Magic Journey: My Fantastical Walt Disney Imagineering Career

FOUR YEARS AFTER the opening of Disney California Adventure, Barry Braverman, then creative executive for the park, spotted me working alone in a conference room. “Kev,” he said, drawing a deep breath. “I have a big favor to ask.” The serious tone of his voice when he emphasized “big favor” sounded as if he were about to ask me to climb to the top of Mount Everest in the dead of winter in my underwear. I thought perhaps it was because he had not asked me to do anything since I had made all those excuses eight-ish years before, during the early-concept development phase of Disney California Adventure, about why I could not work on the new park project. Truth be told, it’s not that I could not, it’s that I would not. I’m a traditional build-a-berm-and-fill-the-inside-with-highly-detailed-immersive-stories-and-experiences-that-take-you-to-another-place-in-another-time kind of guy.

When the company was starting to think about adding a second gate park at Disneyland, Imagineer Kirk Winterroth and I suggested to Marty it have a California theme.

And I wasn’t the least bit drawn to this new berm-less “build it and they will come” approach for a park, especially one that would reside next door to the mother of them all. I would do anything for Barry, including climbing Mount Everest in my tighty-whities in zero degrees, but I had zero desire to work on this new park. “Since you didn’t work on the park,” he continued, “I need your fresh eyes.” I always felt guilty about bailing on Barry, so this time I promised to be there for him. “Great,” he responded, “because I want to ask you to come up with something big, something that’ll bring more Disneyland DNA to DCA.” This was a huge ask for a daunting, terrifying, monumental task, but boy, oh, boy I loved the sound of it! “I get what you’re asking,” I said, “but what are you looking for specifically. A new ride?” “Yes, a new ride,” he responded, but then it got even better. “Or even a whole new land.”

When I was a kid, working at Disneyland, the southeast section of its parking lot—the very spot where I used to hang out with my fellow dishwashers after our night shift and dream about the fun new rides we would create there if given the chance (yeah, right!)—was the very spot Barry offered me to dream up a new fun ride. Or more! How crazy is that? The location offered a rare opportunity to build something from the ground up. And given my history of theoretical dreaming and scheming there, this was hallowed ground. It was also one of the precious and few sections of usable land left. Whatever was going to be built there had to be nothing less than spectacularly amazing. The pressure was on.

As soon as Barry departed, I started thinking about what some of my colleagues had done with their similar from-the-ground-up opportunities; and I came to the conclusion that they all shared something in common: the themes of their best and most groundbreaking (literally) work were inspired by their personal interests. Joe Rohde is passionate about art, nature, and travel to exotic places, and he helped parlay those personal interests into Animal Kingdom. Tony Baxter is passionate about Disneyland and Europe, and he helped turn those personal interests into Disneyland Paris. Steve Kirk is passionate about science fiction, world history, and travel to adventurous destinations overseas; he helped transform those personal interests into Tokyo DisneySea. What if, even though it seemed selfish, I could help turn my personal interests—classic cars and oldies music—into a new ride or even a whole new land?

Rock ’n’ roll oldies and classic cars go together like sunshine and Southern California. Yet, despite the fact that a first-generation red Corvette was featured in the center of the opening day park poster, Disney California Adventure missed the mark in delivering anything about our legendary car culture in the Golden State.

This opening day poster featured a first-generation Corvette, but the park didn’t deliver on the popular car culture in California. This was actually one of my selling points when pitching the idea for a new cars-themed land.

Between all of the car clubs, car shows and gatherings, race courses, custom-build and paint shops, major automotive design studios, and manufacturing plants, car culture has always been in high gear in California. As long as I can remember, I was infatuated with cars and everything about them, inside and out, from top to bottom. While growing up, I built every model car I could get my hands on with my saved allowance; and I couldn’t wait for every September issue of Life magazine because of its snazzy ads for the new car models, like the one for the “Wide-Track Pontiac,” which was so wide, in fact, it always commanded a double-page spread.

I’ll never forget watching the episode of Bonanza, sponsored by Chevrolet, that got me into more trouble with my pa than Little Joe Cartwright ever got into with his. The Sunday night show was on too late for a sixth grader, so my parents didn’t allow me to stay up and watch. But I watched it anyway behind their backs—literally. My trick was to crouch behind the couch and quietly watch it over their shoulders. I would have gotten away with it every week had it not been for the commercial introducing the 1967 Camaro. When the commercial cut to a close-up of the Camaro Rally Sport’s hideaway headlights opening like magic, I couldn’t control my excitement. I gasped, choked, heaved, and spun around in a dizzying stupor until I, just this side of a faint, fell forward onto the back of the couch scaring the living crap out of Mom and causing Dad to pull me by the ear into my room. I remain a sucker for hideaway headlights to this day. Many new models were introduced in the 1950s and 1960s, and the evergreen models were always changing radically in their design every year. Advertising copy for them was terrific: CHEVY PUTS THE PURR IN PERFORMANCE! and MOTHER WARNED ME THERE WOULD BE MEN LIKE YOU DRIVING CARS LIKE THIS. Compared to gems like those, car slogans today should be ashamed of themselves. GO FURTHER (that would also work for a laxative) and LET’S GO PLACES? (Like yours is the first car that can take us somewhere? That would also work for a laxative.) I can still tell you everything about every model from every manufacturer from that era, including all available engines, options, and colors. Show me a hubcap and I’ll tell you the manufacturer, model, and year.

As long as I can remember, I was infatuated with cars and everything about them.

In 1962—one of my favorite years for perfect-line automotive design—I was playing in our front yard when I noticed a shiny new black Pontiac Bonneville, exactly like the one I drooled over in Life magazine the night before, glistening in the sun as it drove up the street towards our house. My eyes opened even wider when I recognized that the lucky stiff behind the wheel was my dad! We thought he was going to the hardware store. Well, he did, but on the way back he spotted “Bonnie” in the showroom window of the Anaheim Pontiac dealership and, bewitched by a beauty more ravishing than the bathing Bathsheba, threw caution and money to the wind and traded our family station wagon for her!

Young Kev thoroughly enjoying Bonnie the Bonneville in 1962. “C’mon, dad, put the top down and let’s cruise!”

