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Steve Cone Interview: Disney's Magic Kingdom Construction · Project Horizons

• Steve Cone: And one of the things I did is after the castle was the last spire was put on. I thought, wouldn't it be cool to climb up that castle and take pictures from up there? And I thought, I wonder if I can get up there. So I started exploring around the castle and I found some stairs that went up. There were like four or five flights of stairs, just normal stairs. And then I got up to this white plateau and it was like a room inside there. Mike: today we are very excited to have another great talent who worked at the Magic Kingdom construction site, and that is field clerk and mechanical draftsman Steve Cohn. And Steve is kind enough to join us today to share some of his fun and interesting stories from his experiences on the construction site of Magic Kingdom. So, welcome again and how are you doing today, Steve Cone: Thank you. Mike: my friend? Steve Cone: I'm doing great. Thank you. I appreciate you having me on, Mike. I live in Southern California and I lived about 20 minutes from Disneyland. And in my high school years, I started working at Disneyland and I worked on a popcorn wagon and that was my first job. And I was remembering listening to Scott and a lot of these memories came back after listening to Scott talk and John Cora was my supervisor and he was talking about Jim Cora and he was their brothers and they both worked at Disneyland and another Dave Rumman who's been around Disney forever was my assistant supervisor. so as time went on, I really wanted to work on the sub ride because that was where all the cool action was, you know. So the last summer I was there in California. I did work on the sub ride and that was a lot of fun. A couple of people I got to know was Greg Emmer, who was one of the foremen and Bob Ovenhour, who was one of the foremen who later I found out were relocated to Florida. And so who helped me get a job back in operations at some point. I'll tell you that later story. But, my dad worked at Disney. He was worked in Marlant operations. And then he worked in security and he got promoted to work in Florida. So my family relocated to Florida and around 19 beginning of 1970, late 69. Yeah, I lived in Costa Costa Mesa down by the beach. And I thought I was really having a great time down there. But when I get on a Newport freeway to go to work, I worked a second shift at the sub ride. It took me literally like an hour and 20 minutes to get to work every day because of traffic. And of course I kept in touch with my parents and my dad kept encouraging me, come on out. said, there's so much going on out here and you would have a great time. Well, I saw while I was working on the sub ride, I met some people that were relocated from Florida to California to learn the operation, to learn the Disney operation. And so they also went back to Florida and I kept in touch with them. They were working at the preview center. They had a preview center on the Disney property, which was something where people from around wherever could come and look at what Disney was going to be building. It was pretty exciting because it had some movies. They're really nice. If you've ever heard of the preview center, Mike: Mm-hmm. Steve Cone: Billy Hosier was the manager of that. I eventually buckled and left California and came to Florida. And my dad said, Hey, you know, they got all kinds of jobs here. They got construction jobs. He says, what do want to do? says, well, know some folks over there. We'll get you signed up. So I said, okay, whatever, whatever sounds good. I was 19 years old. I felt like I'm now look back. I'm just, I was just a child. You know, and, and so I was just kind of going with the flow. So I was working at Pluto Park right next to the Magic Kingdom. And it was a series of construction trailers that were tied together with like a wooden boardwalk. And some of them were like six wide or whatever, big trailers. And I worked in a trailer with about six engineers. And those engineers, basically what they did at three o'clock in the afternoon, They would go out and inspect the construction process. had mechanical plumbing type HVAC electrical inspectors. They would go out and make sure that everything was going right. And in some cases, there was a problem with the installation. You might have an air duct that was going through a column. Well, you couldn't do that. You had to reroute it and that could affect other things. So they were making update drawings, which we called as builds. And so my job was to file blueprints. And it also was cool. I found my ID card, my original ID card. The date on I think was November 1970. So that's when I actually got back into Florida. So my job was to to blueprints when they come from California, constantly we get these new rolls of prints updates. So these what we call blueprints sticks of plans, they were in the trader and I had my job was to go in and update those. I got to tag along with the engineers in the afternoon and I would go with, know, Don, one of the guys and he would go out and inspect and walk around. take these, we have these little three wheeled Cushman, orange Cushman motorcycle. They're not motorcycles, but they were gas powered scooters. And we, there was a, there was a bunch of them we had, we just get on them and go. And so we go out into the park and, um, and I got basically just, you know, it's like a playground for me. I just go out and look at what's going on. I would go out and check things out. And sometimes I would just go out by myself in the afternoon. And so that was kind of what my