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Imagineering Interview: Mark Eades | Star Wars | Disney · Project Horizons

• Mike: All right, so today we're joined by former Walt Disney Imagineer Mark Eads, who played a major role in producing some of the most memorable shows that we remember from the early days at Epcot Center, MGM Studios, Disneyland. And if you're a fan of Star Tours, Magic Journeys, Muppet Vision 3D, American Adventure, I think you're gonna really love this conversation we're gonna have with Mark today. So Mark, happy to have you with us today. How are you doing, my friend? Mark Eades: Well, retirement is pretty good. I love having Mike: Excellent, yeah. Mark Eades: the time to be with my grandkids and all five of my kids are grown. In fact, one, my fourth kid got married off a couple of weeks ago. I'm down to one left to get married and move out of the house. Mike: Very good, very good, very good. we'll see what happens, right? Mark Eades: Yeah, and we still go to Disneyland and my wife and I went to Walt Disney World just a few weeks ago, so. Mike: Excellent, excellent. And you're a former Imagineer, so I guess you still enjoy, you're a big theme park fan, you still enjoy going to the parks and going on all the rides and eating all the great food they have there? Mark Eades: Yeah, unfortunately, I don't get a free pass from Disney rules changed after I left. I was 40 when I left Disney. Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: the rules now are you have to be 10 years with the company and over the age of 55 when you retire to get the pass. I don't get it. Mike: Gotcha. Mark Eades: I do get the free health insurance, and that's a big deal. kids make me buy the high end pass because it gets free parking and they made me renew it again this year. I was thinking of not. And so I go, well, OK, I'll renew it. Who's paying for it? And they all go, you are. Mike: Good plan, good plan. Well, Thank you for joining us today. It's gonna be a really exciting conversation. I kind of want to start by your journey to Disney, where you grew up your life story from your humble beginnings to working on major projects at WED. Mark Eades: Well, I was born in Indiana in the same city that my dad was. My dad, we lived in Indiana until I was turning 10 that summer. So I got through the fourth grade, lived at a couple of different places, Madison, Indiana, Columbus, Bloomington, while dad went to IU, Indianapolis, two different houses there. So bounced around a bit. My dad hated the cold. And he Mike: You Mark Eades: saw California as a land of opportunity and he'd been out here as a kid. And so they talked about moving in the summer of 63, didn't quite have the money. so then it was going to be the next year. And of course we had the horrible winter of 64 in January and that pretty much cinched it. We were moving, you know, so I've leaving behind all the friends that I had and We moved out here, we lived with a family that dad, dad, mom knew from Madison that lived out here for about eight weeks. And then they rented a house and we moved to it. And then after a year in that house, they bought a house on Wright street in Santa Ana and we moved in there. Ironically, the house that they bought, they bought from Mr. and Mrs. Hall. And it's the same place that a certain actress who recently died was raised. Diane Hall, who you actually know as Diane Keaton, was raised there and went to Santa Ana High like I did. You know, I went like everybody. I went to high school. Because we didn't have a lot of money, I had to start working with my parents by throwing newspapers every morning. It was the Orange County Register. Initially, I would sit on the back of a station wagon with the tailgate down, throwing the newspaper as my mom drove. And then I tried not to get a driver's license because I knew they'd make me throw a route on my own. And eventually I had to get a driver's license and I started throwing newspapers every morning. So I didn't have a social life in high school. Then graduated, we went on a long summer vacation, supposedly our last family vacation. and came back and I had to register for school at Cal State Fullerton. You had to do it in person back then. And I went and applied for a job at Disneyland and I got a job working in the food division at Riverbell Terrace. Initially busing tables and washing dishes and eventually moved up to being an order cook. Met my wife there. stayed there for five years and then we decided to get married after about a year and a half of dating and stuff. And then when we got married, we were both working in the stand and they decided that when we came back, we both wanted transfers. And they said, well, you can't work together, but since Riverville is gonna go down for a refurbishment. We think we can make it so you can work together for two weeks, close the stand down, then go to your other jobs. And we actually came back and worked together for a couple of weeks at Riverbell. I think it ran better than it ever did during that time, because we were both the leads. And I transferred Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: to attractions, and Donna transferred to merchandise. I had been going to school part-time because just full-time and I needed money. But one of the requisites for a communications degree at Cal State Fullerton was you had to do an internship. And the degree in communications included emphasis on different things like journalism, radio, TV, and film. And I focused on film, but you still had to take courses related to the other media. But I interned at the Disney studios and on a film called The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again. It's the sequel to the Apple Wimpling gang. Not the world's greatest film, but it was kind of interesting. It's a live film. It had Tim Conway and Don Knotts, Tim Matheson was in it. A lot of classic character actors, Ruth Buzzi was in it, Harry Morgan, Jack the crooked eye guy, Jack whatever his last name was. more than, and several others that you would recognize when you see them. to get going in the film business was to get into a mail room. So I reasoned, well, let me get into the studio mail room, which was called the traffic Mike: Right. Yeah. Mark Eades: department of all things. And I kept a lookout and they had openings and I applied after I got my degree because you had to have a bachelor's degree to get the job. They required that. So I got my degree in January of 79 and then. During that summer, I applied and I got a position. And in the fall of 79, and that's kind of the way things were with me, it was always in the fall of when I did things, I transferred to the studio. And yes, it was a transfer. So I had seven weeks on the books, which means I was getting three weeks vacation a year. I'm the newbie in the mail room. And when it came the next summer of 80, was time to put in for vacation time. was low on picking the days, but I picked three weeks when I could. they were like, how'd you do that? You know, and then, and you know, what was nice about that was you, was definitely the old guard, the studio Ron Miller ran the studio, Card Walker and Don Tatum were, you know, chair and president. They were trying to do a few new things. They they shot splash while I was in the mail room. They shot Tron. something wicked this way comes. mean, they were trying to do some new things. And, you know, Splash was a hit. Tron is kind of a cult hit. Great looking film, kind of like the new one, but lousy story. And it was fun. And then they needed somebody to cover in animation for the production assistant, because he would go away for a month at a time on a long hike. And so they sent me over there, trained for a week, and then he left. And during that time, I was called into a meeting with the head of animation to go to a meeting with the Tron post-production unit to figure out what they needed from animation. And I met somebody I worked with on a couple of projects later on, John Shealy. And they talked about what they needed. And I'm taking notes. And I had to ask a few questions. on our way back, Ed goes, did you understand what they wanted? And I go, yeah, I think so. OK, just take care of it. So it's like, cool. And, you know, back then, you knew everybody on the lot. So I went to the studio machine shop and talked with Dyna Iwerks and a couple other guys who'd been around who I worked with over the years later on. And they said, great, we understand it. And they the next day, I think it was Bob Otto came to see me and said, Does this look like what they want? I think so. Let me see what they say. I took it to John Shealy. He said, perfect. And how many of them do you need? These were different kinds of animation things, not the big Disney animation desk. And he said, it was somewhere around 190 of them. So I told him 190 of them, great production number. I gave him the Tron production number and they were making them. They liked me so much in that position that they kept me there. I did not go back to the mail room like, they used to do. then my boss from the mailroom, Shirley Bench was her name, came to see me and said, hey, I think I have something that might be better suited for you. was sent to stage two, where they had set up all these film projectors so they could mock up essentially smaller versions of like Energy Theater 2, Energy Theater 1, American Adventure, the 3D, took up the whole stage. They had an office in there that they had built out of, know, scenics where some editors were working and they kept film store that was coming from all over the world for the different films. And there was a trailer that was the guy who was the manager there. His name was Ray DeLue. He was an He was an editor from the old days and I got hired in. So again, another transfer, a nice little bump in page time and started working on post-production for all the Epcot films. And it was fascinating to me. I had to learn a lot very quickly formats because I mean, nothing was standard. I had to learn about separate audio, all this stuff and I started having to schedule the projectionists for dailies and screenings and all this. And something happened at one point. It was in late 80, I think it was a very early 81. And we had to put together a screening for the Exxon of the energy pavilion. Nothing's done. There was black and white temps of the pre-show and... virtually nothing on theater one, the dinosaur thing. The finale was just storyboards and we had some live action stuff, no script. So we put together essentially a demo reel of what was the main show, which is what Exxon was primarily interested in. And Randy Bright, who was the executive producer, I started meeting these people and Don Henderson was the production manager and Randy's assistant, John. Anyway, was all set up and Exxon, all the big ones from Exxon came in and Randy and Marty were gonna take them through and we were just gonna show them the big energy film, the demo reel we had and we had a rough cut of the pre-show because they would stay in one place. But after we finished screening it, Randy, I somehow anticipated this. Randy goes, I don't know what it would take, but maybe we could run some of the theater one stuff, both the what we have of the dinosaurs and maybe of the finale. And he looks at me. I was known by then for, you know, trying to deal with stuff. How long would it take us, Mark, for us to set the would should we go to lunch and come back? I said, no, Randy, give me five minutes to move the projection so we're ready to go. And he was like, taking a back hand, you know. He said to everybody else, said, you know, the wonderful thing about these projects is you discover people who have moved beyond what you thought they could do even more so. And that was flattering. And I got things set up when we ran it. Two days later, Randy's assistant comes in and asks me if I could maybe take on more responsibility in the post-production, essentially become the post-production supervisor. And I said, that's a lot more. And he goes, well, think about what you might want. I said, well, how do you deal with Ray? Ray was definitely a little out of his league. He was very old school. And I was willing to try