’s a really unsung artistry and it does, it happens towards the end. It’s quite unsung and it’s a quick finish, but it’s absolutely the icing on the cake. It makes it feel real for the story. So absolutely, it’s a great topic for discussion.

Dan Heaton: Oh, for sure. Well, Andy, I would love to hear some of your examples that you might call out as far as unheralded great designers.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Well, I have two. And like Don said, I tried to whittle it down because I felt like there was dozens and dozens and some people I wanted to almost personally call out. For example, I mean, not to embarrass Don, but Don is a fantastic Imagineering designer in his own right that kind of deserves to be lauded because for me, I kind of really do, and I say this kind of completely, that he’s on that plane with a Marc Davis in terms of his ability to show character and charm and that complete quintessential storytelling.

I mean, he talks about quintessential Imagineers and he can count himself within that, the gamma to people. And also again, and Joe Lanzisero as well, I think between the two of them, I mean, you can look at the amazing work that was done in the ’90s, that Disney decade where work was a little bit more kind of prevalent and some more risk taking was taken and amazing designers like Joe and Don were there.  But yeah, those are the two that I just kind of always wanted to kind of point out as that great guests you’ve had on and great Imagineers themselves.

But for me, and I don’t think my two names would be people that people have heard of these people, but I always think they’re quite important within the kind of history of Imagineering. So the first was Bill Martin. I think for me, he’s kind of what I call a great in the box thinker.

He was one of those people, I think that towards the beginning of Imagineering when everyone was kind of being assembled, he hadn’t come from that animation side of things. So for example, you had Mark Davis and all the other imaginers who’d come from the animation side and had that understanding of storytelling and color and all and the staging. And Bill had come from more of an architectural kind of standpoint and he called himself an artist, but an artist, but with an architectural background, a pom chant for architecture.

What he brought was more of that kind of believability and the fundamental approach to how to actually do it in almost the art direction, how to actually stage these things. And I think that, I’m sure everyone’s seen this piece of artwork, but if you haven’t, try and have a Google for it, it’s Bill’s sketch for Peter Pan’s Flight, that very quick early sketch when they decided that they wanted to do Peter Pan’s Flight.

And someone possibly said it should be a flying ride because Peter Pan is such an aerial kind of attraction. Bill does this wonderful sketch and it literally is, there’s the box, there’s literally this rectangular box and he’s drawn it, there’s the unload, there’s London, there’s Neverland. And it’s just absolutely perfect. This one sketch is transcendent and it’s charm and it’s staging and it’s…and I think he really understood the working of confinements.

This was kind of inspiring when seeing Don’s work that he’s done on dark rides. When you really see the…it’s understanding the limitations of a dark ride and what you can and can’t do. And then working with that. I mean, everyone uses the expression, thinking outside of the box. I think Don and I have talked about this before, that thinking inside the box is sometimes the best thing to do. Once you have the walls of that attraction, making that inside sing, that’s the real skill. So Bill for me, Bill Martin was completely instrumental of that. I know he went on to develop things like the Utilidors and the actual layout of Fantasyland and Walt Disney World was instrumented in that. So really unsung. I think towards the beginning of his career, he was a little bit more prevalent with the ‘50s.

And then once Walt passed away, went into Disney World, he became more managerial, but right in the background and kind of the battery that was kind of pushing Imagineering along in that. And then the other one is Sam McKim, again, someone that everyone’s heard of, but he tends to be a little bit more forgotten in terms of the concept.

You have Herb Ryman who produces these incredible iconic pieces of art and they are art in their own right, that they hang in museums almost. And John Hench was more of a designer, so he approaches these things from a design aesthetic. Sam kind of approached these things with such an attention to detail, which was unprecedented. I mean, he did a sketch which really stayed with me now, which was for the 1964 World’s Fair for the, I think it was the Magic Skyway. And it’s just a nice kind of three-quarter sketch of the queue line, of guest queuing in the line.

And he’s drawn all the guests in there. It’s charming. The color styling is wonderful. His pencil sketching is breathtaking. It’s so quick and effortless. Then he’s even done some of the graphics, how the graphics are staged, some kind of jaunty, mid-century modern stylings to that. And it’s just fantastic. It’s a complete piece of art. It’s evocative. You want to step into that. It’s designed to enough of an extent that someone could pick that up and do it. It’s not designed enough that it’s too much to like detail design.

So the work he did on Main Street as well again, and that’s where he’s really going into that intricate work of the Victorian, the pencil sketching. It’s just his artwork. And again, for people just to kind of compare that now to some of the artwork of Herb Ryman, which is kind of really glorious and loose and Sam’s, which is more detailed, but still as charming, I think he’s someone that I think needs a little bit more exposure maybe.

Don Carson: Yeah. I definitely agree with Sam as well. He also did one of the Disneyland maps too, I think. I think one of the books actually has a double-page spread of Sam McKim’s. And also didn’t Sam also do the Pirates of the Caribbean sort of breakout that shows all the various scenes done in that wonderful pen and ink style. Yeah. I would say that if one bookend is Marc Davis, Sam McKim is the other bookend as far as I’m concerned as far as line work and color.

Also, as you said, Herb Ryman was really good at the broad strokes and getting something that got an idea across, but then Sam was able to do drawings that were buildable, that you could get in there and you knew what the buildings were doing and their relationship to the ground and how people interacted with the space. They could be mined for information that then would fuel the production, which I love his stuff.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Completely agree with you. Herb Ryman, like you said, just did those broad strokes and it gave a feeling and an emotion of what that was. But if you really look at some of his pictures, it’s sometimes hard to tell what that is. It’s just an evocative feeling of what could be done. And I’m sure that was enough to bankroll things.

But then as you say, Sam would take that and just flesh that out and you really feel you could step into that world and he would make some early design choices and decisions that really would flesh it out. And yeah, he’s very much an inspiration in terms of the work I do where it’s that buildability. It’s the fantastical concept that you want people to be invested and involved in, but at the same time, have one toe, just a toe in the reality of it, how it could happen.

Don Carson: Yeah. I think that in hindsight, looking back, I realized that there really were two jobs for the arts. I mean, there’s many, many more layers, but there’s sort of the illustrative approach and then there’s also the production art approach. Sam definitely came from the world of producing artwork that would fuel the design as opposed to necessarily something that went as part of a press release. And so sometimes the named Disney talent are the ones that did the beautiful paintings and not necessarily the people that did those pencil sketches that became the places we loved.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: I remember thinking about when I was younger, looking at Herb Ryman sketches and John Hench stuff and you think, I could never do that kind of stuff. Even as an Imagineer, you could never do that kind of artwork style. But like you said, for Sam, it was a little bit more production, theatrical side of it where you think, okay, there’s a reality to that, which is more possible.

Dan Heaton: Well, there’s so much to cover there. I don’t know.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Sorry, already in depth.