I suspect all of this happened while Dad was in a euphoric hypnotic trance, like Snuffles the cartoon dog whenever he ate a dog biscuit. So, the entire affair was understandably out of his control. To surprise Mom, who was saving up for new living room furniture and knew nothing about this new car purchase, he pulled up alongside the curb, laid on the horn, and timed it so as she was opening the front door to step out, just as the automatic convertible top would be going down to reveal the beaming new owner inside. But when he lowered the top, she lowered the boom! The entire neighborhood came out to witness Mom’s booming ballyhoo over Bonnie. As she stomped in a huff back towards the house—where the living room would now remain furniture free until the car was paid off someday—Dad called out to her one final time to try and bring her around. “And she has three deuces and a 389 under the hood! (Engine rev.) “HOT cha-cha-cha-chaaaa!” Mom slammed the front door so hard that two of the three glass panels in it cracked. Smiling, the old man raised his dark Ray-Ban glasses and winked at me. It was the greatest moment ever and the first time I realized that the power of a beautiful car is not found under the hood. The real power of a beautiful car is it can make you lose your mind. And your money.

Automotive design was in its heyday then, and I loved every line, headlight, taillight, and chrome trim. Today, when I want to go to a happy place, I climb behind the wheel of my classic car, “Sandra Dee,” drop the top, turn up the oldies, and let her take me away—and that’s without even leaving the garage!

My 1956 cascade green Corvette Sandra Dee at the First Annual “Car & Bike” Show held on the Green at Imagineering in March 2013. It took over eight years to restore her one piece at a time. She won Best in Show that day!

Here’s the original land logo used for the first three years of concept development for what became Cars Land. After all, chrome wasn’t built in a day!

Would it be possible to wrap an entire land around the single theme of the automobile? I was lucky to have spent my wonder years as the automobile became less of a means of basic transportation and more a form of personal expression, style, and freedom. That era would provide the perfect time period. The “where” should be small-town America. Would a 1950s, small-town main street in the spirit of Main Street, U.S.A., help bring some of that Disneyland DNA to DCA? It made sense that when Disneyland opened mid-century, its turn-of-the-century–inspired Main Street was compelling because it brought back to life, in a utopian way, a place from fifty years in the past. Yet, it was not so far back in time that older guests could not relate to its look and feel in a nostalgic and reassuring, “Hey, this reminds me of my hometown” kind of way. The same amount of time had passed from 1955 to 2004. If we created a new main street depicting mid-century America, it could work exactly the same way. “Cruise Street” was born. The name for the proposed new land came quickly, too, thanks to the challenge to bring more Disneyland to Disney California Adventure. Taking a cue from the names Fantasyland, Adventureland, Tomorrowland, and Frontierland, it seemed only natural to name this new land “Carland.”

Although I knew a lot about cars, I began my usual research to help inspire ideas for possible shows, attractions, and restaurants for Carland. The first thing I did was make a list of all cars related to Disney, including Herbie the Love Bug and Professor Ned Brainard’s famous flubber-fueled flying Model T from The Absent-Minded Professor. There were a couple of car-themed cartoon shorts starring Goofy called Motor Mania and Freewayphobia, and a few other Disney car connections here and there, but nothing with enough tread on its tire to become a full-fledged attraction. I even discovered, to my great surprise, an automotive event Disneyland hosted on September 5, 1959, called the First Annual Car Club Day and Autocade. Unfortunately, it was the first and only such event—and the reason why was explained to me by someone who was there. According to his eyewitness account, “Things got a little out of hand because of all the hot rod hooligans with their slicked-back hair and cigarette packs rolled up in their T-shirt sleeves cruising down Main Street like they owned the place in cars that were almost as loud as they were.” After the Autocade Parade, when the cruisers assembled and hung out on a dirt lot backstage, they raised even more of a ruckus. Still, for driving on down to Disneyland that day, each car owner, despite their undesirable behavior, received a desirable bronze dashboard plaque featuring the name and date of the event and side-by-side images of a hot rod and Sleeping Beauty Castle.

Few knew about the first (and last) annual car show at Disneyland. I discovered this event, which I had never been aware of while doing research for the original Carland concept.

When I was a “little driver,” my favorite ride at Disneyland was the Midget Autopia because the cars were my size; and that made them beyond special. The attraction opened in 1957 and closed in 1966 to make way for “it’s a small world.” But I didn’t mind because by then I was just tall enough to segue over and drive a real car with a real gas pedal and steering wheel on Autopia. Short drives such as those on Autopia—or long drives, such as those on a “you can hold it until we get to the next gas station in a hundred miles” road trip—were my thing. My family took many cross-country trips in Bonnie the Bonneville. Our ex-station wagon would have been much more practical and spacious but certainly not as classy.

That’s why, on one of our trips, I didn’t mind traveling all the way home from Nebraska in our jam-packed back seat, filled mostly with my sister’s stuff, riding on the back of a concrete donkey lawn ornament dad purchased at a roadside stand. And a few miles down the road that donkey ended up standing on top of a case of Grain Belt beer because dad couldn’t get that Midwest brand in California. Beer on the bottom—donkey in the middle—me on the top. I was sitting so high up it was a good thing Bonnie had a soft top. That is until we hit the baseball-sized hailstorm in South Dakota. While we were getting bombarded with thousands of frozen pellets in the middle of nowhere, you should have seen Mom’s “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING TRADING OUR STATION WAGON FOR A CONVERTIBLE?” glare at dad. That glare was even glarier when we had to stop in a long line of cars behind a summer road crew in Yellowstone National Park and a big old bear walked over to us on its hind legs and started clawing through Bonnie’s vinyl top on Mom’s side. “Take a movie!” dad excitedly suggested to her. But Mom just locked the door and screamed until she passed out. Holy convertible top! It was the greatest road trip moment ever! After we returned home, I remember lying on my back in all the spacious splendor of the sister-less, donkey-less, beer-less back seat and seeing blue sky through the shreds in the convertible top on our way to the furniture store.

