Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everybody,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette. I
Speaker 1: am an editor at how stuff works dot com. Believe
Speaker 1: it or not, sitting across from me as he always does.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, I guess you could believe it. That'd be
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Guest, you gotta pull yourself together.
Speaker 1: You enjoy that, don't you. Yeah. So we have a
Speaker 1: little listener mail to lead into this podcast. So let's
Speaker 1: queue Liz with the sound effect. This listener mail comes
Speaker 1: from Paul, and Paul says, Hi, I'm enjoying listening to
Speaker 1: your podcast, and I wanted to add a new topic
Speaker 1: to the tech stuff agenda. I'm a fan of theme
Speaker 1: park rides and attraction show effects, and I always wanted
Speaker 1: to know how some of them work. I love the
Speaker 1: ride Haunted Mansion at the Disney Parks. There's an effect
Speaker 1: called the Pepper Ghost where they make the ghost appear
Speaker 1: to come out of the wall and into your vehicle.
Speaker 1: I would like to know the tech behind this effect. Thanks,
Speaker 1: and hope this topic is fun. Paul. Paul, you happen
Speaker 1: to have sent this into at least one avowed Disney fanatic,
Speaker 1: which would be yours. Truly, I believe Chris is a
Speaker 1: bit of a fan as well. Yes, definitely so um.
Speaker 1: I have been to the Walt Disney World Park more
Speaker 1: than thirty times. I've been to Disneyland probably around seven
Speaker 1: or eight times. I have not yet been to the
Speaker 1: ones in Europe or or in Asia. But yeah, clearly
Speaker 1: I have a special place in my heart for the
Speaker 1: Disney um, the Disney Park attractions. So we're going to
Speaker 1: answer your question about the pepper ghost effect. But actually
Speaker 1: before we do that, we thought we'd talked about a
Speaker 1: bigger topic, which is imagineering. Yes, well, imagineering um sort
Speaker 1: of a it's sort of an obvious portmanteau, if you will, Yes,
Speaker 1: of imagination. It's always great to be able to use
Speaker 1: the word portmanteau. Yes it is. Yes, thank you very much,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry i interrupted you just as you were
Speaker 1: explaining it. Please say it again that it is about
Speaker 1: imagination and engineering. And I'm not even sure that Disney
Speaker 1: was the first to have come up with this term.
Speaker 1: But they have embraced it wholeheartedly. Yes, to the point
Speaker 1: where there's now actually Walt Disney Imagineering. It's a it's
Speaker 1: an actual division within the company. Oh yes, yes, as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, headquarters. Sorry I didn't mean enough.
Speaker 1: That's okay, go ahead. And I have a had a
Speaker 1: friend in high school who whose dream it was to
Speaker 1: become an imagineer. So I'm not sure how far he's
Speaker 1: gone with that, but it's it sounds like any job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a pretty amazing job. Also sounds like
Speaker 1: it could potentially be a very frustrating job. But well
Speaker 1: we'll go into why that is in a minute. And
Speaker 1: when I say frustrating, I just mean that. Imagine that
Speaker 1: your job is to come up with amaze attractions for
Speaker 1: the Walt Disney Company. And we're talking about from top
Speaker 1: to bottom, from every single element of design you can
Speaker 1: think of, including what sort of story it's supposed to
Speaker 1: tell or what sort of mood it's supposed to evoke,
Speaker 1: and then knowing that there's a fairly good chance that
Speaker 1: your idea will either only partially make it into reality
Speaker 1: or never make it into reality, because as we all know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't. Not every idea is going to
Speaker 1: come to fruition. Some things are just going to fall
Speaker 1: down to budget, some things are going to fall down
Speaker 1: to space issues or timing. So, um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a job that gives you amazing opportunities, but
Speaker 1: you also have to realize that not everything you come
Speaker 1: up with is ever going to see the light of day.
Speaker 1: But let's let's talk about imagineering in a in kind
Speaker 1: of a broad sense. So Disney himself, uh kind of
Speaker 1: fostered this. This a set of disciplines and his his
Speaker 1: set of standards were very very high, very exact, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to be able to create a park where
Speaker 1: he could have families come and and enjoy themselves as
Speaker 1: families and experience attractions that brought them into another world. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's beyond the the basic uh amusement park, um
Speaker 1: uh paradigm. I was gonna say, so the amusement park paradigm.
