I've worked with Imagineers on some projects in the last few years. Not a lot I can say publicly, other than it really was interesting to see how much effort goes into creating and preserving a specific theme/mood/vibe for the rides. Textures, colors, smells, finishes.
Stuff that usually only gets a passing acknowledgement in other projects (eg: we'd prefer if the [thing] could be painted to match the walls) becomes "Can we completely disassemble [thing] and embed its components into [other thing]?" Guest experience, and safety, receive a lot of attention, which creates some fun problems to solve.
I have several friends who are or were imagineers.
The question you ask is very wide unfortunately because it is such a wide job.
Imagineers cover everything from software engineers working on robotics, to machine learning, computer vision, or data management. There’s hardware engineers, rendering engineers, people responsible for traditional costume design with fabric etc, animators, civil engineers etc…
Like any other job, there’s no real secret to getting in though. You just need to know what roles are there and see what fits you. Coming from an entertainment background certainly helps (games, feature animation, visual effects) but isn’t a hard requirement either.
There are Imagineering documentaries and behind the scenes on YouTube and Disney+ that give you an insight into what goes into it.
One would think I might have already looked there previously, and was asking about personal experience from someone who has worked as an imagineer, not looking for a generic list of bullet points in a job req. :)
In my domain I am known as a bit of a problem solver/out of the box thinker. So when people get into a scenario they don't have a ready answer to, they reach out to me. In this case, a contact of mine works closely with Disney, and other theme parks, and when they ask his company for something unusual he typically calls me up (it also helps that I'm in Tampa, not too far away).
IOW, I guess the answer, as it often is, is "networking".
Thanks, that makes sense. I’m similarly “that guy” that gets called for scenarios like that, but in CA, which is why I asked about Disney specifically.
Disney's secret sauce when it comes to parks / experiences always seems to be that extra layer of polish and effort. One of those things that you maybe couldn't list all the details you did, but you absolutely know is there in the background somehow.
There’s also the fact that (a) the line experience is usually an entertainment in itself and (2) the rides last longer than typical theme park rides (on this last, I remember being at Magic Mountain chaperoning a youth field trip and I started timing the ride experiences and the big rides (rollercoasters, etc.) lasted around 60 seconds. I never timed any of the equivalent rides at Disneyland,¹ but I’m pretty sure they lasted longer.
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1. I took my kids to Disney World last year and found the Magic Kingdom to be disappointing compared to Disneyland. With the exception of Space Mountain, the ride experience of the equivalent Disneyland ride was better at Disneyland. Pirates of the Caribbean in the Magic Kingdom is actually only half the ride that it is in Disneyland.
You are officially the only person in disney park-going history to prefer orlando Space Mountain over DL Space mountain. So painful, old, dark, and rusty.
I had a tour of Imagineering nearly a decade ago, and it was truly magical, leaving a lasting impression on me. It felt akin to what I imagine Xerox PARC or Bell Labs were like in their heydays.
Why does this page push so many entries into my back button?
Edit: If I scroll to the bottom very quickly, it only adds one extra. It seems to add them when I stop scrolling, but not every time. And never when I scroll up. This is on Firefox for Android.
No, this is just Microsoft dealing with the way they do web-based backwards compatibility and routing old as shit links to their modern infra, which usually involves six redirects
Yeah, seeing his picture here was a bit bittersweet - it caught me unsurprised, and hit like a gut punch, but it's good to see he's remembered and his legacy lives on
Mythbusters, Grant, taught me that just dorking around and trying things is as much a part of engineering when it comes to smart people as it is for anyone else.
I always assumed they just "did the math" and knew what to do, but rather when just trying things like anyone else they can discover some surprises and solutions that they don't expect.
Kinda stopped me in my tracks a bit. Nice to see him and his contributions noted, as I'm going to guess that they were more significant than the task in the photo.
when I made my drivers license, you were still taught that if all your breaks fail and there's no way to stop car, you should use "body braking" - i.e. use the friction of scraping your car's side against something, preferably a wall - to get to a stop
I'm not sure if I was taught this specifically in driver's ed but yes, I also learned that if all else fails the best approach is to hit the guard rail at a tight angle and keep steering into it until the car stops. It will total the car but it might save someone's life.
I miss when companies invested in R&D. Just think if companies paid you 1-2 hours of your day to do either R&D or open source projects, how many advancements we could have. Theres all sorts of open source projects stalled because not enough time or money.
I imagine some might fix bugs management isnt prioritizing, or performance issues, and so on.
While I agree with the sentiment in your first paragraph, I think the idea of the second sounds like either working sub-optimally (fixing bugs that don’t need fixing) or else too much management ineptitude to overcome by fixing critical bugs for a couple hours per day that management just wants to ignore.
The number of dumb bugs that make your company look incompetent, but never get fixed because fixing non-critical bugs is always low priority, is insane.