Oftentimes on our family road trips, we’d stop to see the roadside attractions advertised on billboards along the highway: 100 MILES TO THE MYSTERY METEOR HOLE, EXPLORE THE MYSTERIOUS MYSTERIES OF THE CAVERNS OF MYSTERY, THIS MYSTERIOUS EXIT TO GRAIN BELT BEER, and HERE IT IS. The mystery there was we pulled off the highway at the HERE IT IS exit and couldn’t find where it was. We were duped. Roadside attractions were the best! What if we combined a Midget Autopia ride system with the story of a road trip complete with roadside attractions? This question got me thinking about another Disneyland favorite back in the day: Nature’s Wonderland in Frontierland, which was a train ride through the True-Life Adventures–inspired Living Desert with some now familiar-sounding sights along the way, such as Big Thunder Waterfall (which you got to ride behind) and Bear Country (featuring Marc Davis’s classic gag of a bear scratching his back on a tree after a long day of clawing convertibles). The best part of the ride came after the natural arch bridge, comical cactus, wild pigs, bobcats, rattlesnakes, mountain lions, devil’s paint pots, Old Unfaithful geyser, and even Balancing Rock Canyon, where the Stinky Pete-soundalike, onboard narrator warned, “Look out! They’re startin’ to tumble!” Yessir, the best part of Nature’s Wonderland was its spectacular grand finale, Rainbow Caverns, which was filled with such wonders to behold as stalactites, stalagmites, colorful waterfalls (cascading down on either side of the train), and even a choir of ethereal voices angelically accentuating the glory of it all. As a nod to Nature’s Wonderland, the finale of the Midget Autopia road trip ride I named Scoot 66 (and later renamed Road Trip, USA) would feature a drive through the colorful and musical wonders of Rainbow Caverns.

And at the very end, just like my dad used to do (except for the trip after the “bear scare and tear”), guests would take a ride through the car wash located at the end of Cruise Street. Guests standing on the sidewalk side of the car wash could push buttons and pull levers to spray, bubble, brush, and blow-dry the road trippers returning to unload.

This is the original “flavor” board I put together and used for pitching the crazy concept for a cars-theme land—and before I even knew Pixar was working on a movie about cars. This trifold board is what got the whole thing on the road!

Pondering the E-Ticket thrill attraction, some kind of car or dragster race seemed like the way to go, but I didn’t flesh it out as much as everything else in Carland. I figured I’d save the best (and hardest) for last. I continued working on the rest of the concepts on my own for a couple of months until I’d had enough research imagery and rough art to put together a high-level concept board that captured the flavor and feel of this proposed new land themed entirely around cars.

The portable trifolding board—the very first thing I used to pitch the idea for Carland—did the trick: Barry Braverman and other decision-making executives supported the concept and got it on the road to further development. To complement the concept art, the board featured the following copy:

Carland

Time Period: Late 1950s–early 1960s

Keywords: Drive-in, Drag Racers, Teenagers, Classic Cars, Rock ’n’ Roll

Carland puts California car culture on the map of Disney’s California Adventure. The time is late ’50s to early ’60s[,] when songs like “Little Deuce Coupe,” “409,” and “Drag City” became the soundtrack of this classic era when the car became a symbol of personal freedom and expression.

Cruise Street, the land’s “main drag,” is home to Marty’s Malt Shop, Ride ’n’ Shine Car Wash (interactive water-play area), California Classics Showroom (displays and merchandise), Carland Dine-in Theater (restaurant) and Be-Bop Garage, a live show starring mechanics that discover the musical potential of car parts! Cruise Street also plays host to classic car shows and cruise nights. Major attractions include Drag Racer, a racing-themed roller coaster and Scoot 66, a Midget Autopia–type driving adventure along a meandering highway dotted with California Crazy icons.

Carland captures the “cool” and carefree attitude driven by the automobile!

Remember, this first concept board was put together in 2004. I had no idea Pixar had started work on a movie about cars while I was independently working on a land about cars. The baby moons (for non-car folks those are chrome wheel covers) were in alignment. This land was destined to happen! After I got approval to continue development, I added another major attraction to the land. It was Junkyard Jamboree, an idea for a show-controlled, indoor ride-through attraction in which you hopped into a junked jalopy body that transported you through a junkyard at the stroke of midnight when all of the car parts come to life and perform car-themed music.

In one scene, Johnny Revtone and the V8s—rock ’n’ roll-playing car engines that popped up from under a car hood—performed “engine block rock.” In another scene, long and low car bodies hopped, dropped, and danced to War’s “Low Rider.” Pickup trucks crooned a country tune. There was a hubcap-and-brake drum percussion band and the car-horn section had a brassy and sassy Tower of Power-type vibe. In the finale, all of the parts came together to literally rock the night away as the sun came up to return everything back to normal in the junkyard.

The Googie-style Cruise Street featured a build-your-own slot car shop, where you could also race them on giant tracks; a record store, where you could choose your favorite “car tunes” and make your own records; a real barbershop, where the talk was all about cars; a dealership showroom, where displays and tributes to a variety of classic car models would change out regularly; a 1950s “dime store” and automobile memorabilia shop; and, of course, a car wash in all its colorfully spired Googie glory.

At the end of Cruise Street was Marty’s Malt Shop (where Flo’s V8 Café is today), featuring a patio that overlooked the breathtaking view of the monumental rockwork, waterfalls, colorful geysers, and roadside attractions of Road Trip, USA. The malt shop’s claim to roadside diner fame was its Car-B-Que, a custom barbecue that put the “hot” in hot rod. On the outskirts of town, the land’s second restaurant, Carland Dine-In Theater, was the sister of Sci-Fi Dine-In at Disney’s Hollywood Studios; but instead of showing trailers from science fiction movies it would show trailers from car movies like Hot-Rod Girl (CHICKEN-RACE…ROCK ’N’ ROLL…YOUTH ON THE LOOSE!) and Thunder Road (THE HOTTEST HIGHWAY ON EARTH!).

I thought it would be fun if the “Dine-In Theater” part of the name on the marquee was fabricated from neon so the word “eat”—hiding out in the middle of the word “Theater”—would flicker as if it were shorting out to call attention to itself as an eatery. The music heard on Cruise Street would be every car-themed song you could think of this side of the 1970s. To further flesh out the rough concepts and their stories (and to help start thinking about how to make them doable and buildable), I asked my creative partner in crime, Rob’t Coltrin, to join me on the road to Carland. And to create our concept art and storyboards, there was none better than my good luck charm (because his art has helped me to sell many projects over the years) and fellow car guy, designer/illustrator extraordinaire, Chris Turner.

