Adirondack Studios shares final excerpt from Fifty Years of Making a Scene

Adirondack Studios (ADKS), a company that provides creative solutions for designers, artists, producers, and owners in the global entertainment industry, concludes its five-decade story in this fifth excerpt from Fifty Years of Making a Scene: 1975-2025, as it continues to future-proof for its next 50 years.

Fifty Years of Making a Scene: 1975-2025 is written by Bob Barnett with a foreword from Michael Blau. It is edited by Michael Blau, Tom Lloyd, Mike Marko and Clara Rice.

The first excerpt is available here, the second here, the third here, and the fourth here.

By the 2010s, Adirondack Studios was practically pulsating with new energy.

With attractions and spectacles delighting audiences from Singapore to Southern California, the company was a globally recognized power player, attracting juggernaut theme park operators and iconic IPs.

Making magic

In J.K. Rowling's seven books and eight movies, Harry Potter transfixed children and adults alike, as the wizard-in-training Harry and his friends battled Lord Voldemort and his drive for world domination.

The young wizard begins his academic journey at Diagon Alley, where he and Hagrid peruse the intricately decorated shops for his needed supplies.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Diagon Alley at Universal Studios Florida

Harkening back to ADKS' experience with scenic finishes, Universal chose Adirondack Studios to create and execute the exterior scenic treatments for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Diagon Alley at Universal Studios Florida.

It was a nine-month project with six months on site with nearly 60 scenic artists detailing every inch of the Alley: painting it, aging it, capturing its cinematic wonder, and making it wind, weather, and people-proof.

When Diagon Alley opened in 2014, visitors walked through the hidden wall and, upon seeing the Alley before them, gasped and often cried, feeling as though they, too, were first-year students at Hogwarts.

Interplanetary adventures

A few miles away, Disney was trying to work some of its own magic in recreating blockbuster films.

Disney located Pandora – The World of Avatar within its Animal Kingdom in Orlando. The huge zoological theme park covered 580 acres with hundreds of live animals.

With its emphasis on ecology and respect for the natural world, Animal Kingdom was the ideal fit for Pandora with its story of the Na’vi living in harmony with their environment.

To make their Pandora as colorful, mystical and otherworldly as the one portrayed on screen, Disney chose to intermingle real plants and flowers with exotic bioluminescent faux flora.

Pandora – The World of Avatar at Walt Disney World

Led by Disney’s Imagineering team, ADKS’ soft goods and scenic arts departments engaged in careful research, multiple rounds of prototyping and sampling, and the combination of expert techniques and unique materials to create landscapes both within the Valley of Mo’ara and throughout the Na’vi River Journey ride that made visitors feel like explorers on an intergalactic expedition.

But this wasn’t the limit to ADKS’s and Disney’s adventures together in outer space. From Pandora, Adirondack Studios ventured even farther afield to a galaxy far, far away…

Right on the heels of Avatar, ADKS launched into work on Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, a whole new land to be built at both Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando and Disneyland in Anaheim, opening within months of one another.

From dining at Olga’s Cantina to shopping at the souk marketplace, Disney wanted guests to feel that they had a part to play in the Resistance. They could even pilot the Millennium Falcon in the land’s marquis attraction, Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run.

Droid Depot at Disney's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge

From the intricate cockpit riders use to control the simulated flight, to the iconic holochess table in the circuitous queue, ADKS recreated every detail of “the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy”, mesmerizing fans and overloading social media feeds.

Throughout the rest of the land, the team’s scenic artists provided the banners and awnings, carefully applying theme paint to make everything authentically aged and unquestionably unforgettable.

Not only was Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge an iconic add to the Walt Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products portfolio, but the project also led to a watershed moment in Adirondack Studios’ history.

To ensure a high level of coordination with WDI throughout the projects, ADKS opened a formal design and management presence in Pasadena, California. That studio still exists today, employing over a dozen creative designers, technical designers and project managers to support all our clients’ projects.

Having a laugh with museum work

While our theme park attractions had visitors clamoring for selfies, one museum project had them rolling in the aisles.

With more than 50 immersive experiences referencing everything from early vaudeville acts to the latest viral memes, The National Comedy Center in Lucille Ball’s hometown of Jamestown, NY, is definitely a laughing matter.

The Comedy Center documents the history of comedy and its artists, producers, writers, and cartoonists, lifting the curtain on their creative processes.

Writers Room at the National Comedy CenterImage credit Jay Rosenblatt Photography

Working with JRA (now RWS Global), Adirondack Studios provided the construction documentation, fabrication, and installation of these uproarious experiences, including custom fabricating scenic elements, creating graphics and signage, procuring props, and integrating with media, A/V, and lighting.

As soon as the red carpet was rolled out for the museum’s first guests, National Comedy Center received numerous accolades, including USA Today 10Best’s “Best New Museum”, one of TIME’s “World’s Greatest Places”, and one of the “Best Museums in the Country” by Conde Nast Traveler.

Intermission and a next act

All signs pointed to the 2020s being a banner decade for Adirondack Studios.

Their global teams were partnering with Universal on scenic landscapes for the Kung Fu Panda boat ride attraction in Beijing, celebrating the Millennium Falcon’s first flight in Orlando and Anaheim, and building two grand pavilions for the 2020 World Expo that were poised to impress.

