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Epcot and Eisner Stories | Disney Imagineer Hugh Darley · Project Horizons

• speaker-0: You're always welcome with Michael Eisner, Hugh. How you getting the situation? speaker-1: Well, I had this art director title. And everybody else just wanted to agree. So they had to have somebody there that was the I don't know, the antagonist, I guess, for Michael. So he's walking down the street, and and there's fifty executives right behind just walking out front. He asked the group, he said, How much did the castle cost when we built it in nineteen seventy one? And actually somebody in the group knew, they said nine million dollars. And Michael said, What's our revenue stream on the castle? And we're thinking and we're thinking, well, it's just King Stefan's small little restaurant and a little gift shop downstairs. Almost no no real revenue. And Michael said, Well, if I had been here when we built it, when we built the park, I wouldn't have built the the castle. And I s looked at him and I said, Michael, without the castle you wouldn't have a magic kingdom. And everybody started backing up. They're like, I can't believe he just said that. speaker-0: That's breaking news, Hugh. Former CEO of Disney saying he would not have built the castle. speaker-1: That's right. speaker-0: All right. So today I'm thrilled to welcome former Walt Disney Imagineer Hugh Darley, who served in roles such as show designer, art director, and graphics designer for many projects at World Showcase and Epcot Center and other projects throughout Walt Disney World and also Disneyland as well. So Hugh, thank you so much again for sitting down with us today. I'm sure this is gonna be must see TV if you're a fan of stories from inside imagineering. So welcome again. How are you doing today, my friend? speaker-1: Thank you. I'm doing very well and it's a pleasure to be with you. I've had an inspired life, and I'll start the story with that. When I was about eleven years old, I think it was sixty nine, I watched the Walt Dis Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights, and they had an episode on this the creation of Pirates of the Caribbean, and it was hosted by Walt Disney and Wafel Rogers. And I knew the moment I saw that episode, I went upstairs and told my parents, I said, You know, I'm gonna be an imagineer. And they said, What? I said, yeah, I am going, I want to be a Walt Disney Imagineer. I just saw this great program. So for the next gosh, I guess seven, eight, nine years, all the way through high school and college, I planned what do I need to learn to become an imagineer? So I went to Georgia Southern. I became an industrial design major. I had to put two majors together, art and engineering. And it created, I was the first industrial design major graduate of Georgia Southern. And I took a second major building construction because I wanted to know to how to build all this stuff that I was dreaming about. And lucky for me I got through those two those two majors. So I had industrial design and building construction. I went to work for a guy named Charles Frazier, who was a visionary I didn't know at the time, but he was building Harbor Town and Seapines Plantation in Hilton Head. So I commuted from Georgia Southern, it's about a thirty five, forty minute drive over to Hilton Head. And I started learning about a branded destination, which I'd never heard that term before. But what we created was a legacy destination. I had been writing to Walt Disney every year to professional staffing to try to get an interview. And I got all these letters back about, gosh, Hugh, you you need to go to Pasadena Art Center or Carnegie School of the Arts or Rhode Island School of Design and I said, Well, I went to Georgia Southern, so that's my major So I got all these rejection letters and I kept them all. Most of them were from Becky Krasett, who was the professional staffing person at Walt Disney World. And I was painting billboards for a living while I was graduating school while I was also working at at Hilton Head. And my dad came out one day and he says, Shee, you got a letter from the Walt Disney Company. And I said, Really? I almost fell off that billboard, it was seventy feet to the to the floor. And I'm painting a Claxton fruitcake billboard. I still remember it like it was yesterday. And come down and and da it was a letter it's from Becky Krasit. Come to Walt Disney World, we would be interested in talking with you about a a role at Epcot. I thought, Great. They flew me down my first business trip anywhere. They flew me to this little airport in Orlando and that airport doesn't exist anymore. It was a little tiny little airport. Got my rental car and drove out to Disney World and met with Dick Banks, who was the head of graphics, and he said, Well, Hugh, I saw your work up at Hilton Head. And I said, Really? And they said, Yeah, you were doing these wood sandblasted signs. We're developing this thing called Lake Buena Vista, which would be this big shopping plaza, and we're doing Epcot. And we're looking for somebody that could help us work on the graphics, signage and work at Epcot. And I said, Great. They took me out there and this amazing I'd never seen a a big construction site like that before. I'm from a small little town in Georgia. I go down there and there's twenty five thousand employees working at Epcot. And I hear that it's gonna open within a year and I'm thinking, Well, I guess if they say it is, I was too young to know the difference. So I just assumed, well, yeah, we can make that happen and led to me meeting some really interesting people. Of course, you're out there on the the promenade working with Tishman, who is our big contractor, and you worked between operations at the park, Tishman, who is the general contractor, and Imagineering. So there's a lot of this dynamic between all these different people. And I worked with the ADA compliant guy, a guy named Al. He drove around in a wheelchair. And if we had a ramp somewhere or stairway or some signage and it was in the way and we had to change it, you had to go by what Al said. And I learned that this guy would always come around in the golf cart with all these signs or all these drawings and he'd yell at everybody. Everybody was scared to death of this guy. I'm thinking, Well, this