Fantasy Factory Plots All the Fun at Disney : Imagineers’ Design Projects Range From Parks to Trade Shows

Peter Kermode aims his water bottle at a Scandinavian troll who regards him malevolently from three heads and seven eyes.

Squirt goes the water, and the troll’s warty noses glisten with moisture. “We have to keep him from drying out,” the sculptor mutters, peering at his eight-foot clay creation. “There, that looks nice and weird, doesn’t it?”

Kermode works for Walt Disney Imagineering, the creative think tank of the Magic Kingdom. He is one of about 600 artists, architects, set designers, animators and “mad scientists” employed by the Walt Disney Co. subsidiary to make things look nice and weird.

The Imagineers, as they are called, spend their days at an unmarked warehouse in Glendale’s industrial district designing rides, plotting special effects and fine-tuning the Disney mythology for future generations. The troll, for instance, is soon to be trundled off to Walt Disney World in Florida and used to cast a bronze statue for Epcot Center’s Norway Pavilion.

“If I’m going to have a job, this is absolutely the best,” said Kermode, who in 15 years with Disney has sculpted everything from alligators to bears.

Many employees agree. They say the fantasy factory is abuzz today with an energy that hasn’t been seen since 1966, when founder Walt Disney died.

For one thing, there’s Euro Disneyland, a $2.5-billion theme park scheduled to open outside Paris in 1992. After a lengthy pas de deux, French Premier Jacques Chirac and Disney Chairman Michael D. Eisner signed a contract in late March to build a theme park that will incorporate French culture in addition to the usual Disney attractions.

Many Imagineers say designing Euro Disneyland will be their most challenging assignment yet. They’ll have help, though: The company plans to hire about 200 additional employees in the next year for the Glendale warehouse, Imagineering President Carl G. Bongirno said.

There also are forays into outside consulting. The company recently designed a trade show exhibit for Caterpillar Tractor, for example, and will construct all the exhibits for a 100,000-square-foot Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum planned in Griffith Park.

Imagineering also wants to build up to nine regional entertainment centers across the country with developer James Rouse, known for transforming aging urban areas into “Festival Marketplaces” such as Boston’s Faneuil Hall and Baltimore’s Harborplace.

Those proposed joint ventures would blend Disney attractions with restaurants, shopping and entertainment. Locations under consideration include Burbank, where city officials on Tuesday are expected to approve plans to build a retail and entertainment complex on the site of the failed Towncenter shopping mall project.

Despite such extracurricular activities, Disney’s own projects still comprise the most of Imagineering’s work.

On one recent day, three engineers were testing an underwater machine that creates fog through ultrasound. Designers were sculpting a plastic foam model of Disneyland’s new Splash Mountain ride, which is scheduled to open in 1988.

And workers were using digital electronics to build the “audio-animatronic” robots for such stalwart Disneyland attractions as Pirates of the Caribbean. The robot technology blends synchronized mechanical movements with sound effects at a cost of between $30,000 to $100,000 per figure.

Some Were Never Made

The building also is a graveyard for ideas that never made it, such as the Big Rock Candy Mountain canal boat ride and a trip through the palace of an ice princess.

Imagineering’s annual budget, about $150 million this year, has fluctuated from $100 million to $300 million--depending on its project load. About $7 million a year on average is written off for attractions that don’t work out.

Given the increasing competition among theme parks, it seems likely that Imagineering’s workload will only increase.

After sluggishness in the early 1980s, Disney’s theme parks are booming. Park revenue hit $1.52 billion in 1986, up 21% from 1985. The parks account for 62% of Disney’s total revenue and 70% of its operating profit.

But industry analysts say there is constant pressure to come up with new ride attractions to keep customers coming back. Knotts Berry Farm, for instance, plans $30 million in improvements over the next five years to keep up with Disneyland. MCA’s Universal Studios Tour is designing at least four new attractions that may exceed $75 million, and Disney has hinted that it may build a rival movie tour attraction in Burbank or elsewhere in Southern California.

And in the Orlando area, both Disney and MCA are building competing movie studios that will double as tour attractions. Disney’s will cost $300 million and is scheduled to begin opening in 1988.

At Imagineering headquarters, employee badges list first names only, and even corporate chief executive Eisner is known as Michael. The Imagineers themselves are eclectic. Some are graduates of prestigious art schools. Others are self-taught creative whizzes who worked their way up through the company. Many grew up in Southern California and spent countless weekends hanging out at Disneyland as children.