anything. And I don't mean that in any disrespect for Ray. It's just he didn't. I know he'd had a heart attack before he took this job. And he was trying to stay laid back. And they were supporting him by keeping him working. And I said, well, I don't know, you know, probably a little more money. But, know, somehow we have to deal with the fact that if I'm going to do this, it's going to upset some of the apple carts at the studio, primarily Ray to a certain extent, but definitely Bob Jabeau, who was the production VP at the studio. And Ray was his guy. And here I am, you know. So then I see Randy the next week. and he actually comes into the office that was made there with all the films and stuff and he comes in and you know there's two editors there and a couple of assistant editors and Mark can I talk to you for a minute and they kind of look up outside okay and you know they're all like looking at me like okay what the hell's going on here And so we go outside, literally the bathroom on the west side of stage two, which is, by the way, the Mary Poppins stage, as it's known now. And it's also Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: where we shot Tron. There were still scenics from Mary Poppins hung on the sides of the stage walls. was really cool. So he came out and said, I understand John talked to you and he talked to me and we really want you to take on more of a lead role here. What would it take? So now my gears are turning. I'm going, well, a raise would be good. And he goes, how about a hundred dollars a week? This is 1981. A hundred Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: dollars a week is a pretty damn good raise, And then he goes, what else? So I'm again, I'm thinking, so I said, you to get things done, I may upset some apple carts here, which means when Epcot's done, I might be out of a job. Maybe I could have a shot at wed for a year. And if it works out great, if it doesn't, you tell me I'll quit. We shook hands, nothing in writing. And he went to Ron, to Bob Jabeau to get me that raise. Bob wouldn't do it because it had two small raises in fairly quick order. He told me that and I said, okay, well, I'll do the best I can. A week later, he was in a meeting with Ron Miller and told Ron Miller he wanted to give Mark Eads a $500, know, a $100 a week raise. So I got $100 a week. didn't know, I stayed hourly because I knew I was gonna work a lot of hours. Bob at least conceded defeat and said, if you wanted to go salary, you could, that would entitle me the stock option plan. And I had said maybe that had been better to take, but my God, I was putting in anywhere from 12 to 16 hours a day and the overtime really helped us a lot as we were gearing up to buy a house in 82. So that's what I did. And I continued working on Epcot and Epcot opening day had 120, I think four film projectors that all had to have film on them and videos that needed Mike: Ha ha ha. Mark Eades: some support. It was a massive project. I can't understate it enough. some of the Tokyo Disneyland stuff. They Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: had Circle Vision, Magic Journeys was going to go in, Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: and Meet the World was another one. And then it didn't impact me, Wed was also doing the new Fantasyland that opened in 83. So all this stuff going on, Disneyland basically got ignored. as did the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, which is understandable. But yeah, we got the films done. I mean, it was by hook or by crook almost. I have a couple of kind of several stories I could tell about all that effort. one thing we did do is we put together some of the abstract when the guy gets transported into the computer thing from Tron. Mike: Yes. Yeah. Mark Eades: They came and decided they wanted to change what was seen in the speed room at the People Mover at Disneyland. So that's what was put in there at some point. eventually I had to fix the speed rooms in World of Motion and I put it in the third speed. There were three speed rooms in World of Motion. So I put it into the third one, which is supposed to be this great computer graphic thing that looked like crap. We put it in there in January of 83, and I was the hero of Epcot for a while. the biggest thing that happened in my journey to web was about Five days before Epcot opened, we're looking at an answer print of the Magic Journeys 3D film. And still had a few issues that were gonna have to be addressed. So I've got the screening set up and while it's being set up, Bob Jabeau had to look at every answer print and approve them, even with the director, And while we're getting set up and we're all in the chairs, you know, I'm on a headset to the projectionists. And Bob goes, you know, Mark, if this answer print looks good, you're going to get on a plane tonight and hand carry it to Florida for us. Okay. And Donna's working on the room and, Mike: Yep. Mark Eades: The film looked good and she said, up and see Donna about it. I called my wife and said, I think I'm getting on a plane tonight. I'll leave as Mike: you Mark Eades: soon as I can. know, the red eye left around 10. You didn't have TSA back then. And by then, my oldest was born in July of that year. And so I went to Donna and they had two first class tickets. And of course I had to change planes in Atlanta. to go to Florida because everything did that back then. There were no non-stops to Orlando. And the reason there were two was one was for me and the other was for the two cans of 70 millimeter film, which are about this thick. And I had two of them and they're Mike: Wow. Mark Eades: really big. so, you know, let Don Henderson, the production manager, let Florida know I was coming with it. And... You know, got on a plane, my wife drove me to the airport with my young baby son and walked me out, because you could walk all the way out back then with people and see them off, right? And yeah, Mike: Yeah, was a different time, different time. Mark Eades: and then I lugged these two cans and I showed the tickets to the flight attendant and they go, how come you have two? And I said, one's for these because I don't think they'll fit up there. And they, well, let's see if we can put them in here. And they tried and they didn't fit. got an extra strap and trapped him to the seat next to me. And of course I'm on the red eye, know, well, this is really exciting. 640 the next morning got a car drove out to you know, I had to luggage because I was in theory I was supposed to stay till January 4th or 5th and then Got to this I went to the what what was originally the preview Center for Walt Disney World and the building's still there It's Mike: It is? Yes, yeah. Mark Eades: where you had to go get your past go backstage parking and I went got it and then I went over to Epcot and The wet offices were in trailers behind the China Pavilion, which is also where Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: the projection guys had their offices. So I went in there and checked in, because you had to check in. We didn't have beepers or anything like that back then. And some people had walkie talkies. And they said, great. Tom Josriak, who was going to be the supervisor for all the film projectors, was expecting me over at the Magic Key Theater. Go on over there. And by the way, Magic Journeys has to run at 9 p.m. tonight. Why? Because all the executives from all the sponsors, Big Wigs, presidents, chairmans, including Kodak, Coca-Cola, Ameri... I mean, you name it. All are gonna show up at 9 o'clock to see the Kodak pre-show and this new film that nobody's really seen. Okay? Mike: So Magic Journeys was gonna be shown again five days before the park opened that night to all the sponsors, all the big wigs Mark Eades: that night, that night. they didn't come out and say it, but it seemed like I was going to kind of be responsible because nobody there had seen it to really know what was right. So I went over to the theater, saw Tom, they ran a lineup chart and they had it nailed. I mean, the projectors were aligned properly. but we didn't know the length of the film because it was cut together. Great. So first thing we have to do is we have to put them both on a bench to verify they're the same length because these things ran in what was known as loop cabinets because they don't rewind. And they didn't want to do that because they wanted it to run off the show programming. So they had to rearrange the loop cabinet. Then they pulled the film in and by about... Oh, 930. OK, what's 10? Not quite 10. I mean, I'm sorry, quarter to 10. OK, films in. The audio loop, the bend loops back in central were ready to go. They've got the E prompts, which back then were only 8K. And they took anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes to burn one of them. It took several of them for that theater. And we Mike: Amazing. Mark Eades: ran a test show. Nothing really worked, right? And Magic Journeys doesn't have a whole lot of actual hard sync points. The voices were ethereal. The best sync point was when the witch does the lightning, It's gonna take us a couple hours to reprogram, okay? I'm kind of hungry. I also said I'd meet Rick Rothschild, another Imagineer, over at Energy if I had time. So I decided I'll go over there and maybe grab something to eat and come back. And Tom, of course, reminds me, you have to come back because you're kind of responsible for making sure it goes right. I didn't really ask him what that meant at that time, but I kind of started thinking. So then I exit, you know, the magic key and the imagination and I walk around the upside down waterfalls. I go into the central communicore area, you know, the beautiful fountain that's now gone and Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: I'm walking around the fountain and who do I see walking towards me but Randy Bright and Ron Miller. So I nodded to them as they passed me. I probably go about 10 steps when I hear this baritone duet, Marquis, Marquis, I turn around. Randy and Ron are both pointing at me. Magic journeys will run at 9 p.m. Well, we're having a few magic journeys will run at 9 p.m. Yeah, it should. And they kept going and I go, oh, shit, I didn't even care about the energy at that point. I went walking back, told Tom. Mike: So when was the energy pavilion going to run? Mark Eades: Rick wanted me to look at a few things because it was a complicated. We were on at nine o'clock that night. Mike: Yeah, yeah, but Magic Journey's had to run at nine o'clock that night. Dad had to get done. my. Mark Eades: so I high-tailed it back, no food, and told Tom, he says, well, if I didn't make it clear before, Mark, you're on the hot seat. It has to run no matter what. And you're kind of the name everybody associates with it. Mike: So it's all up to you. If this doesn't work, it's on you, Mark Eades: So I can't do anything, but it's on me. So it took them several hours not just to do the changes, but they had to burn a whole bunch of e-poms. And so we ran a show, I think around 3.30 and curtains were still off, some of the lights and a couple of the exit doors were opening at the wrong time. And the pre-show was close. The film was still way off. It was about a second and you can't time it right. You can't tell. So we guessed two seconds. They got it down to where it only took us about, it took about an hour and 40 minutes to reprogram. So by now it's 6.30. We ran a show. Still a little off. Okay, well. How's everything else running? You I was in the theater. It appeared right. Yeah, I think we just need to fix this one thing. I asked how the pre-show going. It looks like it's okay. Did the doors open on time? Yeah, they did. We had someone do a fake spiel just so we knew. Okay, let's reprogram, you know, for the one door and, you know, well, it's a set of doors and let's adjust the film a second and a half. I mean, I'm noodling it in. So we got it down to quarter to eight. We ran a test show. Now the problem is when you run a show and you finally get to that point, okay, it's off by this much. The whole thing has to run around to get back to the start point. We go, well, you we Mike: Right. Mark Eades: could, you know what? Tom came up with a great