Designing the extraordinary at Walt Disney Imagineering

Over a 30-year career in theme park design, Disney’s Scott Trowbridge has been the creative force behind some of the world’s most successful and ground-breaking theme park attractions. 

From Universal’s Iconic Spider-Man ride to Disney’s game-changing Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, Trowbridge has been instrumental in delivering epic attractions that have changed the way visitors experience theme parks.

We sat down with Scott to discuss his career, theme park design and the enduring power of storytelling.

Imagineering at 70

Last year marked the 70th anniversary of Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI), the design and production division of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products. WDI was set up as Walt Disney’s personal innovation think-tank.

It is the creative powerhouse that designs and builds all the Disney theme parks, resorts, attractions, and cruise ships. WDI now employs thousands of “Imagineers” across the world.

As senior creative executive at WDI, Trowbridge currently leads a number of projects and initiatives.

With CEO Bob Iger recently announcing a whopping $17 billion investment in Walt Disney World over the next ten years and the continuing appeal of the Star Wars brand, Trowbridge is as busy as ever.

Creating experiences

Growing up in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri, Trowbridge played percussion in the school marching band, acted in its theatre productions, and sang in the choir. 

“I was enamoured by this idea,” he says, “that you could provide extraordinary experiences for other people and that gives them a sense of wonder.”

He first visited Disneyland as a child with his family. Even then he had a keen interest in how the attractions functioned. “I was the worst 7-year-old to visit the park because I was constantly thinking, ‘How did they do that?’”

USC School of Cinematic Arts

In the early 90s, Trowbridge gained a place at the University of Southern California’s prestigious School of Cinematic Arts (SCA).  Established in 1929 by film star Douglas Fairbanks (best known for his swashbuckling Zorro and Robin Hood roles), it has been ranked the number-one film program in the world.

Its alumni include legends of cinema such as Ray Harryhausen and Star Wars creator George Lucas. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige is another graduate.

At SCA, aside from learning “so much about what not to do”, Trowbridge says he learned the importance of storytelling. “I think it’s at the heart of who we are as humans. We experience the world through narrative examples … that’s just how we’re wired”.

He also learned the importance of teamwork. To create anything of scale, “whether in cinema, theatre or themed entertainment, it requires big teams that pull together lots of different expertise. All of them in the service of a shared creative vision.”

“That was one of the real important things that I took out of that film school experience. You bring a bunch of subject matter experts together, and focus them towards a cohesive, singular, common creative goal.”

Creating attractions

Trowbridge started his 15-year tenure at Universal Creative, the design and development arm of Universal Parks and Resorts, in 1992.

There he helped develop the Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, a revolutionary ride at the time. One of the first media-based attractions, it combined moving vehicles with projection and 3-D technology.

He also led the project team on Revenge of the Mummy, another hybrid ride – part dark ride, part coaster –  and oversaw the early development of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which opened at Universal Orlando’s Islands of Adventure in 2010.

Moving to Disney in 2007, Trowbridge led Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development in finding opportunities to combine various media and technologies to tell new stories and create innovative entertainment experiences. He also ran Disney’s Blue Sky Design Studio, developing new ideas for Disney experiences worldwide.

After Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm, Disney created a new portfolio at Imagineering in 2014. Headed up by Trowbridge, the group manages the global strategic and creative development of all the Lucasfilm and Star Wars projects in Disney’s parks & resorts around the world.

He was creative lead for Disney Parks’ Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge themed lands, and most recently the immersive resort experience Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser at Walt Disney World.

Designing the Magic

Over three decades of designing theme park rides and attractions, Trowbridge has seen the tools change, if not the process itself.

“In most of the important ways [design] hasn’t changed since the days of Aristotle. Because the human experience hasn’t fundamentally changed.”

“But the way we go about it has. Tools like AI and rapid prototyping tools allow us to accelerate the work.” 