Speaker 1: I was like, I was trying to come up with
Speaker 1: something besides paradigm because I didn't want to get to
Speaker 1: uh to snooty. But I mean, I guess I'll just
Speaker 1: embrace it. So yeah, the amusement park paradigm where you've
Speaker 1: got all these different rides and and you know, maybe
Speaker 1: some food stalls and things like that. There's not really
Speaker 1: any rhyme or reason to the way it's laid out
Speaker 1: other than the fact that you don't want to have
Speaker 1: all the food areas right next to all the rides
Speaker 1: that spin you around and around and around. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to stop people anyway. Well, yeah, some park
Speaker 1: designers actually get that, and they don't put the stuff
Speaker 1: that makes you get nausea nauseated rather right next to
Speaker 1: the food. At any rate, Disney wanted to go beyond that.
Speaker 1: He wanted to have a park where you had very
Speaker 1: specific areas that kind of had a thematic continuity to them,
Speaker 1: and that you would have a real experience as you
Speaker 1: moved through the park and it wouldn't just be you know,
Speaker 1: making a bee line from one ride to the next
Speaker 1: and maybe stopping to eat some time along the way.
Speaker 1: And uh, this is really a revolutionary idea at the
Speaker 1: time that we're talking about, the nineteen fifties right now,
Speaker 1: back when Disney was was working on on the parks
Speaker 1: the originally UM and he really stressed this to the
Speaker 1: people who worked for him. Um, he said that this
Speaker 1: is something that really is important. He's not gonna compromise
Speaker 1: on this at all. Disney is not known for compromising,
Speaker 1: and so that's kind of where the whole concept of
Speaker 1: the imagineer came from. Now, at the time, there wasn't
Speaker 1: really a formalized, you know, set of criteria that you know,
Speaker 1: what makes an imagineer apart from someone who's working for
Speaker 1: Disney is trying to create attractions. Well, yeah, as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, I'm not sure that it is, uh
Speaker 1: you could really call it a standardized thing. Now I
Speaker 1: read uh some information on Disney's website about the the
Speaker 1: imagineer core as they're calling it. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: more than a hundred and fifty disciplines uh that make
Speaker 1: up the imagineer group. So I mean with that, you've
Speaker 1: got a very broad sense of you know, what an
Speaker 1: imagineer may be asked to do. Um. You know, there
Speaker 1: could be anything from design, visual design, to the mechanics,
Speaker 1: you know, the planning, the planning like Disney did, where
Speaker 1: you were orchestrating the the entire environment and an immersive
Speaker 1: experience for the park visitor. Uh, you know, those kinds
Speaker 1: of things. All sort of fall into the purview, the
Speaker 1: overall purview of the here I am being snood the purview,
Speaker 1: um but really into into their field of imagineering. So
Speaker 1: they could be you could have a mechanical engineer and
Speaker 1: an electrical electrical engineer and somebody who's into the graphic
Speaker 1: design of the whole thing, and they're all working together
Speaker 1: within that whole unit. So it's really diversified quite a bit.
Speaker 1: You could even have a writer, sure, because a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, a lot of the attractions at at
Speaker 1: the Disney parks tell a story, and in some cases
Speaker 1: it may be that the writer is not necessarily writing dialogue,
Speaker 1: but is instead writing the progression of the story and
Speaker 1: how the story moves from one element to the next,
Speaker 1: and that kind of defines the experience that the the writer,
Speaker 1: that the guest in Disney terms, is going to experience. Well,
Speaker 1: go ahead, and so I was gonna say that, um
Speaker 1: As I was preparing for the podcast, I watched a
Speaker 1: video interview with um an imagine your named Asa Kalama,
Speaker 1: who has a whole series of DVDs out called The
Speaker 1: Science of Disney Imagineering. It's a it's an educational series
Speaker 1: for kids people who are interested in uh science, and
Speaker 1: trying to trying to get kids interested in science in school.