Rob’t and I went right to work trying to get that yet-to-be-defined E-Ticket racing ride off the starting line. Our intent was to make it the land’s anchor attraction, so it had to be big, fun, fast, and repeatable. We kicked around a few concepts but didn’t come up with anything that felt right or did the land justice. That’s when we got wind of the timely, unbelievable rumor that Pixar was making a movie about cars! ARE YOU KIDDING? Who knew? I’m sure when Pixar found out Imagineering was working on a land about cars they said the same thing. It was, I must say, the strangest of coincidences. Or was it? The movie was about two and a half years out from theatrical release, so the film’s director, John Lasseter, and his team were still very much in the development phase. Rob’t and I flew up to meet with John as I had done in the past to brainstorm and consult on other attractions—only this time we were hoping there might be something in his new car-themed film we might be able to use in our land. Neither Rob’t, nor I—or anyone else at Imagineering—knew anything about the movie.

John graciously and excitedly took Rob’t and I through the concept art and story in the works for Cars. He showed us one of his favorite pieces of early-concept art, the first-ever bird’s-eye view of the town of Radiator Springs, illustrated by longtime animator Bud Luckey. Afterwards, John took us into Pixar’s main lobby theater to show us, on the big screen, some of the absolutely stunning test footage they had recently completed of rookie race car Lightning McQueen in a “Piston Cup” race and the scene in which Doc Hudson teaches the rookie how to steer on the dirt track around Willys Butte (for you keen-eyed editors out there, relax. “Willys” does not have an apostrophe because Willy is not possessive about his butte. The butte is named for the defunct car company once known as Willys; S’s with no apostrophe preceding them can be messy. I once knew someone whose first name was Roberts. So as not to keep confusing people, he shortened his name to Bobs).

Chris Turner’s early-concept sketch of Cruise Street with a view to Marty’s Malt Shop, the only weenie at the end of any Disney street where you could actually get a weenie!

When I saw the early clips from Cars, my incredulous head blew a gasket. I, like Mater, was hooked. All I could think was Way to go, John. Independently choosing cars as a theme for a movie while I chose it for a Disney Park land close to the same time made John Lasseter and me oil brothers, car-noisseurs, afficion-autos. While we were at Pixar, Rob’t and I learned everything we possibly could about the movie, including, and especially, the lovable car characters and the town they lived in. Since I spent every summer vacation in the car, sometimes on Route 66, I loved that the “Mother Road” had such an important part in the story. But what Rob’t and I loved the most about that Pixar trip is being introduced to race car Lightning McQueen at the very same time we were trying to come up with an idea for a race-inspired ride. That’s all we excitedly talked about on the flight back to Burbank.

By the time we landed, fueled by Pixar’s Cars, we not only had the big idea for our anchor racing ride, we also had it broken down into a three-act structure. Act 1 would be a relaxing drive through the mountains, like the one Lightning and Sally enjoyed together; Act 2 would be the show-controlled theatrical indoor experience with all of the Audio-Animatronics (or as I liked to call them, AUTO-Animatronics) characters; and Act 3 would be the thrilling race across Ornament Valley and around Willys Butte, where Doc taught Lightning how to turn right to go left. The whole thing felt right.

Almost immediately after Rob’t and I came up with Radiator Springs Racers, we asked concept artist Ray Cadd to visualize what the attraction exterior might look like from the patio of Marty’s Malt Shop.

I loved our Act 1 road trip because it made the experience feel similar to major attractions at Disneyland that have a great opening act like the stretch room at the Haunted Mansion and the relaxing “firefly float by” alongside the Blue Bayou Restaurant at Pirates of the Caribbean. These Act 1 examples serve to decompress guests from all the other distractions and experiences of their day and get them settled in and ready to focus on the upcoming attraction story. Imagine if you had to hop into a Doom Buggy first thing after stepping through the front door of the Haunted Mansion or if the boats in Pirates of the Caribbean were dispatched directly into the first drop. Our relaxing mountain drive in the great outdoors would allow our guests to settle in and get ready for their accelerating surprise encounter with Mac, which gets the story started.

Radiator Springs Racers was the first attraction name I hand-printed on a three-by-five-inch card—and it never changed. Rob’t and I never even suggested any other name options. More than two years before the movie Cars would be released, the two of us had the entire Racers ride sequence storyboarded in hand-printed words and thumbnail sketches. It took about six weeks for us to get to that point following our recon trip to Pixar. Then, after receiving some proprietary character model sheets from Pixar to help keep his depiction of the characters honest, Chris Turner started replacing our “placeholder” words and sketches with his sensational storyboard art.

I am so proud to say our completed first-pass story sequence as represented in our original attraction storyboards for Radiator Springs Racers, which we wrapped up in 2004 (about three months after we found out Pixar was making a movie about cars), represented beat-for-beat almost exactly the attraction you can experience in Cars Land today. The only differences between our original storyboards and the opening day attraction is our first-thought queue and load area took place at a Dinoco gas station at the entrance to Ornament Valley. Our first-thought postrace finale scene, featuring Mater, Lightning, and Sally, took place in a garage. But we quickly changed the uninspiring garage interior to the inspiring Carsbad Caverns, home to stalactites and stalagmites in the shape of spark plugs and other “natural” car part–like formations. When we went back to Pixar to pitch Radiator Springs Racers to John Lasseter, after we picked him off the floor because he was so revved up about the ride as you can imagine, his only suggestion was that we turn Carsbad Caverns into Taillight Caverns. After that, I started calling the stalactites “stalac-lights.”