idea. I think it's about four frames, I told him. Okay, we're just gonna advance the film projector four frames, reset the start point. They fixed the last thing. Let's just run one more show. It was 8.40. We ran it. Damn, it was dead nuts on. Great. Everybody starts walking into the pre-show space, all these executives at 9 p.m. sharp. We just had a good show. So Mike: Wow. Mark Eades: then, of course, we have to do the whole thing twice because... We have to let them see the pre-show first, so that runs. And by the time we get everybody in, they do their pre-show spiel, et cetera, it's about 9, 10. It runs. There's a period of nothing, and then the pre-show runs, and then it's over with, and the doors open automatically, and they go into the main show. We pause the show. That's something we could do at a certain point to make sure everybody had glasses, everything's ready to go. And I just said, OK. We ran the show, Murray Lerner, the director was there. I mean, anybody who was everybody associated with Epcot in terms of management types, Disney, corporate execs, I mean, you name the corporation, they were there in mass. We ran it, big hit, successful as hell. They started exiting and turned out there was gonna be a shindig in the American Adventure corporate suite. And Randy sees me and Marty sees me and they go, congratulations, Mark, you pulled it off. Thank you. And Randy goes, why don't you come to the party? they go, I haven't had anything to eat. I'm tired as hell. Mike: You Mark Eades: I haven't checked into my room yet. I'm going to have to pass. I mean, I was exhausted. So I had a great room at the Contemporary in the North Wing on the first floor, the big room, right where the wings come together. I got to my, I went to where I could, the only place I could get a snack, which was in the arcade. Mike: You Mark Eades: I got a couple things to eat, went to my room, back to my room, called my wife and they said, they had told me if you wanted to have your wife come down. So I called my wife and said, you and Casey get on a plane tomorrow. I'll pick you up. And so she came down the next day. I did sleep a lot that night. And then I went back out to the site and you had to always check in with the web trailer. So they knew where you were. My Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: marching orders were just go around and see all the shows. I told them I was picking up my wife that day and would be off campus. That's fine. They were opening that day was the first of four days they were going to open the park to quote paying people. So people could pay to come in. And the reason they had to do four days is they had to do four days in that quarter. So they could start capitalizing, know, start writing down the money. So that's what they did, you know, between 27th, 28th, 29th and 30th, the park opened up every late afternoon for at least four hours. in those four days, the pace went from pads of concrete and pads of dirt to solid concrete and flowers everywhere. It was beautiful. Mike: Yeah. So, so Mark, you got Magic Journeys to where it needed to be. making memories, Magic Journeys by 9 PM and everything went smoothly. Mark Eades: They actually asked me to come back because they said, since you Jerry rigged the film projectors, we need to reprogram for that. So they did. And I had to sign off on it again, but it wasn't that big a deal. Mike: And hardly any food or nourishment. You had to wait until got back to your hotel at the contemporary room. Mark Eades: I weighed at most 160 pounds back then. So I know I probably lost 10 Mike: Hahaha Mark Eades: pounds. You know, oddly, my max weight at one point was 230 pounds and now I'm staying Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: between 202 205. But oh my God, what a all adrenaline, know, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, whatever I put my hands on. So let me finish the transition to Imagineering. So my wife comes down. Go see everything. I'm making copious notes on all the films and videos and what needs to be fixed. That's kind of what my job was. come on the last day that we there for the opening. My wife and kid were somewhere back there. I was close to the front, didn't get very good pictures. I mean, was a buy it, take pictures, turn it in, developed film type thing. But we got a few pictures of what I call the toothpaste tubes, the Barnett Ricky specialist. And I always had their hands up like this Mike: you Mark Eades: for the opening ceremonies. And, four days later after opening, I had got a message from the web trailer. They knew I was flying out that night, of course, and that Marty and Randy Marty Sclar and Randy Bright wanted to meet with me and they knew I had to leave by four 30. So they wanted to meet with me about three 30. And they said, meet them in the hallway outside of Studer computer review, which I already realized the boy that show sucks. We're going to have to redo that one. Mike: You Mark Eades: somebody is and They showed up right at 3 30 because I was gonna have to leave it 4 30 with my wife and kid in the car We already had everything packed except what my wife because there was a shop right across from that show she was busy, know buying figments and whatever else she could buy and You know, we both had Disney ID. So we got a discount and They showed up and I kind of went through the notes and they made a few comments and they said yeah that we're gonna have to you know, Sperry Univac was already talking and we needed to redo the Studer computer review because it was out of date. I mean, everybody's already starting to get portable laptops and stuff. And I think we pretty much finished it up. And I said, well, I guess I'm a wet employee now, right? And Randy said, yeah, Mike: you Mark Eades: see so-and-so in professional staffing, she's already got the paperwork and they're going to work it out as a transfer. No contract was ever signed. They both shook my head and said, Mike: wow. Mark Eades: when you come over to wed, welcome. And on September 14th or 15th, I became a wed employee. So when I went back to the studio, I take a couple Mike: Congratulations. Mark Eades: of days off because I mean, I'm like, I need to recover. And I come back in, know, Mike: Hahaha Mark Eades: Ray says, Bob DeBeau wants to see you. Ray wasn't really aware of what had happened and how he kind of Hornswoggle a new job in spite of him. And so I had to go up and see Bob Jabeau. Now, if you know anything about Disney back then, unless you needed to be alone and read something private, you generally did not close your office door. It was kind of an open office Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: approach. And so I went up, saw his secretary, Donna, and she said, go on in. And Bob stood and welcomed me. And then he closed the door. He says well mark as you know, we're done and we're gonna have to start making some changes and it goes have you made any plans for what you're gonna do next and I go and I stopped him right there and I said well Bob Randy and Marty have asked me to come to wed and they want to work it out as a transfer I'd really like for you to help move that along. I swear you could have seen Bob's jaw drop to the floor because he knew I'd kind of gone around on him. But he was a gentleman. He honored it and he made sure it happened. I transitioned to wed, became a salaried employee, started getting the stock options for a while. the stock wasn't doing anything. It kind of tanked, which made the options better, sort of. and then became a WED employee. October 14th, I think it was, of 82, Epcot's open and I'm hiring it as a WED employee year after Horizons was done, they had to let more people go. They went down to 2,000 and as, you know, we had to get Tokyo done, had to get Phantasm done, then Horizons was gonna open October 1st of 83. But through Mike: Right. Mark Eades: all this, people were whittling down and let go. And in 84, we got down to 400 people, 404, I was told. And I mean, We all had to make up resumes to show all our different abilities of what we could do. Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: Disney was going through the whole green mail thing Not only was I having to finish over kind of raised semi-dead body over at the studio, because he was still there for a while, had to deal with him, but they started a project with a new sponsor of PSA where they're to redo America the Beautiful for the Circle Vision theaters. And I became the show producer, along with the fact that we had to fix a Studer computer review. they, you know, they had a, Scott Hennessy wrote a new script. They came up with the thing. We shot it video and transferred it to film all of this. And I'm suddenly on two projects that are going to go beyond the layoff days. And Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: so I'm working on a Circle Vision main show as the sort of the show producer of the whole thing. Basically, there was a pre-show film with PSA that had Orville, the albatross, kind of in it. And then the main show film, Rick Harper directed it. Jeff Blythe claimed a big directing credit, but he was the second unit director. And so that's ongoing. In fact, the winter of that winter, I had to do a big thing where I put together storyboards of what had been shot in because they had no script. They just started shooting because they wanted to get four seasons in. And then we figured that out, brought Rick back, Harper to talk to him. And then we had to get four shots done. So I had to manage those four shots. Don Henderson was on a consultant contract. He helped get them put together. I actually went on the shot that we shot in. I coordinated going to the places we needed to go to. One of them was getting an aircraft carrier for that shot. The other was we needed a place that looked like it was Maine. And Maine didn't get a lot of snow that winter. But we found one and Mike: Hahaha Mark Eades: we needed to stage a fake rock and roll concert at Disneyland that ended up getting dropped. And then we wanted a building under construction, a skyscraper so the cameras could rise up between the girders and found a building in Seattle that was being built. And we shot it there. I on that shoot, got drunk afterwards with the crew because we did it that one day and it turned out great. Didn't have to do retakes, didn't have to worry about weather. Weather was great, you know. Mike: Well, at least you didn't starve like you did for Magic Journeys, right? Mark Eades: Well, I didn't have any things. still would occasionally, you know, when you're on a project and you're in a position like I was in, you have to carry it through to what I call the bitter end when it's all done, working, running properly and can open to the guest. you Mike: Right. Mark Eades: know, it opens to the guest. And Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: when we got Circle Vision done, first, it was first put into Disneyland and I had to spend the night. with Chris Costura, who is the show programmer and just he and I, we're programming on, he's programming all night and I have to sign off on everything. You know, I will tell you that the lean rails will not safely support your weight nor that of a three ton elephant. But I actually down on them. Mike: you're the one who makes that announcement. Okay, now I know. Mark Eades: Well, that announcement had been around for decades. In the meantime, also, Randy had decided we needed to put it into Walt Disney World's Circle Vision, but he also wanted to have the Circle Vision at Disneyland changed to run a different film, the China film. So I had to oversee that getting set up properly so the film projectors could be rethreaded halfway through the day. Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: A new sign, you know, all this stuff. There's a lot of little details when you're a show producer that have to be followed through on. And it all got kind of taken care of, except the project manager cut the acoustics out of the Disneyland Circle vision, didn't know it, he just did it. And when I brought Rick down to listen to it before we opened, he said, that's not the way it sounded. And then we found out what had happened. So then we had to bring in 12 equalizers. program them to where it was supposed to be, leave them run there, write, know, well, basically we didn't open it. We took the equalizers back, remixed the whole show to equalize properly for that theater, and then bring it down and install it again. And then it was opened. And then in the Florida version, the screens there are actually plaster of Paris. We had to mix for that theater. Somewhere in that time, in January of 83, Randy Bright calls me down to his office and he says, you're getting on a plane with me tonight. We have to go see the energy pre-show films. The screens are supposedly working, but they said there's a problem. they had these screens and they were three-sided and they had to rotate at times in the film. initially they hadn't worked because the motors were too small. So they'd have to, Mike: Okay. Mark Eades: you you count, were four by five times five, you know, a hundred motors had to be replaced. So they ran it without the motors running. So then they got them and they programmed it and they wouldn't show it to the public till Randy came down and said, looked at it. But they said, you need to bring somebody who understands audio. And I was elected. So I'm on another red eye. My first one was in September of the Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: previous year. we get down there and we have to, of course, screen it in the morning before the park opens because they want to run guests through it. So we screen it probably about two hours before opening of the park. They run it, and we can hear the motors. And the soundtrack was a quiet soundtrack initially. And Mark, you're going to have to fix this. What do you propose? I said, I think I need to get. both Sean Murphy down here, who was the chief mixer, and I need to get Patrick Gleason down here, who was the composer of the music, and we'll figure it out. Okay, do it. In the meantime, the cinema projection guys had said they wanted to show all the problems, and they also showed me the speed room of World of Motion, and Randy basically said, figure out what we can do there too. So I'm getting all these assignments in my first basically year at WED. and Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: I had to solve them all. Anyway, I got a hold of Patrick Gleason and Sean and had them on a plane that next day. And then I had to stay up at night and I had no hotel room. I finally got the web trailer, got me a hotel room in Kissimmee. And by the way, I only had a sport coat and I Mike: You Mark Eades: had one change of underwear and one change of socks because I was supposed to come back. So then they wanted me to go around with them to look at all the films in detail after the park closed. So, you know, I got went and got the room I got. I slept, tried to for a few hours, had dinner, came back. Then the great freeze of January 83 came in, killed all the eucalyptus trees around the world of motion, killed orange trees, crossed the the central belt of Florida, and I Mike: my... Mark Eades: have a sport coat. And so, you you don't get from one pavilion to another at Epcot very easy. You have to walk. Even if you drive to it, you still have to walk into it. And Mike: Yes, that's right. That's right. Mark Eades: they were gonna just run the films wild so we could look at them. so, you know, energy, four films. Didn't feel too bad in Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: there, but get out there it's cold. You know, and Mike: You Mark Eades: so they took me to War Room and I got a... a big oversized coat and it wasn't so bad after that, And then, you know, I had to go through every pavilion. World of Motion, they were all film loops, couldn't do much about them, the animated things, we'd had to fix my stopping frames and they said, okay, if you gotta live with it, you gotta live with it. The speed rooms I was aware of, I had brought the fix, which was the Tron thing for the third speed room and showed it to Randy before I left and he said, will Mike: Ahem. Mark Eades: you just leave it there? Randy, I only have two prints. Well, leave it anyway. Okay. And then I had to fix the other two. You know, I had to go through imagination, the Magic Journeys Theater, you know, 3D. knew what they were fixing. So that was on, didn't bother to look at it. The pavilion itself wasn't open yet, but they said, you know, you need to look, well, it had opened by then. Look at the couple of films in there. There's films in it. The land pavilion only had what we called the land barn. and they looked fine. The 270s looked fine. The 35 was newsreel and I said that's the way it looks. The symbiosis film looked fine. You know, we didn't have seas. I had to ride spaceship Earth a couple times. They didn't, they, well actually they walked me up to where the films were in spaceship Earth. There were just a few films in spaceship Earth. There was the Roman road scene, that's an animated Roman going down a road, and then the Mike: Right. Yep. Mark Eades: three scenes in the media section. I had to replace the Fred Astaire loop because there was a Robin Astaire, Fred Astaire's wife was threatening a lawsuit, Fred had died Mike: interesting. Mark Eades: because Fred had told her to make sure my stuff is, you get paid for it. And Mike: Wow. Mark Eades: incidentally, and it was around that time I had to start was in 84 that I had to replace the silent movies in the Main Street cinemas because they were silent movies and film studios were starting to threaten rights things. So I had to replace it with Mickey Mouse films in a silent movie. It's still there. Mike: Okay. Yeah. Mark Eades: Sometimes it's not, but when it's there, it's still there. And I oversaw the posters for that when it comes back again. I went to this went to All of them was waiting for the student computer review had been fixed by then. Well, not by then, but that was down the line and we knew we had to make it work and how it was gonna look and said, that's just the way it's gonna be when it's fixed. And then I had to go look at all the circle visions and American adventure. France was particularly funny because... France was using a very full aperture, which means it's right on the edge of usable film space. And there was a couple of times you could kind of see the lens almost creeping in. said, see that, see that? Yeah, it's in the film. We can't fix it. Unless we do an optical blow up and didn't want to do that. Mike: worked with Randy Bright a lot on American Adventures. think he was the... Mark Eades: yeah, basically he was my boss. Mike: Okay, yep. Mark Eades: mean, had, Don Henderson was kind of a production manager and he Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: was still around as we started Star Tours and the Sea Pavilion. But eventually one of the things that had come out was the fact that he had an office there, but he was a consultant. And I pointed out, said, you know, this could become a problem for us because he's not on Disney payroll. then I remember it goes. rabble rousing about people hired like that if they worked in the office. And so Don eventually was, they kind of, some people wanted him to be eased out. So he left. I like Don. He and I stayed in touch over the years until he passed. His wife was wacko and she'd call me once in a while. But yeah, so that was kind of how I not only did I go to Imagineering and it was a trial by trial by fire to go there, but once I got there, it was a little bit of a trial by fire for a while. And then even when we were shooting Circle Vision and it was kind of calm, Randy calls me down to his office and says, what do know about simulators? And I go, well, I know they're used for training pilots and I know there's this really stupid one up in the Peter 39 in San Francisco. Well, I want you to go research simulators, figure out how we can use them. So I did that part of the time. So I wasn't necessarily full time on Circlevision and I researched simulators off and on. I flew an F-16 without flying it. I went to Florida with Claude Coates to ride Mike: Wow. Mark Eades: this circular thing. But while we were there, we drove tanks, not real ones, just Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: Claude was thinking maybe we could do a shoot them up thing. And eventually, of course, they did something down the line, but... And I also flew a helicopter without flying it. I can't land a helicopter. Mike: research you've done on developing those films for simulators, that obviously led to Star Tours, as I'm sure you're going to tell me more about, and Body Mark Eades: See you. Mike: Wars at Wonders of Life, and how Mark Eades: Yeah. Mike: it's evolved into, it seems like every Mark Eades: No. Mike: attraction has some simulator component to it in today's theme Mark Eades: Yeah. Mike: park industry. Mark Eades: Yeah, I researched simulators and at the end of it, I kind of did some thinking for a couple of weeks and I wrote a memo. They were memos. I had to type that. typed it out. Then I had to retype it Mike: A lot of typing, that's right. Mark Eades: because if you sent a memo to Marty Sklar and it had an error in it, you got it back. you get the red note, Mike: You start over if it goes to Marty Sklar, that's correct. Mark Eades: red pin that he had and sometimes he'd just attach what would know him as his clip, his whatever they were called, with his notes on it. But I also, because everybody knew what I was doing, and I was kind of the collector, we didn't know what story we were going to do. my memo ended up, so I collected some 40 some odd stories from people that I just added to it, ideas for using simulators. I ended up in the memo, I said at the end, well, maybe there's two ways you can use a simulator. And the way I couched it in the memo was maybe if one of our decisions in Tomorrowland is admit it's a simulator, but the flight goes wrong. But I said, the reason you buy into the believability of it is if you go to an airport, you don't really get on a plane. When you first get there, you know, you go into a terminal and when you get out to the end, you see these jets moving around on these giant windows. Those, they're not really jets moving around. Those windows are film projection screens. And then you go down this tube, you can't see anything out of, and you get in another tube and there's little windows. Well, those aren't seeing out. They're just television monitors. And so they can make you believe you're on a plane. And so I kind of wrote that and I said, If we want to do Tomorrowland and keep it as a ⁓ land of tomorrow, and there was a debate about this, I said, that's the approach we should take. But maybe we could go off into a fantasy universe. Star Wars was, of course, really popular. There were a lot of them. said, maybe we take a journey on the Millennium Falcon, and when we land, we end up exiting into the Mos Eisley Cantina. That's in my memo. Look at what's happening now. I was given free rein to come up with a fantasy concept for Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: Florida. And I called it the Imaginarium, and it was a total fantasy concept. And Joe Rode actually did artwork for me and kind Mike: awesome. Awesome. Mark Eades: of pitched it. But by then, they decided, let's do something with George Lucas. And eventually, there was a story meeting. And out of that, it became Star Tours. though Michael wanted us to call it Star Rides. So I was attached as the media producer with Tom Fitzgerald as the show producer. And, you know, I spent two and a half years on that counting the research time. You know, both the research of simulators and what was nice was, you know, I'd also said in my memo that we need to see the vehicle. If it's a fictional universe, we should see the vehicle we think we're going to fly in, whatever it is. So the ground rules for how we use simulators was essentially established in that memo and they followed it almost to the letter. You're going into perhaps a maintenance bay, or into something. So you will see an actual vehicle being worked on. And that was Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: followed almost to the letter. And Tom said, I thought the way you would put that was