IT BROKE MY HEART the Submarine Voyage remained closed at Disneyland for more than five years. When the subs were gliding gracefully across the colorful lagoon, they added stunning aesthetics and kinetics to the park—and it was a must-do literally immersive ride (not to mention Disneyland was able to boast about having the eighth largest submarine fleet in the world). The Tomorrowland favorite was the perfect example of a major attraction that offered guests an opportunity to enjoy an experience they may not otherwise have had. Marty Sklar knew this well, and he wanted the subs back so badly he threatened to lie down on Harbor Boulevard until they were returned to operation.

I promised Marty if he ever really did that I would lie on the busy boulevard alongside him, as long as he was the one on the side of the oncoming traffic. Tony Baxter was in the same boat, so to speak, in that he never gave up coming up with compelling ideas to try and bring the subs back. Among his ideas were an interactive hunt for undersea treasure and an adventure inspired by the Disney animated feature film Atlantis. Alfredo Ayala, resident genius from our R & D studio, was inventing a new “dry for wet” technology that created the believable illusion of generic animated fish swimming around in real water, mostly because it was real water. I was also independently trying to come up with a story hook strong enough to save the subs. So, there we all were, working in our own little “sub groups” looking for the answer. All of this momentum-gaining independent thinking going on by different people in different buildings around our Imagineering campus was a strong indication it was time for the subs to relaunch.

Unrelated to the subs, in March, 2003, I took my family to the IMAX theater in Irvine, California, to see James Cameron’s Ghosts of the Abyss. In this fascinating film, the director bravely mans a tiny submarine and dives into the dangerous dark depths of the Atlantic to explore the Titanic in its final resting place. Cameron’s film was captivating and visually stunning, and it naturally turned my thoughts once again to our own Submarine Voyage. Tony’s take on Atlantis was a great and worthy idea, but it featured a sub-shaking attack by the giant Kraken from the film, which I personally felt would be too scary for kids. I loved his undersea treasure hunt idea, truly big thinking and more family friendly, but it would have required major modifications to the existing subs. This most likely would have required too deep of a dive into our corporate treasury to justify project approval.

We had to do something. But what else could it be? If only we could come up with an idea solid enough to get everyone on board.

As I was leaving the IMAX theater with my family, two men were wheeling in a large lobby display for the upcoming Pixar film Finding Nemo. They stopped directly in front of us to unload it from their cart. The display featured beautifully detailed dimensional versions of Marlin and Dory with a wide-grinning Bruce the shark looming ominously behind them. The timing was impeccable, if not strange, because the new big idea for the Submarine Voyage, like Marlin, Dory, and Bruce, was staring me right in the face. Why hadn’t I connected Finding Nemo with the Submarine Voyage before? I had seen the executive rollout at the Disney Studio two years before, which introduced us to the cast, character designs, and certain scenes from the work-in-progress film. And prior to that, I was part of a most fortunate group that was treated to director Andrew Stanton’s pitch of the film’s story. Andrew’s unscripted telling of the story—sans teleprompter—was one of the greatest pitches I’ve even seen in my life. He stepped onto the naked stage of the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, while a bunch of us executives were there for project updates, and without any visual or audio aids, brought the entire story of the movie to life from beginning to end. His mesmerizing one-man performance had us hanging on his every word.

Why didn’t I think of this story and character connection for the subs at that time? Could it be I wasn’t even thinking of the subs back then because the time wasn’t right? I’ll never know, but I believe that spark was waiting for just the right time to ignite, and it ignited in the form of a cardboard and plastic lobby display that happened to be unloaded and set up directly in front of me as I was walking out of the theater after watching a movie featuring a submarine that got me thinking about the Disneyland submarines. Coincidence?

As it was late Sunday afternoon, I raced home from the theater, grabbed every index card my wife had stashed in her desk, and started to sketch “fish stick” figures to create and lay out a rough-attraction storyboard sequence. All I had to go on was what I remembered from the movie rollout, including the concept art and rough animation of the characters—and Andrew’s unforgettable storytelling. By eleven that night I had a first-pass storyboard, albeit crudely sketched on index cards, covering our kitchen table. The voyage would start out as it had in the past with the captain as our narrator. Only our new captain would be Australian. Instead of going under a polar ice cap, as was the original destination, our new destination would be the active undersea volcano that the original submarines also visited on their voyage; only it would be Mount Wannahockaloogie from Nemo’s world.