job was. also what piqued my interest was some of the drawing changes they were doing. And I think that was where I first got interested in doing drafting. They actually showed me how to do it. And I was actually doing some of the drawing modifications under their direction. so I got to do that. That was kind of fun. And one of the kind of cool things I did was a lot of kind of fun things that I got to explore, you know, just go out and explore. And I had a camera, Honeywell Pentax camera, and I was going out and taking pictures. And one of the things I did is after the castle was the last spire was put on. I thought, wouldn't it be cool to climb up that castle and take pictures from up there? And I thought, I wonder if I can get up there. So I started exploring around the castle and I found some stairs that went up. There were like four or five flights of stairs, just normal stairs. And then I got up to this white plateau and it was like a room inside there. And I found out later they converted that room into a... I think it's like an apartment or overnight where people can stay. so I kind of, climbed outside and I started looking around. found one of the part of the, the spire, you know, so there's a steel ladder inside and I climbed up and then I climbed up into the section and climbed up into the section. Eventually I popped out, you know, there's a like a little door up there or opening and it's got like an arch at the top and you know, I, I you can see forever up there. It was really cool. So I took a a series of panoramic pictures. And one of the pictures I took, you could actually see 20,000 leagues under the sea under construction. And off in the distance, you could actually see Pluto Park where we were and where our traders were. yeah, I've got a whole series of photos I took up there. see one of the photos, see Rivers of America being at Liberty Square under construction. Rivers of America before they put it, you see the track before they put any water in it. yeah, so you see Maine, had one of Main Street, 20 K behind me. And so I couldn't get almost all the way behind me, but I did get some good, you know, front views and some of the Tomorrowland, Tomorrowland was still way under construction. They were still building the tunnels back then. And this was like it, which is really unbelievable when you think about it. This was in the spring of 71. Is that right? Yeah, because I was there in the fall of 70. And so this was in the spring of 71, like February, April timeframe, June, some pictures I took. you would, I mean, you look at the place and then how did they get all that done in like four or five months Mike: amazing thing is how fast they got it done in that short period of time. That's Steve Cone: Yeah. Mike: what's incredible. it takes a long time to build something today, but back then they got it done on time. Steve Cone: Yeah, yeah. And another thing we would do is we would drive around in the what they call the tunnel area and on our carts. And a lot of people think they're tunnels, but really, technically, it's a basement. It's a giant basement down there. And of course, they drywall all the corridors off to make it look like they're walkways. they have a Floyd's cafeteria. And then you go down through a tunnel that goes down under the castle in the back up under Main Street. And there's, it's just a giant basement. And we used to ride those things down there and we'd race them down there and stuff. just, we just all kinds of mischief we'd get in, know, and, uh, you know, I knew where every single stairway was to get, to go from the tunnel to up into the park, you know? So, uh, you know, we, we spent a lot of time in the park, walking around, looking at different things and, so it was quite a lifetime experience, once in a lifetime experience to be there when all that was actually being done. Mike: you have experience seeing this place get built. going up into the castle and to see, all those areas, like I said, the 20K site, probably see the Jungle Cruise and Tomorrowland being built, the tunnels being built, I mean, or the large basement, as you say, Steve Cone: Yeah. Mike: but could you go into detail for our listeners what a mechanical draftsman would do and field clerk would be on the construction site? Steve Cone: So we would get drawings and we get blueprints and we get what they call, it looks like a blueprint, but it's brown. They call it sepia. And you can make drawing changes on a sepia. They actually had like a little chemical you could, with a paintbrush, almost look like fingernail polish, but it was kind of a clear liquid and you could paint over the area you wanted to make a change with the brush. It would actually remove. that part of the drawing. So it was blank, you know, so you could then go in and make drawing changes to it. So my job basically was, it wasn't that it was not that difficult. I mean, basically what it entailed was, know, following Brent, following blueprints when the new, when the new prints came in, I have to go to the stick, find that old blueprint, take that old blueprint out, discard it, and then put the new blueprint in. So when the engineers would come in, and they would be looking for things. They could go pull the stick off with these big flat tables, lay the stick down, the drawings down, and they could unfold, you know, go through them. They had all the different mechanical, you know, drawings there, all the duct work and electrical work and all that. So I had to make sure, my job was to make sure they were all up to date. And then another important job I had, what I call stamping submittals. So we had these submittals from the contractors. and