Since we ended up requiring a longer outdoor queue area with more shade and structural cover than the Dinoco gas station could provide, I created the story for Stanley’s Oasis, which is the current queue and load area for Radiator Springs Racers. Pixar had already established a short Stanley story by featuring him as Lizzie’s long-departed husband and the founder of Radiator Springs. The town honored their founder with a bronze statue of his likeness in front of the courthouse. In the bonus material on the Cars DVD, John Lasseter adds a bit more to that by explaining Radiator Springs was founded in 1909 by a character named Stanley who discovered the original spring, “Nature’s Coolant,” while crossing Ornament Valley in the summer heat. That’s about as far as Pixar took Stanley’s story. So, I picked it up from there to provide a backstory for the covered structures we needed to design and build for our meandering queue:

During the sweltering summers of the 1900s, automobiles traveling through Ornament Valley overheated with so much pressure, their radiator caps blew off. Losing a cap meant big trouble for those traveling alone. One such car, a radiator cap salescar named Stanley, started losing steam in the middle of nowhere. He carried extra caps but they were of no value to him without coolant in his radiator. Poor Stanley thought his miles were numbered—that is until he rolled down into a shady spot and happened upon lifesaving water bubbling up out of a rock. Nature’s own coolant! As he filled his radiator to the brim in the comfortable surroundings of this hidden desert oasis, he decided to stay and direct overheated travelers to the spring and then sell them a new radiator cap.

Stanley put down stakes and went to work building the Cap ’n’ Tap radiator cap shop. He then constructed a water tower with a pipe that carried coolant over to a long trough, so thirsty cars could park side-by-side and get their fill. The enterprising young car set eye-catching signs out on the road that read FILL UP & COOL DOWN and REFRESHINGEST RADIATOR REJUVENATOR ON ROUTE 66, and opened “Stanley’s Oasis the 8 3/4th Wonder of the World” for business. Stanley had no idea the steady stream coming from his spring would attract such a steady stream of radiator cap customers!

Stanley added a filling station to his oasis where visitors to this restful and refreshing place could fill up with gas and get their oil changed. In those days, motor oil came in bottles, so Stanley saved up enough empties to build the Oil Bottle Garage, a popular roadside attraction. Many cross-country travelers pulled off Route 66 to rest and refresh in the shade of this special place, including a lovely little Model-T named Lizzie who instantly fell head-over-wheels in love with Stanley. Lizzie did not want to leave so she talked Stanley into letting her set up a souvenir stand in a corner of his radiator cap shop. Soon Stanley started to take a shine to his new business partner. To provide lodging for Lizzie and overnight visitors, Stanley established the Comfy Caverns Motor Court offering overnighters a free Lincoln Continental breakfast inside the “Naturally Cooled” Fender Cave.

Stanley’s Oasis eventually expanded from the higher rocks to a flat stretch of nearby land where there was plenty of room to expand. Lizzie opened a larger curious shop and soon other businesses began to spring up establishing a new town. Stanley named the town after the natural wonder that saved his life and started it all: Radiator Springs. Thanks to the many travelers on Route 66[,] business was good and life was even better. When the courthouse was completed Stanley and Lizzie were the first to get hitched. And they lived happily ever after in the cutest little town in Carburetor County.

John liked the story of Stanley’s Oasis so much Pixar turned it into an animated short called Time Travel Mater.

Written and laid out eight years before the opening of Cars Land on June 15, 2012, Radiator Springs Racers was the perfect anchor attraction for what was still known then as Carland. The six-acre attraction was to be located on the outskirts of town with its impressive Ornament Valley-inspired rockwork and waterfall serving as the “weenie”—the iconic draw—at the end of Cruise Street. The third-act outdoor racecourse layout of Racers intertwined and shared the expansive landscape with Road Trip, USA in the same way the Submarine Voyage, the Monorail, the PeopleMover, and Autopia intermingled to create the kinetic “world on the move” theme for the 1967 version of Tomorrowland. Junkyard Jamboree, a large-scale indoor attraction, was housed in a show building on the opposite side of town, and Cruise Street was complete with shops and smaller scale–themed experiences.

With all of the elements identified and sited, we created an illustrated bird’s-eye view of Carland and went to work on a large-scale model. In 2006, Executive Producer Kathy Mangum and Executive Project Manager Jim Kearns joined our team, so we knew things were getting serious.

Carland was well on the road to becoming a reality. As is his style after he helps launch and grow new concepts until they are designed and ready for production, Rob’t left the project to develop other new blue-sky ideas. Creative Director Tom Morris and Art Director Greg Wilzbach joined me to continue work on the land’s further design and development, right up and into its production phase.

Tom and Greg would be instrumental in helping to refine the detailed ride layout, show sets, and a large-scale walk-through model of Radiator Springs Racers and the land. Everything was running on all cylinders and speeding along quite nicely until 2007, when our little Carland team would suddenly take an unexpected detour.

A year after the movie Cars was released in theaters, it would establish itself as a phenomenally strong and growing franchise. As a result, John Lasseter asked if we would consider turning Carland into Cars Land. I must admit, after all of the hard work we had done, I felt like the carpet was getting yanked out from under us, especially since we had already created so many original stories and experiences for the new land. Turning Carland into Cars Land would mean everything that was not related to the Cars franchise would be wiped off the map. But I respected his instincts, so I remained open-minded. In fact, the more I thought about his request, the more I realized, dadgum, he was right. (It’s interesting to think that creating an entire twelve-acre land based on one movie, which had never been considered, much less done, would probably not have happened were it not for the slow and steady evolution of Carland to its eventual transformation into Cars Land.)

In our business, sometimes you have to toss out the stuff you love—always painful at first—to get to the place you’ll love even more. It’s all part of the process. Heck, we already had Radiator Springs Racers designed, which took up half of the land, so we were halfway there. Our go-ahead mission then was to swap out Cruise Street with the town of Radiator Springs at the same scale, replace Marty’s Malt Shop with Flo’s V8 Café (in the same location), and come up with two new Cars-themed attractions to replace Junkyard Jamboree and Road Trip, USA. Kathy called the troops together to immediately get to work turning Cruise Street into the cutest little town in Carburetor County. The fun part for me was realizing we were still going to be able to create new Imagineering stories because movie audiences never got to go inside Flo’s V8 Café, Lizzie’s Curios Shop, and Sarge’s Surplus Hut, as well as parts of Luigi’s Casa Della Tires and Ramone’s House of Body Art. We got to create almost everything that was inside of everything! So many new stories came out of the effort to re-create the town of Radiator Springs to make every nook and cranny of it accessible for guest exploration and enjoyment, including Doc’s Museum and the Motorama Girls gold records display at Flo’s. I had had a blast writing all of the songs and album titles (such as “Jeep Date,” “Blue Suede Brake Shoes,” and “Fuelin’ Around”), plus the backstories for Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree, Luigi’s Flying Tires, Stanley’s Oasis, and the story for the entire land: “It’s Race Day in Radiator Springs.”