Speaker 1: Um by sort of putting it in the framework of
Speaker 1: what an imagineer does and how they do cool stuff
Speaker 1: for Disney. Well, um, he said, the very first thing
Speaker 1: that they start out with is the story. That is
Speaker 1: the most important part because that's basically where they jump
Speaker 1: in and take off. So you know, you're right, I mean,
Speaker 1: in a writer writer's perspective is one of the very
Speaker 1: first things that they look at because it people come
Speaker 1: to them with ideas and say, we want to make
Speaker 1: this happen. And it's a very cinematic kind of experience
Speaker 1: with a lot of these attractions. So when you're talking
Speaker 1: about a writer, you may have dialogue. For instance, they're
Speaker 1: plenty of rides that have lots of dialogue in them.
Speaker 1: The Pirates of the Caribbean ride has lots and lots
Speaker 1: of dialogue and and a lot of it is really funny,
Speaker 1: clever stuff that you have to kind of listen for
Speaker 1: it to pick up on because it's very directional. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, there might be a pirate that's often one
Speaker 1: corner who's muttering something and it's absolutely hysterical. But if
Speaker 1: because there's so much other stuff going on in your
Speaker 1: field of view, you may not even notice it, um,
Speaker 1: which is you know, you do tend to notice it
Speaker 1: if you're like me and you have ridden parts of
Speaker 1: the Caribbean more times than you can count, sometimes more
Speaker 1: times than you can count in a single day. UM.
Speaker 1: So the writers will write not necessarily just the dialogue,
Speaker 1: but also the everything, like the action around it, and
Speaker 1: you know, like there's a sword fight going on, like
Speaker 1: if you if you ride the Disneyland version of Pirates
Speaker 1: of the Caribbean. Uh, there's a point in the ride,
Speaker 1: pretty early on in the ride where you can see
Speaker 1: the silhouettes of people fighting. Uh. And it's projected against
Speaker 1: a sale. Uh. So it's in this you see this,
Speaker 1: and you see the silhouettes of of figures fighting each other,
Speaker 1: and it's actually a pretty amusing fight. And there's several
Speaker 1: different sequences to the fight. It's not in the Disney
Speaker 1: World version, or at least it wasn't the last time
Speaker 1: I wrote it. Uh. But the that kind of thing
Speaker 1: again is something that the writer would have to come
Speaker 1: up with. And then of course you've got things like
Speaker 1: actors who are involved in this who have to record
Speaker 1: all the different voices or act out the parts. And really,
Speaker 1: when you when you factor in all the elements that
Speaker 1: come into making an attraction work, you really start to
Speaker 1: realize how huge a task it is for these imagineers.
Speaker 1: And now, when when we talk about the early imagineers,
Speaker 1: they were multitaskers, Like we have very specific kind of
Speaker 1: roles that imagineers take up now, Like you've got like
Speaker 1: an entire department of illustrators, departments of you know, graphic designers, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the engineers, all that kind of stuff. The
Speaker 1: early imagineers were sort of jack of all trades. A
Speaker 1: lot of them, I mean a lot of them were
Speaker 1: doing multiple roles in order to build the early early
Speaker 1: attractions like Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion,
Speaker 1: things like that, or it's a small world after all,
Speaker 1: or just it's a small world that after all is
Speaker 1: the song um any rate they had, those early ones
Speaker 1: had to do a lot of these things, all them
Speaker 1: by themselves or in small groups. So it's actually kind
Speaker 1: of a monumental task for a small group to to
Speaker 1: be able to come together and design and build this
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Um often as as Chris said, they'll
Speaker 1: start with an idea for a story, for an attraction,
Speaker 1: or for an area of a park. Because they don't
Speaker 1: just design the rides. They also design everything that Disney
Speaker 1: does that has a physical presence. Right, So like if
Speaker 1: you walk down Main Street, main Street was designed by imagineers.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's not necessarily that you don't just
Speaker 1: think of the rides. You gotta think about every single
Speaker 1: element of the park. Or the Disney cruise ships. The
Speaker 1: cruise ships were designed by imagineers who were working with
Speaker 1: ship designers because clearly you can't just you know, you
Speaker 1: can't just take someone who has great ideas and tell
Speaker 1: them build a boat. They need to know the principles
Speaker 1: behind the cruise ship industry in order to really design
Speaker 1: it properly. Right. But at any rate, uh, everything Disney does,
Speaker 1: even to the Disney stores, imagineers are involved in credit
Speaker 1: there has made Disney stores now as there used to be. Well,
Speaker 1: the Disney has decided to end its contract with the
Speaker 1: company they were using to outsource the stores too. So
Speaker 1: the Disney stores now, uh, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: are all being run by Disney itself. But they cut
Speaker 1: down the number of the stores results of that, which
Speaker 1: I imagine is part of the imagineering. Um, it's not
Speaker 1: quite as much of a tangent as you might think,
Speaker 1: because I think it's probable that the imagineers will have
Speaker 1: a greater hand in the Disney run stores than they
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily have had with a third party to be
Speaker 1: able to guide that experience, and that it actually is
Speaker 1: representative of what Disney, the Disney philosophy is. UM. Once
Speaker 1: they have the story idea, then they have to start
Speaker 1: thinking what what kind of direction are they going to
Speaker 1: move in? Like when it comes to coming up with
Speaker 1: an attraction, UM, usually they'll they'll try and think of, well,
Speaker 1: what sort of experience do we want the guests to have?