Built Scale Models

“I used to go through the rides and think, why did they do this, why didn’t they do that,” said set designer Bruce Gordon, 36, who grew up in Fullerton.

Gordon’s first job at Imagineering came in 1979 as a builder of scale models of Disney attractions. Today, he is show producer for Splash Mountain, a $35-million to $40-million Disneyland attraction billed as the world’s longest log flume ride.

Scheduled to open in 1988, Splash Mountain will feature more than 100 robot figures, including Br’er Rabbit from the Disney movie, “Song of the South.”

Gordon is a self-described “Disney fanatic.” He visits Disneyland about three weekends a month, in addition to about two trips during each week on business. He haunts auctions for Disney memorabilia, and on the opening day of Epcot in 1982, he walked away with $2,000 in souvenirs.

Despite the thrill of seeing their ideas unfold, some Imagineers find it frustrating to work for years on a project only to see it shelved.

“It takes five minutes to come up with an idea. It takes five years to implement,” said Tony Baxter, main concept designer for Star Tours, Disneyland’s latest ride, which opened this year.

Baxter, who began his Disney career as a popcorn vendor, is luckier than most: Two of the 300 ideas he’s pitched--Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Splash Mountain--are becoming Disney attractions. Most may never have an idea become a Disney reality.

For Star Tours, the $32-million attraction produced as a joint venture with “Star Wars” film director George Lucas, Imagineering designed the physical settings and plot line while Lucas made the film used as a backdrop.

Simulates Space Flight

As passengers wait to “board” their flight, they are regaled by “Star Wars” robot characters R2D2 and C3PO and watch big-screen TV ads urging visits to exotic planets. The ride that follows simulates space flight by using a hidden hydraulics system synchronized with films of intergalactic battles.

Disney is one of the pioneers in the use of interchangeable props and sets for attractions, said Roy Hong, an industry analyst who follows Disney for First Boston, a New York investment firm. Star Tours, for instance, could become a different ride someday just by installing new film footage and retooling set design, Bongirno said.

And for Christmas, Disneyland turns its Country Bear Jamboree into a holiday show by reprogramming ursine robots and switching props and backdrops.

Imagineers credit Eisner, the former Paramount executive who took control of Disney in 1984, and his management team with the renewed vigor of their operation. Eisner himself often drops by the idea factory to talk over new projects, they say, much like Walt Disney himself, who built a small apartment at the Glendale warehouse for the occasions when he worked late.

Imagineers say Eisner and Disney President Frank Wells are also behind the company’s decision to court outside business.

Requests from theme park competitors, however, get turned down flat. So do projects that fail to pique the Disney imagination, such as a motel owner’s recent suggestion that Disney build a rest stop along Interstate 5.

But when Caterpillar asked Imagineering to design a Las Vegas trade show exhibit, Disney swung into high gear.

Liked the Challenge

“The fun part was saying: ‘How can you make these great big machines interesting?’ It’s hard to get intimate with cold steel that weighs 20 to 30 tons,” Patrick Scanlon, Imagineering’s vice president of business affairs and marketing development, said. The solution was a three-dimensional staging that put the big tractors against a painted backdrop of farms and other settings.

Such projects show just how far Imagineering has come since 1952, when WED Enterprises--for Walter Elias Disney--was founded to plan and design a 77-acre theme park in an Anaheim orange grove.

After Disneyland opened in 1955, WED’s next big task was to design four shows for the 1964 New York World’s Fair that were later incorporated as Disneyland attractions, including “Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln” and “It’s a Small World.” The company, renamed Walt Disney Imagineering in 1985, also designed the 28,000-acre Walt Disney World, which opened in Orlando, Fla., in 1971, Epcot Center in 1982 and Tokyo Disneyland in 1983.

During construction of Disney World in Florida, the Imagineering work force swelled to 2,100 but has since shrunk by almost three-quarters. In fact, the company almost folded three years ago, when management considered farming most of the design and construction work to outside contractors and whittling staff to a core creative group.

After compiling a list of more than 60 in-house specialties from making imitation rocks to robotics, however, Disney dropped the idea.

To research Euro Disneyland, the company plans to send a design team to France to soak up local culture. In fact, that has become Imagineering’s standard operating procedure: Before set designer Joe Rohde began work on the Norway Pavilion at Epcot’s World Showcase, Disney shipped him to Scandinavia to study architecture, design and folklore.

“In the beginning and end you’re enthralled,” said Star Tours designer Baxter. “In between it’s a complex job, getting yelled at and spending money foolishly.”