The Big Picture
- Behind the Attraction accumulates more content than they can use, which makes it difficult to decide what to include in each episode, leaving them to make tough choices about what to cut out.
- The episodes of the docuseries go through a process of research, outlining, and approval from Disney, but often the plan changes during filming based on new discoveries and stories.
- One surprising story in the « Pirates of the Caribbean » episode involves handling chickens for a funny gag in the Shanghai Disneyland version of the attraction, which was a fun and memorable experience for the Imagineers involved.
Behind the Attraction
Explore the history of how popular Disney attractions and destinations came to be, how they have changed over time and how fans continue to obsess over them.
- Release Date
- July 21, 2021
- Main Genre
- Documentary
- Rating
- TV-PG
- Seasons
- 2
As a company, Disney has been making magic for 100 years, from animation to live-action, classic characters to new additions, songs that we can sing along with, and ever-evolving innovation at theme parks around the world. For so many, Disney has captured our hearts and imagination in a way that has led to moments and memories shared through generations.
With 2023 having drawn to a close, I’ve been thinking about some of the real standouts in entertainment over the year, and one of the Disney offerings that I was most looking forward to was the second season of the Disney+ original docuseries Behind the Attraction because it serves as both a reminder of how long Disney has been around while also showcasing the company’s evolution and ongoing innovation. Executive produced by Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia and directed by Brian Volk-Weiss (The Toys That Made Us), the six-episodes use humor and fun facts to explore the ideas behind some of the most memorable Disney theme park attractions around the world, showing how they started and what they’ve progressed into.
If you love Disney theme parks, which I certainly do, then you’re quite familiar with the phrase “Disney magic.” Whether it’s Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Disneyland Paris, Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea, Hong Kong Disneyland or Shanghai Disneyland, the little details are everywhere and the cast members are always looking to provide a special moment. Some of my earliest and favorite childhood memories involve time spent at Disneyland, my local Disney theme park, with my family and friends, taking photos with the characters, riding thrill rides for the first time, watching the parades and fireworks, and even sitting down for a very special meal at the Blue Bayou restaurant, located inside the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction.
Before I started covering theme park entertainment as part of my job, I was actually a little bit worried that it might take some of the magic away to learn some of the behind-the-scenes secrets. Instead, what it really did was give me a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the blood, sweat and tears we never even hear about, on the road to opening the next big theme park attraction, debuting the next nighttime spectacular, or even deciding the flavor of the next Mickey macaron. And while the episodes of Behind the Attraction dig into some very cool tidbits, they are truly only scratching the surface when it comes to the history and legacy of all things Disney.
Because of my job at Drumpe, I was given the opportunity to chat with Walt Disney Imagineers Jeanette Lomboy (Vice President – Executive Producer, Creative) and Luc Maynard (Portfolio Creative Executive), who are both involved with attractions and entertainment and Shelby Jiggetts-Tivony (Vice President, Creative & Advanced Development for Disney Parks Live Entertainment), as well as Gary Maggetti (General Manager at Disney California Adventure Park West) and Brian Piasecki (Culinary Director at Walt Disney World), who work to create special experiences through food and beverage, series director Volk-Weiss (with The Nacelle Company), and executive producer Garcia (with Seven Bucks Productions) to see how many more fun stories I could get from them. Continue reading to learn about all the tidbits they shared with me.
‘Behind the Attraction’s Director Finds It Gut-Wrenching to Have to Cut Content
When I spoke to Volk-Weiss, the first thing I asked him about was whether the hardest part of putting together a series like this was having a limited number of episodes and a limited amount of time in each episode, and he confirmed that that’s absolutely the case. “It’s gut-wrenching,” he declared. “But with this show, it’s really gut-wrenching. I’m a crazy Disney fan, so it’s very personal. Very often, when you’re making a show, you’ll have a rough cut and you could take every beat and be like, ‘These are the As and these are the Bs,’ and then you have A-plus through B-minus. Normally, when you’re at a two-hour cut that you need to get to 55 minutes, you just get rid of the Bs or the A-minuses. With this – and I don’t mean this about our filmmaking, I mean this about Disney and the parks and what Disney is – there are no Bs. You’re constantly having to take away stuff where you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, don’t forget that, so you can talk to people about that, if they ever ask about what ended up on the cutting room floor.’ It is so tough, cutting stuff out of the show.”