Speaker 1: And then how can we achieve that? And uh, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of really interesting examples of that out
Speaker 1: on the parks. I mean, Sore in California is a
Speaker 1: good one. Oh, that's an excellent that's an excellent example.
Speaker 1: They wanted to create a ride that would give guests
Speaker 1: the the feeling that they were flying over the California countryside.
Speaker 1: But then they had to figure out, well, how are
Speaker 1: we going to do this? And uh, it was one
Speaker 1: of those things where various imagineers were working on the
Speaker 1: problem trying to come up with a viable solution, and
Speaker 1: several were proposed, and the one that was ultimately chosen
Speaker 1: was this interesting arrangement where people would sit down and
Speaker 1: what looks like a theater, but then uh would be
Speaker 1: raised up off the floor in tears. So each row
Speaker 1: would become a level of of this ride. We're not
Speaker 1: we're not talking crying here, no no t I E
Speaker 1: R S tears. But it was it was a really
Speaker 1: neat approach to that idea, I mean, because you really
Speaker 1: do start thinking like, well, how do we achieve this
Speaker 1: this effect? Um And there have been a lot of
Speaker 1: proposed Disney attractions that never went anywhere that I still
Speaker 1: would love to see. The one that I still kind
Speaker 1: of want to see, and I can understand why it
Speaker 1: would Disney has not done it yet is a Villain's Land. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there there. There's been talked before about creating a Disney
Speaker 1: Villain Park or a Disney Villain Land within an existing
Speaker 1: park that would have a lot of thrill rides in it.
Speaker 1: They were themed after the Disney Villains, and I have
Speaker 1: a soft spot in my heart for the Disney villains. UM,
Speaker 1: Captain Hook in particular, I can't imagine why it's a
Speaker 1: bad form shooting a man in the middle of his candenza.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and I would love to see that happened. Uh.
Speaker 1: But again, that's one of those things where imagineers have
Speaker 1: worked on these ideas for years and years and years.
Speaker 1: It may never happen. So that's kind of that frustration
Speaker 1: element we were talking about. Um. Now, Disney's coming through
Speaker 1: the imagineering program, They've come up with a lot of technology.
Speaker 1: They've developed technologies that were pioneered by Disney. Imagineers were
Speaker 1: talking about things like audio animatronics. Well, yeah, because I
Speaker 1: mean that's one of the earliest, right. Sure, they use
Speaker 1: audio animatronics and a lot of their early early attractions
Speaker 1: like the Tiki Room, parts of the Caribbean Haunted Mansion. Um.
Speaker 1: I believe you didn't mention a Lincoln I was going
Speaker 1: to get their Hall of Presidents. Um. Yeah. The this
Speaker 1: audio animatronic technology was was revolutionary and um, it's also
Speaker 1: really complicated. It was mechanical as opposed to electrical. Um.
Speaker 1: We since have moved beyond sort of the audio animatronic
Speaker 1: age to more of a digital age. But that's that
Speaker 1: technology is still in use in many of the Disney parks.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was that was pioneered by Disney imagineers,
Speaker 1: and and that's not the only technology that Disney kind
Speaker 1: of really pushed forward and developed. That's true. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're the examples that they use on
Speaker 1: the on the website to um. Another would be the
Speaker 1: Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, although I don't know that
Speaker 1: I'll ever Actually I've never been a fan of the
Speaker 1: free fall ride, so I'm not sure that I will
Speaker 1: go to see it in person. It's really not as
Speaker 1: bad as you think, because I had a really bad
Speaker 1: experience on a free fall ride and I was reticent
Speaker 1: to ride Detailer of Terror, and then I went ahead
Speaker 1: and wrote it and realized, you know what, this is
Speaker 1: actually a fun ride, and it it's way more gentle
Speaker 1: on your system than you would expect it to be.
