The future and Walt’s legacy

Can you talk about what you are working on these days?

I can talk about what I’m working on now because although I’ve retired from Imagineering, I haven’t actually retired by any stretch of the imagination. I’m writing full time. And I just published my book, “Dream Chasing.“

I discovered writing is something I really love, and I never really wrote before. And now I’m working on a big book also by Disney Editions, based on Marty Sklar, who was at Imagineering for 50 years. He left behind a storehouse of more than a thousand boxes of stuff from his history. And so we’ve spent the last three years scanning and documenting all of that, and I’m writing a book about the whole collection which has been great. That’s been going on for several years and is starting to take form.

I also wrote “Ghost Dog,” which is a small novel about the Haunted Mansion, which came out last year too. And I have a couple more books in line with Disney. So I’ve just really enjoyed writing.

And then I advise the Savannah College of Art and Design on their academic programs in theme design. They’ve got a new Bachelor of Fine Arts coming out this fall that I’m going to be helping with, and I love that a lot too. And then I do a little bit of consulting, but mostly on projects that I find really interesting or compelling, but that don’t require me to go somewhere and work full time anymore. I’m really prioritized on my writing now. I love giving advice and traveling around and doing things, but I also like the quiet life of being a writer. I’ve chosen a kind of a second career and it’s been great. 

You are going to your favorite theme park – which industry people (dead or alive) are you taking with you?

Of course for me it would be Walt Disney. If I had the chance to walk around Disneyland, or any park, with Walt Disney, that would certainly be great. 

I think it would be amazing to hear whatever he said about how he put things together. And certainly what he might have to say about what we’ve done since he was there. You might even get some criticism about it. But I think generally speaking, the thing about Walt Disney was that he never let paint dry around him — he was constantly moving forward and so he never expected the parks to become museums — and said that himself many times. I think it would be great to have a conversation with Walt about the creation of Disneyland, where it’s gone, and what he would be still thinking about. 

Working with Disney, I’ve been very lucky to be able to travel around the world. My first job at Imagineering was in Tokyo, so I’ve always had a very international view of Disney as opposed to staying in the U.S. When you’re trying to build something that’s big and complicated, you have to have people to make it a reality, and in the case of Tokyo or Paris or Shanghai, you have to have a lot of people, a lot of talented people, and you can’t just bring everybody from Glendale. 

So I got used to the idea that theme parks are unique businesses with diverse talents, and they are global collaborations. As a result, you can get as much excitement from an audience in Tokyo as you can from an audience in Anaheim or even more so. And Disney, Universal, Lego, and so many other companies have managed to be successful all over the world, with many languages, and very different audiences. That’s what I think is the magic of it, that we are this kind of unified world of entertainment.

Unlike a movie, which is made at Pixar, or in Hollywood, or France or someplace, and goes around the world, maybe dubbed and slightly changed, but for the most part, it plays everywhere exactly the way the filmmaker intended. Our work becomes completely different, whether it’s in Tokyo or Hong Kong or Paris. And that’s what’s exciting — it’s constantly changing; it’s constantly evolving. 

Also, what’s fun is the crazy diversity of people’s talents, from artists to engineers and architects — just the amazing creativity in this business — such a wide variety of people and such dedication. Every time you do a project, you find yourself with a whole new crop of friends who you can call up anytime and say, “Hey, can you answer this question?” So that’s been great. I did try to capture that in my own way in “Dream Chasing,” the fact that nothing really happens unless you can get a lot of people behind it and get them all to work together. And that’s what’s exciting. 

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Writer Kendall Wolf is a long-time consultant in the themed entertainment industry. She has worked with designers, producers, and fabricators to help developers create unique and successful projects around the world. In 2017, she introduced Merlin Entertainments to a development group in Sichuan province for the first Legoland park in China.

Kendall continues to consult for the developer to open more themed resorts in China.

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