great, Mark. So they did that. They came up with the whole notion of that pre-show using the space that was part of the old adventure through inner space attraction as a way to get into it and then all of that. there was even a debate. Do we want to see the simulators running or not? And that was not even answered until after we got to a point where we ran some tech. We had a big guest, you know, employees and their families could come and visit wed. So we had a simulator we could play with. And we'd been playing with it. And we had a 10th copy of the Star Tours film with audio. So we set it up so people could go out and ride it. But we wouldn't let them see the moving simulator. Of of course, they had to go up these stairways and be belted in. And then after they got off, we put them in an area that they stood in so they could see the simulator move. And after it moved, they were like, holy crap. The reaction generally was, had we known that, we wouldn't have gotten on board. So that pretty Mike: Hahaha Mark Eades: much sealed the debate. And Randy was on the show the simulator side of it. I was actually on the side of don't show the simulator. Mike: amazing how that all works out. mean, like a temporary suspension of disbelief, right? You where you get into this world of Mark Eades: Yeah. Mike: Star Tours. Now, the question I have is, you mentioned the Millennium Falcon. I we see that today in Star Wars Galaxy's Edge. Why do you think that they didn't lean towards the Millennium Falcon and went towards the Starspeeder 3000, Mark Eades: well, I don't know exactly, out of the, had a story meeting and it was decided because the simulator has a certain look to it. How do you make it look like a Millennium Falcon? And there were space concerns because the first one was gonna open right there at Disneyland. So we're only gonna be able to fit four simulators. The one in Florida came later and like a year later or something, I don't remember. And... So there's space and we come up with a great storyline. I mean, it was better to have a storyline Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: that existed in the Star Wars universe. it was initially that this one was set sometime after, you know, the last film, episode six, okay, back then. And it Mike: Right, yep, yep. Mark Eades: was film. There was even a debate about should we use HD video or film? And... Tony Baxter insisted we could use HD video. Now realize when we're developing this, this is 84, 85. HD wasn't gonna work back then. The projectors were brand new. They just weren't gonna work. But I had to spend 30 grand on a mock-up simply because Tony and I got no major argument on the Gold Coast about it. Everybody could hear it. Mike: my. Mark Eades: Well, Tony's a rather strong-willed individual and I'm a rather strong-willed individual. And so Randy called me down about 40 minutes later and said, Mark, you're going to have to mock it up. Okay. But make sure it's fair. So we actually got the, episode six demo reel for special effects and had two prints made one for showing and one for. Had to pay for it, you know, from ILM and one for transferring to high def video. And one of our web guys found out where there was only one machine that could transfer it in the world. And it was going to be at the. whatever the conference was in Las Vegas, so he arranged and they transferred it to video. We actually had two HD projectors, one from Sony and one from GE. It was the GE Tulare light valve and the Sony was a three gun one. I said, okay, and everybody had to sign off on it, but they agreed. I said, wherever we're going to do this back then at our Tahunga facility, the seats have to be the same in both locations. The screen has to be the same. We have to have the light levels the same. So we had two cutouts of Rex created and had him lit. they spent a couple of days, both GE and Sony, tweaking the machines. then we had Mike: Mm. Mark Eades: this and projections came out and said, OK, we're ready. And so everybody comes out. And Dave Melanson, who was the project manager, He was also on Circle Vision, by the way, kind of used to work at Disneyland. He was a supervisor, a little challenging. He wanted the video projectors because they were really cheap. Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: Anyway, so we ran the Tulare one first. And they're all saying, well, it's OK. It could be a little, it seems like it's bright enough. The contrast could be a little, but we might be able to get away with it. I could, because of the way it worked, or. Occasionally there would be a dot because it used oil on the lens and then okay Let's let's run the next one and they probably looked at the till area one for a good 30 minutes over and over and over They just kept running it then we ran the Sony one well the colors better and boy menu, you know and it was this and you know, maybe be a little maybe by time we do it it can be a little brighter and all that and after another 30 minutes Dave keeps holding up the price of the video projectors versus the price of the film projectors. Then we move over to the film. Okay, let's run over to the film side. Crank it up. They open the dowser. I don't think 20, maybe 30 seconds went by. Randy Bright stands up in the front and he goes, well, that answers that question. Mike: you Mark Eades: That's what I've been saying all along, but know, Tony was Mike: Yep. Mark Eades: a little upset with me after that. I won the battle with Tony Baxter. Mike: probably have so many battle stories. It's very, very entertaining. Yeah. Mark Eades: Well, you know, was also the casting director by then in terms of handling, you know, voices. And I had to find the voice for Rex. And I mean, we tried a whole bunch of people, Billy Barty, B.J. Ward, but cartoon type Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: people, Frank Welker, et cetera. And I don't know. I went to see Flight of the Navigator and would go see the movie. I've watched it right over here at the mall back here. And I go, Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: who's the voice of that spaceship? So I watched the credits and it says Paul Reubens. Now back then he wasn't very well known outside of comedy Mike: Right. Mark Eades: clubs. His films hadn't come out yet, et cetera. And I go, so I come in the next day and I tell Tom, Tom, go see this movie. I had the times for him playing at a nearby theater. No, Tom, go see this movie. I found our voice. he's Mike: Hahaha Mark Eades: like, wow, Mark's intense. My office was really close to his. And Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: he went and saw it. He comes back in about three hours later and says, book him, Mark. And so. Mike: You chose the right voice and it's funny you mentioned about flight of the navigator. Mark Eades: Yeah, that's right. You have to get it. Mike: watched that movie and I did the same thing you did. I said, who is the voice of the spaceship? And I said, it sounds familiar. Rubin, Pee Herman. ⁓ Mark Eades: We had a consultant who would help on tracking down voices or just setting up, you know, Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: recording sessions with people just because we wouldn't know the voice. And so I called her. Her name was Mercedes Penny. And she tracked down where he was. And he was actually working on the first season of his TV show back then. And his movie Mike: that's amazing. Mark Eades: was coming out soon. And he agreed on the phone, the principle back then, to do it. So we had him come in. They recorded a couple lines with the, know, they call them sides, you it's an audition. Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: And we set it up to George and he said, love it. And so then we had to sign him a contract. There was some, I went on vacation and we were waiting on him to sign it. And his manager was claiming that we'd said he could have a free pass to Disneyland for all his life. I didn't agree to it, but Don Henderson was Mike: You Mark Eades: taking care of it while I was gone and agreed to it. And I had to clean up that mess. He got it. But yeah, he came in and did it. it kind of made me laugh. So when they started talking about the redo, was like, well, is his voice going to last? Was he Star Tours 2.0? I was a reporter with the register Mike: Right. Mark Eades: by then. And yeah, his voice appeared in the pre-show where they had a rex there, and there's a couple snippets of his lines from what had been recorded. So of course he still got the pass until he died. And then Mike: Okay, yeah. Mark Eades: they actually had him come in and voice Rex for that bar as a DJ. Mike: Mark, you're responsible for Paul Rubin's voice Rex. That's terrific. Mark Eades: Yeah, and the voice of Rod, the voice for Rod Serling in Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, which I had identified Mike: Is it Mark Silverman? Yeah, that's awesome. so just expanding on that, voice actors for other attractions, which other attractions did you work on Mark Eades: There were a couple in the great movie ride that we had to do. Mike: Awesome Mark Eades: Had to get John Wayne. That was a challenge. most people who did John Wayne, well, say here, Pilgrim, and you think John Wayne. That's not how he sounds. Mike: It should have been you, Mark. I mean, you did a perfect impression. Mark Eades: And we had to get approval from the family. I actually eventually Mike: Right. Mark Eades: met the one son that's been in, the younger one that's been in a lot of his movies. When I was with the register, we did a story about when they were selling memorabilia, but Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: they had to approve it. And I mean, we went through a lot of people. as I was... I was doing, was Mike: Ahem. Mark Eades: casting something for another redo of another safety spiel. We did a lot of redos of safety spiels. Lawyers would say, we got to fix this one. know, BJ Ward got a lot of work out of us for a while. Mike: I'm sure. Mark Eades: She was the voice of Epcot safety spiels. she did a thing. I don't know if it's out there or not. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, WED enterprises is now closed, please turn off the light and lock the door on your way out. This was just Mike: That's awesome. Mark Eades: have fun. I had to, so I had to find the voice of John Wayne and I was lamenting to an agent about something else one time how I couldn't find him. And all he said was, I won't get anything out of this, but I'll help you because I heard about a guy who does a wicked John Wayne impersonation. Well, who is it? Just send me the sides. I'll get you something on tape. Okay. And a couple days, few days later, and he said, this guy does them at parties. Okay. I'll take his word for it. And a few days later, a cassette shows up and I listened to it. God, that sounds like him. He says, He says the lines and then he says, goes to normal voice, Chad Everett for John Wayne. send it off and they liked it. So Chad Everett, you know, the television star was the voice of John Wayne in the great movie Ride. And most Mike: That's incredible. Yeah, that's great. Mark Eades: of the other stuff they got out of the movies or because they were singers, they were contracted. But the other one that I had difficult with was Jimmy Cagney. And that had to be approved by his widow. Don't remember the guy's name. You might be able to look it up. Mike: Yeah, I remember hearing something about that. There was some challenge with using James Cagney's voice. Mark Eades: couldn't use I wish I could remember the guy's But I found a voice and God, that sounds great. And people there, play it for them, they say, yeah, send it to his widow, send it to his widow. And she actually called, cell phones existed then. She called and said, I had to stop the car. You're like, uh-oh, you okay? You know, no, it sounded like Jimmy. And I had to hold it. So that I don't remember the guy's name, but that was how we got James Cagney's And like Mike: That's great. That's great. Mark Eades: a widow blessed it, you know? Mike: Yeah, Mark Eades: that was kind of how we did things. I realized by the time of the great movie ride, we were entering into a problem area because