TOONTOWN TRANSIT, the anchor attraction for the proposed Cartoon Studios land at Disney-MGM Studios, was based on a story I cooked up about a Hollywood city bus named Gus who really wants to be a movie star. Designing Gus to be able to take guests on a wacky and unpredictable ride through the animated world of Toontown, we planned to mount him on a motion-base simulator and marry him to a yet-to-be-invented wraparound projection technology that would provide an out-of-your-peripheral view through all of his side and front windows. This was all totally made up and unproven stuff and it sounded impossible to do—even in theory. But we kept going. I always loved this attraction concept, so whenever I’d occasionally reorganize or move my office over the years, which usually meant getting rid of copies of concept art and treatments that continued to stack up, I could never part with my Toontown Transit binder dated April 1991.

Here’s the original treatment:

Gus the Bus works for the Toontown Transit Line. It pays the bills but Gus’s true ambition is to be a movie star, much to the chagrin of his boss who tells him to stop dreaming and start driving! Gus drives us through the Toontown Tunnel on his regular route where on the other side we are greeted by singing flowers and trees and many other cartoon characters that have gathered to welcome us. Suddenly, Benny the Cab cuts Gus off to inform him that auditions are being held at the Cartoon Studios right now. This could be the big chance Gus has been waiting for! Benny tells Gus to follow him because he knows a shortcut. He floors it and we follow Benny, speeding over the cartoon countryside and around high and perilous mountain curves.

Gus can’t keep up with Benny and skids off the road, and we splash down into the Toon River. After taking a wild white-knuckle, white-water ride on the rapids, we are caught in a whirlpool and pulled underwater. After the bubbles clear we find ourselves inside Monstro the whale with Pinocchio. Monstro sneezes, sending us high into the sky, and we crash-land back on the road directly behind Benny as if we had never left! The roller coaster-like road filled with lots of twists, turns, and surprising gags takes us on a rollicking route that leads us into the heart of downtown Toontown.

Turning the wrong way on a one-way street, Gus drives directly toward two big trucks, approaching side-by-side. Benny is able to get through the middle of them but Gus is too wide to drive in between. He holds his breath and makes himself thinner at the last minute and we manage to squeeze through the middle of the trucks. But we come out the other side only to see a long fire truck speeding towards us with Roger Rabbit clinging to the end of its ladder. To avoid a head-on collision, Benny scissor-lifts over the fire truck and Gus follows his lead. But Gus doesn’t quite lift high enough and we snag Roger from the ladder, causing him to crash-land on Gus’s roof (we see Roger’s physical imprint protrude through Gus’s interior). Roger jumps onto Gus’s hood (as we see through the windshield) and begs Gus to p-p-p-please help him save Jessica from the top of the burning fireworks factory straight ahead.

The first “grab ’em” image on the storyboard for Toontown Transit.

Here’s a view from inside aspiring actor Gus the Bus in this early-concept art for Toontown Transit.

Gus gallantly accelerates up a ladder to the top of the burning factory, avoiding wayward exploding fireworks all the way up. We crash though an upper-story window where Gus steers to help Roger, still holding on to his hood, reach out and save Jessica from the flames. But as Roger grabs her, Gus can’t stop in time and pushes them both out the window. Finally coming to a stop on the window ledge, Gus teeters downwards to reveal a view to the ground far below where we see that Roger and Jessica have been safely caught in the fire department net. Just as we are about to go over the ledge ourselves, one of the wayward skyrockets crashes through Gus’s dashboard (physical animated prop) and lodges itself in the floor directly in front of us. We watch helplessly as the fuse burns down.

KA-BLOOIE! The explosion sends us flying up above the clouds into outer space, where, reaching the apex of our ascent, we happen upon a confused cow that says, “A bus? Up here?!” We nose downward for a view of Earth below. Rapidly falling towards earth, we can see we are approaching the United States, then Hollywood, and finally the Cartoon Studios. Gus crashes through the roof of the very soundstage where it so happens the auditions are being held. And cut! What an entrance! What a talent! The director loves Gus, begs him to star in his next picture, and offers him a movie contract on the spot. It was a tough road to stardom, but Gus’s dream has come true!