by the way, I got there right at the time Allen Construction was basically being removed from the site. And Pete Markham was, he took over as the head of engineering and formed the Buena Vista Construction Company. But Buena Vista actually was created back then in the fall of 70 and it basically took over the project. And John Zovich was the head of engineering. Pete Markham was the head of construction. so those are the two key guys that were responsible for that. yeah, so basically that's what my job was. And then I did a little drafting and later on, which kind of spurred me on, to do more drafting. And I went to drafting school in mid Florida tech. We had a vocation school there in Orlando, and I went to vocation school to learn how to do drawing. and, and so basically that's what my career ended up starting as a mechanical draftsman at Disney. I actually left the company after the park opened worked for a survey company in Orlando. And I'll never forget this. were paying me $3.50 an hour. And I kept Mike: Wow. Steve Cone: begging to come back to Disney. John Zovich was still there. Pete Markham was still there. This was some years afterwards. And guy named Bill Mack was the manager of engineering. And so I interviewed with him and I got hired on in October 1973 as a mechanical draftsman. And then I ended up working for Tim Kelly down at Machine Design Trader in the North Service area. And so, yeah, so there's a lot of stories there. one story I want to tell you about, was a couple of stories. during the Magic Kingdoms construction, you know, Florida is really hot. so I don't know whose idea this was, but After they the drain Bay Lake, and they actually built the lagoon part of the the the lake system there. That was all all the dirt was, you know, moved out of there and actually constructed that as a lake. And then they built like a water bridge to connect the two lakes. And before, of course, they were down, but it lays the lakes were completely almost almost completely empty. The lagoon, the lagoon was for sure. But the Bay Lake still had some water in it. But there's an area behind in the North Service area called the dry dock area. And they had these two great big well pumps. mean, these pumps were dying like 24 inches in diameter, the huge wells. And so they were getting ready to refill Bay Lake. Well, there was a canal that went from the dry dock down to Bay Lake, and they dammed that up and built like a waterfall system so it wouldn't have you know, wouldn't erode the water out as they were filling up Bay Lake. But this canal was like 30 feet deep of crystal clear water. And we'd go out on the bank and have our lunch and we had our swimsuits. And we'd jump in that crystal clear cold water, spring water, have, you know, during the during our lunch hour, sit on the bank, have lunch, mess around, get, you know, get cooled down a little bit and then go back to work. But that was kind of a fun experience. I used to go over there with a friend of mine have lunch. at Fort Willerness and Fort Willerness was just an old dirt road and we'd drive down that dirt road and we'd get to the beach and we'd sit out there on the beach and it's beautiful, have lunch and then we'd go back to go back to work. But yeah, one of the things is when we went to work, we would drive our cars to a parking lot in the admin area and then we would kind of rendezvous there with the engineering team and the people and they would then drive their trucks, Disney. company trucks down to the site. They didn't really allow any personal vehicles down on the site on a company trucks. And so we drive our company trucks down there and I'd ride along with one the engineers down to our office. so another really beautiful image I had always had in my mind. And I actually recreated this image and you can show it is the castle we drive in in the morning. would be coming to work around seven o'clock and the sun would be cresting up, sunrise, and it would be in the background of the castle. And the castle was all steel structure and all these welders are up inside the castle and all these welding streams would be coming down. And this is an image I had in my mind. And I actually had that image recreated through AI. And that's what it actually looked like. It really looked like that. Mike: imagine all those other construction images that we see of the site. What AI can do with those pictures? like five seconds, 10 seconds of live construction. if you were there, brings you back to that time, Steve Cone: I got to do a lot of fun things, exploring. I would go into the Haunan Mansion, know, it's under destruction. I'd walk around inside the Haunan Mansion as they're putting the ride system in. And I would walk around like the catwalk up above. And I mean, I just like explore every inch of the place. And it was a lot of fun, you know, just to be able to watch those guys and see what those guys are doing. but it's kind of like a playground for me, Mike: going anywhere you want to go walking through the Haunted Mansion man, I would have loved to have the opportunity to do that and many Steve Cone: Yeah, well, it did. Mike: others would as well. So that's awesome. Steve Cone: And one day, this is kind of, I think about this and it's kind of a horrible thing in a way, but we were at the monorail station at the entrance and they had put a lot of the monorail beam in. all the way around to the Polynesian. It kind of goes up to a certain high point on the monorail beam. So me and my buddy were out there and we said, I wonder if we could walk out on this thing. the monorail beam is, it looks pretty narrow when you're down, but when you're there, it's