Wed was not signatory to any DGA or SAG or writers guild deals. And we were starting to try to name people, you know. So I went to Maggie Elliott, who was the creative, basically the admin creative VP of Wed and Don's gone. and told her this is an issue, we need to address it. And she said, so she listened and then she thought about it said, OK, you're right. We need to do something. Go see Art Frazier, who was the lawyer. And I talked to him and we talked for a while and then came up with a scenario where we created a legal entity, actually several. He created them. But set them up so they could sign deals that could be then signed over for the films to be used in the various theme parks type things. And the principal one was theme park productions. And then Maggie said, well, you know, if we form theme park productions, what do you want to do going forward? And I have to say by then I was, was, I wanted to just focus on maybe one project at a time. And I wanted to just produce. And they talked having me head up. didn't I don't know if I did or didn't have the experience of it. I went and met with Sandy Ravens at the studio, but she clearly wanted somebody else and that somebody else was Tom Fitzgerald. And so Theme Park Productions was set up and Tom ran it. And I signed a contract becoming one of the producers for Theme Park Productions. And Mike: Awesome. Mark Eades: well, it was awesome for three years, two years and eight months. Mike: Yep. Mark Eades: So the contract, when they offered me the contract, The way I was one of the 30, 20 some odd people offered contracts so they couldn't just go to work for somebody else like Lucasfilm and Universal. And we didn't want to lose some of Mike: Mm-hmm. Right, right. Mark Eades: the key people at that time. I looked at the contract and the way the contracts were worded initially is you got a two year term and then three one year terms. And the one year terms were totally at Disney's option. And I looked at that and I went to the guy, his name was Howard Carden, who's professional staffing and I knew him from Disneyland. And I showed him that and I said, look Howard, I'm not gonna point it out, but if you read my contract and you look at my initial hire date, you'll get the issue and maybe change it. The next day he calls me, Mark, I got it. He redid the contract. The contract was reworded, so I got two years and eight months and a few days. And it took me to my 20-year date with Disney. And the reason that was important to me was it guaranteed I would get, under the rules of the pension back then, I would get a pension later in life. Plus, I would get supplemental health care free when I reached retirement age. And I did. Mike: Very good, I wanted to ask you about Muppet Vision 3D. It's a topic of conversation amongst the Disney blogosphere recently with the changes happening. Mark Eades: Yeah. Mike: It's been between that and Magic Journeys and PhilharMagic. I 3D shows are just an incredible part of Walt Disney World history getting Muppet Vision open and did you get a chance to meet Jim Henson and work with? Mark Eades: I've worked for him But I'd heard that, you know, the way it came about was, now I had been on Captain EO initially, I was working on so many Randy Bright projects. Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: And Rick Rothschild came up, came to me with this little one page treatment. And I was asked, well, what did I think that film would cost? And I looked at it, I didn't do a budget. I just said, you're probably looking at 16 to $17 million. And I wrote it in a memo and Sandy Ravens at the studio said, that's too much. And she had somebody do an actual Mike: You Mark Eades: budget. And they had, well, what do you think of the director? And I said, well, I think John Landis should do it because he directed Michael in Thriller and he probably would get it. But no, they wanted to do Francis Ford Coppola I go, he's doing it for the money because he's broke. ⁓ but Sandy's team came up with a budget that said it would cost $10 million. ⁓ And I basically said, Sandy. you do that film, because I had a lot on my plate at the time. And I didn't really work directly on on Captain EO, but Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: they came back to me a few times. I knew how bad it was. Francis did the three weeks of principal photography and left, and they spent another three months, the second unit, essentially doing it. I think Francis's Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: son directed a lot of it after Francis left. Anyway, they came back to me finally at one point and they had an issue with the projectors at Disneyland. They said they're out of sync. And so I, you know, what do you mean they're out of sync? Well, first, let me see the film. I watched the movie. They're done, right? I said, yeah, they're out of sync in three places. You're going to have to recut. we can't do that. Your left and right eyes are out of sync. no, it's the projectors. So I had to first prove the projectors. We were running it on there. And then I had to prove the ones at Disneyland were not malfunctioning, which I did. I got black film cut holes in them. They pop up at the right time. And then just, can you supervise when we run it for the first time with an audience? Michael Jackson's going to be there. Fine. know, I did that. By the way, I also put together Magic Journeys when it ran in the outdoor Tomorrowland Theater for three summer seasons too. We put the projectors in Mike: Wow. Mark Eades: a trailer. We came up with how we would try to block off the light and all that. I Mike: Yep. Mark Eades: did a lot of crazy things. So we Mike: You Mark Eades: had the first showing of, I mean, I also met Captain Michael Jackson early on when we Randy had talked about doing 3D in a ride-through environment, which eventually people did. with Larry Gertz, we mocked it up and all that. And Michael Jackson comes out to look at it. And so they would put all the people in the Mike: Right. Mark Eades: theater and then they... brought Michael in and you know, I stayed in the theater so the film would start and all that and then you can hear it's Michael, it's We actually named our first two dogs, Michael Jackson and John Denver, because that's all the music we were listening to way back then, But then we did Captain EO. Now, as a 3D person, I go, there's some stuff that could have been done better. I mean, they didn't edit for 3D. That's why if you watch Captain EO with it slowed down to about 16 frames a second, it works better. no music, but visually, because now you can get your eyes trained to make the 3D work. That's an important part of 3D. So when Michael Eisner announced the Jim Henson deal, and it's like, we're going to make a what? I didn't know. We were rebuilding one of the 3D cameras at the time, because I'd started on that. And then, boom, we have to them in production in three months? All of sudden, pressure's on. Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: And so I was on Muppet Vision as a theme park productions guy. concept development and script development. Early on, Jim came over and they asked me to show him around. And we got to talking about the Muppets. And I said, you know, one of the great things about the Muppets is how they break the fourth wall. And 3D might give you a chance to break the fourth wall. And ⁓ who knows what you could do? You know, you can make the theater kind of a living thing. Let me show you something. So I took them out back because they were running some tests of the projectors that were going to be used at Epcot for the show at the time where they would project the buildings and they would change their look. You know. Germany would suddenly be, think, children's blocks, things like that. And he really thought that was fascinating. Ran him through the effects shop and showed him how someone could do some special effects. Anyway, went over and he was still a little concerned about 3D. So Tom sent me over to meet with him in the offices. He had another office building close by. told him, said, here, look at this hallway. And it was a nice long hallway, of course. And he said, one of the reasons 3D works is because you have some depth behind it. So you've got to have this depth. And then you have your 3D thing play close. But at the same time, you've got to teach the audience that they're not going to see it right away. So we kind of have to build to it in the first few scenes, and not just boom. But he learned and he listened. Then the first script came in and it was the Bean Bunny show. God, who's Bean Bunny? New character he wants to use. Okay, but it's Muppets. So there was a lot of talk about that and I campaigned that, if you want to have Bean Bunny in the show, introduce him at some point, but we really need to see the first guys. And Bill Prady was the writer and he did a great rewrite and it got closer to what you see. And then eventually it got to a shooting script. And, you know, they were doing sets. first scene shot was Miss Piggy being towed over the water. the 3D cameras were, I had to jury rig the other set of cameras because the ones we were rebuilding weren't done. And oddly enough, two days before production is supposed to shoot, the batteries for the jury rig cameras blew up. So again, had a disaster. They got the machine shop guys, got them running. We had some periodic problems where they were the Cameras were skiving stuff off the film. We discovered that the film wasn't always maintaining its supposed width. Had to have Kodak give us, measure everything, make sure we were right. So the first shots, Miss Piggy being pulled across the water, find, you know, and was all shot on, all the interiors were shot on stage three. And which is where 20,000 Leagues was shot, by the way, the submarine stuff out. And for a shot, They pull her and she flips over and her butt's coming towards the camera. Mike: You Mark Eades: So we had to shoot it a couple more times. There were funny things like that. I caught the flu in the second week. But Sandy said, you have to be here. You're the only one that you're responsible for the cameras and making sure we stay on schedule. Mike: That's right. That's right. Mark Eades: assigned a production assistant to make sure that I aspirin or whatever every two hours and plenty of orange juice and liquids. I worked through that flu. probably took years Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: off my life. And then when we got to the outdoor scene, which was the one where we'd blow up the wall. And the first shot, you know, we had to blow it up. It's an air cannon. The bricks blew up and not only flew, but went right into the mirror through which the cameras shot. One shot this way, one shot through it and broke it. Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: like crap, that was the good one. Now we had to go to a second one. It's like, OK, we got to put something in front of it. So they had to go get a good plate glass, put it in front of it in case it breaks, and quietly tone it down. They did a good job. And we got the shot. Then we had to clear it, let the debris look the way it did and what the shot we were taking. And then the next day, we shot the fire truck coming in. And then there were problems with that because the guy couldn't drive it in straight. The ladder went this way, went that way, you know. It Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: didn't quite come in straight, we finally said, Jim finally said, cut, print that one. And then the last thing shot were the soldiers in, in Sam the Eagle's, you know, supposed to be hour and a half and you got a minute and a half finale. And there was a shot Mike: Right. Mark Eades: in there. At one point, one of the characters is coming across. and is in front of this cannon that boom, it goes. And Steve Whitmire, Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: who eventually became the official Kermit after Jim had passed, He was that particular Muppet because most of the named Muppets weren't with us anymore So we're going across and the first The first of the three soldiers is played by Steve Whitmire. And the cannon goes and the character's head falls off. So he does this great death scene with the puppet. And of course, we're all laughing. And Jim goes, very funny, don't do it again. Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: He got a little tense on the fire truck coming in. I made a comment. said, I don't need that. need to... So I backed off and gave him a space. but yeah, I mean, and we had the original puppet performers. I mean, we had Frank Oz and Jim Henson working together on the characters together. know, Swedish chef, for example, we had, what's his name? Dave Goals, who did Mike: Yep. Mark Eades: Gonzo. Jim's youngest son, played sweetums in the South, sweetums. And it was fasting. We had Frank for two weeks. And then we got down the last week and we didn't need him because Jim was gonna do Kermit on the thing and the puppeteers other than Steve Whitmire were gonna do the various incidental characters. But we got our shoot done in three weeks. On schedule in spite of camera problems. Jim took some vacation time and we looked at the film and we knew probably had to shoot some more stuff. But I took some vacation time. we went to Washington DC. And I had actually worked on bringing putting George Bush the first into the Hall of Presidents. So I knew people in the White House. So we got great tours. Jim died while I was gone. So I had to come home so we could figure out what to do. So Tom Smith and the editor and a few others and the post-production supervisor, Mary Ann Ray at the time, who I I had told her to, she eventually got hired at Theme Park Productions because I told Tom, take a good look at her, you'll like her. Ann was great and she stayed with Tom for 20 plus years. She retired a few years ago. Anyway, they came up with a new storyline. But by then it was recognized that something I had said, our contract wasn't clear, we would have the film to use and could call the actors back, which I had gone to Bob Osher, who was the guy supposedly dealing with the contract. And he told, oh, no, it's in there. And I said, no, it's not. I've read it. I've read many contracts. It's not there. I was right. It wasn't. Anyway, they did an edit. And then we did a temp mix of the sound and Frank came on board for a week to oversee that mix. we had some of the Muppet performers come in and show how the Muppets should work, the ones that were in the attraction, know, the old sweet, the Swedish chef, the two old guys and Bean Bunny. anyway, then, you know, then we couldn't talk to them. Well, we went ahead and finished everything. know, the finished, tweaked the cut, did all the opticals that weren't quite done yet. Then we did the final sound mix up at Skywalker Ranch. I was there for two weeks while we did it. Gary Rydstone, Gary Summers, and Sean Murphy do the mix. Sean did the music. All Academy Award winning sound guys. the editor was put in charge of the mix. He and I sometimes. hit heads because he wanted to cut the whole ending of the theater. I said, you can't do that. Well, you know, well, I don't want to mix. I don't want it in there. And I said, that's not your choice, you know. And so the wet audio guy promised him Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: it wouldn't be attached to the film, but he looked at me when he said it. I got it. And then we went down and we installed it in the theater. had a guy by the name of Clyde McKinney who'd overseen the acoustics, because I wanted to make sure we had great acoustics, and we did. That was the quietest theater ever built. And Clyde came in and we got the sound right, got the show done, had it all programmed and run, and couldn't open it. Went home. Couldn't open it. No agreement, as I had predicted. Eventually, it wasn't Lisa. Michael got Brian Henson there. You need to understand Lisa and Brian were fighting for control. But it was agreed to, and Brian got at least enough members of the family to sign off on it, because Michael pitched it as, can't let Jim Henson's last film die in vain. most of it was him and in Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: the film. so eventually we got an agreement to run it in Florida and that was it. Eventually they sold everything to Disney, though Disney did not get the rights to the Sesame Street characters and Sesame Street retained the rights to use Kermit in Sesame Street. That was something that Michael had wanted and Jim did not want to have happen. So eventually that's the final deal that was struck Now people ask me what I think of it leaving and when I, you know, last time I saw it was out here. I'd seen it in Florida once more But I saw it out here before they replaced it with the Philharmonic thing. I'd seen Philhar-magic, mean, in Florida, in the theater there, which by the way, I had set it up to put Magic Journeys in that theater way back when, So I did that one too. Mike: Yep. Mark Eades: nothing in it, they'd run the Mickey Mouse review, they'd sent it to Tokyo and there was wardrobe was using it for storage. So I did that to all Mike: Yeah, yep. Mark Eades: these projects. And then they, you know, I saw it out here and I actually talked to Mary Ann and I said, I saw Magic Journeys, she says, yeah, it's getting a little long in the tooth. I said, yeah, as much as I'd Mike: Hahaha Mark Eades: enjoy it, it's there. You know, we both spent a lot of time on it, but They needed to shoot something new or do something So eventually they put Philhar Magic in there and then eventually Mike: Yep. Mark Eades: now we know they're putting a monster sting in the Muppet area and Mike: Right. Mark Eades: Muppets are going into the rock and roll thing which I think is a little weird But you know, I Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: miss the fact that we never did the Muppet ride that had been developed it would have been great The fact that the pizza restaurant would have been so much better. We would have had audio of Rizzo the Rat and Gonzo in the bathrooms. That never happened. So after Muppet Vision, I would I actually started working on developing a redo of the Golden Dream. This would have been my third redo of the Golden Dream sequence in American Adventure. Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: The first one was the original. The second one was a slight redo to focus a little bit better on the Vietnam War. And this was going to be the third one. And Steve Siegel and I had some differences at time. But after a while, Rick comes in to look at the storyboards that Steve developed recognize this is back in 1990, 91. Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: So still kind of a Vietnam war child. And he said, yeah, Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: Vietnam, more Vietnam. And I said, you know, what's really important about the Vietnam War is not only do you show the wound, but you heal the wound. So we ended up with the Vietnam War sequence that we did because Rick Rothschild, you know what, Mark's right. Mike: Yeah Mark Eades: And they still basically use that sequence even in the new versions. I was just there Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: a few weeks ago and saw the newest version. The statue with the fireworks going off, the statue is a model that we shot for the version I did. And the fireworks were added Mike: wow. Mark Eades: optically. In the meantime, we were waiting back then for to get corporate sponsors sign off. which was gonna be just Coca-Cola, And that's how you funded things. So I was kind Mike: Right. Mark Eades: of working off on a couple other research projects and helping out a little bit here and there with the Circle Vision film for Euro Disney. And then Dave Jones, who was the theme park productionist guy assigned to it, he had been over there that Christmas and he hated it, but he stayed there because they needed to see all stuff. But he came back and then he went on vacation. so I had to take over for David for a couple of weeks. Now, they had already asked me, Maggie Elliott had asked me, the manager at the time of Theme Park Productions had asked me privately if I would take over as show producer on the project. And I didn't want anything to do with it Anyway, I didn't think anything about it. helped. I mean, we had to set up a thing where the pre-show so that Chris Bailey, the director for the pre-show could see the set and figure out his camera angles and all this and, you know, and we'd set up a video wall to play with or whatever the pre-show was going to be Mike: Thank Mark Eades: and all the videos, things coming on and off David was on a long three-week vacation. Well, during that vacation, I got a call from Maggie to come down to her office. And we're in different buildings, so I come down to her office in the main web building on the Gold Coast. Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: It says, good, you're here. Come with me. OK. We go to Mickey Steinberg's office. Mickey's on the phone. She says, stay right here. I'll be back. She comes back a few minutes later. It's Marty Sklar. So it's Marty Sklar. Mickey Steinberg and Maggie Elliot and me and they closed the door again. I'm like, now what did I do? Mike: Sit Mark Eades: So I do a really bad Mickey Steinberg Southern draw. Basically he said, well, Mark, I know you've been working on Circle Vision and I know you really don't want to, but you know, as you know, Circle Vision's got some problems and they're not running very well. right now it says it's going to open late and that's a problem for us because it's contractually called for in our deal with the French government to be there on opening day. Yeah, I understand that. Yeah, you know, I don't know what I can do. And Mickey looks at Marty and Marty says, Mark's the guy to take it over. Mickey said, we're gonna make, and Marty's just kind of, Maggie's just kind of shrugged. Mike: You Mark Eades: Mickey says, well, we're gonna have to sign you as show producer and project manager without portfolios. So you're gonna be in charge of it. What do you need? And I said, the most important, like, you know, now my gears are turning and I said, the most Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: important thing I need. is you need to somehow telegraph to everybody, including my boss, Tom Fitzgerald, because I assume he doesn't know this yet, and Tim Delaney and to a certain amount, Tony Baxter, they had a guy, a director helping out, Jeff Blythe, and all of them, a way of telling them that I'm in charge and everybody hear it, so they know what my role Mike: Yeah, right. Mark Eades: is. Okay, we'll let you know. Okay, and I leave. and they say don't say anything. I'm not gonna. I don't want this. Mike: You Mark Eades: Two days later, I'm in the dentist chair getting my teeth cleaned in Los Alamitos. My beeper goes off. It's Marty's extension. Okay, well, it goes off 30 seconds later. Marty's extension 911. Shit, hang on a minute. I go get the phone. call and Sally Judd, who was Marty's secretary says, oh good, Mark, it's you. Here's Marty. And I guess she just hands Marty the phone and he says, Mark, we're gonna have that meeting. And I think he said it was going to be at 930 and it's 830 and I'm in Los Alamitos. I'll get there as fast as I can, Marty. Fine, floor it. And there's traffic on the way to Glendale. At 830, it kind of had tailed off some. I say, I gotta go. so I take off. pull it. I just park in the wheelchair lot. I tell Sarah, I gotta get in this meeting. She okay, I'll watch it. Mike: you Mark Eades: I said, here's the keys if you need to move the car, you know, I go into the, it's the big conference room next to the cafeteria at the time. Everybody's there that on the project, except, you know, those that are in Europe are on the television monitor. And on the conference phone is Jeff Katzenberg and Jeff Blythe, Antoine and Keras, the producers, Jeff Blythe, the director and the director that Jeff Katzenberg had hired to help out. And I walk into the room and all other members of the project team. And they're kind of mumbling and I could see they had schedules in front of them And says, good, Mark Eads is here, now we can get started. I just go up to a chair You know Marty just kind of listens and Maggie just kind of listens. Well, as you Mike: Yeah Mark Eades: know, a Circle vision project has been fraught with problems The the big figure is way behind that this and that and right now the project is scheduled to According to the scheduler who was Bob Stevens, so I know very well. I'm still alive It's gonna open three months late And he kind of silence run the room. Well, that's unacceptable. We can't have that. We've got to open this project on time. So I'm going to make a slight change. Mockeds is now the show producer and project manager without portfolio. What he says goes. Everybody needs to let him make the decisions. Boom. So I say, well, OK, I haven't thought about this because I kind of became, you know, Thomas Gell had been made aware of it that morning. You can tell he didn't like it. Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: Tim Delaney pretty much had washed his hands of the thing for a while because he, you know, he'd done his his signed off on the design. Couldn't help that it get done. You know, the maple guys were pulling their hair out, trying to get the figure done. The guy who approved the figure was a pain in the ass. I mean, there was so much stuff going on. And I said, okay, let me have a day folks. You know, I went back to my office to think. And of course people start calling me, including the new team that had been hired to do the pre-show shoot and post-production, So I said, I called Bob Stevens. actually went to his office, turned my beeper off and he and I went that day. We had a full day. We went to Bob's big boy, Glendale with the schedule. And a couple more copies and we went through a lot of napkins and we kind of figured it out. I told Bob, look, you know, come up with a new one, show the end date the way I think it should be, just force everybody into it. I assigned people to the buy offs of different things, which had never really been done before. They actually put their names on the schedules, which was going to force it and then said, I need another meeting set up. And so we sent the schedule out, had another meeting. couple days later in the room and said everybody had the schedule and everybody's looking at their seeing their names on the schedule and somebody finally said how come our names are on these things it's a star or whatever I said well I'm glad you asked that here's how we're gonna run this project Mike: You Mark Eades: from this day forward if your name is next to one of those dates that means you have to approve it that's where the star if you don't approve it You give up your authority to approve anything else on the project from that day on. Mickey's right there. And Mickey's like, yeah. That's one of my two, that was my biggest decision I made on that project to do it. I said, where Mike: sure. Mark Eades: went I could tell I wasn't getting along with the way Tom was running things by department instead of letting the producers run things, which didn't work Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: with me. so I went, but regardless, they said, well, when they wanted me to go to Florida with Golden Dream, I said, I don't need to go. No, you need to go. Okay. So I went down there. The guy who, the director who had been signed to... do this thing. His name was Paul Jessman. He was there and he looked at it. And, I went in and we watched it and Paul watched it and this is great. And Paul was there for several days. And then the last day Rick wanted to talk with me. And, you know, we just walked the parks and talked and said, he talked about how, you know, we just got to keep this money making machine going. And I didn't realize that at the time he was trying to convince me to stay with Disney. I didn't. No, but I sensed something and Paul was on the plane. didn't sit together. said, so what are you going to do after this? And I I don't know. think I'm done. I think I'm going to be let go. You? You're kidding. No, that's my feeling. What do you think of this? It's time. So I came home and two days later, Tom wants to see me in his office and basically told me he wanted to let me go. So they gave me 30 day notice and encouraged me to try to find something Mike: Right, Mark Eades: else to do at Disney, either some other department at WED or anywhere across Disney. I went to see Art Frazier and he said, well, a couple of days later, they showed me what would be a termination deal and how much it would pay me and Art told me, that's not enough. You need to get a lawyer. And I just, I didn't want to fight it. I wanted out. So I helped out. Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: I did help out on the honey ice shrimp, the audience price on the mock-up. Mike: The audience is here. Mark Eades: They wanted to mock it up. And I said, well, you need to have the same lens that's in the theater. Well, do we have to order one? No, they have spares in Florida. I'll call Tom and he'll send them to me. And they were like blown away. Cause you know, you pick up all this detail. when you're with a Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: company a long time about how things work. Mike: know how the system works. how Imagineering works. getting these projects complete is to know exactly what has to get done to the nitty gritty. Those details are so important. Yeah. Mark Eades: I was freelance writing and I stayed in touch with people at the Orange County Register, which was where the Orange County News Channel had been located. And they had a guy there by name of Jeff Rowe got me a bunch of freelance gigs. And I learned to write newspaper styles. So, you know, I'd written theme Mike: Mm-hmm. Mark Eades: park films, produced theme parks films I'd written for and produced. television news things. Now I was writing for straight news in their weekly editions, which were for local. And then I got hired on eventually in 2000. I was writing so much that they joking said you should be on staff and eventually I got hired on staff Mike: Hahaha Mark Eades: in the South Bureau and I covered the canyons and Coder to casa, which was a great beat. mean, Coder to casa was like the Walt Disney World of HOAs. so I got the job of trying to be a multimedia reporter and experimenting. But after three months, they said, well, we got to have you be a regular reporter, but keep doing what you're doing, because they were losing money. And then in 2009, it was like, I can't do much more down here. And I was getting kind of tired of it down there, because I couldn't just cover my original beat, which I really had kind of loved. So I was moved to the North Bureau and I was told I could cover Disney. Initially just videos, but then eventually I became the Disney guy. And Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: I covered that from 09. There's some videos out there, a lot of them towards my later time, some stories. I ended up being a multimedia reporter eventually under when Rob Curley got hired. hired, he made sure I was laid off in 2014, but came back six months later because he said, He's important to us. And he basically said, you have the Disney beat, do what you want. Have somebody edit it for you. So I could find an editor I liked. did video. I'd been doing slideshows about Disney. I'd done some video. I did a few stories on my own. I just did a lot of stories about theme parks in Disney almost on a daily basis. Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: Disney, Knott's Berry Farm, Universal, the business. And it was great. And then they went through a buyout and then I was, but they left me alone. I actually was a Jeopardy question. I got a call from an aunt and then a cousin in Indiana, both of them said, Mark, you're on Jeopardy. I Mike: You Mark Eades: didn't know if I'm on Jeopardy. No, you're a question on Jeopardy. What? So I had to watch the show that night. But then my cousin actually recorded it and sent me a short bit. Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: And so it was a double Jeopardy question. And then the question was, Mark Eades is on the Disneyland beat. for the register of this county. The guy got it right, what is Orange County? I actually went to the opening of the Star Wars land as a freelance guy. Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: But I still went there and I did some freelance stories. My editor who had brought me back to the register was then up north and he had me write stories for their paper about it, And so, you know, I was there when. Harrison and Mark Hamill and all of them were there. Mike: Mm-hmm Mark Eades: I was right in front, took a picture. And that was cool. And I got to ride the rides. Well, they didn't have Rise of the Resistance working. But I rode the Millennium Falcon. Mike: The Millennium Falcon, Mark Eades: I didn't care for it as much. Star Tours is finally doing what Randy Bright and I envisioned simulators would do, have multiple shows. Mike: Right. Mark Eades: because we had asked several times over the years to do a new film. And Disney had said, no, we still have lines. Yes, I was involved a little bit with body wars. had to prove we could do a trip through the human body. We shot all the models for the Wonders of Life pavilion, which we're going through. ⁓ There were great sophisticated models. And then we ended up making a simulator film out of it. That was done. And then ⁓ Jeffrey didn't like it. So he hired Leonard Nimoy to add stuff to it. ⁓ And it made it ⁓ more pukey. But it got. Mike: Yeah, was a ride that many complained that it was, people got sick on it, but it was a great... Mark Eades: There's no horizon, it's too rough. Yeah, but Mike: Yeah, well they actually had to tone it down a bit, I believe. After a year or two or something like that. Mark Eades: they toned down the movement, but they couldn't change the film because it was done. Mike: Right, right, right, right. Mark Eades: And that's the problem with films and simulators is even if you change it, then film's an expensive issue to deal with. in terms of changing that plus reprogramming. Eventually you have to shut down one of the simulators while you go through reprogramming. Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: But by then we didn't have a simulator at WED. One of our simulators had actually gone to Disneyland, a test one we had, and one of Disneyland's four simulators. Then they had to buy six for Star Tours at California Adventure. Then they had to buy more for Body Wars. Mike: Yep. Mark Eades: They got a nice deal because they bought them for Japan and all of that. Mike: you've done some amazing things. mean, especially with Epcot, these films that as Disney fans like myself and others remember these shows from growing up at the park, seeing them, and they're ingrained in our brain. And so I just want to thank you for bringing all these memories Mark Eades: Okay. Mike: to all of us. so I just wanted to make sure we end with that. Mark Eades: Can I add one thing? France film Mike: yeah, absolutely. Mark Eades: I mentioned a long time back, it hasn't changed. It's still running and holds a world record. How's that for quality? The France film is still the same. And it's still there. Anyway. Mike: Which one is this? Impression, that's right. Since the opening day, yes. And I make a point to go see it when I'm there. whenever I'm there, always mention to my family that this is an opening day attraction and it's unchanged in EFKOT. We don't see many in EFKOT like that anymore. Mark Eades: Yeah. And it runs at night, now only now, but it was great. My wife and I wanted to Mike: Only for a couple hours, yeah, or two or three hours, right. Mark Eades: it. And they did finally change all the films all around the world to video projectors. The last one that they Mike: Yeah. Mark Eades: could change was American Adventure because it's such a wide screen and the light has to be even. But Mike: Yes, right. Mark Eades: they're all not film based anymore. I feel good about all of it. Thank you for having me on your podcast. Mike: it's a pleasure. Mark, you're always welcome back. I'm sure you have plenty of stories could dive into. Definitely a pleasure having you with us and look forward to speaking with you soon. But thank you again for taking the time to talk and join us here on the WWW Connection Show.