Another change has been the ability to engage people at a distance. Recently there would have been “a lot of people flying to come and look at a prototype that might have taken three weeks to build.  Now that prototype can be generated a lot faster, and we can share it and collaborate across the globe instantaneously. “

See also: Environmental sustainability: going green at Disney

A shared virtualization environment is a big change too.

Trowbridge says that the ability to share work in an augmented reality (AR) or mixed reality (MR) environment is significant. “We’ve been doing this in VR (virtual reality) for probably ten years.

“But there’s something different in VR when you’re wearing the big goggles and you can’t really see the other person. Now, (in an AR/MR environment) you’re still seeing that virtual object. We’re all seeing that same virtual object, but we’re also seeing each other. 

Technology

Imagineers are always asking questions, he says, “How do we make better experiences? How do we make them more efficiently? How do we connect with our audiences better and tell better stories?”

“We’re constantly kind of R&Ding, not just the stuff that we do, not just the stuff the guests see, but also our own process.”

For example, says Trowbridge, “We scan the park with a LiDAR scanner (a remote sensing method using light to measure distances). You end up with a point cloud, which is a representation of the built environment. But it doesn’t necessarily give you the information about how those dots should be connected.

“Somebody sitting down and saying, okay, I see this point cloud, I see all these dots. I think that’s a tree but now I’ve got to do the dot connection to turn it into a 3D model.”

“So, now there is new AI technology that takes a best guess at how to connect those dots. It turns a point cloud into a working mesh. That’s a game-changer for us. Because even today it’s still largely a manual process.”

The advent of drones

Disney has been leading the way in using drone technology in its parks. Last year marked the first time a Disney Park had used drones in an outdoor spectacular, as Disneyland Paris launched its award-winning Disney D-Light show.

The state-of-the-art night-time drone display is the result of a collaboration between Disneyland Paris and French company Dronisos, an official technology supplier for the park.

“The sky is such an incredible canvas for us”, says Trowbridge. “It’s a highlight of our guest experience to close the day out with one of our epic, Disney-level, end-of-day firework spectaculars. Over the years, we’ve added other things to the palette. We’ve added projection, other kinds of lighting effects and flying characters. And then with the advent of drones, we’ve been able to add even more.

Another collaboration with Dronisos, also at Disneyland Paris, was the $13 million Avengers: Power the Night. The eight-minute show was Disney’s first daily drone show featuring Marvel characters.

“We recently launched a new show in Paris. The drones are both on stage, but also, they’re off stage. There’s an amazing collection of drones in formation lit up. And that’s one way to use smaller drones. But we’ve used huge drones too, the size of a van. That we don’t necessarily even want you to know it’s a drone. That’s a lot of what we do at our parks. We try to hide the magic.”

See also: Marvels heroes swing into Disney’s Avengers Campus

Making (and hiding) the Magic

Renowned science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke famously said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.

Trowbridge says he “lives by that quote”. The job of the Imagineer is all about finding ways to make guests suspend their disbelief.  “And what Walt Disney did was to try to make magic real and that is what we are trying to do today.

“Some people really want to know how the magician does the trick.” But Trowbridge feels that knowing how the magic works is, “never as wondrous.

“It turns it from a moment of wonder into a moment of skilful appreciation of an amazing bit of engineering.  From awe and wonder to a human level. Both are great. But I like to have that awe and wonder part forward, most magicians do too”.

See also: The spirit of innovation at Disney Parks and Resorts

With technology advancing at a rapid pace what tools is he looking forward to using that are, as yet, just over the horizon?

 “What I would really like is for us to be able to tackle large-scale light field displays”, Trowbridge says, “We can do small-scale light field displays. We just can’t do large-scale light field displays. Give it a couple of years, we’re working on it.”

Guest behaviour and LARPing

Disney has been developing its expertise in live-action role-playing (LARPing) for over a decade, understanding how to encourage guests to not just immerse themselves in a narrative, but to become active participants in it.