probably 24 inches wide. So it's like a sidewalk, you know? So we start. Mike: Yeah, it's wide open, Steve. I don't know. Steve Cone: Yeah, so, so, so we... Mike: I would not be that brave. Steve Cone: I said, well, what you think we'll get in trouble if we go out here? And they said, no, we're not going get in trouble. And they probably know that we're supposed to be out here. So yeah, we actually walked out on it for maybe, I'd say, a couple hundred feet and then turned around and came back. Mike: my. Steve Cone: So we were actually walking on the monorail beam out there. I got some really cool pictures there of the contemporary, side views where, as before they put the rooms in... And you can see like the skeleton of this contemporary. And, you know, they built those rooms at the US Steel. They actually built a building in the Admin area and they called it the US Steel Fabrication Building. And what that building was for was to fabricate the rooms for the contemporary in the Polynesian. And they built those rooms like modular, complete. And then they took cranes, they brought them out on trucks. and took cranes and hooked the rooms up to the cranes and just picked them up and slid them in just like a brick, you know, and then hooked them up inside. Mike: Yeah. many people think that you can put them in and remove them once they're in there. And there was a US Steel commercial that says like drawers into a chest. Well, the hotel. can't be pulled out cost ineffective to do something like that. Steve Cone: a I've talked a little bit about the admin area where, where some of the construction offices were Pete Markham, John Zovich. They had their offices down there. They also had an employee cafeteria down there. We would go down there sometimes and eat lunch. Sometimes Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: I'd have to go down there. There was a guy named Ed Schaefer. He was a retired master sergeant and he would basically give us our supplies like our pads of paper. That was another thing I was responsible for to make sure our trader had all the supplies it needed. So I go up to Ed Schaeffer and if I wanted a pencil, I have to turn in a pencil like that, you know, just a pencil stub. He was also responsible for the master, all the master drawings. He had like a five or six wide trainer. He had all the blueprints there too as well. But what was interesting about the cafeteria is Roy Disney would eat there. And you wouldn't be shocked to see, you go in and be standing in line to get a hamburger or whatever. And there's Roy and even Card Walker over there who was the chairman of the board. They're always really friendly. know, like Pete Markham, John Zobish, these guys are running the place. They'd be over there eating and they'd mingle with the boys over there, you know, and the ladies or whatever. And yeah, that was interesting to be able to just, you know, see them a couple tables away. And as they'd get up and walk Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: away, they'd always say, walk by and say, how are you guys doing? How's things going? You know, and just be really friendly. You know, it's really neat. Mike: Roy ran the show He was in charge of everything, but he was a very like soft spoken guy and he was kind of in the background leading everything, leading the Steve Cone: Yeah. Mike: charge and being that driving force behind Steve Cone: Yeah. Mike: this whole project. you're in the same room. could be having lunch down the table, you know, not many people can say they've done that. I mean, how does that Steve Cone: Yeah. Mike: make you feel knowing that you were in that room with someone like Roy Disney? I mean, knowing what Steve Cone: I said... Mike: Walt Disney World has become today. Steve Cone: Yeah, I'd say very honored. A lot of times I forget about this part of my life when I worked in the construction piece of it. I look at my career more after I came back in 73 and a lot of fun things I did then as well. But yeah, it's pretty amazing when you think that far back. It's a very, it's really an honor and a privilege to have been part of that whole process. Mike: mentioned Seven Seas Lagoon earlier. Seven Seas Lagoon was kind of a last minute, not last minute, but it was an addition to take some of that soil, put it on the Magic Kingdom site, because as you know, the site to build Magic Kingdom was not in the best of shape. It was very swampy and probably could have been a lake itself if it had more soil up there from the seven seas lagoon site. You mentioned you worked for Tim Kelly you were involved I believe in testing the wave machine, is that correct? I mean you have to Steve Cone: Yeah, yeah, actually. Mike: have some good stories about the wave machine, right? Steve Cone: Yeah, I want to say one thing about Tim Kelly. It's a very sad time right now, because he's got he's got a terminal cancer. he's he's like a honestly like a brother to me. We grew up in Disney Mike: sorry to hear that. Steve Cone: together. And I stayed in touch with him, I worked for him starting in 73. I was one of the luckiest guys in the world to be able to work for him. I was actually assigned to him. I don't think he really had much choice. don't, I don't know if I'd have been his first pick or not, but I'm so glad he did. But we made a good team together because I, I, you know, I did a lot of rooting around getting things working. And in addition to doing my drafting chores, but, as, as we created this group, he was relocated from California to form a group called, and he called it machine design later. became ride and show engineering. Mike: Mm-hmm. Yep. Steve Cone: So he and I were