Dan Heaton: No, it’s great. One thing I wanted to hit on was your comment about dark rides too, because I think now in the world of huge budgets, I mean, I’m speaking of course before right now, but in the previous world of huge budgets and everything and dark rides where I think about, well, especially the early Fantasyland dark rides, but like If You Dad wings at Tomorrowland where they had this space, which is now Buzz Lightyear that was so tight and somehow it mind boggling when you see the space to think of how limited it was.

But I feel like that attraction in a double-sized space doesn’t work as well because it’s like, because it was so tight, they had to do all these kind of inventive things that they did with films and various things they put together where same with probably a lot of the Fantasyland dark rides because like Disneyland, they have so many rides in such a small space and sharing buildings and everything else, it’s kind of mind boggling what they had to do and might be a big reason why some of them work so well.

Don Carson: No, I agree. There’s nothing worse for a creative person than being told you can do anything you want. The best thing you can possibly be told is, :Here’s the box in which you’re going to work within.” And then it gives you surfaces to really push against to be able to say, “Okay, I got to tell this story in three scenes.” You rise to the occasion and you do it.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Totally. I think that’s where true creativity, as you were just saying, happens when you say to someone, “This is the challenge, this is the story you’ve got to tell, this is the space.” I think true designers and artists roll up their sleeve and go, “Okay, that’s great.” As Don said, if you make that box too big emotionally and kind of creatively, it’s crushing for an artist because you could do anything you want and the budget’s limitless. It’s like, well, where do you even begin to tackle that? Whereas if you have those parameters, you can really do something.

And picking up your point down the fact that If You Had wings when it became Take Flight, the Delta Dreamflight, sorry, that was one of my favorite dark rides in Disney to this day still is one of my favorite ones because I remember vividly going through the Clipper, I guess it was the Spruce Goose, wasn’t it, sorry? And you’d see the captain at the end sitting eating and you’d go through the table. So you’d literally cut through a plane and it was almost like a film where you’d kind of just pan through different scenes and see them. You came out from the plane and you’d kind of flown to Japan and you saw, I think the couple at the end of the bridge and then there was a person the closest to you.

I mean, it’s just classic theatricality that will never ever go out of fashion. Always will always work. Pepper’s Ghost will always work. All these forced perspective things will always work. And I remember thinking, what’s that man going to talk to them about? Why is he going there? And he’s waiting on the bridge and they’re kind of greeting him. Then you had a little bit of Japanese music and then you segued into the next scene over Paris.

And it was just charming and wonderful. The Barnstormer scene was much more kind of cartoony and it was kind of the biggest space within the dark ride and they utilized the space really well. But as you said, Dan, at the same time, you kind of felt like you’d go around a tight corner and you’d be pushed towards a scene. And it was just classic storytelling. And still to this day, Buzz Lightyear was great. It’s kind of its time, but Dreamflight and If You Had Wings were just such iconic dark rides to this day.

Don Carson: And just the forced perspective was, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I mean, some of those characters are only 12 inches tall while other ones in the foreground are four feet. It’s just brilliant.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. I think about, there’s one point where you just go by and it’s just like a light that’s shining, like a very simple light. And it’s like, wow, we’re about to go supersonic or we’re about to go in the shed. And it’s the most basic $150 light or something that they put in, but it’s all put together right. It’s like, yeah, it doesn’t take that much. It’s really not that much to it at all. So it’s really impressive. All right. Well, let’s ask the next topic. Let’s dig into this.

So we’ve talked a lot about Disney and Imagineers and everything, but I’m curious, and I’ll start with you, Andy, on this one. Looking beyond Disney or Universal, because that’s too easy. What is another great example of themed entertainment design? And it could be at a regional park or zoo or individual experience, but what is another great example that should get more attention?

Andy Sinclair-Harris: First off, I picked one that probably people do know about, but it’s worth a discussion because it’s so unique and different. It’s Warner Bros. World in Abu Dhabi, not within the kind of Disney/Universal canon. So I think it’s already operating from a perspective of different types of IP. It’s almost on the back foot a little bit like that. You have Hanna Barbera, Warner Bros. are slightly older properties in there.

But the fact that it has to deal with the harsh climate of Abu Dhabi inside, and I think the amount of theming they did within there and the storytelling and the placemaking with an inside attraction, it’s just for me, it felt like a game changer. The fact that you could segue between the different lands and experiences and the way that they really began to stage the cartoon worlds, I thought was really impressive.

It was Dave Cobb, the team at Thinkwell, I think he did it. And fantastic use of kind of, again, sometimes the ceiling was embraced in terms of like a clouded sky and the lights were clouds and the blue sky. Other times it went away, became a bit more theatrical. But it really did open up a whole new opportunity for people. I think seeing that an indoor theme park could be as expansive and immersive as say an outdoor Disney theme park.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. I mean, that’s really impressive. I see like YouTube images or pictures from there and I think, wow, that would be an amazing place to go. How can I make my way to Abu Dhabi? I don’t think it’s going to happen soon, but it’s very impressive. I mean what they have.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Oh yeah, I haven’t been there but I want to go and see it. It’s really impressive. And like I said, some of the charming stuff like the Scooby Doo stuff is really old school, like we were talking about the dark rides, but with a bit more of the Mystic Manor kind of trackless ride-throughs. It’s a nice upgrade of things, but still keeping that classical approach to theme parks, which is quite nice.

Dan Heaton: Don, do you have another good example kind of like that?

Don Carson: I have two that just completely rose to the surface when you asked the question. One is Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri. I was on a freelance gig to that park and it is definitely what you would call a regional park. It’s in the Ozarks. It’s up in the mountains; it’s very, very rocky. It has a little bit of a sort of Knotts Berry Farm feel about it. The people that go there love it.

They’ve grown up with it. It doesn’t have a lot of money and yet I think that they deliver a depth that the Disney park does, but in a more rural way. They have sort of their own sort of little main streety western towns. The craftspeople that are there, whether they’re weaving or they’re doing blacksmith or they’re making candles, some of them have been doing that for 40 years. They’re the same people doing it.

There’s a sense of community and family. Then the foods are, they have these giant skillets where they do these sort of okra mash bowls of incredible vegetables and smells that so is divorced from the only, churros is your only option. Really impressive. I’d say that as far as their dark rides, they’re not trying to compete necessarily with Disney, but they’re very, very charming. I think they completely deliver a deep theme park experience, but on a budget and with a lovely fan base.

And the other one I think about too is Busch Gardens Williamsburg. When working at Imagineering, there are certain rules by which you design that you assume are sort of sacred. One of them is being that you design with a weenie in mine, with you go into an area and there’s another area that draws you to it. Busch Gardens doesn’t do that.

In fact, it does the opposite of that. You don’t know where you are. You leave the place and then you’re basically going into an arboretum and then turn a corner and then you see one element that’s Roman and then you see another element and another element. Then it opens up into a complete themed land, utterly filling your aesthetic view. And then you’d sort of leave it again and sort of disappear into the bushes and then boom, you’re in another theme. I loved the fact that there are other ways in which one can design a themed environment that’s equally successful and doesn’t necessarily have to always follow the rules established by Disneyland.