Our core concept team for Toontown Transit included designer Greg Wilzbach, concept artist Scott Sinclair, producer Janny Mulholland, and me. As we had to invent a bold and risky new projection system that included a bus-sized seamless wraparound screen, we contracted a visual effects company we found in New York that was earning awards and quite a reputation for developing innovative new show technologies for movies, concerts, and theater. For example, they helped pull off the animation and visual effects for Audrey II in the movie Little Shop of Horrors. They also dabbled in developing super-secret, high-tech military stuff for the government (which makes me think that if our country ever gets into trouble man-eating plants will suddenly appear and chomp up to our rescue).

This unique company, Associates & Ferren, was led by a risk-taking, techno-theatrical filmmaker, photographer, madman/scientist inventor, and visionary named Bran Ferren. Bran is a lovable and charismatic character, a jolly Santa-like man with a Santa-like beard; only Bran’s beard is bright red, looking like Santa’s would should he ever wash his white beard in hot water with his Santa suit. But unlike his famous red-suited cousin from the North Pole, Bran is from the Northeast, so his suit is khaki pants, khaki utility vest, black polo shirt, and black Nike shoes. That’s what he wore every single day with no exception; well, except for that one time he and I were minutes away from pitching Test Track to some GM executives who were visiting Epcot and he showed up in his usual outfit but with the addition of a too-short bright red tie hanging from the never-before-buttoned collar of his black polo shirt. “So,” he said pointing to his tie, “what do you think?” I answered truthfully, “It’s not you.” At that he yanked off the tie, which was easy to do because it was a clip-on, and tossed it into the trash can. After our presentation to the GM execs that day, we walked them backstage and bid them farewell, and Bran and I hopped into his rental car, which was a Lincoln Continental, a product of the Ford Motor Company.

Arriving at that realization I slumped down into the seat so I wouldn’t be visible to the GM executive entourage and mentioned this embarrassing oversight to Bran. His excuse was putting on a tie for the first time threw off all of his power to reason. A couple of weeks later, when I shared that story with Disney president Frank Wells, Frank told me that when he recently traveled to Detroit to meet with GM, he pulled in front of their company headquarters building in a Lincoln limo. Suddenly realizing this faux pas, he grabbed the phone to call his support person to ask that she exchange the Ford product with a GM ASAP. But this is how good she was—before Frank made the call, she had already double-checked to see what brand of car was sent to pick him up and quickly arranged the swap! A big black Cadillac pulled alongside the Lincoln close enough for him to make the stealth slide across.

That reminds me. One day while at the studio in a meeting with Frank and Michael Eisner, Frank mentioned he had to catch a plane because he was conducting some important business with a major American company that will go unnamed. “Frank,” asked Michael, “when you go to those places do you talk with the top people?” “No, Michael,” Frank responded facetiously, “I talk to the first schmuck that pops out into the hallway. Of course I talk to the top people!” I loved that man.

Bran’s small but mighty company was located in East Hampton, New York, where he also has a humongous house in the woods that he claims is not a house at all but rather a five-thousand-square-foot addition to his mother’s tiny house in the woods. When you walk in the front door you’ll see a portrait of his father drawn by his father’s onetime roommate: Picasso! Bran had more surprises up his sleeve than he had pockets on his vest, and he was, more than anyone else I’ve ever known, the personification of the advice my dad was famous for imparting to me: “Son,” he would say, “if you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance, baffle ’em with bullshit!” I immediately took to Bran and truly enjoyed every minute I ever spent with him.

When Janny and I made our first trip to the Hamptons to meet with Associates & Ferren, Bran, as much a salesman and schmoozer as he is an artist and scientist, escorted us to his R & D laboratory where he introduced us to a car wash–sized machine. Next to the massive mystery machine was a small screen on which there was a computer-generated (CG) design for a small doorknobby doohickey sporting concentric rings. This type of CG thing was unheard of at that time. “Observe,” said Bran as he pressed a computer key, which brought the big machine to whizzing, whirring, clinking, and clanking life. A shoebox-sized chunk of metal clunked into a front-end bin and the noisy machine had its way with it, tossing it up and down and all around like a tennis shoe in a clothes dryer until it disappeared, only to appear again in the machine’s last bin as a small exact representation of the object we saw on the screen. It was hilarious to me that this colossal machine worked so hard to spit out this tiny object. It reminded me of an old cartoon I once saw about an enormous factory that loaded a giant redwood tree–sized log at one end of the machinery and at the end popped out just a teeny, tiny toothpick as the finished product. On the bottom of the little knob’s built-in stand was a plaque on which was inscribed my name. Janny got one, too. They were “homemade” welcome gifts from Bran.