the first two. Dana Jones came over from the paint shop out of all places. Dana had a mechanical design background. So it was Tim, me and Dana. And we had no true engineers. We were all just like self-taught engineering designers or draftsmen. And so Tim hired a man named Farlow. That's kind of a funny name. His name was Farlow Burt. He was a great guy. was an older man. He came from Martin, Marietta. He hired him from Martin, Marietta. His expertise was in hydraulic systems. And lo and behold, the wave machine was built around the hydraulic system. So basically the wave machine had these hydraulic accumulators and they would push these paddles and it was driven off a cam system that would push these paddles in a certain sequence. And the paddles were steel-framed with wood. And so Tim came in one day, said, I just had a meeting with Dick Nunes and Dick Nunes gave us marching orders to get the weight machine to work. And we're like, cool, this is going to be fun. Because we always had a good challenge. So it's funny, because any time you see a request that had the initials in the usually big red initials on the work order, it'd say RAN. And that was called a RAN request. And that was a Richard A. Nunes RAN request. so, Farlo and Tim went out there and they asked me to go tag along with them. So we're doing some exploratory, of the, of the system out there. And so I was designated as a flip boat, the boat driver. Farlo was a magnificent engineer. So he developed this cycle and came up with this theory on waves that if you push little waves together at a certain frequency that they would catch up with each other and create one big wave. And so that was the theory behind it. And so my job was we had these poles with tires and concrete. And so we put these poles down in the water. And had markers on the poles so we could see how high the waves were. And so my job was to put these poles out at certain intervals. And so Farlo was back in the hydraulic, I call it the hydraulic hut. And he was playing around with the hydraulics. And so we'd get the waves going and eventually over time, and like we went out there every day. So we'd get up in the morning, go out there first thing in morning. My job was to get the float boat and get it out there and Farlo and Tim would be there and this guys came up with this scheme on how to get the wave machine to work and Lo and behold after a few weeks. We actually got it to work and So they had a big thing for dick Nunes they had Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: a big Hawaiian thing with a bunch of Hawaiian people out there with skirts and you know and You know the huts with flowers on and stuff, you know big celebration And Dick actually got to go out and surf it. And oddly enough, Tim actually took a video of it and he tried to get the video restored, but we could never get it to a point where it would look right. I mean, just wasn't, it was an eight millimeter video, it just never, unfortunately we couldn't get it. So, but that was kind of the story behind that. And, um, yeah, it was a lot of fun. mean, where can you think about it? I had a job going out in a float boat every day at the Polynesian Hotel driving around the lagoon, you know, and that was my job, helping them do that every day. Mike: Steve, I to be there and be a part of that is amazing. But I think the big issue with the wave machine Was it more mechanical and it didn't work all the time or was it more the beach erosion issue of it working too well? Steve Cone: No, actually, you're right. Your second point was right. So we got it mechanically working. The problem was after about 30 minutes, the beach was gone. And so they had to completely bring in dump truck loads of sand to Mike: Yeah, yeah. Steve Cone: put back down on the beach. So it just didn't work. I mean, that was the problem. And now we have a wave machine over Typhoon Lagoon. they use a material there where it's kind of a rubberized, it's like a rubber material where the waves won't do and they won't erode out the area there. but anyway, so yeah, that was the problem. So it didn't last too long. It lasted a little while and enough to at least get Dick to say it worked. You know, we got it to work. I was thinking about this the other day. There's a picture of me and Dana Jones in the machine design trailer. almost every day, without exception, you know, we would have visitors from the Magic Kingdom supervision coming over. I think they just like to come over and have coffee. And so we always had the guy that we were located right next to central shops. And central shops was a big manufacturing area. It had a well shop. had a machine shop. It had a a wood shop, a fiberglass shop. And Arnold Lindbergh was the director or manager over that. And we used to call him the singing sweetie because you could always hear him coming in the morning. He'd whistle and he'd be singing real loud. He'd walk in the door. He'd say, hey, Mr. Cone, how's it going? You know, and where's Kelly at? You know, you know, Mike: Ugh. Steve Cone: we walked around and he was he was very instrumental in getting us. Like our trailer built there and stuff and you Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: know, he was very supportive and we would have maintenance guys coming in. like Joe McVeigh, he was over like Frontierland, Bob Harbor. He was a, he's an interesting fella because Bob Harbor, he actually would, he, he said an interesting story. We got to, I got to hear all these stories about these guys when they come into our trailer and talk, but he actually. built steam trains back in California. The miniature ones like Walt used to build down at the