Working in a world where every detail has a story behind it, Garcia agreed about the challenge that comes with cutting the episodes and said she looks forward to being able to just continue telling those stories in possible future seasons. “There is so much to the element of storytelling and the connection to the audience,” said the EP who also grew up going to Walt Disney World. “You asked that great question about how hard it is to cut things out, and every aspect has gone through Imagineering. With the thought and the moments and the affinity that creates, it’s a very special place to be and it’s a partnership that leads towards inspiration. I look forward to Season 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.”
Neither Volk-Weiss nor Garcia are just making a TV series with Behind the Attraction. As fans of the theme parks themselves, they each had a must-do episode once they knew they had the green light to delve deeper into these stories. Said Volk-Weiss, “For me, it’s always been Indiana Jones. That’s my favorite attraction, bar none. I know that sounds crazy to a lot of people, but it was that and Pirates. I was literally praying that we’d get a second season, so that we could do a Pirates episode.” For Garcia, it was Jungle Cruise, “And not just because we were doing Jungle Cruise (the movie with Johnson and Emily Blunt), but I was really excited about unpacking that ride that almost everyone has gone on. We had to do Jungle Cruise. What it represents was so important. It was wonderful to have that kick things off, as our first episode of Season 1.”
‘Behind the Attraction’s Director Said Episode Plans Often Change And Evolve
The episodes of Behind the Attraction have a variety of current Imagineers, OG Imagineers, cast members, and historians, all of whom add their unique perspectives. But when it comes to deciding exactly who will speak in each episode and what they’ll focus on, everything goes through a process that ultimately ends with Disney giving the thumbs up or thumbs down. “It starts with the research and it ends with the words,” said Volk-Weiss. “It’s a cliché slogan, but it seems to work. We do about four months of research and that work becomes outlines. Those outlines go to Disney, and then Disney tells us what they like and what they don’t wanna do. We go back and forth until everybody agrees. Then, we got out and film.”
But it doesn’t stop there. “With most everything we do, at least once, we find a nugget in the field that almost redefines what the outline was, » continued Volk-Weiss. « Very frequently, I’m doing the interview and I hear something, so I pull out my phone and I send a note to myself. Then, I get back to the hotel at night and I send an email to Disney saying, ‘Hey, Karlos Siqueiros (the Food & Beverage Synergy Manager at Disneyland) made me cry 50 times in the food episode. But one of the things he did while I was crying was that he said this, and I think that should be the spinal column of this episode.’ If Disney agrees, then we take what was in the outline and we graft it onto this new spinal column, which is again a nugget that we find while we’re actually doing the interviews.”
Getting to hear all the behind-the-scenes stories can also change the guest experience and perspective when they return to the parks. “You get these big heartfelt stories,” said Garcia. “You get the Imagineers and you get our food experts unpacking the world, but then when you go back to experience it, you’re looking with eyes that are broader. You’re beginning to look for the gems. When you can entertain, tell story and history, and pay homage, but then you can have people look with new eyes, the experience becomes fresh and new. I really feel that our series does that, in addition to all the other great work.”