But before we even got started on all that, John suggested we experience the same Route 66 road trip he and his animation team took when they began their research to learn as much as they possibly could about the legendary road. He arranged for us to have their same ride-along guide, the man who wrote the quintessential book on the subject (Route 66: The Mother Road) and who performed the voice of Sheriff for the movie, Michael Wallis. Seven Imagineers—including myself, Producer Kathy Mangum, Creative Director Tom Morris, Art Director Greg Wilzbach, architect Joe Kilanowski, interior designer Emily O’Brien, landscape architect John Sorenson—plus our Pixar pals (Director Roger Gould and Producer Liz Gazzano), got our kicks on Route 66 for ten days with our own personal guide and master storyteller, the Sheriff himself. Michael met us in Amarillo, Texas, where we piled into three SUVs and immediately took to the interstate, which he referred to as “The Super Slab.” We also immediately took to Michael. He greeted us with a devilish grin on his lips, mischief in his eyes, and something up his sleeve. The first thing he said to us in his deep, dramatic voice was, “Are you frightened?” I wasn’t until he said that. Michael was clearly the beloved son of the Mother Road and he couldn’t wait for us to meet her.

We stopped for the night at the Big Texan Steak Ranch, home to the famous seventy-two-ounce steak and a fake cow that was so big you can probably see it from the moon. We met the manager, Becky, who invited us to step into her Cars-themed office. There we were, standing with the Sheriff himself, in a wall-to-wall shrine to the movie. But that was only a drop of water in the giant radiator of stuff Cars-collector and uber-fan Becky had acquired. She invited us to her house, arranging that we ride over in Cadillacs (really Cattle-acs) with steer horns on the hoods and car horns that sounded like moos. Every square inch of Becky’s house was covered in Cars collectibles—truly the mother lode of the Mother Road. I couldn’t help but ask what her favorite movie was, and she answered Beauty and the Beast. Becky’s home and business reflected the irony of the many moms and pops that almost lost their shops because of the interstate bypassing their towns—as happened to the residents of Radiator Springs—but then, thanks to the movie Cars, experienced a strong resurgence of customers. Most of the small businesses we visited had some sort of a display dedicated to the movie because the owners felt it told their story and claimed it helped spark an interest in Route 66 tourism, which helped their bottom line.

We drove to our easternmost destination, Erick, Oklahoma, and then motored west stopping at almost every diner, curios shop, and interesting and/or historical spot along the way. Michael personally knew every small-business proprietor along the over one thousand miles we traveled, because they were his siblings, the daughters and sons of the Mother Road. These warm and welcoming people gave a face and heart to their particular dot on the map, and they helped us feel the friendly spirit we knew we needed to capture in Cars Land. My favorite of these folks was Angel Delgadillo, a long-retired barber in Seligman, Arizona. With a twinkle in his eye, Angel told me about the days when travelers stopped in for a long chat and a short haircut. Even though they we out-of-towners, every one of them remained his friend for life. “Having this place where my friends can stop and visit,” he said, “makes me feel good.” And then he put his arm around my neck, looked seriously into my eyes, and whispered, “If that new land you Disney people are making gives you that same feeling, it will be a success.” More than anything, I wanted our new land to make our guests feel as welcome as the “Angel of Route 66” made me feel that day.

Enjoying my model friend, Pixar’s Roger Gould, at the Radiator Springs Racers model. Roger and I have worked on many Disney-Pixar attractions together and he has become one of my dearest friends.

Throughout the trip, we took hundreds of reference photos; filled our sketchbooks cover to cover; stood on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, and sang every word to the Eagles’ “Take It Easy”; sampled every comfort food dish from every roadside restaurant; and listened to the song “Life Is a Highway” from the Cars soundtrack a million times. No, I’m kidding. It was more like ten million times. Roger Gould alone consumed 8,746 packages of beef jerky. (His salt level was so high that whenever we’d stop for gas and more beef jerky, cows would come over and lick him.)

At the Midpoint Café, in Adrian, Texas, we were treated to a dozen flavors of Ugly Crust Pie created from the owners’ grandma’s recipe. (Later in the project, we met with one of the chefs at the Disneyland Resort, a gentleman from France, to suggest adding Ugly Crust Pies to the menu at Flo’s. “No, no, no, no, no!” he denied us emphatically. “I will serve nothing that is ugly. Everything must be beautiful!”)

One afternoon, after driving up a switchback road on a mountainside in New Mexico, we stopped at the summit near an abandoned adobe church. The old church presented a breathtaking view of the entire valley framed by magnificent mesas. Disrupting the glorious view, however, was the straight dissecting line of Interstate 40. It suddenly occurred to me this was the very view Sally presented to Lightning when they reached the mountaintop at the Wheel Well Motel. I played that scene back in my head. “Look, they’re driving right by,” Lightning laments to Sally as he watches the cars cut straight across the landscape to make time. “They don’t even know what they’re missing.” At that moment, I heard Michael Wallis, who was standing next to me whisper, “It’s such an incredible sight, that road.” I was taken aback by his comment, shocked that Michael—of all people—would be talking about the Super Slab with so much affection. But then I glanced over and noticed his eyes weren’t on the interstate. He was staring straight down the cliff towards the cracked and broken weed-covered remains of what was once a portion of Route 66.

We returned to Imagineering inspired, invigorated, ten pounds heavier, and loaded with fresh memories of the people, places, sights, sounds, tastes, textures, and emotions we felt on the road. That “something” Michael Wallis had up his sleeve when we first met him was the very heart of Route 66, and that’s what inspired the design of just about everything in Cars Land that was not already established in the movie, from the menu items to the interiors of the shops, Flo’s V8 Café, and everything in between. Almost every square inch of Stanley’s Oasis was inspired in its design, materials, color, and texture by our research photos and sketches. John Lasseter was right to suggest we go on that trip.