But how do we transition from our world to Nemo’s? The answer came right out of the original Submarine Voyage script, which I knew by heart because I had been a passenger on that wonderful voyage countless times from the impressionable age of four to the impressionable age of almost forty. “The fish world has always been considered a silent habitat,” said the captain since 1959. “But now thanks to remarkable advances in marine technology, we can use instruments such as our sonar hydrophones to actually hear the fish talk.” In the original show, what you heard after that line was a bunch of bubbly underwater-y ambient noise with added high-pitched sounds picked up from a distant dog trying to yip and howl with its mouth stuffed with socks. I never asked him (and I wish I had), but my guess is this was the sound effects work and voice of Jimmy Macdonald. I would bet the writer or director of the show called him and said, “Say, Jimmy, I know this sounds fishy but we need you to make fish-y sounds.” I’m glad they did because that “sonar hydrophone” setup was the perfect segue for our new show, because Nemo and his friends really can talk! After our Australian captain wraps up that very same statement by saying, “To actually hear the fish talk,” we would immediately hear Marlin call out, “Nemo! Where are you son?” Jumpin’ jellyfish, this was gonna work!

First thing Monday morning, I grabbed my rubber-banded stack of index cards and left home at 5:00 a.m. so I’d have enough time to pin them up on a board and wait for Marty to stroll in from the parking lot. If for some reason he didn’t stop at my door and toss in his usual Marty-ism to start the day, my plan was to head him off at the pass and kidnap him; even wrestle him to the ground if I had to. I was really excited about this and I had high hopes he would be, too. After I finished pinning the sequence of sketches on the board I turned my chair around to face the window to watch and wait for Marty. By the time he arrived, I was so anxious I was about to explode, so I stood outside my door like an over-caffeinated traffic cop to whirl my arm and redirect him in. He stepped into the Gold Coast corridor carrying his usual heavy stack of papery stuff in his arms, and before he could say a word, I directed him into my office and plopped him down in the awaiting chair. “What’s this about?” he asked. I answered, “It’s about ten minutes. Well, no, maybe twenty.”

Marty, I’m sure, appreciated my honesty and agreed to stay put. “What have you got, kid?” “I think I’ve got an idea that’ll keep us both off of Harbor Boulevard!” I put the stack of stuff he had had on his lap on my desk, swiveled his chair around in barber-like fashion so he’d be facing my rough but ready story-board, and dove in, starting with the proposed attraction name I had hand-printed with a Sharpie inside a sketch of a submarine porthole. At the end of my fish-stick figure pitch I asked Marty what he thought. “You had me,” he chuckled, “at Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage.”

When I finally released my “kidnaped victim,” he told me to get with Tony Baxter, who he knew had been working on other ideas for the subs, as soon as possible to take him through the storyboard. He further suggested I continue to work with Tony to get “this one going.” After I met with Tony, he brought in Chris Tietz, one of the most talented dimensional designers Imagineering has ever had, to start working on a large-scale model of the entire attraction. At the same time, I brought in my favorite “good luck charm,” storyboard artist and designer Chris Turner, to join the team to create some real storyboard art. Plus, Kathy Mangum came on board as our producer. Within a couple of months, I had the attraction script written, Chris Turner had his beautiful storyboards completed, and Chris Tietz finished his stunning overall attraction model. Using the model and storyboards, Tony and I presented the concept to Michael Eisner (one of the last pitches to Michael prior to his departure), Bob Iger, Jay Rasulo, and Tom Staggs. We were cleared to set sail!

Here’s a sample of the rough “fish stick figures” I drew on three-by-five-inch cards to pitch to Marty Sklar a Finding Nemo–themed show for the restored Disneyland subs attraction.