Back in 2015, Trowbridge told The Verge, “We’re spending a lot of time making sure we get awesome at deeply immersive, participatory experiences.” Though developing technology was clearly enabling this, he added that, “culture is inviting us to do this, I believe there’s a changing form of narrative.”

Its first attempt, Legend of the Fortuna, was an immersive adventure playtest. The feedback from guests was great. However, it was almost impossible to create at scale. It needed 50 people behind the scenes reacting in real-time as the narrative progressed.

But, says Trowbridge, “We learned a lot about behaviour, and how to involve guests in an experience. ‘Do I have to wear a hat?’, that was one mom’s red line. There was also an interactive experience, a sort of social media meets storytelling experience called The Optimist. Again, it was successful, but the challenge was creating such an experience at scale.”

Immersed in the story

One way in which Disney is changing the theme park experience is the visitor’s relationship to the story. Guests can have a role not just as a character in a story but in fundamentally shaping the narrative.

What Imagineers aim to do, says Trowbridge, is “create emotionally meaningful transformative shared experiences.

“At Disney, we’re there to entertain our guests. We’re not there to challenge them. That ability to put yourself in the story, to become a character or a version of a character that you want to play in one of our immersive experiences is amazing. And when we have given our guests (and our cast too) the opportunity to be more of a participant in these stories and not just a spectator, they have really, really, sparked that.

“And I think we’ve found that the vast majority of our guests really, really love that. We talk to our guests every day in our parks and destinations around the world. We’re doing research every single day.

“So, we have a pretty good sense of what’s working and not working. Not only are we talking to them, but our fan base is very, very vocal and lets us know what they’re thinking about what we do all the time, every day.”

Extending the storytelling experience

Whilst Galaxy’s Edge took theme park design to a new level, utilising fourth wall-breaking theatrical devices, escape rooms, horror-based experiences and more, it also marked a step forward in storytelling. Not only is the in-park experience highly immersive, with guests engaged with the narrative in a richly themed world, but that same story extends well beyond the park itself.

“We just released a new edition of our virtual reality experience, Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, an enhanced edition that was released with the new PlayStation VR headset. So for Galaxy’s Edge, people can’t come to our parks all day, but they still want to participate in that world and feel connected to it and have an experience in it.”

“One of the great things about Disney is that we have expertise in multiple forms of storytelling. So that a story or character that might start in the parks, might also show up in a VR experience or a streaming show or in a movie. We can connect across these platforms.”

So, Disney has created a rich content ecosystem, including not just the theme park attractions themselves but also books, games, music, and merchandise.  This allows the guest to continue to engage with the story and characters on demand, however, and whenever they want to.

Inspiring Imagineers

Imagineers, as Trowbridge points out, are not just creators of content but also consumers and fans of experiences themselves.

In London recently, he and his colleagues saw the Abba Voyage show. A 3-D, immersive virtual concert in a custom-built arena, the experience has garnered rave reviews.

See also: Tron Lightcycle/Run, how sound can transport guests to another world

Trowbridge thought it was, “just really, well done. A special call out to our partners at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) who did the imagery. I just thought it was amazing. That’s a great example of how we can suspend our disbelief and become a participant in an experience as opposed to just a spectator. People were up on their feet, they were dancing and singing.”

“There are other great immersive experiences happening around the world, a lot in London, and here in Los Angeles too.”

Trowbridge and his team are always asking themselves, “What are the cool new games? Where are the cool new immersive experiences? What are cool new parks doing? What are great restaurants?”

“We must be 3 or 4 steps ahead of our audience in terms of seeing where cool and fun is going. We also have to be thinking over the horizon in terms of new technology. With the supercomputer that people carry in their pockets now and wearables, there’s more stuff coming that we know about. [This technology will] influence that world. It’s all stuff to pay attention to and be inspired by and be excited about.”