guy's really important to somebody. And one day he saw I saw him coming to me and I was like, gosh, this was not gonna be good. He comes over and I'm moving. a walkway in the Canada Pavilion and he says, What are you doing? I said, Well I had to do this because Al said, the handicap ramp wasn't ADA compliant and I had to move it. It had to move rocks and landscaping and signage and railings and all that stuff. And the guy says, Well, okay, and I yelled at him a little bit and he yelled back and then he drove off and the next day he comes over again and gets me. Hey Hugh, I got want you to come over here to American Adventure. And at Disney, for all those y who know, You only have your first name tag, you're just your first name. I talked to him a little bit and we'd come over and we do some things in England and we go to American Adventure and we come over and I find this guy's coming to me all the time to solve some little problem. And one day I'm eating in the Canadian Pavilion, which is where Wedd, that's where we went, was which is the precursor to Imagineering. And Bill Cohen, who's a friend of mine and later a business partner, he landscape architect at Imagineering, and he says, Hugh, how how do you know Dick Nunes? And I said, The president of the company? And he goes, Yeah. I said, Man, I've only been here six months. He goes, Well, how did you get to know Dick Nunes so well? I said, Bill, I've never met Dick Nunes. He goes, The guy you're riding in the golf cart with, that's Dick Nunes. And I'm thinking, You gotta be kidding me. I yell at that guy all the time. But Dick, of course, took it as a huge compliment that, hey, here's a guy who actually will tell me what he thinks. And and I wasn't scared of him. So we became lifelong friends and I knew him up till the day he passed away. And but they everybody thought though I was a spy. there was this all this animosity between Tishman and the operations company and Imagineering. And I got along so well with Dick. He was with Operation. Now I d indirectly reported to Marty Scalard at Imagineering. So I just went out there, I had my blue name tag on, I was special and I got to do all this stuff and Dick would just call me. He'd just pick up the phone one day, call me. I'd be over in the offices that were behind the ball fields at at Walt Disney World. And Everybody called me the spy. They said, You must be a spy for Dick Nunes. You're you are he always calls you and asks you to go to these special meetings. So one morning I go into the office, it's one of my favorite stories, and his secretary Kathy calls me and she says, Hugh, can you come over to meet Dick at the Sun Bank building? And I thought, Yeah, I can do that. So I had to go find my clip on tie and my name tag because you didn't go meet Dick Nunes if you didn't have your tie on and your name tag. I've seen him fire people for less than that, So he says I and Kathy says, Bring all of the drawings for Fort Wilderness Town, which is a project I was working on. So I got all my drawings together and, got in the car and had a little company car, drove over to Sun Bank building. Go upstairs, I got all my little drawings under my arms, and Kathy goes, Wait right here, Dick wants you to go down to the conference room. I said, Okay. So I'm standing there, Dick comes out, he walked a Gosh, he walked 10 miles an hour. He was just always walking fast. I had to keep up with him, walking down the hall to go to the conference room. And he goes, I want you to put all the, he goes, I got a meeting going on. I want you to put all the drawings up on the on the tack boards. we have these big walls. He goes tack all the drawings up. And I'm like, okay, I'll tack them all up. So I walk in there and there's a whole room of people, but I don't really pay any attention. I put up my big drawings, and I turn around and Dick says, ladies and gentlemen, this is Hugh Darley. He works with us here. At Walt Disney World with Imagineering, and he is the designer for Fort Wilderness Town. He goes, I'd like for him to tell you the story. He goes, Hugh, this is Ron Miller, Card Walker, Diana Disney Lund. And he's going around, and I'm realizing Mrs. Arminhammer and I I'm realizing, this is the board of directors of the Walt Disney Company. He goes, Hugh, tell us the story. So Totally unprepared, I start going through the ideas of creating a Fort Wilderness town, which would have been between the Walt Disney what would have been Mickey's Wilderness Lodge and what is now Disney Springs. There's a large portion of development parcel there. And I had developed a country fair that would have been in the nineteen twenties, thirties, forties, and it would have had a Ferris wheel and a merry go round in this little country setting, small, low rise hotel buildings. I told the story, and not having been prepared, and Mrs. Arminhammer, who must have been, probably 90 years old, she goes, Hugh, that is the most inspiring story I've ever heard. She goes, I grew up in that era. And what you've captured here really is a boardwalk and a fair, Ferris wheel, and all this stuff. And I mean it almost brought tears to my eyes. And I'm standing there and I'm looking and I'm Speaking to the board the board of directors of the Walt Disney, something I aspired to do all my life. I had zero prep time. And it became one of my favorite stories of working at the Walt Disney Company. speaker-0: Maybe that's the secret to a successful meeting, a successful presentation, because a lot of people overprepare, they worry about saying this, saying that. You went in and you saw all the bigwigs are here, the board of directors are here, and you know your stuff, you know what you're gonna present, and you did it, and you got that response. speaker-1: Yeah, I've learned through my career authentic story. If anything Disney did well, it was telling the authentic story. And in my careers, I've built cruise ports and other theme parks and worked around the world. I've worked in seventy-eight different countries. The story, authentic story, usually the owner of the land or the project that we're doing, they don't understand how valuable that authentic story is. But that's what I learned at Disney. And Wethel Rogers, who was my mentor, and I it was fabulous that I got to meet the guy who was on the T V show that inspired me for my career path. It