It does happen like that, lot's of departments within big companies have R&D focus with time dedicated to development/discovery. The problem is that the output is captured. If it doesn't end up in a product, the general public will never know
Closest to R&D we're getting is hackathons and the like, and in practice it's trying out new technology that someone else developed; coming up and developing something new in IT is really difficult, and said development takes time for which you need buy-in first.
That said, I'm sure there's still dedicated R&D at companies like Google and the like. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.
Unfortunately the tax treatment no longer incentivizes this. Accounting practices that in the past allowed for this activity to be booked as an asset are no longer in use. Lower corporate rates no longer necessitate liability offsets that in the past fueled r&d budgets. Instead we have stock buy backs! Yippee!
Note that in an actual intercept, this thing is in space and going like 10km/s. It's job is to slam directly into an incoming Ballistic Missile re-entry craft before it can deploy nukes and decoys.
The giant nozzle pointed downwards is simulating 0-gravity, and probably does not exist on live fired craft.
Those thrusters must be extremely precision controlled too. At that flight profile, having a nozzle open an extra millisecond means missing the intercept by hundreds of feet.
Considering they did first small-room-sized wireless electricity distribution, I'm not sure they're that different from DARPA in terms of know-how and amount of secret sauce.
You can't convince me there isn't some kind of funnel from Disney Imagineering into the US military if this is the kind of tech they're working on. Most R&D doesn't happen in the public spotlight the way Boston Dynamics and Disney apparently do it.
If they're heavily armed and hard to destroy then most humans might not have a choice whether or not to accept them regardless of whether they're cute and fluffy or barebones metal soldiers.
It’s called neoteny, it’s when animals keep their youth traits longer when domesticated than when wild.
Example: Adults cats purr, while wild cats don’t. Because looking cute (or sounding cute) has a drastic effect on survival in domesticated environments.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadStuff that usually only gets a passing acknowledgement in other projects (eg: we'd prefer if the [thing] could be painted to match the walls) becomes "Can we completely disassemble [thing] and embed its components into [other thing]?" Guest experience, and safety, receive a lot of attention, which creates some fun problems to solve.
The question you ask is very wide unfortunately because it is such a wide job.
Imagineers cover everything from software engineers working on robotics, to machine learning, computer vision, or data management. There’s hardware engineers, rendering engineers, people responsible for traditional costume design with fabric etc, animators, civil engineers etc…
Like any other job, there’s no real secret to getting in though. You just need to know what roles are there and see what fits you. Coming from an entertainment background certainly helps (games, feature animation, visual effects) but isn’t a hard requirement either.
There are Imagineering documentaries and behind the scenes on YouTube and Disney+ that give you an insight into what goes into it.
But thanks.
IOW, I guess the answer, as it often is, is "networking".
Thank you for the insight!
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1. I took my kids to Disney World last year and found the Magic Kingdom to be disappointing compared to Disneyland. With the exception of Space Mountain, the ride experience of the equivalent Disneyland ride was better at Disneyland. Pirates of the Caribbean in the Magic Kingdom is actually only half the ride that it is in Disneyland.
https://www.disneyplus.com/series/the-imagineering-story/6ry...
And going way back, Epcot plans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLCHg9mUBag
AMA.
Edit: If I scroll to the bottom very quickly, it only adds one extra. It seems to add them when I stop scrolling, but not every time. And never when I scroll up. This is on Firefox for Android.
But yes, obviously it's some bad javascript code.
I always assumed they just "did the math" and knew what to do, but rather when just trying things like anyone else they can discover some surprises and solutions that they don't expect.
but I really feel there's a missed opportunity there, to come up with something that abbreviates to "S.P.L.A.T." rather then "R.U.E.D." ;)
or, from the Kerbal Space Program fanbase: lithobraking (as opposed to aerobraking)
RUDE
- Spontaneous Pieces Leaving And Tumbling
- Surprising Pieces Launching And Toppling
I imagine some might fix bugs management isnt prioritizing, or performance issues, and so on.
That said, I'm sure there's still dedicated R&D at companies like Google and the like. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.
0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMU6l6GsdM (the rapid fire rockets are a little loud)
The giant nozzle pointed downwards is simulating 0-gravity, and probably does not exist on live fired craft.
Those thrusters must be extremely precision controlled too. At that flight profile, having a nozzle open an extra millisecond means missing the intercept by hundreds of feet.
And a Nuke hitting DC
But they might look like the Mouse.
Example: Adults cats purr, while wild cats don’t. Because looking cute (or sounding cute) has a drastic effect on survival in domesticated environments.
And it involves FLUDD's hover mode.
Sometimes the universe just seems committed to making you smile.
In satellites there are ways to de-spin the reaction wheels, using alternative sources of torque, e.g. the earth's magnetic field
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10065127B1/en
As well as their HoloTile moving floor/omnidirectional treadmill, which has gotten significant press recently: https://www.fastcompany.com/91019277/a-disney-imagineer-expl...
That is an impressive Lightsaber but holy, those tiles look super fun!!!