The next thing you know, Janny and I are buckled into Bran’s Range Rover, bouncing and trouncing across the Long Island countryside on our way to get ice cream. Going to get ice cream is more important to Bran than anything else. I can imagine him getting an urgent hotline phone call from the government informing him of a national emergency in which they need him to unleash his man-eating plants or the entire world will cease to exist in thirty seconds. Bran’s response: “Of course. After I get ice cream.” When we returned to get down to the actual business of planning the mock-up of Gus the Bus, Bran introduced us to his right-hand man, a young Tom Cruise-y–looking Long Islander by the name of Bruce Vaughn. Bruce was our charming host for a dinner in town that evening, where the vino and the stories flowed until we closed the place at 2:00 a.m. It was the beginning of a long and beautiful relationship between Imagineering and Associates & Ferren.

Several weeks later, when Bran and his clan had the mock-up and its projection system nearly ready to rock and roll, I hopped on a plane back to New York to check in with them. In those days, all Imagineers flew first class, and when I took my seat I noticed I was the only passenger in the cabin. Five minutes before takeoff I was still the only passenger in first class. Although I was happily thinking the in-flight service was going to be incredible with three flight attendants attending to one me, it was a little disconcerting, and just plain weird, to look around and see that every seat was still vacant. Then it happened. About three minutes before departure I heard the squelch of a walkie-talkie behind me. When I turned to look for the source of the sound, I could not believe my eyes. A representative from the airline was escorting into the cabin the Rolling Stones! Apparently, the Stones had booked the entire first-class cabin with the exception of one seat. Guess whose that was? This is one of my all-time favorite examples of my pre-Imagineering past cosmically connecting to my Imagineering present. My high school band used to cover Rolling Stones hits (or at least we tried) because I was a huge fan. Now here I was with the Stones themselves, all to myself in one small place for the next five hours. Who says “you can’t always get what you want”?

As the band took their seats all around me, they appeared to be in quite a jovial mood. Keith Richards noticed me as he was passing by. He stopped, lowered his face to face mine, and asked, “Who are you then?” “I’m…uh…Kevin?” I nervously answered the question with a question like I wasn’t even sure of my own name. “Everyone!” proclaimed Keith to the empty-except-for-me-and-the-Stones-cabin, “This is Kev!” All together everyone exclaimed, “’Ello, Kev!” He could have chosen any seat, but Mick Jagger sat directly across the aisle from me within arm’s length. His companion, supermodel Jeri Hall, joined him in the neighboring center seat. After we took off, Mick asked, “Why are you off to New York then, Kev?” I explained that I worked for Disney and was heading to the Hamptons for a meeting related to a project I was working on. “Everyone!” Mick proclaimed, “Kev ’ere works for Disney!” “What do you do for Disney?” I heard someone ask from somewhere among the seats but couldn’t see who it was. But I was pretty sure it was drummer Charlie Watts. “Well,” I responded, “I’m an Imagineer.” Charlie then asked, “What’s that then?” “Imagineers,” I responded, “are the lucky ones that get to create all the fun rides and stuff for the Disney theme parks.” Charlie said, “’Ow fun is that? Hey, do you want to trade jobs with me?” I said, “I’d love to, but I don’t play the drums.” They laughed. “I do, however,” I continued, “kinda play guitar.” Ronnie Wood said, “Then trade jobs with me!” I responded, “’Ow fun is THAT?” This got another laugh from the group.

One of them said (and I can’t remember who because the question shocked me into a mindless stupor), “Speaking of fun, Kev, why don’t you blow off your silly meeting and come with us into the city when we get there?” Everyone agreed that was a great idea. Hold your wild horses! The Rolling Stones are inviting me to go with them? Did I hear that right? Was this really happening? Just to be sure I wasn’t in the Twilight Zone, I looked out the window to see if that gremlin was on the wing; you know, the one that freaked out William Shatner in The Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Only this wasn’t a nightmare at all. This was turning out to be a pretty darned good dream. And in it there was a supermodel paging through a Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie catalogue!