Dan Heaton: Well, yeah, I live in St. Louis, Missouri, which is about four hours from Silver Dollar City. And don’t go there that often, but we went last summer in 2019. I took my two daughters who were 10 and six and I’ve been used to going to our local Six Flags, which it’s okay. But we went to Silver Dollar City, and my daughters and I had just an amazing time. Like you mentioned the dark rides. They have one that’s a boat ride through this Flooded Mine that it was built.

I mean, the Flooded Mine part was built in like the 1970s, but then they added where you shoot things and it’s very, the figures are very static and everything. And we rode it like five times. They have this other one called Fire in the Hole. It’s this like mine train indoors, very, again, old ride, built in I think the early ‘80s, late ‘70s.

A lot of things like that. But then like you mentioned, there’s tons of trees. All the roller coasters go through the woods, so you don’t know where you are and it uses the terrain so well. And then all those other factors like beyond rides, it’s just a really comfortable place to be. And it’s near Branson, but I’m not really someone who goes to Branson or that area, but it’s kind of in its own spot.

It’s kind of like this regional haven where, and they’ve spent a lot of money and they keep adding new attractions. And that place is a gem. I wanted to go there again this year, but they had added a big raft ride that Mystic River Falls, but now obviously not going the summer. But I would love if that was my home park rather than, even though it’s four hours away. It’s really incredible.

Don Carson: Yeah, I agree. I was surprised. Kudos to them for the work that they’ve done at that park.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: You noticed I couldn’t actually find any UK-based theme parks to add into that. We’re really not pulling up our side of this. We’re falling behind with that.

Dan Heaton: Well, I mean, I think it’s interesting because I think there’s so many like Williamsburg and like so many things in Virginia and that East Coast has tons of parks, but being here in the middle of the country, I mean, you have some big coaster parks, but there are not a lot like that. And so Silver Dollar City, and I know Dollywood is made by the same people, but stands out just because you’re kind of in the middle of a lot of more typical amusement parks in the area, which so it’s not the same as some parts of the country like your Florida or California or even Virginia or something.

Don Carson: Yeah. Their dedication to the history of that area too, that we were there for a week and we were there to help design a new land, which eventually actually did not get funded, but as a prerequisite to our beginning design, we actually had to sit with historians for three days and be told the history of the Ozarks before we were allowed to start designing. I learned so much stuff about that region, but it was just so wonderful to have them say, “No, no, it is really important. Yes, you can create fun environments that are themed, but these themes need to be utterly steeped in the history of this area.” Wow.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. And I want to move on to the next topic because I could just veer off and start raving about Silver Dollar City for awhile. I want to mention one more thing. They also have a cave in there. It was built around a cave and it’s like you think, oh, it’s a cave. It’s by a theme park. It is a serious cave. I felt really dumb taking my six-year-old. Then we went through it and I was like, “This is pretty treacherous.” This is not a light cave. This is like a tourist attraction, but it’s like it was built around it where that’s almost an attraction itself and it’s included in the price and it’s like an hour plus experience of walking through a cave that goes hundreds of feet below the ground. It’s incredible.

Don Carson: Ironically, that was the reason you stopped, was to go to the cave and then they added…it was just like Knotts Berry Farm, coming for the berries and getting some chicken and then they added a theme park attached to it. That’s Silver Dollar City too.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. It’s something else really. All right. Well, let’s move on to the next topic. This is not that related to what we were talking about, but I think very important. It’s a question that I think there’s a lot of people that are young artists, like yourself, Andy, but that are just getting out of colleges. Yeah, even younger. And they’re interested in becoming Imagineeers or working for a variety of companies that are in the industry. And let’s start with Don. I would love to know what your advice might be if someone came up to you and said, “What can I do or what should I be pursuing in order to become an Imagineeer” or something similar?

Don Carson: Well, certainly Imagineering is probably 300 different disciplines. So people do fairly often ask the question, I’m sure they do of you, Andy, as well, is what do I got to do? Those that are leaning toward the artistic end, which I could speak to more than I can necessarily the engineering or the project management end.

I would say that the most important thing that you should work on is your ability to communicate visually because really your job description is you have an idea in your head and you need to be able to produce whatever images are going to not only sell the idea, but also communicate to all those disciplines that are going to be responsible for making it a reality. And the better you are at that, the more likely that your idea will come to opening day and look even vaguely like your initial concept.

In the past, I would have said that that was predominantly through drawing. I mean, one is visualizing through sketching, so it never, never hurts for you to draw a lot to be able to get better and better and more hand eye coordination when it comes to depicting things. And in that respect, very much like learning to be an illustrator, you never know what you’re going to be asked to draw.

So be able to draw anything, whether it’s a hubcap or a wine bottle or a person or an elephant, you’re going to be asked to draw just about everything. So getting good at that is really important. But I’d say a new aspect, and I think the Alice Project sort of illustrates that too, is also you can learn to be good at 3D as well, because more and more very, very recently we’re starting to see that even on the first day of concept, often a rough model is one of the first things that’s generated before even a sketch is done.

So there are people who don’t draw well, but are quite adept at making 3D models that are just as influential and helpful in the design process. So I would say it’d be great if you knew how to do both, but I think if you are leaning more one or the other, there is definitely a possibility of you having a job in this industry, as long as you can communicate the pictures in your head, whether it’s digitally, 2D or digitally, 3D, both are valuable.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. I mean, I think right there, even what you just said, it reminds us that there’s no one road to get there, which I think is more true now than ever, given like you just mentioned with Alice, that there’s so much more done with computers, but it doesn’t mean you also can be an artist in another way. So I’m curious, Andy, from your perspective, just having a different background, what you’ve gone through and how that’s kind of colored, how you would answer the question.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Yeah. As Don said, it’s something that we get asked a lot as soon as you become an Imagineer. I think people want to know your story and your process, how you got there. And I think the quickest answer is there’s no one process, there’s no one route to Imagineering. And that’s if people want to get to Imagineering, I mean, in previously Don’s always said this, if your goal is to be an Imagineer, then that’s great.

But if your goal is to be within the themed entertainment design industry, then there are a multitude of places you can go, including zoos and aquariums and things. And again, as Don said, speaking from the similar design, the concepts and the artistic kind of side of this industry, if your end game is to become a designer working within industry and then possibly go up to imagine, I would say start anywhere you can, kind of get within the industry as best you can.

So for example, if you have, as I say, a local aquarium or a Zoo or a Six Flags or something like that, maybe begin a conversation with people there if it’s possible if you can do so and reach out to people and how do you do that? What designers do you use? Do you look for anyone to do kind of freelance or things like that? And just be really passionate about what you do and definitely enjoy the process.

I think some people get very focused on the end result and what it’s going to be. And I think you have to enjoy the process of doing this thing for me, which is always the best part. My favorite part of the process is very much the initial conversations that we have, the first sketches you get to do, what is this world going to be, how’s it going to look?