Speaker 1: The breaking system in particular, there's really really gradual and
Speaker 1: and gentle on you, so you don't feel like that
Speaker 1: horrible jerky motion that you usually get with free fall
Speaker 1: rides once you get to the bottom. Yeah, I'm more
Speaker 1: familiar with the haunted mansion style, you know, which we're
Speaker 1: going to get into in just a second. So we've
Speaker 1: we've kind of talked about what imagineers do in the
Speaker 1: sense that you know that they they embrace many different disciplines. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're all about telling a story or creating a show.
Speaker 1: Because Disney parks are supposed to be a show. That's why. Uh,
Speaker 1: the employees are not called employees at Disney parks. They're
Speaker 1: called cast members because they're part of a show. And
Speaker 1: they even will refer to things being on stage versus backstage.
Speaker 1: So you can take backstage tours of some of the
Speaker 1: Disney parks. I've taken one and it was fascinating, But
Speaker 1: you can't take pictures. You not in most areas. Yes,
Speaker 1: in most areas you are not allowed to take photos. Also, uh,
Speaker 1: a backstage tour is not recommended for people who don't
Speaker 1: want the magic ruined, and a sense that if you
Speaker 1: know how it works, if that's going to ruin it
Speaker 1: for you, you should not go take the tour. Also,
Speaker 1: I should mention that when we get into talking about
Speaker 1: the Haunted Mansion, if you don't want to know how
Speaker 1: the effects on the Haunted Mansion work, stop the podcast
Speaker 1: because we are going to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: some of the things that Disney does in order to
Speaker 1: give you those effects. And if you don't want to
Speaker 1: know it, please stop, because I don't want to spoil
Speaker 1: it for you. There are some people out there who
Speaker 1: just you know, they don't want to know how the
Speaker 1: magic trick works, and I completely respect that. So, but
Speaker 1: the backstage tour does give you a lot of the
Speaker 1: information about what the imagineers had to do in order
Speaker 1: to to create these effects. And uh, and I do
Speaker 1: highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in that. Also,
Speaker 1: they have a very good intern program and what I understand,
Speaker 1: so for students, college students, if you are in California,
Speaker 1: the headquarters is in Glendale, California. UM. If you're a
Speaker 1: college student, you may and you're interested in engineering, graphic design,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Uh, and you want an internship,
Speaker 1: an interesting internship, you can look into interning with the
Speaker 1: imagineering program at Walt Disney UM company. They from what
Speaker 1: I understand, it is a really intense but very rewarding
Speaker 1: program as far as you know, really getting an idea
Speaker 1: of what goes into these designs. UM. No, granted I'm
Speaker 1: not eligible for that. I haven't been a student student
Speaker 1: for many, many years, so I can't really take advantage
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, but you certainly couldn't choose a program
Speaker 1: with a better pedigree, because they have won thirty four
Speaker 1: awards over the course of the years for from the
Speaker 1: Themed Entertainment Association for their different rides, most recently for
Speaker 1: Toy Story Mania at Disney's California Adventure Park, which, since
Speaker 1: I haven't been to any of the California parks, i'd
Speaker 1: really like to see at some point. Well, they have
Speaker 1: it at Disney World, do they really? Yeah, it's in
Speaker 1: the Disney Hollywood studios, but is it the same one?
Speaker 1: I believe. So it's a right which you walk through. Uh.
Speaker 1: The the Q theme is that you're in a big
Speaker 1: toy box. You're in Andy's room and you're in a
Speaker 1: toy box you're walking through, and there's a big audio
Speaker 1: animatronic Mr. Potato Head or actually animatronic Mr potato Head,
Speaker 1: who is pretty phenomenal as far as the sophisticated movement
Speaker 1: movements he can do and things he can't do. And
Speaker 1: then you go through a ride where you see three
Speaker 1: D images and you shoot little darts at targets and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: it's cute, cool, it's it's kind of a digital version
Speaker 1: of the buzz Lightyear ride that that preceded it. So
Speaker 1: it's another one of those rides where you ride and
Speaker 1: you you shoot stuff. But it's cute. Um. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about the Haunted Mansion now again.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to know how it works, stop
Speaker 1: the podcast now. So, Haunted Mansion had an interesting history.