Even Disney Imagineers Are Surprised By Attraction Details
Although the Imagineers themselves know all the secrets for any project they’re working on, they still have plenty to learn since they don’t typically know what goes on behind the scenes of each other’s projects. One particularly surprising story in the Pirates of the Caribbean episode in Season 2 reveals how the chickens came to make an appearance in the Shanghai Disneyland version of the attraction. When Maynard thought it would be a funny gag, he realized the best way to get the job done would be to shoot them on green screen. “We had an animal handler who knew how to handle chickens, and even he wasn’t always getting what he wanted out of them. I forget if it was seven or eight or 10 chickens, but we had to figure out which ones would cooperate, and then we had to coax them to do some things. That, in itself, was a whole thing. It was just as goofy and crazy as it sounds. You would call, ‘Okay, action chickens!’ But it was wonderful. That’s a day I will remember for the rest of my life. It was so much fun.”
And the challenges that came with pulling off the Pirates attraction at Shanghai Disneyland didn’t end there. Right up until the moment the ride opened, the Imagineers working on it weren’t actually sure if everything would work the way it was supposed to and really needed to, which can happen when you start with an idea of taking guests to the bottom of the ocean without knowing for sure how to pull that off. “The idea of going to the bottom of the ocean is something I had, even before we started on Shanghai,” said Maynard, “and it was inspired from some of what we saw in the movies. We didn’t go below the ocean in the movie, but you kept wondering, ‘Davy Jones and his crew go somewhere, right?’ So, what happens? And that’s where all the treasures are, so it was easy to imagine that there would be something really great and crazy there.”
He continued, “As a kid, I was always fascinated by these stories of hidden treasures and what might be at the bottom of the ocean because we all know that the entire ocean is littered with riches and mysteries. But how do you go about it? I don’t think anyone knows exactly how things are going to be done. We had multiple ways that we tried. It was one of the high points of the story, so we had to figure out a way to do it. After that, there was some trial and error, and we did a lot of mock-ups and things. Eventually, technology came just in time. The tide system didn’t exist, but parts of it were around and we thought, ‘Maybe we can strong-arm this into doing what we need here, and then we’ll do this with projections.’ And then, it worked, just maybe not on the first try.”
When Attraction Mishaps Happen, Disney Imagineers Just Try Again
Every attraction, no matter how technologically advanced, has its trials and tribulations, often including moments where it seems like it will all fall apart before it ever opens. For the Shanghai Pirates attraction, that day was when they realized the flume carrying the ride’s water wasn’t working, which is definitely a problem when you’re opening a water-based ride. “[The flume] was overflowing on one end and it was shallow on the other, and the boats were scraping at the bottom,” said Maynard. “That was a low point. That was like, ‘Oh, wow, this could be a real letdown, or this could be the part where we find out this ride doesn’t work.’ That was not a great day, but it’s okay. That’s what happens. You have to get there, so that you can get past it, right? Once it happens, you get past it. That’s what’s great about working in Imagineering and our industry. Once you’ve had a few of those scrapes with terror and you’ve actually lived through it and you figure out how strong everybody is at inventing things, it makes you trust that you can get out of more scrapes later.”
Lomboy agreed that it’s important to talk about the failures that happen. “When Walt Disney Imagineers are tasked to do the impossible, which is what we say we do, of course there’s going to be failure along the way. One of the attractions that I worked on a long time ago was called Disney’s Kim Possible: World Showcase Adventure at Epcot, which is now DuckTales. I had this moment that was a small thing, but we were very close to opening. There was an effect where we wanted you to believe that this whole entire window was underwater, so we did it with a tank that had acrylic in it. I was standing in front of this thing and the tank cracked. All the acrylic came flying at me, I was covered, and we were about to open. That example is one small thing. In the course of every attraction, there’s always something that doesn’t work quite like you think it’s going to. Sometimes it’s the technologically advanced things that you think there’s a lot of risk to. When we invent a ride, we know that there’s a risk that comes with that, and we do our best to figure it out and solve these problems. And then, there are things that don’t believe are going to be risky, but that’s part of what it takes to create these amazing, innovative, cutting edge, different, unique experiences for our park guests around the world.”