was amazing to hear him tell how an authentic story makes it work. And I've done that now all my life and I've made a very successful career out of telling a great story. speaker-0: Power of storytelling. Disney did it best. You see a lot of other area theme parks trying to copy that. speaker-1: They try. speaker-0: They try. They tried. Do they succeed? That's debatable. But Disney, especially that leadership at the time when they were trying to make these immersive experiences and create these worlds that no one else can duplicate. It was something special. You mentioned that Fort Wilderness town. I'd like to know more about that. Was this going to be a whole separate area from Fort Wilderness? speaker-1: An extension of what was river country and the campgrounds. And the idea was that we wanted to have more things for people to do at night and all weekends. And the idea was we were trying to expand that guest experience and the things we were learning, once the park closes at night, people were going back to their hotels, but they were still looking for that thing to do. We eventually developed Pleasure Island, which took a lot of that overflow, that opportunity to do things at night. It was a great project. I I really liked the original. Pleasure Island and then has v eventually developed into downtown Disney or Disney Springs. And what happens is once you're in that immersive environment, this you don't want the story to end. You want to stay there. You want to experience more. You just you can't get enough of it. And even though the park may close, the opportunities to go back to the hotels. The things I'm most concerned about today is that Disney's lost that. They don't seem to understand that authentic story. And I understand about the financials and all the things that you need to do to make the company, be financially successful. But at the price points they are now and the fact they take out things like Tom Sawyer's Island, I was so disappointed. I worry about the fact that you go to the parks and you're there for eight hours and you spend six of in a line. So I'm looking forward to when we get back to some of that storytelling. speaker-0: Hugh, you can skip the line for a low price of twenty dollars Lightning Lane, isn't that proper speaker-1: Well I do. I do actually do some tours called it Ventures by Disney. And I think you pay seven hundred to twelve hundred dollars a person and we get to skip all the lines. We give a tour backstage. I get to tell these stories. And those are fabulous. if you can do that and you can go to the Disney parks and do it Ventures by Disney and get the backstage tour, it's fabulous. It's the best experience in the world. speaker-0: You were there at a time when storytelling was at the forefront of the company, of their theme parks. And you see today, obviously you notice a change in that. I could remember some attractions in Epcot. There were parts of attractions where guests would never see, but the attention to detail in those show scenes would be words that describe the scene that guests would never see, but the meticulous attention to detail for those experiences was just like, why would they put money towards something a guest would never see? And it just goes to show how much energy and time went into making it as perfect as can be. And we all saw it as perfect. That's a testament to those creatives. speaker-1: Yeah, I think that people aren't so inspired. It's a job now. When I worked there, my whole life revolved around that. I was inspired to have that job. It wasn't just because I got a job interview and I worked for Disney. No, that was my life goal. And I saw I used to remember some of the most important times to be in a show was it went one one. If the show stopped in let's say Pirates or in Haunted Mansion and you got to sit there for a minute. And to see everything that was going on. It was an amazing picture in time. There was no way going through on the regular ride track that you would see all of that detail. But when you could absorb that level of detail, and then later when I got to restore Pirates of the Caribbean in in Disneyland in California, I got to go through in the mornings, every morning as the art director at Disneyland. And I got to work with Tony Baxter, who was a fabulous art director for Disneyland. I would walk through the scenes, and of course you got all the show lights on and it the water's not in there and you're walking around doing the art direction. I found out that the skeletons were actually real. They had little whiskers and they had eyebrows. So I went back and researched and found out those were actually human skulls. And I don't know that that's public knowledge, but you would see some of these pirates in there and you'd be going, That's like a really guy that's like a real guy. But That level of detail and the experience of being able to work on the inside of the company was an unbelievable guest experience and it's helped me throughout my whole career in all the projects that I've done around. speaker-0: Yeah, One and Mansion, Pirates. These are attractions that are not short. And so, you know, you have a through attractions today, one, two minutes, you wait two hours in line, these slower moving attractions that tell a story. If they had a backstory or not, it didn't matter. But they all told us they all told a story. And you were part of that experience. And if the ride slowed down or stopped, you got to see all this detail. It was incredible. Absolutely incredible. And Disney still does great things today. I'm not gonna take anything away from them, but it was a different level of attractions. You've seen it, you understand that. And this is why we love the company so much. It's like we remember these moments, these times of great attractions. speaker-1: I love redoing Peter Pan at Walt Disney World. All the models and the miniatures, and you flew through the sky, and it gave you this great personal experience. You cannot replace that with technology. You can do all the virtual you want to in the world. There's nothing better than flying over to London and seeing that the clouds and seeing the model and hearing the story of Peter Pan. You become part of that story. And I'm hoping that Disney will get back to doing more of that touch, feel, and personal emotion, personal connection. speaker-0: Absolutely. There's nothing like it. Pretty incredible experiences. You mentioned Wathel Rogers. You watched him on television. You said, Wow, I wanna do what he's doing. And to start your career, to start your job at Disney and to be working for speaker-1: Listen, I it brought tears in my eyes. You're probably gonna make me cry right now. speaker-0: Who can say who can say that that experience has happened to them? speaker-1: Unbelievable. The enchantment that I got out of that and just the inspiration. I'm sitting in my little cubicle at Walt Disney World, and this guy walks around the corner. So you're gonna make me cry. It's Waitha Rogers. And he goes, She, I'm Waitha Rogers. And I said, Gosh, I know who you are. I watched you on this show, you know, when I'm eleven years old. And he says, Well, I'm going to mentor you through the shooting gallery program, which is what I was doing at Walt Disney World. And I love little shows like that because most of the Magineers wanted big shows. you want to do a pirate, or you want to do an Indiana Jones. I was doing the shooting gallon and a little traction, but we had to change it because OSHA said you can't shoot lead anymore, real lead at targets. So we had a timeline, so I I picked it up, picked up the model, the project, put it together. But what I learned about that little project was I got to do animation, lighting, audio, special effects. set building. I became a rock builder, a certified Disney rock builder. I got to do these guns and fiber optics. I got to use the first compact displayer in America. I actually did a little trip over to to Sony in Japan. They sent me over and they said, We're gonna transfer all of our stack machines, tape stacks, into digital. I don't even know what digital was. Well, they said, Hey, take this little box back in your luggage. You know how they ask you at the airport, don't take stuff back, Well, they gave me this little box where they said, take this back to Walt Disney World. It's the first compact disc player in the United States in 1983. And they made a little disc and they put my sound effects from the shooting gallery on the first disc, and it was made out of glass, not plastic, not lightweight. But it would wear out the machines too quick. But we eventually moved Wisney World from audio into digital format and changed all of Walt Disney World's sound and and shows and attractions. So I got to learn a lot from that little tiny attraction. Even one of the little tombstones had a little hand that came up, and to grab a bottle off the top of the tombstone. And Michael Jackson was in my office one day and we were talking about it and we were putting together the model. He said that inspired thriller was the little hand coming out of the Walt Disney Girl shooting gallery. I never got that check. speaker-0: Michael Jackson loved Disney World. he loved being there. and so folks, if you're listening or watching right now, you know, CDs became popularized in America because of Hugh Darley. So all you music fans out there, you could thank you for that. You mentioned there was lead in the shooting gallery. speaker-1: It was a rifle that was made to accept the lead and you shot lead pellets and it hit all the what they called rat tracks and you'd knock you'd knock all the stuff over. So I redid both of the shooting galleries. Unfortunately they're both gone now, but it was a fabulous opportunity. speaker-0: It's an interesting story about that. And y so you met Michael Jackson. I mean speaker-1: We were working on Captain Eo, he built the really one of the very first video concepts of how to take music and bring it into a show. And fabulous guy, just in just saw the movie, the biographical movie they just did. very well done. spectacular guy, spectacular friend and client. He understood that magic that you're talking about about Disney. he would come there in the morning before the park opened. We got to walk around with him because of course he can't walk around, when the park's open. We enjoy getting to tell the story with him and walk around and you could tell he was really a twelve year old at heart. he was like that 'til the day he passed away. speaker-0: Captain Neo was a great show. Magic Journeys to Captain Neo, nineteen eighties Epcot, nineteen nineties Epcot. That's it right there. speaker-1: It was just pure story. Yes. before we got too smart and started thinking too deep about it, it was just pure story. The imagination pavilion was fabulous. speaker-0: Say Journey into Imagination, Horizons, those two were absolutely incredible for Epcot and for Horizons especially. It was it closed in ninety nine, got demolished a year later. I feel like it became even more popular after it closed. speaker-1: It was. I got to work on that show as a as a show designer. And George McGuinness and some of the industrial designers that were at Imagineering, they really pioneered that show. And it was a great story. And again, anything you can do to tell keep a story authentic, and I tell people that all the time, even those guys that work at a Universal or a Sea World or a Herschel Entertainment or whatever. Go back to the original story. Don't listen to some of the hype that you get and some of the what I'll call the virtual story. No, you gotta really live these stories and it comes back to a human emotion. And if you can tell that story in an authentic way, you're gonna always capture an audience. speaker-0: Yeah. Well, Horizons was a wonderful story. I talked about looking back at tomorrow, our thoughts of the future from the past, and then focusing on the family, evolving through time and seeing where we're going and an optimistic future, an achievable future. And you left Horizon saying, Wow, this is really where Epcot got it perfect. I know you spent a lot of time in World Showcase, and when you got to the Epcot site, you probably saw a lot of dirt. You said to yourself, How is this place going to open in one year? speaker-1: when I look around now at the people that I knew there, they were all in their twenties. And what they pulled off in a short period of time and and for the amount of money that we spent, it was unbelievable. And on opening day, I was there standing on plate waving a flag. I had a monorail uniform on and it was all hands on deck. But the night before we were still lay inside