“You…you want me to go with you to New York City?” I asked, still incredulous. “As in…go with you go with you?” They nodded and agreed among themselves it would be the best thing for me to do. “Thanks,” I answered, “that is really a great offer, but I’m only in New York for one day, so I really do have to go to my meeting. It’s really important and I’m really responsible.” Someone in the seats said, “Dedicated lad you are. Disney is lucky to ’ave you.” At that, everyone settled back down and all the excitement and conversation stopped. I unfolded my Sunday paper, and I’m not kidding, the first page I opened featured a large photo of Mick Jagger with a related article about an autograph shop and the big money they were getting for certain celebrity autographs. Mick’s took in six hundred bucks!

I looked across the aisle at the man with the golden hand and noticed he was noticing my newspaper. “It says here,” I said excitedly to Mick, pointing to the article under his photo, “that this shop recently sold your autograph for six hundred dollars.” He reached across the aisle openhanded and said, “Give me something to sign then.” I snapped the pen out of my shirt pocket and grabbed the first papery thing I could get my mitts on from out of my briefcase, which was my Disney travel folder. In those days, the cover of the folder featured the words WALT DISNEY TRAVEL COMPANY under the image of Mickey Mouse standing in a ta-da pose with arms open wide. Mick signed above Mick, handed it back, and said, “You’re not going to sell that, now are you?” I answered, “Not for less than six hundred bucks I’m not!”

After we pulled up to the gate at the airport upon landing, I heard the familiar squelch of a walkie-talkie approaching the first-class cabin. A representative from the airline came to escort the band. As I was about to bid them a fond farewell, Keith said, “Come along with us, at least till we get out of the airport,” and gestured for me to follow them off the plane. There I was, walking right in the middle of the Rolling Stones, being escorted through the back corridors of the terminal. When our airline host opened the door out to the curbside where the limos were waiting, so were the paparazzi—and they swarmed me, and started taking my picture (like I was somebody)! But by the time they realized I was nobody, the band members had escaped into their limos. A black rear window went down and I heard a voice from inside say, “Last chance, Kev. C’mon then!” I thanked them profusely, but once again declined their gracious offer. Off they went into New York City in their stretch limos, and off I went to Long Island in my compact rental car.

Everyone I share this story with tells me I must have been crazy not to go with the Stones. Maybe so. But that’s how crazy dedicated I am to my Imagineering life. After I returned home from that short trip, I was certain the whole thing was a dream. That is, until I unpacked and found my six-hundred-dollar autographed travel folder. To this day I wonder what would have happened had I cast my responsibility and suitcase to the wind and jumped into the back of the limo that night. I know it’s only rock ’n’ roll. But I like it.

A few weeks later producer Janny Mulholland joined me on the next trip to East Hampton. But Disney Travel had a problem finding lodging for us there. A big wedding event had taken over the town and all of the local accommodations were booked solid, with the exception of one hotel, which strangely had all of their rooms available. This raised a warning flag with Disney Travel, but we wanted a place to stay that was close to Associates & Ferren. Even though it wasn’t recommended, we convinced Travel to book two rooms at that hotel for the two nights we were going to be in town. (The hotel will remain nameless to protect its identity, even though it didn’t protect Janny and me, as you are about to discover.) Our flight was delayed so we didn’t get to town until almost midnight. We were fortunate to happen upon the old hotel, because it was not well lit. As a matter of fact, the only source of illumination was a single naked bulb over its small front porch, under which stood a tall, lank, Ichabod Crane-looking man straight out of central casting. Bags in hand and ready for bed, Janny and I approached the man on the porch. In a low and slow voice that sounded eerily like Lurch from The Addams Family, he said, “You are late.” Before we could apologize and explain why, he said, “Come,” and we followed him through the front door of the smaller-than-life-sized six-room hotel that was built in the 1700s.