The privilege to be able to do that and to create that is wonderful. So my other advice is to be a really good people person because being someone that people are going to remember and want to be within a team and to utilize again in the future is something that’s important. So having those people skills is good. I’m not saying you have to be like an extrovert and everything because I think Don and I are a little bit both introverted like that, which seems to work within this industry.

But being kind of friendly and approachable and working well within a team is great. I mean, for example, like Don was someone you’d always say, “Oh, let’s reach out to Don. Let’s talk with Don because he’s a great designer one, but he’s also someone you want to work with. He’s a really good person that you want to know with and you want his opinions and he’s a good listener and a kind of team player.” So those are the basic kind of ideas of that.

And as Don said, being able to sketch things is, for me, I think is really important because you’ll have those early meetings with people and a quick skit, a sketch is really important to visualize those early drawings. If you can push that further, then fantastic. But being able to sketch is great and that’s a skill that is really good to have within your arsenal.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. I think those are great ideas. And I mean, just, it’s funny, I feel like we could just do a podcast and talk about the various things, but even so, every single person is different where I feel like you could give and say, “Here’s what you do, step one through seven.”

But if that person, that might work for you, but not for someone else. So I think that’s where the question, I’m sure, like you mentioned, you get asked a lot, but it’s a complicated topic, but I think I always like hearing this though, because I know there are people listening or people out there that this is what they want to do, especially given how much themed entertainment design has permeated a lot more than just Walt Disney World or something. I mean, it’s everywhere, at least like you mentioned, aquarium, zoos, so much more where there’s so many different places someone could work now.

Don Carson: A lot of the people that I talk to have, they’ve been bitten by the same bug that I was bitten. I know Andy, you were too, for some irrational reason this is the industry you want to be working in. Exactly. Yeah. And we’re place makers, but we’re also theatrical types. We want to create the stage, but we want you to be able to move through the stage and be surprised as you turn corners and are entertained by not only the performers, but also the place itself. And so that’s what we’re hungry for. That’s the itch that we want to scratch and the work that we work with. And to reinforce what Andy was saying, really, really love the process because I’d say that 80% of the things that I work really, really hard on for whatever reason don’t happen.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Same.

Don Carson: So enjoy the people you’re working with because that’s really what you get to own. And then lastly, I think the Pumpkin Town and the Alice Project really taught me that those scratch the same itch that I’m trying to scratch with the theme park stuff and that in a very, very rich career working in this industry, you may really only have three things that you’ve produced that you like are really proud to say you are part of, that really looked like the thing you wanted it to look like.

And yet there’s this digital potential too for those people starting out who don’t necessarily work at Imagineering and aren’t given half a billion dollar budget to go create a Star Wars attraction, could actually start creating attractions at home with the tools that they have that not only scratches the itch that’s causing you to want to be in this business, but also becomes a calling card and it tells those potential future employers, which may or may not be Disney, that you understand this business, you understand environmental storytelling and you just, like us, just want to take people places.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: I had a kind of a back and forth with Eddie Sotto the other day, and it was interesting because I think many people in our industry are so influenced by the people we just talked about at the beginning of this podcast. Marc Davis’s name hangs really large, so does John Hench. And it can be somewhat overwhelming for people wanting to get into the industry and certainly for us within the industry. But I think the most important thing for people is to…those people are champions and gods and goddesses of this industry that live large, but is to find your own path and your own voice, and that’s okay.

I mean, having to say to Eddie Sotto, “Yeah, you’re not Marc Davis, but you’re Eddie Sotto, that’s fine to say that it doesn’t matter because…” And that’s the thing. And the same, as I said, looking at Sam McKim’s artwork and you pour over John Hench’s illustrations, you think, “Oh my goodness, this is from another world.” But it’s your voice that you can add to that. It’s your refractions of those things which are as important, have as much merit.

Don Carson: Yes, agree. And also, I think we could look back at those sort of legends of the industry and it’s easy for us to imagine that these iconic attractions were born pure, but fully formed.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Yeah.

Don Carson: If you look at the Marc Davis book, which the Chris Merritt’s Marc Davis book and Pete Docter, just a fabulous must-own tome, if you read through it, it was anything but a smooth, easy process. I mean, a lot of these things, both Pirates and the Haunted Mansion had like 10-year gaps where it went on the back burner and didn’t get worked on. And one was a wax museum and the other was a walkthrough and then they didn’t necessarily agree with you. Claude Coats had his vision and Marc had his vision, neither of them necessarily agreed despite this turmoil, this classic was created. So I’d say don’t be hard on yourself if you feel like the process is messy because the outcome in many ways we don’t get to choose. It’s going to be the audience that’s going to decide whether it’s a classic.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, totally. I mean, I think about, like you said, Marc Davis and even Rolly Crump who’s involved a bit, they all hate the Haunted Mansion and how it came out. I mean, they don’t mean because they’re all like, “It’s not what I wanted at all. “ Same with Pirates or they like their little parts, but the rest of it, no. And it’s just crazy to think about, and I’m sure that’s the case, like you mentioned for so many other attractions that it ends up that way.

Don Carson: It’s the designers. Oh, I think of poor Daniel Ratcliffe can’t go to a Harry Potter movie and actually, so that’s that day I got so sick. I mean, he can’t enjoy that movie because he can remember all the pieces that went into its creation. And the same with Marc Davis and John Hench, Claude Coats too.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Yeah. Marc Davis always seemed to be kind of angry when he was designing when you read things. He was really mad and kind of a child into this great artwork, but he never seemed to be completely happy with the process.

Don Carson: I think he also had a high regard for his own talent.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Yeah. Yes. He knew he was Marc Davis.

Don Carson: Yeah. Yes, you are. You are Marc Davis. You deserve to be egotistical, but at the same time, it didn’t necessarily make him easy to work with always.

Dan Heaton: Definitely not. Okay. Well, I want to make sure I get to this question because I kind of like it, which is, I’ll start with you, Andy, but what’s a type of attraction that’s not as prevalent now? It might be a little out of style or whatnot that you would really like to see more of today in theme parks.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Well, to cycle back again what we were talking about with Peter Pan, I think the kind of flying attraction, the actual moving attraction where you’re above the ground, I still think has a lot of validity to it. And I don’t want to make Don upset when I say this, the fact that the version that Don worked on with Tony Baxter for the Mermaid attraction was so much more superior than the version we did get, which was much more land-based.

And obviously it comes down to the fact that it’s whatever the story requires. Obviously, for Peter Pan, it’s completely natural to want to fly through the air with Peter. So that tends to be what drives the ride system. And we’ve got some amazing ride systems like Pandora, that’s a brand new breathtaking ride system where 50 years ago, that would have been something like Peter Pan’s system.

I just think, however, in terms of a dark ride experience, there’s still something that’s beautiful that I’d love to see now with maybe a taller show building with slightly larger sets that you could do where you have…I mean, if you look at Shanghai’s evolution of Peter Pan, yes, the pirate boats are slightly bigger for the capacity and everything, but generally the show sets a little bit more fleshed out, there’s a little bit more projection mapping.