Imagineering in a galaxy far, far away

Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012 and Trowbridge leads the portfolio at Disney dedicated to all things Star Wars and Lucasfilm. However, the iconic brand had in fact been part of the Disney Parks experience since 1987 when the original Star Tours opened. This was a motion simulator attraction and the first attraction based on a non-Disney licensed intellectual property.

 Trowbridge had been thinking about creating an even more immersive Star Wars experience years before the acquisition of Lucasfilm.

“People have been living and dreaming about Star Wars for 40 years”. Trowbridge says, “So [once Lucasfilm became part of the Disney family] I thought, ‘Oh, we really gotta figure something out here.’

“And so, when we began developing what would become Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the idea for a multi-day immersive companion experience was part of that right from the start.”

“It took us a little bit of time to crack the code on what we thought it should be, which is why it didn’t open with Galaxy’s Edge. But we developed these ideas hand-in-hand. This is why the characters and stories connect so seamlessly. Right from the start, they were designed to be companion experiences.”

Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser offers an unprecedented blend of state-of-the-art technology, rich storytelling, and immersive theatre. It is a two-day, two-night experience driven by a set of interlocking, interwoven stories.

“There’s nothing else like it in the world,” says Trowbridge. “You’re in a story and truly invited to participate. It is a very, very special experiment”.

‘We’ve learned a ton”

An experiment is the keyword there. Disney recently confirmed that Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser would make its final voyage on Sept. 28 of this year. Trowbridge says he is proud of what the team delivered, as Galactic Starcruiser is one of the highest-rated experiences across Walt Disney World.

“Our guests take the time to really talk to us about their experience there. Many of them have had life-changing experiences.

“Because we’re inviting them to step into this kind of safe sandbox. But they can engage in decisions that are fundamental about, good versus evil, personal responsibility versus group responsibility.

“You invite people into these fun stories. And when people engage with them, they start having very, strong connections with these characters and to the version of themselves that they’re exploring.”

“And they take the time to send us letters or emails: it’s really touching. These are stories of families that haven’t played together for years, having an opportunity to play together, kids that have come out of their shells. It’s a safe environment in which they can explore and expand their understanding of who they want to be in the world (or galaxy).”

“We went into this knowing that nothing like this had ever been done before. But we thought we’re never going to get good at this kind of thing if we don’t start. I’m so proud to have been part of the team that brought Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser to life. We’ve learned a ton. And we’re already thinking about what we might do next”.

What is WDI working on now?

In addition to CEO Bob Iger’s announcement of the huge investment in Walt Disney World (which, he added, would create up to 13,000 new jobs), Disney Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro has also announced ambitious new “blue sky projects”.

He released concept art for a possible expansion at Magic Kingdom, posing the question of what lies beyond Big Thunder Mountain. Attractions could be based on Disney animation IPs including Coco and Encanto. He also revealed another potential project for Animal Kingdom, a Moana/Zootopia retheme of DinoLand USA.

So, Trowbridge is as busy as ever. “Our CEO also announced that we’re bringing an Avatar-based experience to the Disneyland Resort.

“And it’s great to be working with Jim Cameron and Jon Landau again. I worked with them very early on the Walt Disney World version at Animal Kingdom. And so, working with them again on a new version is fun.”

And there is more to come from a galaxy far, far away. Trowbridge recently revealed that there will be new Star Tours destinations for 2024. As he says, “The sun never sets on Star Wars. There are new Star Wars experiences coming.”

Creating these entire themed worlds is not easy, he says. “It is a very challenging thing to do. And there are very long days and nights and a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But we do it for the audiences, we do it for the fans. That’s what makes it all worthwhile, helping people make their own memories and bringing them some joy and wonder.”

All images copyright Disney except Revenge of the Mummy Universal Studios, LiDAR scanned Millennium Falcon and castle courtesy Emily Zawacki and Scott Trowbridge images courtesy Scott Trowbridge.