As 2019 came to a close, rumblings began to circulate of a new, devastating, and highly contagious virus with the off-putting medical label SARS-CoV-2. The virus soon leapfrogged around the globe, and by the ides of March 2020, the doors to the United States and many other countries slammed shut.

Stores sold out of masks. Zoom meetings became de rigueur. Theme parks, theaters and museums closed their doors as attendance disappeared overnight, letting go of staff by the thousands with no real sense of when they would be coming back.

It also meant that their vendors were left high and dry, with projects suspended or canceled. Who needed a new dark ride if no one was lining up for it? Why order an opera set if the theater was empty? How do we preserve employees’ jobs if there’s nothing for them to do?

Wegmans rooster, constructed during pandemic

Just when the situation for Adirondack Studios seemed its most dire, a long-term client proved to be an economic lifeline that not only sustained ADKS financially but kept the team working and tools operating.

That legacy client was Wegmans Food Markets, with whom Adirondack Studios had been working for the past two decades. As a supermarket chain, they were an essential business. As one of their vendors providing services with opening and renovating their stores, Adirondack Studios was named essential as well.

Having received its mandate and reopened its doors, ADKS established rigorously enforced procedures and safeguards to ensure that its shop and office environments were safe, clean, and virus-free, so no one could unwittingly transmit infection.

After a brief but challenging intermission, the company was ready for its next act.

Adirondack Studios approaches a milestone

As the world reemerged from its Covid cocoon, ADKS kept a brisk pace to make up for lost time.

Once it was safe to do so, the company went right back to work with Disney, producing Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, Disney’s first backwards launched roller coaster; Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, a trackless dark ride through a cartoon universe; and the reinvention of Splash Mountain flume ride as Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.

By 2025, Adirondack Studios had received 28 Themed Entertainment Association Thea Awards for its work, most recently with Fantasy Springs at Tokyo DisneySea.

Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway

But as the company hammered away at its theme park projects, public art and live performance, core to the company's existence since 1975, continued to play heavily in ADKS’ repertoire.

Five Echoes, a temporary exhibit at Art Basel celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Chanel No. 5 and designed by famed British artist Es Devlin, featured a labyrinth of five-concentric circles. Each circle led to a core adorned with sundial-like markings illuminated by the sun.

The installation, while temporary, was planted with a forest of 2,000 trees that would outlive it.

Adirondack Studios transformed the scent of Chanel No. 5 into light, sound, and custom-fabricated sculpture, partnering with designers, coordinators, and the city of Miami to bring the essence of the fragrance to life, handling logistics, management, and installation.

Five Echoes for Chanel

But among all of ADKS' clients, perhaps the greatest example of "art as show" has been Meow Wolf.

Convergence Station, Meow Wolf’s new Denver, Colorado installation and its largest to-date, is a fully immersive walk-through arts experience and event venue set in an interdimensional transport hub that links Earth to the Convergence of Worlds, created from fragments of four planets fusing together.

Using unique materials and unconventional building methodologies, ADKS’ team members and Meow Wolf’s artists succeeded in creating a kaleidoscopic sensorial wonderland that continues to delight, engage, and mystify visitors daily.

Meow Wolf's Convergence Station

And of course, from X: The Life and Times of Malcom X at the Metropolitan Opera to A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Joffrey Ballet, the shows continued to go on, just as they had nearly five decades prior.

The next 50...

Today, a visit to Adirondack Studios’ sprawling facilities around the world offers a cacophony of noise and a wonderland of surprises, where days are anything but typical.

Artisans may be applying paint and age to walls for a new Universal thrill ride, carving sinister rock formations from high-density Styrofoam for a Hersheypark Dark Nights haunted house, or crafting whimsical fiberglass airplanes to soar above candy displays in a Bahrain confectionery shop.

Or they could be creating a massive fiberglass snake for a world-renowned artist, constructing 20-foot-tall bibles for an opera company, or taking delivery of paint, metal, or sheets of polycarbonate that will be used to embellish a renovated water coaster, a global brand headquarters, or an engaging museum exhibit.

ADKS' 50th anniversary celebration in Orlando

While the projects and processes may change, it is the people that remain key to Adirondack Studios’ DNA - the hundreds of artisans, designers, project managers, craftspeople, salespeople, and more who have shown up for five decades to literally make a scene, day after day, month after month, year after year.

As the company reached its milestone birthday in 2025, it held seven celebrations around the world to personally express its thanks to every employee.

From three founders and that 6,000-square-foot building in Warrensburg, New York, to 300 employees in six locations around the world, the last fifty years have brought challenges and change, growth and loss, new markets and decades-long partnerships.

As Adirondack Studios charts its future, the company will continue to explore new innovations while always maintaining its commitment to artistry, making a scene wherever needed for many years to come.

Members of the Adirondack Studios team will be at USITT in Long Beach, CA, from 18 to 21 March, China Attractions Expo in Beijing, China, from 19 to 21 March, and the Themed Entertainment Association’s INSPIRE Week and Thea Awards Gala from 29 April to 2 May. Attendees can schedule an appointment by email.