Everything’s done subtly, but I just think all it does is add to that original charm of that attraction, make it a little bit better. So I just really think going back to Mermaid, I think that would have really benefited from having that be an attraction that exists within the sphere of water rather than being on the ground. So that’s one. And then my other one, I think it’s sad to see the decline of moving theaters.

I know that it’s become a little bit passe and it’s probably not something that people want to do, sat in a huge row of 100 people watching something. But I still to this day, and Rob Yeo talked about it the other day, that when you’re in this theater and then the theater moves, it’s amazing. It’s transcendent. It’s something that’s fantastic like, “Wow, we’re moving.” And then you see these other four theaters move. So it was something that, again, it comes back to whatever the story requires, but I think that’s a ride system maybe I miss. It probably won’t come back, but it’s something that I miss as a ride system.

Don Carson: Yeah. I think that we’ve also hit a point where I think Rise of the Resistance is the perfect example of having hit an extreme of saturation with so many different technically marvelous ride systems that any potential for one of them to go down means that the entire attraction goes down.

I think it’s a marvel. It’s amazing. It’s definitely a watershed, but I think that there might be a desire to return to something a little bit more simple. I use the trackless ride system as an example. Here’s a marvelous potential for a ride system. Amazing attractions have been based on it, but the reality of the ride system is that it has to have a certain amount of space on either side of it’s for egress and it means it has to stop at any point and you have to be able to get out and get away.

It also has to have a breaking distance and that also adds space. So what you end up with is very, very large sort of ballroom floor areas with theming sort of spread thickly on the walls on either side of it. And so I think that the Mickey’s Runaway Railway is just incredibly fantastic and really clever and a fun story, but it also has a huge amount of floor space, which is a reality to that ride system.

I would love to see a buzz bar ride system where some new technology is being used in the sets as opposed to necessarily in the ride system itself. I’m hoping we’ll see a bit more of that too. The other thing that’s happening is that I’ve been on many, many projects where it’s filled with animatronic figures and as you realize you just don’t have the budget for them, some of those figures start to be replaced with media surfaces and it’s sort of a slippery slope. You start convincing yourself that the media surface is as good as having the figure in the room with you. And sometimes it’s better, but sometimes the audience can tell the difference.

Oh, I’ve seen that figure three dimensional and then I’m seeing it on a projection surface. I would love to see people challenged with, if we cut the figure, how do we make the environment rich enough that which is less expensive than a full animatronic figure that immerses you, tells the story, lets you be in the presence of these characters without necessarily referring or falling back to the media surface to replace that figure that’s been cut. So I’d love to see more traditional dark rides.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: I think you make an excellent point there, Don. The fact that if we just go back to what we said about the Delta Dreamflight, if we took the current ride system, if that was done today possibly with a rotating free roaming trackless ride, you would have lost that intimacy that we were just all talking about, reminiscing about with those close sets and that feeling of charm and intimacy with that ride, it would be a lot bigger. And as you said, Don, the trackless ride system is fantastic and we’ve kind of seen the evolution from Pooh’s Hunny Hunt and then Mystic Manor has kind of done quite a lot for that. And then Rise of the Resistance is the next generation of that where you’ve got dozens of effects working with that. But as you say, it’s a bigger space, it’s a bigger canvas.

And I think it works quite well for Pooh’s Hunny Hunt because it’s a forest and because they bring the ceiling down a bit, it does feel more charming. But the dark red, then that system then tends to be, you’re in a massive cave, you’re in a huge starship and the canvas has to be so much broader.

And sometimes the one kind of quibble I would have with Mystic Manor is sometimes the sets do feel, as you say, a little bit bigger and you lose some of the charm of being within a kind of stately home. So as you said, Don, I think going backwards to a ride system that is just as adept at telling those stories, but is a little bit more charming and allows guests to be a bit closer to things, I don’t think that could hurt at all to go back to that.

And as I said, it does look quite good for Shanghai. One end you have Pirates of the Caribbean where they’ve taken that ride system and it’s a completely different attraction. It’s so much kind of media-based and screen-based and really effective. But Peter Pan, as I say, is a really nice kind of evolution of that. It’s a subtle evolution of a really classic ride system.

Don Carson: Yeah, agreed. And I think that it would bring the price down for some of these attractions without those very, very expensive ride systems. I think that Diagon Ally does a marvelous job of proving that an incredibly rich environment can be done that is as enjoyable as a ride just to be in it. And then you have Gringotts, which is a fun attraction, but I think doesn’t necessarily as successfully recreate the world you want to be in. And I think it’s just purely because of the choice to have so many projection surfaces as the big notes of your storytelling.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. I think, I mean, the comparison when you…not that everything could be Forbidden Journey, which is such an expensive, complicated attraction, and really fits in with the complicated ride system, but the difference between the two when you hear people talk, I mean, you have screens, but then you have sets, you have the dragon and the Dementor and everything you come out of and you’re like, how is that? Where did they even come from? And Gringotts is a fun ride when people come out of it and they’re like, “Yeah, I really like the queue with the goblins.”

Or you hear as much about that and the elevator and that than actually about the ride and everyone loves Diagon Alley, but it’s one of those things where they spent a ton of money on Gringotts. It was not a cheap attraction, but where it doesn’t connect with you enough where it just sticks with you so much, at least from when I talk to people. So that’s an example of something where the sets make you feel like you’re in the story versus watching the story, I think.

Don Carson: Yeah. I don’t know if humans have echolocation or…I think we emotionally, our senses bounce off the surface of rocks and structures and sets in Pirates of Caribbean a perfect example of you feel like you’re there. And in Gringotts, the most interesting pieces of scenery aren’t physically in the space with you. They’re digitally represented. And so you have moments of, “Oh, I’m underground, I’m in the caves, this is fun,” but all the big hero sections are not actually there with you.

They’re big screens. Doesn’t mean they can’t be evocative, certainly the Pirates of Caribbean in Shanghai has moments where you gasp just the sheer scale of those surfaces. So there is absolutely a place for projection surfaces, definitely is it worthy if we’re having it everywhere is the question.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: So you’re saying if we could get dolphins onto Gringotts, they would love it. I think Gringotts is an example of being too invested in a ride system. I think obviously it’s hard to channel the stories of J.K. Rowling and look at that. And the Gringotts ride through the bank seems to be the most theme parky part of that.

So obviously it kind of jumps off the page to be a ride system, but I think that’s been then too counterproductive to telling the story by being so invested in that. And it’s neither one thing nor the other for me. I think that it’s neither a rollercoaster, which it almost needs to be. I think for that journey, you just probably want to be in the bank, go through that and not be so kind of story based, or it is a dark ride where you have those story points with the dragon and all of those aspects to it.

Dan Heaton: Totally. So speaking of Gringotts and Harry Potter, there’s obviously a trend with theme parks that’s been going on for a while, but is especially prevalent in the last five or 10 years, kind of driven by Potter with Pandora, with Galaxy’s Edge, with a lot of IP as it’s known and franchises really kind of taking charge even more than before, especially at Disney.