Speaker 1: It was part one of the original concepts for Disneyland
Speaker 1: before Disneyland even opened, but it did not. Um, it
Speaker 1: wasn't there when Disneyland open because it it was one
Speaker 1: of those that had kind of a contentious history. Uh.
Speaker 1: The original idea was sort of a walk through haunted
Speaker 1: house attraction, and there was some arguments within Walt Disney
Speaker 1: Imagineering between imagineers rather since the Walt Disney Matineering was
Speaker 1: not a formal institution at that point, whether it should
Speaker 1: be a legit, legitimately scary attraction or if it should
Speaker 1: be whimsical and funny. Ultimately, it kind of became a
Speaker 1: mix between the two. Yeah, I really did. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some scary elements to it, especially if you're a little kid.
Speaker 1: There's some of the things that happened that are kind
Speaker 1: of freaky, and then there's some really silly stuff that
Speaker 1: kind of helps you, you know, relieve some of the
Speaker 1: tension that you would get from from looking at the
Speaker 1: scary stuff. Um. The original idea kind of came from
Speaker 1: Ken Anderson. Um. Actually, well, I guess Harper Gooff really
Speaker 1: had the original idea, but Ken Anderson kind of picked
Speaker 1: took the ball and ran with it and came up
Speaker 1: with a lot of the concepts that that eventually made
Speaker 1: their way into the ride. Uh. And there was a
Speaker 1: story to the ride originally which kind of has come
Speaker 1: back in recent years and in recent updates to the ride.
Speaker 1: This original story involved a sea captain, a ghostly sea
Speaker 1: captain who had jilted his his wife, his lover, and
Speaker 1: she had killed herself as a result, and they are
Speaker 1: both ghosts now and and the wife is actually I believe,
Speaker 1: haunting the ghost of the husband. So you have a
Speaker 1: double hunt going on. And uh. And as you progressed
Speaker 1: through the ride, you would learn more about the family. Uh,
Speaker 1: you'd find more about the story behind the the two
Speaker 1: the husband and wife. You would also discover more about
Speaker 1: Madame Leota the gypsy who whose head is in a
Speaker 1: crystal ball as you make your way through the ride,
Speaker 1: and all these elements kind of tied together. Once the
Speaker 1: ride eventually made it to construction, most of those elements
Speaker 1: were abandoned. Um, you can still see hints of it.
Speaker 1: There would be little bits and pieces where you'd say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be the bride at the very
Speaker 1: end of the ride when you know come back, Uh,
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be the wife. Um. Recently, at
Speaker 1: least in the Disneyland and Disney World versions, they've kind
Speaker 1: of reincorporated some of those elements, and now you've got
Speaker 1: sort of a black Widows storyline. There's a woman who
Speaker 1: has been marrying men and offering them for their money
Speaker 1: and uh, and so there's a little bit of a
Speaker 1: story element inserted back in. But really now it's it's
Speaker 1: still just uh, mostly a ride where you're going through
Speaker 1: room by room and seeing all these various ghostly apparitions
Speaker 1: and effects. So let's talk about a few of them now.
Speaker 1: The one we were specifically asked about was the pepper
Speaker 1: ghost effect, which uh, they use a couple of times
Speaker 1: in the ride, but the most famous, I would I
Speaker 1: would say. Version of the effect is the ballroom sequence.
Speaker 1: On the ballroom sequence, if you're not familiar with the ride,
Speaker 1: what happens is you're you're writing in these things called
Speaker 1: doom buggies, which is a version of the omni mover.
Speaker 1: It's this never yeah, it never stops moving unless they
Speaker 1: have to load in someone who has a mobility issue.
Speaker 1: Otherwise they're constantly moving, and you step on a moving
Speaker 1: sidewalk in order to get into the ride. All right,
Speaker 1: so you're you're riding through this attraction is no longer
Speaker 1: walk through, so that that was abandoned. Um, and you
Speaker 1: come along a you're you're going along a ballroom sequence
Speaker 1: where you're looking down into a ballroom. You can see
Speaker 1: a long table where there's a apparently a birthday party
Speaker 1: going on. There are ghostly dancers dancing through the room.