Cars Land most certainly would have looked and felt different in many places had we immediately zeroed in on the destination without first having experienced the journey, especially considering the land was much more than a “cookie-cutter” representation of Radiator Springs from the movie. We had a blast working on all of the things you never saw in Cars but were “always there.” For example, if in the movie the camera were to travel down through the center of town and turn right at the courthouse, you’d see the entrance to Stanley’s Oasis,” now a historical point of interest. In stepping into Radiator Springs Curios, we wanted it to look and feel the same as when we stepped into any one of the many curio shops we visited. But we did absolutely adhere to the layout of Radiator Springs as designed for the movie when we started brainstorming ideas for our smaller scale Cars-themed attractions. The reason is if we were to change or move any of the buildings in our Radiator Springs from where they were located in the movie, that visual disruption would be a contradiction and the town would not feel real. Had it been an unbelievable fake-believe and not a believable make-believe, we would not have heard a young boy ask his mom on the opening day of Cars Land, “Was this where they filmed Cars?”

Among our secondary-ride ideas were Sarge’s Boot Camp, a Midget Autopia-sized off-road Jeep adventure that started out behind Sarge’s Surplus Hut. Luigi’s Leaning Tower of Tires put you on top of a tall and precarious stack of tires that leaned to-and-fro in all directions. But then we changed that to Luigi’s Flying Tires, inspired by the Flying Saucers that floated on air at Disneyland from 1961 to 1966. Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree took its story cue from Mater deciding to host a tractor-pullin’ square dance in honor of Race Day in Radiator Springs, much like Sally did by converting her Cozy Cone Motel rooms into cone-themed snack shacks for this special day. We decided the time period for the land was post-movie, soon after Lightning McQueen moved to town. After deciding upon the stories and ride layouts for Mater’s and Luigi’s—and upon the completion of concept art and a scale model depicting the exciting new twelve-acre addition and everything in it—I pitched Cars Land to our corporate executives, Jay Rasulo, then chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts; Tom Staggs, then chief financial officer; and fellow car guy (and oh, CEO) Bob Iger.

After my pitch, the first question came from Jay. “Can you explain,” he inquired, “why there are people walking around in a place inhabited by cars?” I couldn’t tell if he was being serious, facetious, or just playfully toying with me as he often did. I went with the latter. “Well, Jay,” I responded, “for the same reason people are sitting in Dumbo’s guts in Fantasyland.” Before he had a chance to fire me I followed up by explaining that in Cars Land, people are honorary cars and would be treated as such. For example, a cast member taking an order at Flo’s V8 Café might say, “How may I help you fill your tank today?” The next morning, I found a photo that had been mysteriously placed on my desk of guests riding Dumbo the Flying Elephant. The guests were saying—in Eric Jacobson’s handwriting—“Mom! I’m sitting on something gushy! It’s icky! Oh, don’t worry, son, it’s just Dumbo’s lung. I’m sitting on his beating heart. Isn’t this a fun ride?”

When Jay Rasulo asked me why humans are allowed in a place inhabited only by cars I asked him to explain why humans are sitting inside of Dumbo. Later I found this anonymous note—in Eric Jacobson’s handwriting—on my desk.

I’m not a money guy (I can’t be trusted with this stuff), but I knew Cars Land could not possibly pencil out from a return-on-investment perspective. But I credit Jay for doing the right thing and championing the project because, as he said himself, “It’s the right thing to do.”

So many crazy and remarkable things happened over the course of creating Cars Land, and among them are some of the most memorable moments of my career. Like when I was walking on the nearly completed site with John Lasseter and some of his family members and he asked me to sing for them the theme song for Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree, as would be sung by Mater himself. I started off with a bang:

Here we go tractors whip and whirl

Make them trailers twist and twirl

Circle to the left and circle to the right

’Round the Junkyard Jamboree

Boy, them tractors sure is dumb

I just sing and here they come

Look at ’em TOW-si-do, dadgum!

At the Junkyard Jamboree…

That’s about when I forgot my own lyrics and started filling in the blanks by singing, “somethin’, somethin’, somethin’—” John cracked up at that and asked me to tell Dan Whitney (aka Larry the Cable Guy, aka Mater) when I was with him in Omaha, Nebraska, the following week for the recording session to do a version of the song where he “forgets” the lyrics. He sure did, and now you can hear it every so often as it plays randomly on the attraction where those cute little tractors are pulling guest-hauling trailers all around the junkyard. Here’s another unexpected bonus you might hear at Mater’s: I suggested we put the first-ever “joke button” on an operator’s console there so an operator could, on occasion, treat guests to Mater suddenly telling a joke like “What does the popemobile say when he backfires? Holy smokes!”

While directing all of the show and audio programming in Radiator Springs Racers, Joe Herrington told me one rainy night at 2:00 a.m. we were about to go on our seven hundredth ride (it takes a lot of ride-throughs to get everything tweaked just right on a major attraction). I started counting from there, and before opening day we had traveled together through the show 879 times.

With Dan Whitney, (aka Larry the Cable Guy), aka Mater, at the recording studio in Omaha, Nebraska, about to get ’er done!

When Joe and I were mixing sound in the tire-changing scene in Luigi’s, I could hear Guido at work beneath our car. But I could not feel him. So, Joe and I went out to the construction site, found a four-foot-long piece of steel rebar, and recorded the sound while whacking it against the side of our audio toolbox to get the desired effect. We then channeled that sound to the subwoofer located under the vehicle seat. So, the next time you’re on the ride in that scene and you feel Guido working under your car, that’s why!

On another rainy day we were experiencing many technical difficulties in Racers. Everything was dark and gloomy—and that was inside the attraction. It also happened to be the day John Lasseter was going to stop by to see how everything was going. The timing for his visit could not have been worse. The site was still under construction so, thanks to the nonstop rain, there was nothing but mud to walk through on our walk-through. When the time came to meet John at the entrance to the land, the rain suddenly and strangely stopped. At that moment, the clouds opened enough to allow the sun to paint a brilliant brushstroke of glowing gold across the Cadillac Range. Then suddenly, I’m not kidding, a rainbow appeared and stretched over the land from the Cadillac Range all the way over to Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree. The rainbow appeared at the same time John did, and when he saw and reacted to the scene, we all started shouting, “It’s a sign! It’s a sign!” I took a picture of John with my smartphone with the glowing Cadillac Range and the end of the rainbow over his shoulder.