Kathy and I had worked together on many projects after we did the Blast to the Past Submarine Voyage in 1988, but I loved that she and I were sailing full circle back to the sub lagoon almost twenty years later. Only this time, it would be with an attraction that was certain to last longer than one summer. Since we were having oceans of fun working to bring the Nemo characters into the submarine lagoon, Kathy and I also dove into yet another underwater project together. (It’s a good thing we get along swimmingly!) Concurrent with the subs effort, we set our periscope on Epcot to bring the same lovable cast of fish characters to The Living Seas pavilion. Although the two attractions featured different types of ride systems (one featuring real submarines, and the other “Clamobiles” that travel on a continuous Omnimover track), the stories were similar. The exciting thing about both The Seas with Nemo & Friends at Epcot, which opened in January 2007, and Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, which opened only five months later, is we designed certain scenes in which we presented the animated characters as they would appear in real water.

In the finale of The Seas with Nemo & Friends, the characters, all singing “Big Blue World”—the attraction theme song written by Bobby and Kristen Anderson-Lopez of Frozen fame—appear as though they are swimming with the real live fish in The Living Seas pavilion aquarium. When I was working on show installation and programming in that particular scene with a view through the glass into the 5.7 million-gallon aquarium, I made a new friend—a dolphin. Every time I stepped into that scene, the dolphin appeared and came swimming up to the glass next to wherever I was to hang out with me. Even though there were others working in that scene, the dolphin, for some reason, was only interested in me, and what I was doing. As I walked back and forth, he swam back and forth with me. When I stopped, he stopped. I showed him the pictures I have of my family in my wallet and he seemed to like that. I also showed him a concept sketch of Peach, the starfish character from Finding Nemo, and he seemed to like that, too. (Peach is voiced by Allison Janney, and as a big fan of hers, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to write her script and direct her for this attraction. My stomach was sore for a week after our recording session because she made me laugh so hard.)

Allison Janney came to our Imagineering studio to record Peach the starfish. Peach is featured at the end of The Seas with Nemo & Friends at Epcot.

While working on The Seas with Nemo & Friends at Epcot, I made friends with a dolphin. He was always happy to see me when I arrived and made a big splashy deal about it. As I was telling animation director George Scribner about my new friend and how we went everywhere together, he drew this.

My best dolphin friend and I really hit it off for some reason—so much so I started to feel like Bud from the sixties TV show Flipper. Our friendship lasted for several weeks. We started playing a game where I’d hide around the curve where the glass ended and he’d pretend to look for me. Then he’d hide in a similar manner and I’d pretend to look for him. When we’d “find” each other, slowly peeking past the edge of the glass in perfect face-to-face synchronization, like Lucille Ball and Harpo Marx did in an episode of I Love Lucy, I would laugh and he would shake his head up and down with that ever-present smile on his face. We had a ball, Dolphy and me. When the project was completed and I was ready to return to California, I was genuinely sad to leave my perky pal. When I returned home and told this story to George Scribner, he whipped out his animation sketch pad and drew a picture of me driving my rental car with my best amphibious buddy riding next to me, his head sticking out the window like a happy dog. I miss Dolphy. When this book comes out I’ll have to send him a copy. He’ll like that.

One of the very best parts of bringing the Nemo characters to Disneyland and Epcot was getting to know and work with Pixar director Roger Gould and producer Liz Gazzano. I had worked on two Pixar-related attractions prior to Nemo, including it’s tough to be a bug! and Flik’s Fun Fair at Disney California Adventure, but that was long before Pixar had established a separate theme park group to support all of our Pixar-themed projects. Roger and Liz—both in actuality Imagineers trapped in Pixarian bodies—were the founding father and mother of Pixar’s theme park group, which has since grown into a large and busy sub-studio (and I don’t mean that as in “submarine,” although that’s where it started).

Since that time, I have worked closely with them on several more projects, and those two wonderful friends have become family. We’ve done a lot, traveled a lot, and have been through a lot together. When Roger and Liz came to Disneyland one morning for a walk-through of the Submarine Voyage show building, we set out on the narrow and precarious catwalks that had a lot of overhead steel cross bracing, which you had to duck under to get by. They weren’t yet used to wearing bright orange safety vests, safety glasses, and hard hats. As we were stepping carefully though the show building, I followed closely behind Liz to make sure she would be safe. All went smoothly until she turned to me to ask, “Why do we have to wear hard hats in here?” When she turned back around she bonked her hard hat against a low cross brace. “That’s why,” I answered, after I knew she was okay. Ever since then Liz is always the first to put on her safety gear in the field.