beach where Walt had the house down there. And Bob would go down there with Walt Walt's place and they had a club and they'd hang around together. so I got to hear stories like that. And Bob was an expert steam engine guy and he knew all about steam engines. So, and that's a very... I don't want to say old trade, but not too many people know about steam engines and how they work. Mike: Mm-hmm. Steve Cone: Because we had a lot of steam engines. We had the steam locomotives. So Bob is real good. was from front, he basically worked in Frontierland. They always had issues they needed help with and guys from like Yon Sinkinson from Tomorrowland and and there forget Ron Strickton and John Kent always come dragging. They'd always be together and they'd come in and they were always in the park, from the park and they always would talk about, hey, we got these problems over here. Can you guys go take a look at it? We'd always. Pretty soon we had a laundry list of things we needed to work on, which is really good. And then we started getting drawings. One of the problems we had that was really an issue was the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the animation. None of it worked. so you see these things under the water and they were just static. They were supposed to be moving. Mike: You Steve Cone: We got all these drawings and a lot of the things about the sub ride were problematic. The hatches wouldn't close right. The engines didn't work right. You know, just a lot of things we worked on. yeah, so we were there to help maintenance. Basically we're support maintenance. And so we were directly tied into a lot of things going on there with that. So it was a lot of fun being able to interact with these guys. also later on in my career, I worked at Imagineering for a few years. And so I'm part of the Imagineering alumni. I was there for Mike: Yeah Steve Cone: three years. So I got to be able to be part of that. in the late 70s, no, late 80s. I got to be friends with this guy that was working on Typhoon Lagoon. His name is Bob Pike. My job kind of morphed over into more technology. And we put a local area network with CAD systems in. And that was kind of my area of responsibility. was like what they call the land administrator then. And so we were built adding more cab stations. And I got to know Bob, he got to know me. He knew my technical background. And he basically got a job working for Walt Disney Imagineering as the head of the, this is gonna sound funny, the Rockwork Company. They call it the Rockwork Company. So. What the theory was, what the idea was, is every time they built a park, they brought all these people in to build rockwork. Like, Typhoon Lagoon is real heavy with a lot of rockwork. And so they had to kind Mike: Mm-hmm. Steve Cone: of figure everything out from scratch. And nothing was coherent, cohesive from the last build, you know? So what the idea was is to build a group or company like Buena Missa Construction Company, they call it the Rockwork Company, that had the engineers, the field people, the creative people, all these people under one umbrella. They would always stay with this group. So for every project, they would always have the knowledge and they would maintain this knowledge. so Bob came to my office one day and said, would you like to go to work for the Rockwork Company? And I said, well, you know, I had a lot of questions, of course. long story short, I said, yeah, so I ended up going to work for him. and the rock work company was supposed to be based in Florida. Okay. Well, after Mike: Mm-hmm. Steve Cone: about six months, I got, I was actually really cool. was, you know, I got moved over, left engineering, transferred out of engineering, into engineering. I worked over in a trader. It was called Pico. It's project installation coordination office, and they were kind of downsizing. So they had a few extra offices. So I got to work out of the Pico trailer is the rock work company. We ended up hiring a couple of contract people to help. What our job was is to try to automate the rebar bending development. So that, so that it'd be a more efficient way of building the rock. So the rock basically started out on a drawing. Well, actually started on building a model, a scaled down car model. And. So we ended up flying back to California. You got to see all this and how they're doing it. And they do what they call 3D digitizing of the model into a computer. So they basically built a grid on the model in sections and they did a 3D digitizing of that. So you actually have a 3D digitized as a model of the rock. And then we would take that and we eventually figured out how to. do feed it into a rebar bending machine. The way they were doing this is they were out in a bone yard and over in the admin area and they would take a piece of rebar and they had a manual machine that bent it and they'd lay it down the drawing and they'd go, oh, it's not quite right. They've been to a little more. I mean, you can imagine the hundreds and thousands of pieces of rebar. Basically, our quest was to somehow automate this process. And so we did to some degree. And then I found out that they wanted to relocate the Rockwork Company to California. And so I wasn't too sure about that. I didn't want to know if I wanted to go to California. All those pretty exciting thought. I don't know. So the rebar, just go back to the rebar bending thing for a minute. Mike: Mm-hmm. Steve Cone: So what they do is they build these re-bars in a shape and they're all catalogued on their drawing and they tack weld these re-bars to an under framework like angle bar, two by two angles and square bar. And so they kind