and painting railings and I was putting up banner poles, which I wasn't supposed to 'cause I wasn't a union guy. But we got it open. And it was such a feeling to walk around and see all the people that showed up and enjoyed that part. speaker-0: I've heard so many stories about all the work that went on that night before. Having conversations with Steve Alcorn and Ed Foyer. Projects getting finished like the morning up. speaker-1: We were painting railings at seven o'clock and the CBS show I think started at n eight and I remember I had to run over and go change clothes and go up on my little flag and wave it, in the opening ceremonies. And some of the things that we did that day before I would have never thought it would have opened. And then a week following I was assigned to go stand at the top of spaceship earth and I had to turn every car a rank. speaker-0: You were that guy. I was one of those gu You were one of those guys. Okay. Yeah, I heard that and I said, Who was up there doing that? speaker-1: called it cross utilization, which meant you had to work. You had speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: to turn each car around at the top. And I used to give Tim Kelly, who was riding show engineering, I'd give him a hard time I Tim, I put my time in, man, I had to turn those cars around at the top of spaceship or speaker-0: Wow. And so how long did that until that was personless? speaker-1: Well I think it was probably a month or six weeks. Okay. speaker-0: Wow. speaker-1: But when you're moving systems like that and changing all that stuff was so innovative. Everything we were doing was one of a kind. And the people that were behind all that ride and show engineering, it was, you know, it was a fabulous opportunity to learn. And again, the dedication. I just don't know where that dedication is today. I'm a little disappointed in the other work that I do that you just you see people that have jobs, but then you see people who are inspired. And anytime you can work, I would encourage anybody, if you can work around people that are inspired, do it because it changes the way you look at the world. speaker-0: Yeah. Well, you mentioned back then it was a different class of imagineers. It was a different job at that point. It was still a job, but it it was a career that you wouldn't at least by choice. I know you had a situation with Michael Eisner. Yeah. But a lot of imagineers at the time, there were several waves of layoffs. There were those that went through that would say, I would never leave this company and go work for another, I work for Universal, I work for Disney, I work for Busch Gardens and I do some projects here, some projects there. It's just a job. It's just a job. And I look at it so different when you're at Imagineering from what I know about Imagineering now than I did several years ago, that it was more than just a job. You're continuing that legacy of Walt Disney, that legacy of those original imagineers, the Marty Sklars, the John Henches, the Wathel Rogers. You're continuing that legacy. And it's so much more meaningful than than just saying it's a job. speaker-1: There was so many times I remember I was in the office the day when we walked in and there was a security guard sitting in the lobby and they said, Hugh, you gotta sign in and go to your office and don't leave, until you get a phone call or somebody reaches out to you. And that was the big layoff day. I think we laid off twenty four hundred imagineers that day. And I I went in and I went back to the back and I'm thinking, I'm a new guy, I've only been here a couple of years, I'm surely on the list. I'm I'm sure I'll be gone by the five o'clock today. So there was a couple of real clowns though at Imagine everybody was really creative. And so me and a guy named Gary, we we decided we'd start calling people on the phone. Because that's what you were doing is waiting on this phone call, you know. We just picked up the directory and just started calling everybody. And they'd go, my God, you I can't believe you called And at the end of the day though, there was only three of us left. And I was one of those lucky three. And, you know, it was a great day for me, but I it was such a sad day for the company. But, you know, we were evolving. We were we had completed one of the largest construction projects in the world. And all those people went out to do other things and some of had, you know, fabulous careers. I got to go to Disneyland in California and got to build the shooting gallery and do continue my work at Imagineering. But that was a tough time for the company and a lot of very creative people, you know, were out on the street that next day. speaker-0: Did those layoffs happen when Eisner came in or was it? speaker-1: No, that happened earlier. That happened in eighty four, right when we completed the project. Eisner came in when I was at Disneyland at eighty four, eighty five. The problem that I had was his approach to everything. I I know I'll tell one real quick story is we're walking down Main Street and we're in front of the Matterhorn and we had a man and his son which were in letterhosen, the German Austrian costume and they were climbing the mountain every day. And Michael stopped and he said, Who are those guys? I said, Well, they're they're part of the entertainment, they're entertainers. I think we paid them forty-eight,000 a year or something. Just ridiculous. They came every day and they always climb the matter horn. And Michael goes, Do you think anybody is buying a ticket at Disneyland to see those guys climb the Matterhorn? And I said, Absolutely. That's part of what we do. That's why And he laid them off. That was my first. I had three meetings like that with Michael and I decided I can't do it. We're walking down Magic Kingdom and I'm walking with him again. Here I am walking with Michael. I had this argument. Well, I had this art director title. And everybody else just wanted to agree. So they had to have somebody there that was the I don't know, the antagonist, I guess, for Michael. So he's walking down the street, and and there's fifty executives right behind just walking out front. He mentions he sa he asked the group, he said, How much did the mag how much did the castle cost when we built it in nineteen seventy one? And actually somebody in the group knew, they