I know it’s been with Universal for a while. So I’m curious to ask, I’ll start with you, Don, just why do you think…I mean, they’ve always been a part going back to Disneyland and everything. This is not a new thing, but it’s obviously really taking hold where we’re seeing overlays of older attractions and stuff. Why do you think brands and franchises are just so important to theme parks today, even more to at least to me than they ever have been?

Don Carson: I think a lot of it’s just like the movie business that you want to know that there’s an audience that’s ready to consume it. And an IP already comes along with an audience that they can discern the demographic for. Recognizability, I’m going to come to the park this summer because I want to experience minions or I want to experience the animals from pets or I want to experience something from Pandora.

I don’t think that the Imagineers or any of the designers are incapable of designing a wonderful experience in any possible genre you could think of, but when management has to write down a $500 million check, they’re going to want to make sure that it’s going to have the draw that they want. So I think a lot is heavily leaning on IP. On the other side, sometimes an IP that’s very, very strong as far as a movie or a television context doesn’t necessarily mean it makes for a good ride or aspects of it don’t necessarily translate to a ride.

So sometimes you end up with an IP that you usually struggle to try to create an experience that is a good theme park experience as opposed to coming up with something yourself. Certainly, an adventure through a temple is enhanced by it being an Indiana Jones adventure through a temple. Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be an enjoyable experience, but having that IP adds layers of expectation to that. And as far as wearing a management hat, I can understand why they’re doing it. I would like to see a little bit more freedom so that we could come up with new IPs ourselves or just be okay with the themed environment.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, totally. And I think Indiana Jones and even Pandora are, to me, examples where they’re not…I don’t feel like they’re beholden to it, especially Pandora. It’s the recent example where I feel like it could just be blue aliens and you’re doing this and it’ll be fine, but obviously the draw, there’s a connection there, especially after Potter. But I’m just curious too, I mean, I think we’re going to continue to head that way, but maybe just kind of taking that for you, Andy, is that what is a good example that you think has done well with IP? Or maybe, I know putting you on the spot here. I didn’t ask this one in advance, but I’m curious for you, what are maybe a good example like that that kind of exemplifies when it can work?

Andy Sinclair-Harris: I think for me, and I’m sure probably Don’s going to agree with this and there’d be no surprise, but Harry Potter for me is the crowning achievement of where an intellectual property has completely delivered on being a place you want to go to. I mean, as Don was just saying, I think the IP question breaks down into two. It’s the artistic and the financial reality. I think that there is sometimes draw for people.

I think people have always wanted to go to a Star Wars planet, and that’s always been the draw. And I think people have always wanted to go to the Wizarding World, all those different places. At the same time, I think it’s easier for…it’s a financial question, the fact that doing a brand new attraction or a brand new land that has no basis in anything, having to do that explanation that education can be costly and is the financial risk involved with that.

And I think 50 years ago that was much more…but then at the same time, basically IP was still being used then with Snow White and Cinderella, all those different properties that Walt had. But to answer your question, I think yeah, Harry Potter for me is the crowning achievement of that. And I think that has a lot to do with the author being involved with that. I think it has to be that J.K. Rowling being the creator of that world and having oversight of University Creative, who also did an amazing job, by the way, but pushing for those uniqueness of the land.

I mean, when you go to Diagon Alley, the fact that it breaks so many of the fundamental rules we’re taught, theme park school that you have to have this many people go down here and a shop should be this big. But to keep the integrity of that story, I think that obviously Universal Creative have fought for that, but at same time, J.K. Rowling has fought for that, that this is going to be a representation of the world of Harry Potter of Diagon Alley, then it has to maintain those conceits of the world.

And I think that’s where it’s been successful, has been completely dogmatically staying to the principles of the story that made it fantastic. The train works because it’s so rooted in the details of Harry Potter from the books and the world of it. And that to me, even though it’s an IP, it doesn’t really matter because yes, Harry Potter is the overriding kind of character in that world, but generally it’s just a place you want to go, you want to sit, have a drink, meet with friends, and bask in the architecture. And like you said, Dan, about Pandora, the reason I think that works is because when the placemaking and the world is enough and when you can remove that, that’s I think when an IP really works as a lab.

Dan Heaton: Well, excellent. Yeah. And I think that’s a great example because it is a case where knowing the story enhances it, but you’re never going and just checking boxes. When you walk in, you’re like, “Oh, that’s this.” Or there’s not book report attractions, which can be a challenge. I’m not picking on any in particular, but just in general, that there’s another level where I think it expands the story rather than recreating it. I think that’s really the key there. Okay. I have one last question that I’m going to ask and I’m going to go back to you, Andy.

And we mentioned a bit about COVID and kind of what that allowed you, Don, to do with Alice and everything, but I feel like we do have to ask kind of the bigger question of the future of theme parks. I’m not saying whether they’re going to exist or not or anything like that, but even I’m just curious for your thoughts on what changes you might see and how theme parks operate or how attractions are made and maybe even the types of entertainment that they present or that people are interested in.

It’s a big question, but I’m just curious for your input on what…I mean, and hopefully when we’re able to kind of get out more in a different way, are theme parks going to adjust or what might they do here?

Andy Sinclair-Harris: I mean, it’s a huge question and it’s a really big, nebulous answer because it’s a question that we’re talking about on a daily basis. This is a moving target because we are kind of still in the middle of this pandemic. It’s kind of happening around us and we don’t know enough about it yet and we don’t know. It doesn’t have an end point to it.

There was the time with September 11th where there was a grieving period, but people wanted to get back to it and this isn’t that. This is something there is a real health and safety impact to what people want to do for fun. But at the same time, hopefully I can say this with some kind of consistency that theme parks aren’t going anywhere. People will always want that form of entertainment. It’s the first thing to go if there’s budget cuts.

If there’s something that happens, it’s the first, it’s the easiest thing to stop, but it’s the first thing people want to do when things kind of become a bit lighter. So theme parks will always exist and they have to exist and there is too much invested. I mean, the people who run these theme parks are huge multimedia conglomerates and there is billions investors in these assets that sit around the world. So they’re not going anywhere and I think it would be too difficult to re-engineer what’s existed and things that are coming.

I think we’ll just see some variation of…unfortunately, I think that we might see theme parks become a little bit more like airports. I mean, we’ve gone there already. They’re building new structures now, Animal Kingdom and Epcot where they are the new security desks where you’re going to walk through a metal detector and you’re going to have your bag checked.

I think you’ll probably end up walking through some kind of more of a screening process that you walk through. You’re going through it, but it will check your temperature. It might check inconsistencies in your body. You might have to stand there for three seconds to register like you would at an airport, but I think there needs to be what I would hope there would be that once you’re within the bubble of the particular theme park, that’s where you’re safe and it’s getting people checked before they get into that bubble. I think so.