Media designer and sound effects wizard Joe Herrington and I have worked together on many attractions. Here we’re installing the soundtrack we created for Radiator Springs Racers. Joe and I rode Racers together 879 times before opening day!

We built a track loop to test out our cars for Radiator Springs Racers. Man, was that fun! I’m sitting with Special Effects Designer Todd Wilder, and behind us, left to right, are Ride Engineer Eric Davis and Art Director Greg Wilzbach. Looking on in the background is Executive Producer Kathy Mangum.

After a rainy day on the construction site, the clouds parted and a rainbow appeared, stretching from one side of the land to the other. John Lasster proclaimed, “It’s a sign!” I said, “Naw, it’s just our lighting designer, Ken Lennon, playing around.”

For some strange reason, while working on Cars Land, I started seeing Mickey everywhere! I had this cactus for over thirty years before it grew ears! I spotted that “hidden Mickey” on the drain the day after the rainbow appeared.

The very next morning, as I was walking backstage behind Racers, I looked at the ground, and lo and behold, there were two perfectly round pools of water on either side of a round drain cover that together created a special not-so-hidden Mickey just for me. I knew everything was going to be all right going forward.

Cars Land and I had a very special relationship that way. A few years later, these “signs” continued. After completion of Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters, I was back in my office in Glendale suffering separation anxiety from the land. I already went through a separation in June 2012 and it took months to get over it. I never imagined I’d be suffering through it again three years later after returning to deliver the new story for Luigi’s. Driving home to Orange County that night, I was thinking about the special times I’d slip away to take a quick break and step out onto the street in Radiator Springs at 3:00 a.m. and have the whole place to myself. There I would enjoy the breathtaking view of the beautifully illuminated Radiator Cap Butte rising high above and behind the courthouse. While reminiscing about this very thing, I came to a stop in freeway traffic and happened to look into the sky to my left. There I saw a cloud in the shape—not in a kind-of-like-it shape—but in the exact shape of the Radiator Cap Butte. Coincidence?

Soon after Cars Land was completed, I was stuck in LA traffic reminiscing about those many late nights I had the view straight down the street of Radiator Springs to the magnificent Radiator Cap Butte all to myself. I looked out my car window and saw this amazing sight. Coincidence? This photo is not retouched or photoshopped. That cloud was a butte!

Getting Cars Land on the road and having the privilege to work on every bit of its evolution from the first day to opening day was not only the greatest honor of my career, it was also the headlight, er, I mean the highlight. Throughout the course of the project, I got to bring together all of my personal interests from childhood to adulthood and do all the things I love to do, from going on road trips to living and breathing all things cars, and from creating attraction ideas and stories to writing songs, scripts, and directing the talent for them. I even got to work on an animated short, too, when John invited me to come to Pixar to write puns for A Cars Tune short entitled The Radiator Springs 500½. My first pun of the short happens when some bad guy off-roaders come to town, and one of them asks Mater, “Who are you?” Mater answers, “Mater.” The bad guy car asks, “What’s a Mater?” Mater responds, “Nothin’. What’s a Mater with you?” A forklift with a snare drum does a rim shot and then shows up again to do it again after every pun to follow.

After I finished the pun project, Pixar sent a beautifully framed car-icature of me entitled All Hail the Punisher! signed by everyone on the shorts team.

Ah, Cars Land, the gift that just keeps on giving! Working on the land, though, was the hardest and most work I’ve ever done on one project. But it was also the most fun I’ve ever had as an Imagineer. Of course, to create a land on the scale of Cars Land, it takes hundreds of talented and dedicated Imagineers representing all Imagineering disciplines to, as Mater says, “git ’er done!” But establishing the up-front vision for the Mother Road of all lands—the one that brought Disneyland DNA to DCA on an epic scale—will forever be in my most grateful heart. I never ever could have imaged when I was a dishwasher dreaming big dreams in the very parking lot spot where Cars Land stands today that someday my dreams really would come true.

John Lasseter invited me to come to Pixar to work on a couple of “Cars Toons.” Imagine my surprise when afterwards this beautifully framed piece was delivered to my office, signed by the Cars Toons team. I always wondered what I would look like as a car!

Now, as the sun starts to set on my day as an Imagineer, I find myself thinking more often about that rare Cars Land experience and all of the other Imagineering project experiences I’ve had that have terrified, gratified, challenged, and changed me. When all is said and done, two magical memories rise to the top of the millions I have, and both happened in Cars Land. As soon as the land opened, I invited my in-laws to see for themselves what I had been working on, but couldn’t tell them about, for so many years. As I helped my eighty-four-year-old father-in-law step into the front seat of our car at Radiator Springs Racers, my mind flashed back to the time I asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. He had little faith in me then because I was an art major and he was certain my career opportunities would be, in his own words, “Marginal at best.” His advice to me was to take a more “practical” road. A child of the Depression era who climbed out of poverty to earn a master’s degree in engineering, which led to a long, solid, and successful career, I sensed he didn’t think I would amount to much.

Patty and I sat in the seat behind her parents, and I watched Dad the entire ride, all the while thinking had I heeded his advice, not followed my heart, and taken a more practical road, he would not be on this road now.

My then eighty-four-year-old father-in-law riding Radiator Springs Racers. Thirty-five years prior he gave me some career advice: “You should consider taking a different road.” As I was taking this photo, I thought about that moment. Had I taken his advice, he would not be on this road right now!

When he stepped out of the car at unload, he smiled and silently but firmly shook my hand for a long time. He didn’t say a single word. He didn’t have to.

My other favorite memory happened in the very same place. It was a moment that reminded me that making make-believe believable is the most important thing an Imagineer can do. On the opening day of Cars Land, quite frankly, my engine was running on fumes. But all of the aggravations tied to the impossible days and late nights melted away like an ice cube in Ornament Valley in the heat of summer when I stood on the unload platform to watch and listen to returning “racers” as they happily stepped out of their cars after experiencing the attraction for the first time. Jumping out of his car with his family, a seven-year-old boy was so excited and overwhelmed by the experience, he could not formulate what he was trying to communicate. All he could do was excitedly jump up and down while repeating, “That was…that was…that was…that was…that was…that…” Finally, he stopped and stood still, knowing exactly what he wanted to shout out loud enough for the whole world to hear: “I NEVER WANT TO LEAVE THIS PLACE!”