Speaker 1: You can see a couple of ghosts. Uh. There's two
Speaker 1: portraits of men holding pistols and occasionally ghosts pop out
Speaker 1: of the portraits and fire pistols at one another. There's
Speaker 1: a ghostly organist playing the organ at one end. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot going on in this scene, and
Speaker 1: all the ghosts look really amazing. You can see through them,
Speaker 1: and they appear to have physical presence, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, you know you can you can see through them,
Speaker 1: and they can pass through objects. So it's a very
Speaker 1: interesting effect. It's also incredibly simple. Really, the technology is
Speaker 1: not that complicated. It's not even recent. No. Pepper's ghost
Speaker 1: is a trick that dates back to the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and what it involves is you take a pane of
Speaker 1: glass as clean as you can possibly make it so
Speaker 1: that it looks practically invisible if you're looking straight at it.
Speaker 1: Then with lighting you can create make it a reflective
Speaker 1: surface so that only reflects certain parts. That depends on
Speaker 1: how you've lit the scene correct. So the ghosts that
Speaker 1: you're looking at when you're looking down into the room
Speaker 1: are actually below you and above you physically where you
Speaker 1: are in the omnimover right, you can't see them because
Speaker 1: the floor and the ceiling block your view of them, right,
Speaker 1: So so they're not at the same level. No, they
Speaker 1: can't be at the same level because if they were
Speaker 1: at the same level, you'd be able to see your
Speaker 1: own reflection. That the reason why you can't see your
Speaker 1: reflection is because you are not lit the way they are. Okay,
Speaker 1: So those ghosts are really just mannequins or animatronic figures,
Speaker 1: and they are moving in a very well lit area,
Speaker 1: and just by changing the lighting levels, you can make
Speaker 1: the ghost fade in and fade out of existence. And
Speaker 1: so what you're looking at is a reflection. You're not
Speaker 1: looking at the real figures that are creating the effect.
Speaker 1: So the the dancing ghosts that are dancing in a circle, uh,
Speaker 1: towards the right end of the ballroom if you've just
Speaker 1: entered it. At least it's the right end for both
Speaker 1: Disneyland and Disney World. I can't speak for the other parts. Um,
Speaker 1: those are actually dancing directly below you or dancing they're
Speaker 1: moving in a circle directly and as they increase or
Speaker 1: decrease the level of lighting, they start to fade in
Speaker 1: and out of your vision. As you go through the ballroom.
Speaker 1: All the figures are that are that way as well.
Speaker 1: So technology actually is pretty simple. It's the lighting and
Speaker 1: it's the glass. You would think that would be way
Speaker 1: more complicated because they look like holograms and you're like,
Speaker 1: how did they have achieve this effect? And it's actually
Speaker 1: deceptively simple but really cool. It's amazing how sometimes the
Speaker 1: simplest effects can turn out to be the most effective
Speaker 1: use of your of your imagineering dollars, if you will.
Speaker 1: I mean, because you didn't need to go into c
Speaker 1: G I or anything fancy like that. It's just you know,
Speaker 1: the pain of very very clean glass and a couple
Speaker 1: of well placed lights. I can give you. I can
Speaker 1: give you one other really cool, actually two others. I'll
Speaker 1: just do it really quickly because we're running out of time.
Speaker 1: There are a series of rotating but busts of people
Speaker 1: who are who they appear to turn these you know,
Speaker 1: busts being like the stone statue, right, they appear to
Speaker 1: turn and watch you as your omnimover passes by. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember those. Uh you know how they do that effect?
Speaker 1: It's actually pretty cool. Okay. So instead of being a
Speaker 1: bust where it projects out towards you, they're actually recessed
Speaker 1: into the wall. It's an optical illusion again by the
Speaker 1: lighting and and it's recessed in, so it's carved into
Speaker 1: the wall. Because the way it's carved in and the
Speaker 1: way the lighting hits it, it gives you the optical
Speaker 1: illusion that you're looking at an object that's pointing at you.