I think the money and the expenditure has to go to the outside of the park, not really to the inside of it. That can be done through the process we’re seeing now when you’re in a theme park, you can make changes, but I don’t think they need to be as sweeping as not doing particular ride systems because this could happen, this could happen.

I think having regular kind of cleaning policies and things like that could help ease the process of that. But like I said, I don’t think we should really start changing the way that we do things. I think that there could be a change in kind of more multi-use products. So things like The Void and those other potential, which could be good for VR to go away actually because as much as VR is great when it’s in a theme park setting, I think it’s much more fun in the home setting.

I think you don’t want to have VR within the theme park where you pay to go to the theme park and then you have to put on a headset. So that kind of shared technology where people are having more exposure to particular things probably could go away or certainly for the close future, for the near future could go away. But I’d be interested to see what Don thinks about it as well.

Don Carson: No, I agree too. COVID hasn’t made us any less wanting or craving the opportunity to travel and to be around other people. There’ll be much rejoicing. There certainly was after the influenza, we had the ‘20s. I think if anything, there might even be an explosion of people returning to those places. So I think preparing those places for the influx of those people when they do come and surviving this time period by allowing some of these places to be open through the sort of airport screening process.

Well, a side product that’s coming, and Andy and I are both living examples of it, is that we’re not working a lot because there’s not a lot of investment in new projects until there’s a reassurance that those existing assets are being experienced and money is going towards them. So I’m curious as to see whether or not it expands our ideas of what a themed environment experience could be and where that theme park experience bleeds out into our daily lives so that we can consume it certainly physically there, but is there some home experience too that feeds right into it?

The Alice Project to me definitely is a way…it didn’t make people not want to go back to Disneyland, it made them want to go all the more. And so as creative people who have sort of been detached from the large multimillion dollar projects, what can we do during this time period to imagine what an attraction might be or how one interacts with it that could extend into the digital realm or through our phones or through the coming AR glasses that will undoubtedly be part of our lives in the not too distant future.

I agree, this too shall pass, and then we’ll be the old guys that remember what it was like to live through it. And in the meantime, it’s what can we take this downtime period to really think about above and beyond safety, how are we going to entertain people in the future and how does that extend the experience of the theme park we love into our lives more?

Andy Sinclair-Harris: I think it’s a fantastic issue to bring up there, because I don’t think there’s a surprise that … If you take a film like Mulan, for example, the live action version that Disney’s been working on, this has been a film that’s been in development for a couple of years. It was a very targeted towards an Asian demographic.

The fact it was going back to its roots of the story, like Lion King had done preceding that. And now that huge story, this big investment hasn’t found its home, is now breaking the mold of typically this would be a template attraction. It’s going to go into a theater for X amount of days and we hope it makes X amount of money. Well, that kind of formula now doesn’t exist anymore. So now it’s interesting that Disney has more of an inroads to people’s homes through Disney+.

So now that’s becoming the first idea to go into people’s homes. And it’s a painful thing as if you’re paying for a family to go see a movie. Whether it works or not, it doesn’t. It’s interesting to see that there are the first steps, the baby steps into how can Disney and entertainment come into your home. And even if you look at Disney Parks Blog, Disney and Imagineering are kind of putting out these kind of paper sets of Main Street, if you’ve seen them, people can color themselves.

It’s very interesting. And like I said, it’s definitely not surprising that Disney are trying to…and again, just like Don’s doing, what are some interesting things that people could do to bring the Disney experience into your home that just creates a whimsical recreation of that? It’s not taking away from the experience, you still want to go do that, but how could that interplay kind of work within the future is definitely fantastic. And we are seeing the first baby steps of this now. We could have this conversation in 10 more years and it’s going to be very interesting to see where we are.

Don Carson: Yeah. As a kid, I remember whenever there was a Disneyland special, like in the ‘70s or ‘80s, I realized that Disney didn’t necessarily understand its own product or wasn’t able to see it beyond its container. So when they would do a TV special based on Disneyland, you didn’t get to explore Disneyland. You usually got to see whatever the star of the day was dancing in front of a castle or dancing with penguins in New Orleans Square. While I was hungry for the rides, I wanted to see if I could somehow viscerally or experience what those rides were from my home.

And I would love to see a breakdown. And I think it could happen where you start to see like the paper sets or watching this incredible, the people recreating Disney dark rides in their own houses through like moving office chairs and flashing lights. Is there a way for them to understand that that is a potential way for people to interact with the content in the theme parks? That doesn’t necessarily mean that at that moment they have to physically be there. Is there a blurring of the lines between a ride that you have in home and a ride that you have in the parks that supports both?

Andy Sinclair-Harris: I think we’re only a couple more years away from that particular technology being what it is. I mean, at the moment we’re kind of living the HD televisions and streaming services, there’s that kind of monetary reason for that. But as soon as the next piece of technology arrives, will it be the VR glasses, as soon as that next piece hits in the next couple of years, that will be, I think that it will open the floodgates to kind of really bringing that entertainment into the home, I think.

Don Carson: Well, during this time period, I’m hungry for anything that’s going to cause my blood pressure to go down, because it’s certainly, every time you turn the news on, it’s just smashing the fight or flight button. And so one of the things that I’ve gone to is I have an Oculus Quest, which is the lower end, it’s untethered, the goggles. And so I’ll plug that on.

I’ll load up YouTube and in YouTube you can make the screen as big as an IMAX screen with a curve on it and I’ll load up … There’s people who have 4K walkthroughs of Venice or London or there’s just very placid. It’s binaural sound. You’re hearing the sounds. It’s not VR, it’s not 3D, but it’s such a high resolution that you can just sit quietly and move through these incredible cities at a walking pace-and then look up one too. Do that at Disneyland.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Wow.

Don Carson: Here you’ve got a park that’s completely empty right now that you could take 5K wandering through with the music playing and I would happily plug into it and consume that without any investment on special effects or anything. Just let me wander inside Epcot or let me wander inside Disneyland from my VR goggles, just looking at high resolution video that fills my peripheral.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: More of that. And I think Don’s really started a really interesting discussion with this Alice ride, the fact that Chris Wallace online did the Horizons Resurrected so well, and now Don has done this. Then now I think there’s a really interesting market which Disney, I’d love Disney to get into that. If they could say, “We’re going to release rides that no longer exist, but still have a place in people.” If I could go on Delta Dreamflight right now, and if Disney wanted to charge me $50 to buy it, to have it as a piece that I could own, I would happily pay that and probably more probably, but let’s not tell Disney that, but I would love to do that.

Or a subscription to it. Disney, I mean, imagine that though, Disney Parks Plus, and it’s something you can go onto and you can, as Don said, Disneyland, you go through, you cycle through at night in the morning, walking to an energy, you cycle through these things, watching the fireworks.

And then Disneyland, you scroll through 1958 and you see how the park looked and if it was digitally recreated and then you scroll down and you have extinct attractions and you do 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and it’s a recreation like someone like Don has done where you can move around it. That to me is, there is a huge … It’s still not going to stop people from going and doing the brand new attractions or the ones that exist, Pirates of the Caribbean in reality, but it’s a fantastic way to engage people from home and is a really great monetized way for Disney to utilize that. Let’s do that.