She continued by saying, “That’s just one example, but I don’t believe there is any project out there that has ever gone perfectly. I always say to people, if you think it’s going bad, think about Walt Disney when he opened Disneyland. The stories of opening day make you want to cry. People’s heels were stuck in the street because it was wet. You could have chalked that up as a failure, but no, it’s an opportunity and you can turn that around. There were a lot of people that showed up at Disneyland on opening day that went, ‘There’s just no way this is gonna work,’ and look at where we are today, almost 70 years later.”
Guests and Imagineers Alike Have Their Favorite Disney Attraction Details
From the goat found at Big Thunder Mountain Railroad to the chickens in Pirates of the Caribbean, guests have their favorite details that they obsess over and that also goes for the Imagineers. “When I was a little girl, on Pirates of the Caribbean when you come down the second waterfall, I was always obsessed with looking at the seagull in that scene,” revealed Lomboy. “It’s after you’ve gone through the thrill of dropping and it’s the first thing that you see that slows down, that’s articulate, and that you can focus on. You’ve gone from the dark to being able to focus on this detail, and that re-grounds you in the story they’re about to tell you. I don’t know why we identify with the critters. I know that, for my own children, with Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout, which is an attraction that I designed, it was always the Walkman popping out. They were like, ‘What is that thing?’ It’s funny because we are obsessive when it comes to telling a story as Imagineers, and we never know what details are going to resonate with our guests. It’s a huge compliment to us that the details get acknowledged and, in some cases there’s a fan base for it. That means we’re doing something right. We’re still finding things that are personal for each one of our guests.”
For me, personally, I love the details in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. Whether it’s the OG attraction or the holiday overlay for The Nightmare Before Christmas, I soak up every little aspect and detail in each room. I was even one of those people that drove from the San Fernando Valley to Anaheim, just to ride the Haunted Mansion when they added the Hatbox Ghost back into the attraction, and then drove back home. I’m so fascinated by how much is in each scene that I actually hope the Doom Buggy will slow down or stop (which it often does), so that I have extra time to take everything in. It’s an attraction that I never get tired of experiencing and will often ride it more than once a trip to the theme park.
For Maynard, one of those special details is the fact that he was able to collect a vial of water from each of the Pirates attractions to tie them all together by adding them to the attraction’s water in Shanghai. “I was inspired by something that I heard was done, where they brought The Waters of the World to Small World, and I thought we could do the same thing for Pirates. It turns out that when you do what’s essentially an attraction that is a giant building with several swimming pools worth of water in it, water becomes an obsession. Early on, I felt like we had to tie them together, but I didn’t realize how emotional it would be until we did it. It was one in the morning because we were still working on everything. I thought, ‘Who’s gonna get up and come to this work site when it’s freezing at one in the morning in the middle of winter in China?’ But all these people turned up because they wanted to be there to see it and be part of it, and it was really, really sweet. It was amazing.”
Technological Advancements Help Disney Imagineers Go Big with Nighttime Entertainment
The magic doesn’t stop with Disney theme park attractions. What started as five minutes of fireworks at the end of the night has since evolved into truly spectacular productions that are incorporating mind-blowing advancements in technology. For Jiggetts-Tivony, who didn’t grow up with the Disney theme park experience and instead had her first trip to Walt Disney World in her thirties, it’s the excitement of the audience that inspires her. “I had never been to a Disney Park, and my day ended with Fantasmic! at Disney’s Hollywood Studio. I was just gobsmacked. I don’t think my mouth closed, the entire time. That was my first experience with a nighttime spectacular of that scale. It’s almost like going to a sporting event. Everybody was so psyched and pumped and excited, and you could feel the energy of the crowd. It’s the thing I love about theater, there can be an electricity in the audience.”