It has been fun over the years watching Roger and Liz learn about and adapt to the challenges and benefits of our dimensional form of experiential and immersive storytelling and grow to become masters of the art of Imagineering, just like Walt’s first generation of animators did. Following that grand tradition, talented folks from the world of animation still find their places among the best of the best Imagineers. Liz, Roger, and their Pixar theme park team were wonderful partners in the design and development of both Nemo-themed attractions, and they continue to work their magic at Imagineering today. As a matter of fact, Roger, who lives in the Oakland, California, area, flies down to Imagineering so often he jokes his best friend is the car rental guy at the Burbank airport. But I don’t feel sorry for him. Roger can commute to Glendale from Oakland faster than I can commute through LA traffic to Glendale from neighboring Orange County!

While writing on the scripts for both Nemo attractions, I worked closely with Roger to make sure I was staying true to the Pixar characters and the world in which they live. I also did my usual extensive research. In fact, I became a submarine expert because the script for Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage had to begin and end with official submarine-ish banter between the captain and his crew member. Their exchange had to sound and be legit. In addition to books, such as Standard Submarine Phraseology, I watched every submarine movie ever released, including my favorites, Run Silent, Run Deep, The Hunt for Red October, Operation Petticoat, and, of course, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. (Fun fact: Jimmy Macdonald once told me in the part of the movie where the Nautilus surfaces and Kirk Douglas comes halfway out of the hatch and starts humming “A Whale of a Tale,” that that humming is not Kirk’s. They didn’t record sound for that shot, so Jimmy performed the humming himself and added it in postproduction. Another fun fact: comedian Don Rickles was in the cast with Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster in the 1958 film Run Silent, Run Deep in a dramatic role. While watching this film, I never would have dreamed I’d be directing him a couple of years later in the role of a potato.)

Roger Gould and I started a fun tradition fifteen years ago that we have to use a paper plate as part of our birthday greeting to one another. Here’s a monstrous example!

While watching these movies, which, by the way, each had a subplot, I wrote down all of the submarine-sounding phrases and commands like, “Flood the main ballast tanks,” and “Right full rudder, steady on course two-two-zero.” In the final attraction script, I wrote this official-sounding line the captain says just after the bubbly “dive” under the lagoon waterfall: “Set course to six-zero degrees true.” Two weeks after we opened Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, I received a call from Bob Iger’s office. It seems Bob had invited the admiral of the United States Navy’s submarine fleet to be his guest on the attraction. Afterwards the admiral mentioned to Bob the captain’s command was off by one degree. Boy, did I miss the boat on that one! I mean, come on, what are the odds the head of the U.S. submarine fleet would sail on one of our subs with the head of The Walt Disney Company and after all that thorough research I would miss the command by one lousy degree and then get the third degree? I was totally torpedoed. That just goes to show everything you hear in submarine movies you should take with a grain of salt water. We immediately called the Australian actor that played the captain to come back in and rerecord that one line. Crikey.

Redesigning the attraction proved to be quite a challenge in many ways, from the conversion of the diesel engines to electric motors to rethinking new ways of designing and fabricating an environmentally and maintenance friendly, more vibrantly colored coral in the lagoon. Designer Susan Dain cleverly figured that one out. Reasoning that since sea glass, pieces of broken bottles, tableware, and shipwrecks are rolled and tumbled for years until their edges are smooth, yet never lose their color, Susan proposed coating the coral understructures with real crushed glass. Problem beautifully solved.

Still, one of the biggest challenges we faced was figuring out the tricky show timing. In the original Submarine Voyage, the only words spoken were those by the captain and his crew; and they were naturally heard on board. Our new voyage required us to create the illusion the dialogue from the cast of Finding Nemo was coming from off board. The subs were essentially “moving theaters” transporting audiences through stationary scenes so the timing of the brief bits of dialogue, important to the storytelling, needed to be heard by all. Because the length of the submarines far exceeded the length of most of the show scenes, it meant guests riding in the front were already through a scene or two or three before guests in the back even arrived in those same scenes. We had to design the script and the audio portion of the show to tell the story to each guest positioned in front of a porthole no matter where in the sub they were seated.