Don Carson: Well, considering Alice was done in two months by four people, all working from their home. There you go. Either. But that was without the show set drawings and all the photo reference, this is mostly making it up that one could recreate those attractions so that you viscerally feel like you’re there with the music and everything fairly inexpensively.

Dan Heaton: Yeah.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: There you go. Heard it here first.

Dan Heaton: Well, yeah, I mean, I remember being a kid and wanting to go to Disney World and being like, wouldn’t it be great if there was somewhere you could just like…I was just thinking you could watch the rides on TV. I mean, we’re talking 1980s or whatever, but I always thought your point, Don, about them not always knowing what they have.

And I mean, we saw it a little bit with the Imagineering Story where they started to be like, “People actually are interested in seeing these clips of the park and the behind the scenes stuff”, but on the VR side or on that side, I still feel like even with that, people always say, well, they’ve talked about they might want to do a black box attraction or whatever where Disney’s talked about, well, it could be something they could swap out, but I think they’re thinking more in terms of the latest movie or the latest story or whatever, Mandalorian or whatever something comes out.

But to me, I’ve always thought that there’s this market, and I’m trying not to just repeat what you just said much better than what I’m saying right now, but there’s a market that’s out there and a lot of fans and people that are really into, whether it’s Horizons or Dreamflight or anything.

And like you mentioned, Don, it’s not this hundred million dollar project, it’s something that could be done, I don’t know how much it would cost, but on the cheap, but maybe that is something, because we’ve seen on the Disney Parks Blog where they’ve started even showing videos where it’s like they just did one of Mystic Manor where it’s like they show you three minutes of the ride and they give you little behind the scenes tips and they’ve done things like that, which might seem like, oh, well, you can see all this on YouTube, but for them, this is not what they were doing before.

So maybe that’s like the first step where they’re starting to realize, hey, people like it when we show them things that are behind the scenes. Or like Mystic Manor, most of us have…I have never…I mean, I’m talking to the wrong people. I have never been to Hong Kong and ridden it and a lot of people haven’t. So being able to experience things either that are extinct or that are in DisneySea or Hong Kong or somewhere that many of us will never get to, it’s brilliant. I like the idea. I think let’s make this happen. Let’s call up Disney right now and do it.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Because as soon as Disney does it as well, and once they do it and they kind of make that, obviously they’ll monetize it, but as soon as they do that, they do it the way Disney should do it and do it well, then it becomes the others will fall away. And it’s like, as soon as Disney get ahead of this and do it really well, and it would pay for itself as daunted, it’s not a big investment to recreate something digitally and then to monetize that for each individual. It’s kind of sort of what you would call in America a no-brainer, I believe.

Don Carson: Also with the Oculus Rift and YouTube, being able to ride SoCal Attractions and there are several sort of dedicated people who travel all over the world with these incredible cameras that can see in the dark and they ride through Mystic Manor or they ride through Phantom Manor. I’ve sat down, I’ve never been to either of those attractions and I have sat down with the YouTube screen and VR and I, even as a young person who’s interested in this industry, get to know these attractions even if you’ve never been to Hong Kong by riding them because the quality of those videos is very, very close to what we’re talking about.

And these are people who aren’t working for the company. If the company actually were to produce ride throughs, they could add a little bit more special effect or more audio that would enhance it and allow people who will never go to Hong Kong to experience Mystic Manor without necessarily having to go there.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: And this is just off the top of my head, but they could call it Disney Quest.

Don Carson: That’s not being used.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Right now. I don’t think it’s been used. I just came to me. Let’s make a call here.

Dan Heaton: Never had any issues. But the last point, I think, just going to what you said, Don, about you wanting to go to Disneyland more, someone with Alice, I think that’s the reason, even with parks, like tons of parks music and stuff, there’s some sort of idea, at least from my perspective, that they think, well, if we had these amazing ride-throughs and stuff, people wouldn’t want to go. But to me, that’s not true at all. If I go on YouTube and I see a really cool ride, I want to go ride that in person.

So I think whereas they may be concerned in thinking that somehow it dilutes the product and people don’t want to go. It’s not true. Even seeing it in a VR is not the same as being there. That’s only going to make me want to see it more. And I think that’s the step is to realize that it only enhances the brand. It doesn’t…it’s like a movie trailer that makes you want to go see the movie or something.

Don Carson: Well, and also Disney, certainly my experience at Disneyland growing up, it is utterly completely woven with my memory and my nostalgia and my childhood. And I’m always hungry for an opportunity to be taken back there, whether it’s through an audio experience or a video experience. I’m willing to say that I’m geeky enough that I’ve on YouTube popped in a hour long Blue Bayou background music ambient just to have it in the room so that I can be taken back to something. I’m not eating a Monte Cristo and drinking a mint julip, but I’ve been transported back to that place. And I think that there’s a real opportunity to pull people into their past right now because we so want to go back there to an innocent time when we were kids going to Disneyland for the first time.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. I mean, I’m feeling so good now about everything. This is great. There you go. I asked the question about the pandemic and now I’m just like, life’s awesome. This is going to be amazing.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: We set the topic at the beginning of this podcast. Can we fix the pandemic? And I think we have. So that’s good. We’ve done well.

Dan Heaton: Mission accomplished.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Mission accomplished.

Dan Heaton: All right. Well, this has been great guys. I would love to do it again some time, but just really quickly, I’ll start with you, Andy. So if people want to follow you online or find out about the Sorcerer’s Lounge, is there like somewhere they should go to do that?

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Sure. They can follow me on Twitter, which is @185peracre and there’s links to Sorcerer’s Lounge on that. I think there might be Lounge Saucer, which is their Twitter handler as well. I’ve just recently come onto Instagram, so I’m @midcenturyAndy on Instagram. And for the moment, it’s my outlet for design tiki mugs to make me feel better through this pandemic has onset. So yeah, I’m on Instagram as well now.

Dan Heaton: Excellent. Well, Don, if people want to learn more about Alice and everything else you’ve done there, are there good places they should go?

Don Carson: Well, definitely Instagram is the place that I post everything and I overshare. So my reason for getting into these projects is to show the process because I think the process is really cool and interesting. I do tend to overshare. So if you want to see up-to-date posts on whatever I’m working on, @donjcarson on Instagram is the place to go. I also post on Facebook as well, but my friend base is much smaller than the number of people that can follow me on Instagram. So that’s where to go. And then it’ll also link to any YouTube videos that I create.

Dan Heaton: Awesome. Well, I’m excited about VR through Disney in the near future. I think it’s going to happen now, but this has been really fun. Lots of cool topics. It’s been a blast. Thanks to both of you so much for being on the show.

Don Carson: Thank you, Dan, and thank you, Andy.

Andy Sinclair-Harris: Thank you so much for both. You had such a great time talking to you both. Thank you.