Inside the dimly lit snapshot-of-history parlor, there were at least two hundred ticking wall clocks. I know we stepped in at precisely midnight because we were greeted with an unsettling cacophony of chimes striking the hour. After we checked in, the man of few words handed us each a skeleton key and pointed down the dark hall for Janny and up the dark staircase for me. I couldn’t help but ask him if there were any other guests staying in the hotel. He silently shook his head. Before we retired to our rooms, Janny and I made plans to meet there in the parlor when all the clocks struck 7:00 a.m. I turned to thank the man before heading up to my room, but he had vanished without a trace.

At the top of the stairs was a short and narrow hallway, at the end of which was a short and narrow door. Another naked light bulb flickered in the hall, but the ceiling was so low I had to step around it. The top of my room door was at chin level so I did the limbo to enter. The moment I stepped in and straightened out I was confronted by two centuries-old portraits of George and Martha Washington on the opposite wall. Their eyes were fixed on me. The dusty, musty room had an unsettling vibe to it and sent a chill through my bones. I tossed my small suitcase on the bed and unzipped it with my back to George and Martha. But I knew they were watching. I quickly pivoted around to see what they were up to—and they had not taken their eyes off of me. I tried to lose them by doing the Soupy Sales shuffle back and forth across the tiny room, but their eyes followed my every move. When I stepped over to my suitcase to unpack, the zipper I thought I had unzipped was zipped. Hmmm. I unzipped it again and hung up my clothes. Returning to the suitcase to retrieve my bathroom supplies I found it zipped again. A pair of my socks was on the bed. I had not taken them out. I don’t believe in ghosts, so I convinced myself there must have been some logical explanation. But George Washington begged to differ. And he doesn’t lie.

There was nothing modern in the room. No phone, no TV, not even a toilet; just a ticking clock. I had to limbo again under the only other short door in the hall outside my room to find the toilet. There was no shower next to it, only a Barbie Dreamhouse–sized claw tub. No kidding, the scale of the 220-year-old hotel’s second floor was only slightly bigger than a dollhouse, one which I was starting to think belonged to Chucky. Returning to my room from the water closet, I found the door wide open. I had closed it when I left the room. The open door perfectly framed George and Martha as I approached. They knew what was up. I sternly said to them, “I don’t believe in this paranormal poppycock, so I am going to bed!”

As exhausted as I was, I couldn’t get to sleep with all those goings-on going on; plus, there were the clocks downstairs and their spy disguised as a windup alarm clock in my room tick-tocking, which was driving me cuckoo. I covered my ears with my pillow. Turning over on my left side had me facing the short door. Under it was a wide gap through which light poured in from the bulb in the hall. Suddenly, I saw a moving shadow under the door and I heard the floorboards creaking as if someone or something were approaching. Quietly sliding out of bed so I could sneak up on whatever was sneaking up on me, I gripped the doorknob like a victim in a horror movie would at the moment the audience is saying to themselves, “No! Don’t open the door!” And I opened the door.

But there was nothing. I closed the door and the floorboard creaking immediately started up again. Once more I opened the door and saw and heard nothing. I jumped back into bed and pulled the covers completely over my entire self, feeling like a scared little kid with no mommy to call out to for help; well, except for Janny (producers are like mommies), who was downstairs somewhere probably sleeping like a baby, so I didn’t want to disturb her. I switched the nightstand light on. George and Martha were clearly enjoying every bit of this. The moment the wind started howling outside the window I felt a tug on my eyebrow. As I was reasoning that it was a sleep-deprived twitch, it happened again. I sat up with the spring action of a switchblade and fired a warning to the Washingtons: “Call off your friends or you’re both flyin’ out the window!” It occurred to me that I had not yet looked out the window, so I got out of bed to see what was out there. In the moonlit median between two lanes of a desolate road was a long thin ribbon of land upon which were old crooked tombstones.

My room was next to an old cemetery! No wonder grim grinning ghosts had come out to socialize with me. Because of that I did not sleep a wink, so I heard all of the clocks strike every single hour until 5:00 a.m., at which point I got out of bed to go wedge myself into the Barbie bathtub. By that time, I was so angry and cranky I didn’t care if the ghosts saw me as naked as their stinking light bulb. I just hoped they weren’t going to tug on anything else.