To understand the action, staging, and timing of each scene relative to each “sweet spot” porthole position, Imagineer Mark Mine invented a way to virtually simulate the entire ride experience, as it would play, from both a visual and audio perspective, to each and every porthole in the sub. Using sheets of foam core board, we built a full-scale curved section of the sub complete with porthole and a “line array” of speakers that flanked either side. Using a scratch audio track of the show synchronized to rough virtual imagery of the characters and show sets, our team was able to experience how the show would look and sound from any seat on the sub. Using the array of speakers, we were able to simulate the “traveling” show audio as if the sub were actually moving through the scenes. This was a fantastic design and timing tool, especially for our show director, Rick Rothschild, whose job it was to ultimately put all of the pieces together into one seamless entertaining ride-through experience. Everything we learned, and as a result built into the show using our sub simulator, was later taken to the Disneyland lagoon to be permanently programmed on board. One of the things I learned in doing so was never to drink an entire pot of coffee just before setting sail on a slow-moving sub to work offshore far from a restroom while completely surrounded by liquid. To heck with finding Nemo—I needed to find a speedboat.

All hams on deck!

Mark’s virtual porthole tool evolved into our highly sophisticated on-site “Disney Immersive Showroom” (DISH) technology. The view inside the room-sized wraparound DISH extends outside of the peripheral vision, which allows us to virtually ride through any attraction scene, or entire land we create, as if it were the real deal. The DISH allows us to look up, down, and travel all around inside or outside anything we design. Before construction was complete and the show sets and figures were fabricated and installed for Radiator Springs Racers in Cars Land, I was able to “ride” through the entire attraction, from start to finish, using the DISH to flag and correct design and staging issues, and make important adjustments and changes to the show elements and timing where necessary. And in fact, the DISH allowed us to move through and fly over the entire land. Moving, changing, or deleting something in an early virtual representation of an attraction or land is faster, better, and a heck of a lot less expensive than doing so in a real one. We continue to use this cutting-edge design tool today.

Truly it was a dream to join Tony Baxter and the team to help bring the fleet of yellow submarines back into operation at Disneyland, and we have an adorable little orange clown fish to thank for it. It was such a joy to see the subs once again gliding gracefully across the even more colorful lagoon; and adding even more kinetics to the iconic setting are the three seagulls perched on a buoy crying, “Mine! Mine! Mine!” My favorite moment in the project came as we were wrapping things up a few days before the grand opening. I was sitting in the sub next to Marty, who was there to experience his first voyage through the newly completed show. Sitting between Tony and me, he was as happy as I’ve ever seen him. As the sub began to move forward and the new captain said, “Stand by to dive,” I pulled my face out of the porthole to turn to look at Marty at the same time he turned to look at me. He didn’t have to say a word because that famous Marty smile said it all. I was suddenly so choked up I pushed my face back into the porthole so he wouldn’t notice.

Another wonderful thing that happened as a result of working on Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage is I really got to know Matt Ouimet, then president of the Disneyland Resort. I liked Matt a lot. I can’t remember the exact date, but I was literally moonlighting one night with a small crew of Imagineering projection experts to find out what it would look like to project film and special effects imagery onto Sleeping Beauty Castle. It had never been done. At around 2:30 a.m., a thick fog started rolling in. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the silhouette of a man, dramatically backlit by the lights on Main Street, walking out of the fog towards us. The man was Matt Ouimet. I was so impressed that he was out and about in his park in the middle of the night checking things out. Of course he was interested in what we were doing and he stayed with us for quite a while, until the fog got so thick it forced us to pack up and leave.

In 2005, Matt, who also spent a lot of time at Imagineering, spotted Rob’t Coltrin and me having one of our crazy highly charged conversations in the hallway that is known today as The Monorail Hallway. “You two,” Matt called out as he approached us, “are just the two I’m looking for.” He took us by surprise when, from out of the blue, he told us he really liked the interactive-game aspect of Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters and was hoping we could come up with another family-friendly attraction like it but that we’d have to “up the game.” Rob’t and I looked at each other knowingly, because if there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years it’s ideas have a better chance of being approved, designed, and built when it satisfies a need or a want from a park operator. And here Matt was personally asking us for a new game attraction. Game on!