WDWGuy Blog

Re-Imagineering Blog

Posted on July 17th, 2006 by wdwguy.
Categories: General posts.

Just added a new link to the list over on the left side, and if you follow Disney very much at all, then you’ve probably already seen it.

When Disney acquired Pixar earlier this year, John Lasseter, head of Pixar’s creative team and one of the founders of the company, became head of Walt Disney Imagineering. Now Lasseter is a huge Disney geek, and like the rest of us geeks, has been pretty ticked off about some of the things that Disney has done with the parks in the last 20 years. So in order to get a feel for what the Imagineers would have done, had they been given the money and/or permission, he invited them to start a blog to share their feeling. Here’s how the subtitle to the Re-Imagineering blog puts it:

A forum for Pixar and Disney professionals passionate about the Disney Theme Parks to catalog past Imagineering missteps and offer tenable practical solutions in hopes that a new wave of creative management at Imagineering can restore some of the wonder and magic that’s been missing from the parks for decades.

I don’t think it was ever meant for the general public, but something that juicy is going to get out. The insights that it has provided have been extremely interesting, and even though it’s updated infrequently (an average of around once a week), the posts are usually great.

However, the posters can tend to get a pit preachy in their feelings toward Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Take this post for example. The writer is bemoaning the fact that Disney has taken to putting a themed shop at the exit of virtually every ride in the parks. A “Buzz Lightyear” shop at the end of “Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin” is once instance. There are tons of others. Somehow, the writer seems to think that since Walt Disney had a “disdain for the hard sell” that he wouldn’t approve. Frankly, to me it doesn’t matter whether Walt would approve or not. Those stores are there for one reason — the stuff in them sells. Real estate in the parks are at a premium and always will be. If a particular area doesn’t generate revenue (or in the case of an attraction, visitors), it gets changed. Period.

But that’s my only real criticism of the site. Otherwise, it’s a must for the bookmarks of any serious Disney fan.

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