Much like with the attractions, so much goes into the planning of every detail of a nighttime spectacular to make sure that everything, from the music to the pyrotechnics to the lights, comes together. But Jiggetts-Tivony said that seeing it with an audience is when you can really determine whether it’s all working. “Don’t forget, these things usually take years and many iterations before they become guest-facing, so it’s only when the guests are experiencing it that you really know. There have been many times when I’ve been in the wee hours of the morning, in front of some body of water in the cold at 3am thinking, ‘That’s good. That’s exciting.’ You’re working on these things, making little adjustments that feel incremental, whether you’re color adjusting or making sure some audio syncs or you’re trying something different with the fountains, and doing things by degrees. But once the guests are that, that’s when I can breathe. As someone whose role is to really nurture, assist, provide air cover and be a pair of fresh eyes, a lot of times, I’m just the mom wanting to see my kids succeed. My feeling is so rooted in their success, which is registered by the response of the guests.”
In talking to the Imagineers, there’s always this idea of, if you can dream it, you can do it. Somehow, even if something seems impossible at the initial seed of the concept, the Imagineers find a way to weave technology in with emotional connection and pull it off, whether it’s taking guests on a pirate adventure under the ocean or creating a wall of water to project a nighttime spectacular onto. “That’s the beauty of it,” explained Jiggetts-Tivony. “What I love about being a part of Disney Live Entertainment and Walt Disney Imagineering is the toys and the most advanced things. That ability to work in community with a brand that is about getting it right, whatever the innovation or new technology is, if we don’t have it, we will find it. That’s huge to know that boundless imagination is nurtured and rewarded with the appropriate tools to push our medium forward.”
Disney Theme Park Culinary Creations Get As Much Attention As Any New Offering
Theme park food used to be an afterthought, but now some guests plan their day around the latest food and beverage offerings. From bringing something to life from a movie (like the delicious gray stuff from Beauty and the Beast) to paying homage to a specific character (like the variety of Mickey macarons) to creating a special dining experience (like at Disneyland’s Blue Bayou where you’re actually located inside Pirates of the Caribbean), Disney theme parks continue the storytelling. Chef Piasecki, who now works in the top secret Flavor Lab (which is so top secret that he had to blur his background for our conversation so that I couldn’t catch a sneak peek of anything), continued by saying, “The fun of it is taking something that is in a movie, or maybe has one line at the end of a movie, or is something that people leave the movie theater and they’re talking about it, and we can give it life. Nobody knew what gray stuff was. No one knew what blue milk actually tasted like. I’ll bet you most people left the Star Wars movies back in the seventies and didn’t even pay attention to the fact that they were drinking blue milk, and now it’s an iconic menu item. So, having the ability to just create through that process and bring that to our guests is incredibly satisfying.”
As the General Manager at DCA West, Maggetti, whose first role with the company was in the college program as a Jungle Cruise skipper, said it’s the freedom they give the culinary teams to create new experiences that really helps them develop must-have items. “It was 2018 and we were putting together the menu for Pixar Pier, and the Walt Disney Imagineering team came to us and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this Monsters Inc. location that we’d like to overlay with Adorable Snowman Frosted Treats,’ which was a soft serve location. And they said, ‘We want to do yellow snow.’ We said, ‘All right, let’s lean into this.’ We worked with partners and were able to put together a new soft serve item that has a lemon flavor versus a Dole Whip pineapple flavor, guests immediately purchased it, and then they Instagram it. It’s just one of the most delicious things we have. It’s that freedom that allows us to do so many things with the creativity.”
While theme park staples like churros and turkey legs can be found by those who love the classics, they continuously put a new spin on many of those items to take them to the next level. “The glorious part of creativity is that we think about different menu items and iconic menu items as platforms,” said Maggetti. “Churros are not just churros. We have churros, which I will never not purchase with my family, but then we actually have next-level seasonal churros. It’s the same thing with macarons and the gray stuff. We are fortunate at Disney to have a business in which every single one of our locations is a unique concept. It’s not a chain. And that uniqueness provides freedom for us to be super creative and to create memories that guests come back for.”