said nine million dollars. And Michael said, What's our revenue stream on the castle? And we're thinking and we're thinking, well, it's just King Stefan's small little restaurant and a little gift shop downstairs. Almost no no real revenue. And Michael said, Well, if I had been here when we built it, when we built the park, I wouldn't have built the the castle. And I s looked at him and I said, Michael, without the castle, you wouldn't have a magic kingdom. And everybody started backing up. They're like, I can't believe he just said that. speaker-0: That's breaking news, Hugh. Former CEO of Disney saying he would not have built the cast. speaker-1: That's right. Because it didn't have a revenue stream. Anybody that could go to that park and stand there and look at the castle and think dollars and cents does not get. speaker-0: That's another mindset that changed as well. And Michael Eisen did some great things, but that mindset was kind of the start of profit over product. Depending on how yeah, depending on depending on how you look at it. Look, money does pay for good things. I get that. But that mindset from what you just said is a mindset of if I was there in seventy one, well, maybe we wouldn't have done the castle. Maybe we would have done something or nothing. Maybe have a store, a just one big giant store to make money. speaker-1: Imagine Magic Kingdom though without the castle. speaker-0: No, and and I say that because I'm used to it. Now, I don't know they could have done something differently and I would have grown up with that. Maybe I would have felt differently, but I've grown up with the castle. I I can't imagine a Magic Kingdom without that speci not just any castle, that specific castle. Yeah. And like Disneyland, you can't imagine Disneyland without Sleeping Peace Castle. speaker-1: To tell the third story. The art director at Disneyland. And I was called by Scott Gerard, who was our landscape architect. They told me they were going remove the landscape planners in front of Adventureland, in front of the jungle crews, because there was too much of a bottleneck. The parts getting so crowded. So I went there and I stood between the landscape guys and the planters and said, You're not taking these planters out. This overhang and the canopy and the way the trees are this makes adventureland adventure land. You can't take out. A few minutes later, Michael came through the park riding in a golf cart, which is a no no. We don't let anybody ride through the park in a in a golf cart. And I see this golf cart coming, and it's Michael and a security guy in the golf cart. I went and stood in front of the golf cart and I stopped it and I said Y'all gotta get this out of the park right now. Guests were there, and here's this golf cart. And I'm like, what the heck? There's a little gate right there by junk cruise. I said, You take it out right now. And Michael got out of the car and looked at me like, Are you out of your mind? Telling me I can't gr I said, Walt didn't ride through this park in a golf cart, and you're not going to. So next week I went to Dick Newton's and turned in my resignation. After those three meetings, it was done. speaker-0: They eventually remove those planners. speaker-1: No, they're still there today. speaker-0: That skill to make Walt Disney World and Disneyland beautiful, memorable. All that stuff matters, not just the attractions, but the experiences. What you see outside the building, outside of a pavilion. That attraction began when you got to that pavilion. That's right. And not when you stepped in that vehicle, when you got to that pavilion and walked in. So you hand in your resignation. So you weren't fired, you chose to. speaker-1: No, I was twenty seven years old. I walked into Dick Nunes' office. He asked me, why I was coming over. And I said, Well, Dick, I think I'm leaving the company. And Dick said, Hugh, you'll be one of the people running this company in fifteen years. And I said, Dick, I'm twenty-seven years old. I want to be running the company today. You don't tell a guy who's twenty-seven years old in fifteen years he's gonna be running the company. I did resign and Marty Scalar called me and and told me he wished I would not leave the company and I said, I'm gonna go find other things to do beyond the berm and I've had a great career doing that. I don't regret it. They said, you'll be back in a week and fortunately I never had to go back and still think the world of the company and the people that I worked with. Many of them are still my friends today, people that I work with, even for a short time at Disney. Authentic story. If you tell a great story, you're gonna have a good career path wherever you go. We did the new signage and graphic system with Sussman and Prazer. We did the new toll plaza. Did a lot of other things that were small projects within the company. Worked on the Polynesian Resort rehab back in eighty-five, eighty-six. And continued to work with the company all the way up until I did the latest project I did with Disney is I created the port in Torto Tortola, British Virgin Islands, for the Walt Disney Company. Tony Baxter was the one that I think the one that probably influenced me the most from Disneyland. Tony had been there almost, gosh, I don't know, for twenty years, even when I got there. And again, it was inspired people. It was the inspired group of people that you got to work with that it was just second nature to you'd you'd ask to change things, but man, if it wasn't going along with the storyline, you had a hard time making a change. speaker-0: Exactly, exactly. Have you been to Epcot recently? speaker-1: Do tours there for Adventures by Disney. I'm not sure that some of the changes they're doing are bettering the part. A lot of people feel like something that's old isn't good. Well, you know, the European story and the different stories that we tell in those pavilions, most Americans are never gonna go to those places. I don't really agree that you've got to change the film in Canada because, you know, it's a great film. It was done with the three sixty out system, you know, and you get this great view of Canada. I wouldn't change a lot of those things, but a lot of people feel like, it's a new generation, there's new people coming through. I'll tell you, I wouldn't change American Adventure. I