When Janny and I booked our rooms, the hotel demanded full payment for the two-night reservation prior to our arrival (gee, I wonder why?). But I was not going to stay in that place one more creaking night. At 6:00 a.m. I stuffed everything back into my suitcase, gave George and Martha a sustained raspberry, and ducked under the short door to amscray, more than happy to wait outside for an hour for Janny. But when I turned to step down the stairs, Janny was already waiting at the bottom, staring up at me with suitcase in hand, very much in a stiff and stern Mary Poppins posture. But she didn’t look like Mary Poppins. She looked like a wreck. There I was, at the top of the stairs staring down at her, and there she was at the bottom of the stairs staring up at me, neither one of us saying a word amid all the ticking clocks but both knowing what the other was thinking. I knew she knew what I knew, and I knew she knew that I knew what she knew. After perhaps a full fifteen seconds of our silent somber stare-out, we both drew a sharp breath and spoke at the very same time, stating the very same thing: “How was your night?” I was the first to respond. “Let’s get out of here and I’ll tell you.” There was no sign of Ichabod Crane or anyone else around as we both flew out the door and jumped into our escape vehicle.

Oh, no. Nope. No sir. Not a ghost of a chance I’m staying another night in this haunted hotel!

Wary of picking up any hitchhiking ghosts, I floored the gas pedal to speed past the long cemetery. Then, once in the clear, we shared our long night’s experiences. Compared to Janny’s night, I got off easy. Neither one of us got any sleep or proper grooming, so when we arrived at Associates & Ferren we were a mess. The receptionist, Susan, greeted us by asking a question that was actually more of a statement: “You stayed there, didn’t you?” We nodded. She continued, “I can’t believe you did that, especially since everyone knows that place is haunted.” Susan helped get us rooms for the night at a normal (as opposed to paranormal) hotel in Sag Harbor. I’ve taken thousands of trips for my job over the years—and never once have I had any of my expense reports questioned. Except for one. This one. A few weeks after I returned from New York I got the call. “Hi, this is Mary from Corporate Travel. We were just wondering why you have charges for two different hotels in two different towns on the same night.” I answered matter-of-factly, “That’s because one of them was haunted.” There was a long pause and then Mary ended the call by saying, “Okay. Well, um. Thank you.”

Despite the sleepless night before, the mock-up we were there to review looked promising. Bran’s team had created a multi-camera rig and mounted it to the top of a van. They drove the van around town and projected the captured footage on a screen that wrapped around both sides and the front of the wooden mock-up of Gus the Bus. The onboard projection system, mounted out of view on top of Gus, provided a seamless, out-of-the-periphery image as seen through the bus windows. There were also subwoofers on board, so when the mock-up began, it sounded and felt like Gus was starting his engine. The crude motion base under the whole thing was programmed to choreograph with the action on the screen. It was like experiencing Circle-Vision, only better, because with no mullions to divide the screen and no frame to define the screen, it felt like we were traveling on a little bus through East Hampton. This was all very exciting, and because of it I was confident about moving the project forward. Its success meant we could invite our leaders, all the way up to Michael Eisner, to come to East Hampton to experience the mock-up.

When they arrived, Bran jumped on the opportunity to present a lot of other fun, interesting, and most-impressive stuff he and his associates were working on in their facility. Michael Eisner quickly became enamored with Bran and his company, and soon they were doing other innovative projects for Disney. Before long Michael invited Bran to come out to Glendale to head up Imagineering Research and Development. When he moved to California, some of his associates followed, hoping to land a job at Imagineering as well. One of them was young Bruce Vaughn.

A few days after Bran arrived, he called me and said, “What are you doing?” I was under the gun trying to knock out an important deadline so I responded in a “leave me alone” tone of voice: “I’m working like crazy.” “Never mind that,” he said. “Meet me out front in five minutes.” Five minutes later I was walking out the lobby door as Bran pulled up in his gleaming new red Corvette ZR-1. I gasped. He got out, leaving the driver’s-side door open and engine running. “You’re driving!” he said. I couldn’t believe it when I slipped behind the wheel, because I had never been in a Corvette. That’s because I could never afford one, so why put myself through that pain of sitting in one knowing it could never be? But I’d had a lifelong love affair with the legendary sports car ever since my dad took me to a Chevy dealer in 1959 and there, on the showroom floor, was a shiny new red one with her top down. I named her Ruby right there on the spot. Yes, it is possible to fall madly in love when you’re only four years old. I excitedly assumed we were there because Ruby was going home with us. But then we went home in a stupid station wagon. I never forgave Dad for that. And I never gave our station wagon a name, either.