The attention to detail not only comes into play with the food offerings themselves, but with the dining experiences. Revealed Piasecki, “This is a super cool story that probably nobody knows, but we worked on Grand Destino Tower (at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort) and the restaurant on the top, called Toledo, and its little lounge next to it, called Dahlia Lounge. Salvador Dali and Walt Disney had a special relationship, where those two extremely creative people [spent time] together. We actually found a black and white photo of Walt and his wife, and Salvador Dali and his wife, having dinner together and we zoomed in on the table, and were able to find the pattern of the china that they were using and had a plate specially made that duplicated that pattern of china. It’s served in Dahlia Lounge, which is completely themed around Salvador Dali and his movie Destino, that he and Walt worked on. Those little nuggets are all over the place and sometimes it takes months to figure that stuff out, but it’s so fun. When our guests learn about it, they’re over the moon.”
Designing new food and beverage items is a balancing act between creativity and expectation. “We have to make sure that we continue with our guest favorites because we don’t want that big letdown,” said Piasecki. “If you came to the Food and Wine Festival and there was no cheddar beer soup at the Canada Pavilion, that would be a huge issue. But if we keep that soup, and then get creative with something else and we balance it, it’s generally a win. We do focus groups, we get a lot of guest feedback, both on blogs and on Instagram, and we listen to our guests. When we put that shimmery cupcake together and all the colors on that cupcake match the newly decorated castle for a celebration, and someone’s holding it up in front of that castle and it’s got 4 million likes on Instagram, we know we’ve hit a home run.”
Even Garcia got in on the action when it came to theme park food, appearing in episode five of Season 2, entitled “The Food.” Declaring herself an expert, she said, “I have a deep love of food, so I felt really, really confident in my point of view. I’ve guided my family through a culinary experience at all the parks. I’ve taken that on, personally. I also have an incredible sense of smell and taste, which I think is genetic.”
According to Disney Imagineers, You Can’t Rush the Magic
Although no spoilers are allowed when it comes to future attractions, the Imagineers are always developing and working on something, or a variety of somethings. But if you think the wait time in line for popular attractions seems like it takes forever, Maynard shared that it will be a long time before guests will get to see what they’re currently creating. “Some of the stuff that we’re ideating now, if it’s a live show, it may come out quicker, like in a year or two years. But with some of the attractions projects, and the park and lands projects, it will be five, six, seven or eight years. Unfortunately, things don’t go that fast. I wish they went faster, but that’s the nature of the business.”
And while you’d expect it to take less time for new food and beverage items to go through the process, which it definitely does, it can take a year or two before things are ready for consumption. Said Piasecki, “I’ll throw a little nugget your way and say that we’re working on kitchen design and pre-work on menus for a project that is not even announced and has not even broken ground yet here in Orlando. So, it will be a while.”
In the meantime, while Disney fans are waiting for the next idea to become a reality, Volk-Weiss is hoping that he’ll get to do another season of Behind the Attraction. When I asked him to imagine getting the opportunity to do an episode solely dedicated to attractions that never happened and which he’d want to focus on, he clearly had thought about the answer. “I really want to do an episode about Mineral King. For anyone who doesn’t know what Mineral King is, Walt wanted to build an amusement park about three hours from L.A. that would have been a ski resort. This is where everybody makes fun of me because I’ve done this, but you can go there. Disneyland Paris used to be all beet fields. Because Disney bought all these beet farms, got rid of the beets, and then they built Disneyland Paris, you can literally still smell the beets because all around Disneyland Paris is more beet fields. With Mineral King, on the other hand, they never built the park, so you can stand where Walt and Roy stood and you can look at this beautiful view and imagine, ‘How crazy is it that they were gonna build a park here?’ And then, you can retroactively imagine Walt and Roy in Anaheim and what that must have looked like, or in Orlando and what that must have looked like. So, I wanna do the Mineral King episode.”
Behind the Attraction is available to stream on Disney+. Check out the Season 2 trailer:
Watch on Disney+