of rough out the bars and they built this shape gets overlayed on the bar and then they put a wire mesh over it. So they build this in sections and then they mark the sections. So the crane, when they put it in place, they know exactly where it goes in the scheme of things. Pretty sophisticated, pretty complex to get all the cages in the right spot and the cages built. anyway, I went back, I flew back to California and talked to some of the people back there. And actually my wife and I went on a relocation trip. And so I met up with some of the people. They really wanted me come back there because I had developed some knowledge on the rebarring, know, Rockwork Company, and they encouraged me to come back. And so the last day we were there on a relocation trip, they had that big giant earthquake in San Francisco. And we were, we were in a mall, all these people were gathering Mike: my. Lucky you. Steve Cone: to the TVs around the mall. They were like, what's going on here? And this is where they had this massive earthquake. I looked at my wife. I said, if I can get a job back in engineering, when we get back, we're going back. So anyway, story Mike: Yeah, yeah. Steve Cone: short, I ended up I got hired back in engineering. Tim Kelly hired me back. so I worked back in engineering back in the early 90s. but it was a Mike: Good, good. good. Steve Cone: fun time being immersed in the research and development. I got to go behind the Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: locked doors of Walt Disney Imagineering where nobody used to go and see the research and development team and work with those guys. where nobody gets to see it. It's top secret kind of thing. All the new Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: stuff through the building. And it was really interesting. It was a lot of fun. Mike: all the different areas, all the different divisions Imagineering and the steps it takes to go from a drawing all the way to the 3D models and then the actual walkthrough models of some attractions. and there's so many different areas, so much artwork concepts. like a museum. mean, that's just what I hear it being like. Steve Cone: Working in Imagineering was like, almost like the pinnacle of, I mean, You just seems like you're like the best of the best, you know, working in a part of the company like imaginary. environment there is just hard to describe, the first time I ever went on a site in a VEPCOT is Tim Mike: yeah. Steve Cone: Kelly and Farlo. were, all things, in a station wagon company car. We were in a station wagon. So we drove out and there was a perimeter road that these earth movers were driving around when we almost got run over, these things were like Mike: my. Steve Cone: five stories tall, know, these massive earth Mike: Ha Steve Cone: movers. We were going over to the land to look at something. And when we drove up onto this area, it was literally nothing. There was it was just dirt as far as you could see. The only thing that was coming out of the ground is parts of Spaceship Earth. And so Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: I watched Epcot come out of the ground, too. We were working Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: on all kinds of projects there for the duration of the whole park, you know, being built and getting the rides up Mike: Mm-hmm. Steve Cone: and running. And I was crawling around and all that stuff too. Yeah, was pretty neat. Mike: Yeah, Steve Cone: the land pavilion was very much like the Pirates of the Caribbean and Pirates of the Caribbean, we spent probably two to three years in 73 working on that. nothing worked on it. The boats would go, Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: they'd be put in the, I don't know if you heard about that, but the boats would just sit there in the water. They wouldn't go around and the load ramps and Mike: Interesting. Steve Cone: the exit ramp, they had these, the rubber belts on these, like a big conveyor system. And Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: the load on those things were so tremendous. And the torque on those things, the shafts would literally just shear right off. So we had to reconstruct and rebuild all that stuff. The pirates down ramp, where they would go down the down ramp, we completely rebuilt all that stuff. We've rebuilt a lot of the flume. stuff to get the boats to go around the up ramp coming back in. We had to rebuild a lot of that. So we worked on that continuously. and so Mexico or not. Well, Mexico too was like that, but Lampa van had the same ramps, conveyor system. didn't have a waterfall, but then, so we were looking at making sure that what they were putting in was going to work. had, we had these, they call variable drive units that would absorb some of the Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: torque. and where we didn't have that before. And a lot of this was the hydraulic systems underneath. had to make sure that they had adequate space for all that. So we were down there looking at that. We, a lot of work on spaceship Earth. I mean, that thing was a nightmare to get it to work. And so we had a lot of work on that. We actually built in the back by the North service area, we actually had a test track back there. of different types of systems that would emulate what was being built out there. So we had a space, spaceship Earth track system that would Mike: Mm-hmm. Steve Cone: emulate what was being built out there. it's not just the vehicles that are heavy. was the load Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: as they were going up, you know, the load coming back. It would literally pull them