I joyously pushed in the clutch as Bran switched the control over to “Sport” mode with a knowing smirk on his face. I put the six-speed manual into first and off we screeched onto Flower Street, speeding past the place where I’d had my interview while thinking about how far I’d come since driving down that street for the first time in Old Unreliable. Little did I know when I rocketed onto the freeway and slammed her into sixth gear that before long General Motors would invite me to drive their special souped-up Corvette at top speed on their proving grounds track in Michigan when my research would begin for Test Track. Bran would later join our Test Track team. After tearing up all the streets of Glendale and a few more in Burbank in his growling animal ZR-1, I told Bran I had to get back to work. “Never mind that,” he said. “Let’s go for ice cream!” For years to follow I’d often get a phone call from Bran, always at one of the busiest times of my day. “What are you doing?” really meant “We’re going for ice cream.” Ice cream and Corvettes on company time. Two of my all-time favorite things and two more not-your-typical-workday reasons I loved my crazy Imagineering life.

When Bran left Imagineering to establish another company, wicked-smart Bruce Vaughn took over as head of our R & D. A few years later he would take an even bigger step up to become the head creative honcho of Walt Disney Imagineering. Bruce’s rise to power was a fascinating thing for me to witness given our long history together. At one time, Bruce was working for us. The next thing you know we’re working for Bruce! Had I never come up with the idea for Gus the Bus, Bruce probably never would have come to Imagineering, much less become its leader. (Always be nice to everyone you work with because you never know who’s gonna end up being your boss!)

Alas, Toontown Transit and Cartoon Studios did not come to fruition because the Roger Rabbit franchise was fading fast and Imagineering was establishing new and different goals. Although the projects I was working on for the studio expansion were canceled, I didn’t consider it a loss. I had a lot of fun with them, learned a lot from them, and took comfort in the fact that a lot of good came out of them. We may have lost Roger and Jessica, but we gained Bran and Bruce. And, as is usually the case, things that are designed for projects that get canceled often find their way into later concepts. The wayward skyrocket with the burning fuse that crashed into Gus the Bus’s interior reappeared as a wayward storm-stopping missile that crashed into the storm-diffusing aircraft interior in SeaRider at Tokyo DisneySea. At least The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror rose to the top and opened in 1994 to elevate the level of thrills at the Disney-MGM Studios, which was the primary goal of our Studios Expansion effort.

I was never, in my entire creative career as an Imagineer, in need of work. Projects came and projects went: some got built and some didn’t. That’s the nature of our business. Gus the Bus had barely been laid to rust before I suddenly found myself on several more new projects in the early- to mid-1990s with even more on the way, including Mickey’s Toontown for Disneyland; the Carousel of Progress show refresh, a New Tomorrowland push, a Snow White’s Scary Adventures refresh, and Sonny Eclipse, the Biggest Little Star in the Galaxy, for the Magic Kingdom; the creation of Blizzard Beach Water Park; and the most important new attraction of them all, the joyous arrival of my second son, Bradley Alexander. Brad came out of the Studios Expansion effort, too, thanks to my wife tagging along on a few trips to the romantic Hamptons. I consider Brad as my turning point and good luck charm because after he was conceived almost every attraction I worked on got green-lit. They all made it from the spark to the park. Also at the time, unable to quell the anxious animator trapped inside my Imagineer body (and being up most of the night anyway with baby Brad), I did some moonlighting for Disney TV Animation in 1992 as a writer on the CBS Saturday morning show Raw Toonage, starring Bonkers D. Bobcat. For that I unexpectedly received an Emmy nomination.

Another unexpected surprise came when I was invited to write Michael Eisner’s on-camera introductions to the Wonderful World of Disney on ABC on Sunday nights. Man, I was living the dream! Hanging out with the Stones, licking ice cream cones, staying in haunted zones, and cruising in Corvettes without taking loans. It just couldn’t get any better. Well, actually, it could. And it did.