heard they're gonna make some changes in American Adventure, and you gotta tell the American story. And a lot of people will never see that story except in that pavilion. I heard Magic Kingdom's gonna take out Hall of Presidents. That's craziness. speaker-0: I haven't heard that. Maybe you have news that I don't have. Those are two examples of just wonderful attractions and they tell great stories and the technology. Like I said, I spoke with Steve Alcorn and Ed Foyer about American Adventure and the technology. And I told Steve, you're one of the few people that could tell that story and that you were there to see that happen. Right. Something that Disney took that extra step to create not just a film, not just a show with a great story. It had it was all that. But they had this technology of lifts and carriages. And it didn't work. No, they broke a lot. And but they eventually got it right. To take that risk. You talk about projects with high risk. Well, this was high reward. And it wasn't just walking into a theater and seeing a show. You had animatronics, you had great story, you had something that you wouldn't see anywhere else. All the money that got put into that technology, you wonder if speaker-1: It was a huge investment. It was a huge investment of people's time. I used to say, you know, the union guys came in at seven and left at three. The operational guys came in about eight and left about five. Imagine ears, I was there till one or two o'clock in the morning. And the amount of time and effort and dedication that it took to get that park open and working was phenomenal. speaker-0: So when you're working with Tishman, Tishman had their contractors and then Disney oversees Tishman and the creatives and imagineering who can't really touch what they're doing. So how how does it take speaker-1: Yeah, how does that speaker-0: Dynamic how is that working in that environment? If you see something that needs to be done as an imagineer, but contractors are in charge of it, what do you do? speaker-1: I think I had nine hundred grievances against me as the art director. And we had to go I had to go to a couple of hearings, with with the union and Tishman and the operations people and we had to testify. they accused me of putting up four hundred parade banners the night before we opened Epcot and I denied it. They had to be up though. We had to put up forty eight banners so they magically appeared and I was happy that they were done before we opened the next morning. speaker-0: That's right. Look, if it has to get done, it has to get done. you have to open the park in twenty four hours or less. You gotta climb up a ladder and pick up a wrench or do something to finish the job. You mentioned the living seas, and I heard this story from the retro guys, and I would love for you to tell that story about the splash in front of the pavilion. One of the funniest stories I've heard. speaker-1: we were I was the art director for the opening fountain, the fountain that's out in the middle. We're supposed to have a wave. Every seventh wave is really big. it's a a natural kind of sequence to make this water come up over the sign, the living seas sign. And Rock Hall and Monty Lundy, who were working for special effects then in in at Imagineering, they were in there to do a test and we were doing the rock work. I was art directing the rock work and we were building rock over the mesh and they said, Well, we gotta do a cannon test. for the waves. And they had these big cannons underneath and rock and model were art directing it. And they told us we had to get off of the rocks for a few minutes while they did this. So we put some plastic over some of the rocks and stuff that we were still working. It was wet concrete. And they were going to do a test. So we stood back a little bit. Over about three hundred, four hundred feet away from us was the mural that's in front of the living seas. And the painters are over there on the scaffolding, they're painting the mural, you know, with the sunset and seas. fifty or f sixty guys over there working, and they decide they're gonna do a test. And I remember Monty asking, How many pounds of pressure they should put on the cannons in this test. And I remember somebody saying, Well, we're gonna start about a hundred pounds, a hundred Psi on these cannons. So rocks down there and Monty in there all day around, we're standing back, and they shot the cannons off, you would have thought it was a nuclear bomb. The water came out of that cannon, went through the rock. went all the way over and knocked these guys off the the platforms where they were working, painting the build and the the the paint running down the wall. And everybody's laughing about it and Monty comes out of the thing and he goes, What happened? And I, with my technology that I had, the all the technological background, I said, Monty, I think it was too much pressure. We ended up it was eight pounds. It was eight pounds that made the waves go through the rock. Well look speaker-0: Test and adjust, trial and adjust. speaker-1: It was testing a jest and it was speaker-0: That's right. it's better to have that then than when there's guests in the party. Now the Living Sea is opened in eighty six, so that's right. speaker-1: Right before opening. that was in A D C right before I left the company. One of the last jobs I worked on as an employee. speaker-0: So how fast did they get the mural repainted since that I guess so. Hopefully it wasn't summertime in Florida, it would have rained. Sounds like you've worked with so many wonderful, amazing talents. You being one of those amazing talents, and you got to work with a lot of a lot of these folks as well. You said Marty Sklar, John Hench. speaker-1: Kids came into a meeting and you had to pick colors, you would sweat. He worked in Picasso's studio, as a kid. He's he was the colorist for most of the movies. I had the responsibility of doing the Renaissance food fair when Epcot opened. We couldn't feed everybody. So we had to build this big tent with a big food facility to serve a thousand people an hour. So I spec'd it all out and I spent a million dollars on graphics and I had these beautiful Burgundy and gold banners and it was just gonna be this Renaissance great thing. The tent company ran out of the white and gold tents and put a blue and white one