apart. Like you think a chain and it's pulling backwards and the load on those, it was huge. And it was essentially like an omnimover system, like Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: the clamshell, like the haunted mansion kind of type system. but yeah, it was, it was. big, big, big problems with that. so eventually they got it worked out, Mike: lot of talk about having them update Spaceship Earth. I think a lot of it's the track system. They wanted to close it for a couple of years during the pandemic. Obviously, it didn't happen with the pandemic imagination that had several challenges with the turntable. scene. they all seem to work themselves out. They all managed to get fixed. They all managed to work I see an attraction, not just as a great experience, but as an engineering marvel that they were Steve Cone: Yeah. Mike: able to do this. And you see it at more other parks. I Universal does similar things today. but when you, when you were back in those days where Disney was just doing things that you just didn't see it anywhere else. And the people behind Steve Cone: Yeah. Mike: that is the reason why these things were able to happen. What attraction that you were a part of posed the most challenges? Steve Cone: Well, I would say probably Pirates of the Caravan. One of the, it was really funny because we call it the barrel gag. So when the boats came in and unloaded, they went through a, like a screen and then went up a ramp and then back down into the upper level. way the thing, the way the boats went up, It would kind of tear at the top there. Well, one boat got stuck and another boat came up underneath it. And then the boat came crashing back down. So we had Mike: my. Steve Cone: to create a reentry ramp. So the boats would come up and they were able to push them far enough. then instead of hitting the water and slamming into the water, we built this reentry ramp and we built it out of scrap metal and fastened a 55 gallon drum. and filled it partially full of water so was somewhat buoyant. then as the boat came up to reenter the water, it would hit that ramp and push down into the water without making a big noise. And we called that the barrel gag. That was the big thing that Dana Jones and Tim Kelly came up with, that idea. And the whole pirate ride, we were there for months working on it. That was one of the biggest challenges, I think. And then Space Mountain was another one, but it wouldn't. mean, Don Hilsen, was in Bill Watkins. Don Hilsen was, I think he was out here a lot and he was like one of the chief architects on the track design and you know, from an engineering standpoint I wasn't necessarily so directly involved with it. I was involved with it from a peripheral standpoint, but we were our department was involved with a lot. of issues. I was in Space Mountain many times with the lights on looking at problems with the designers and engineers. And so we had to see a lot of the problem areas. And some of the areas were Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: like when the cars would go up to track, there was a Mike: Mm-hmm. Steve Cone: chain system that Mike: Yep. Steve Cone: would have to catch just right. And how it was lubricated. and what kind of bearing system we use. We use this material. It was a polyurethane material, ultra-high monocular weight polyurethane is what it was called. It was a plastic material that came in sheets and we used it basically for everything that was underwater Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: and needed a bearing. We used it for sliders. took quite the term, we used to call it Kelly Green. So we want to use the Kelly Green material over here. And we used it on the down ramp of the Pirates of Caribbean because it wouldn't rust, it wouldn't fail, it was very slick. could like ice skate on it, it so slick. It was very durable. Mike: Well... Steve Cone: the boats would slide down on that. so Pirates of the Caribbean was probably the biggest challenge. Mike: Walt Disney World is a better place because of Steve Cohn. So I appreciate, appreciate Steve Cone: Oh, thanks. I appreciate that. Mike: that. you retired in 2009 from Disney. what are your thoughts on the attractions and parks today? Steve Cone: Well, it's amazing just in the people, for instance, like I've kept in contact with some of the folks there at writing show. One person in particular, his name is Mike Seamer. And when he was hired in 1995, he was a co-op. if you want to go co-op from basically he was going to college and he's working at Disney part time. Mike: Mm-hmm. Steve Cone: Um, and another person that we hired is kind of Brett J. Hoes and, Brett's a senior manager in, security, IT security stuff now. And Mike Seymour just got promoted to vice president of ride and show engineering. And so he said, you got to come back and I'll show you around. So, I'm Mike: Wow, very nice. Awesome, awesome. Steve Cone: going to get back there someday and, things have changed. People have channel, wouldn't recognize anybody. Most everybody there that I know the last person. that I knew that work there was left in 2022. Robert Lopez, he retired then. Mike: Yeah. Steve Cone: So yeah, I'd love to get back there and I'd love to get with some of the people and go to lunch and take a tour of the place and see how things are going and it'd be a lot of fun, I think it would. I feel like we really have left it in really good hands, you know, when you step back and look at it, Mike: thanks for sharing all your stories and thank you for all your great contributions Walt Disney World I'll definitely be in touch and we'll chat soon. Steve Cone: OK, all right. Thanks, Mike.