up, which clashed with a million dollars worth of graphics and all I had done. So I'm sitting over in my office and I get a call. They said, Hugh, John Hinch wants to meet you over at Epcot. I was like, gosh, what in the world? I go over there and nobody has told me that it's a blue and white tent. I still think it's the gold and white tent, which was designed for the themed graphics. And I'm Walking up to the pavilion I come in the back and I'm like, Where's this blue and white tent? What the hell? I go out there and John Hinch is waiting and they go, Yeah, he's waiting on you out there, he wants to talk to you. I go out there and everybody's got this big smile on their face and I'm coming up there and John says, Hugh, you this is your design? And I said, Yeah. I said, But let me let me explain that he's he didn't want nothing of that. He's like he as you have reached a new high in Disney low. speaker-0: Wow. Congratulations to you, Hugh. speaker-1: He didn't want to hear anything about why that was a blue and white test. So Bob Smith, who was one of my direct reports there, he handed me the keys and said, John needs to arrive to the airport. And I had to take him to the airport. He talked a lot about color theory. I got to hear all about it going to the airport. speaker-0: Are important and especially to John Hench. The Africa Pavilion was the one that never got built. And were you involved in the planning for that? speaker-1: I knew everybody thought the idea was too big for Epcot, which of course we got Animal Kingdom out of that. And they were right. The Epcot pavilions originally and I I saw the original plans, that Disney had envisioned, all of those hotels all would have been behind all of those countries and you would have gone and kinda lived with the experience of France, but that didn't really happen for a lot of economic reasons. I'm sure there were good decisions behind that. But All of those future pavilions, we worked on I worked on an expansion for Germany where we were gonna put a matter horn. if we wanted to do rides and everybody felt like we gotta have roller coasters and rides over in in Epcot. So we did go through a a long period of planning for those other attractions. Norway came out of that, the Norway boat ride. speaker-0: There were gonna be several attractions for World Showcase at that time. I know with budgets and other factors, they didn't come to fruition, sadly. No, I mentioned the Africa Pavilion because I'd had a conversation with Scott Gerrard and I understand he was sent to Africa, him and many others that were working in that pavilion and there was a lot of money invested in this pavilion. It was difficult to get a country to sponsor it and again several other factors, but it would have been a spectacular pavilion. speaker-1: I actually got to know Harry Schuster, who was the last, I guess he was the last Chief Justice for South Africa before the apartheid event. But Harry and some of his people ended up building Lion Country Safari here in the US. And it I knew him and his kids and there were a lot of other people that were involved in things. I went to Switzerland and spent two weeks thinking about a Swiss pavilion that would have had the sponsorship of force and and and could have developed. And it was an interesting process to go through to see who was actually going to, sponsor a pavilion. speaker-0: I you have probably more Dick Nunes stories and many other You're probably the only person I know that had gotten to arguments with Michael Eisner and Dick Nunes. I don't know anybody brave enough to have done that, Hugh. So Hold that title and nobody can take that away from you, Hugh. So as we close out this conversation, what's one of your favorite memories do you want to tell the audience today? speaker-1: I got an opportunity to work with I was I went to Paramount after Michael had left. I went and ended up as an executive at Paramount and did Paramount Parks. But I got to work on Star Trek. So I worked with Hermann Zimmerman, the production designer and the staff at at Star Trek. That was a fabulous experience. I got an opportunity to work for George Lucas and we built the studios in London for Phantom Menace. And meeting those kinds of people and working with visionary Steve Wynn, I got to To design and work on Treasure Island in Las Vegas with Steve Went. When you meet inspirational people like that, somebody I haven't met, I'd love to, is Elon Musk. you gotta have inspiration to make the world better. And I got a chance in my life, like meeting Michael Jackson and, you know, I met Walter Cronkite. I met all the original astronauts at a charity I worked on, Give Kids the World. I got to spend one morning with all the original. Except Gus Gis Grissom. I I met with Alda Shepherd and John Glenn and my daughter was with me and she got to sit in John Glenn's lap while we had breakfast and I I couldn't narrow it down to one thing. I got to spend the day with Prince Charles, who is now King Charles, in Jamaica when I was restoring Falmouth, Jamaica. So it's hard to put it all down. you know, sitting on the fence out at Neverland talking to Michael Jackson about just personal stuff. pretty amazing experience and again, it's been a lifetime that's really been a blessed experience. speaker-0: Yeah, so do you got Prince Charles on speed dial or no? Could you call could you call him right now or no? On the show. speaker-1: No, but I have some I could call some guys in the building they call Paul Mall, which is where the all the official offices are. Yeah, yeah. I I do have some contacts I can reach out, but it wouldn't be direct. speaker-0: No, that thanks for sharing all that. Going back to working at Disney. You've worked with so many wonderful people. You've met wonderful people post Disney and so many great names. And and I'm happy that I get the opportunity to speak with a great name such as yourself. True speaker-1: Thank you. speaker-0: truly a pleasure to have this conversation with you. And thanks for sharing all your stories with us. And you're always welcomed here. I'm sure you have many other stories to tell. So You always get a seat here at WW Connection if you want to tell more of your stories and we'll definitely be in touch soon. speaker-1: Sounds good. Thank you very much. speaker-0: You have a great day, Hugh. speaker-1: You too.