Speaker 1: And that's why it looks it appears to turn I
Speaker 1: guess because your perception. You're it's all about angles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all about angles. I had I had a thought
Speaker 1: and then it just erupted. There are actually several videos
Speaker 1: on YouTube that show various ways of creating this effect
Speaker 1: by by making an origami figure or whatever, and it
Speaker 1: looks like it looks like a head of a dragon
Speaker 1: or whatever that's that's biting at you. And then if
Speaker 1: you just move a little bit off to the right
Speaker 1: or to the left enough so that you are at
Speaker 1: a completely different angle of viewing, you can see that
Speaker 1: it's not pointing at you the way you thought it was.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. Um. And the other one was I
Speaker 1: was going to talk about the scrim and the stretching room. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the stretching room. By the way. Interestingly enough, in half
Speaker 1: the parks, the floor moves down, and the other half
Speaker 1: of the parks the room moves up. That's that's weird. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it seems like it would be easier for the floor
Speaker 1: to move down, well, and it would, except and here's
Speaker 1: another reason why imagineers have a tough job. They have
Speaker 1: to consider the space they're working in, all right, So
Speaker 1: for instance, in Disneyland, they could dig down and so,
Speaker 1: and they needed to because the the the mansion that
Speaker 1: houses the ride is not big enough to house the ride.
Speaker 1: The actual ride building is kind of behind the mansions,
Speaker 1: behind the wall. You can't see it from where you are,
Speaker 1: so you have to take an elevator down to get
Speaker 1: to the point where you can move into that other building.
Speaker 1: That's why the floor goes down in Disneyland. You can't
Speaker 1: do that disney World. But because of one major geographic
Speaker 1: feature of Florida swamps the water table. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: dig down in Florida, you hit water, So you can't
Speaker 1: have rides that go down in uh in in disney World.
Speaker 1: So the instead what they did was they made the
Speaker 1: wall go up. Well, the top of the of the
Speaker 1: room is not a solid wooden uh ceiling the way
Speaker 1: it appears when you first walk in. It's actually something
Speaker 1: called a scrim which is a sheet of fabric that,
Speaker 1: when lit one way, looks like it's you know, opaque,
Speaker 1: but lit another way, becomes transparent or at least translucent.
Speaker 1: So at the end of the stretching room sequence, you
Speaker 1: hear a scream you look up and you suddenly see
Speaker 1: someone hanging from the very from the rafters at the
Speaker 1: top of the room. The way they achieve that as
Speaker 1: they turned the lights off at the bottom, they turned
Speaker 1: the lights up at the top, and the light coming
Speaker 1: through the scrim allows you to see the figure. Neat stuff.
Speaker 1: As as a matter of fact, imagineering sort of uh
Speaker 1: is behind Walt Disney World anyway, because because you can't
Speaker 1: really dig down, they had to they built the underground
Speaker 1: level on the main people floor around and then built
Speaker 1: the park on top of it. Right, Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty fancy stuff, and you never know. I don't think
Speaker 1: the average visitor knows that. Yeah, they built they built
Speaker 1: one whole administrative system uh on the ground floor, and
Speaker 1: then they dumped a whole bunch of sand that they
Speaker 1: dug up in order to create the lagoon system. They
Speaker 1: dumped all of that on top of it and built
Speaker 1: the Magic Kingdom on top of the system of corridors,
Speaker 1: the Utilo doors. Yeah, I've been through those. They're pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Like I said, that was part of the backstage tour,
Speaker 1: which again really really a neat to are. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: that kind of wraps up our discussion about imagineers. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think it's a really awesome job. I would if
Speaker 1: I were more you know, architecturally minded or design minded,
Speaker 1: I would definitely want to try it out. Sadly, I
Speaker 1: can't draw with a flip. Yeah, I found myself wanting
Speaker 1: to read a bunch of books that I found, uh,
Speaker 1: including um, the Imagineering Field, Guide to Magic Kingdom and
Speaker 1: Walt Disney World and uh another one hold on Designing
Speaker 1: Disney looks interesting and I mean for other people who
Speaker 1: are interested in learning more about this, and the Walt
Speaker 1: Disney Imagineering Behind the Dreams look at making More Magic Real.
Speaker 1: I added all three of those two my cue with
Speaker 1: Good Reads, so I will be checking those out sometime.
Speaker 1: And if you want to know more about this great, um,
Speaker 1: pretty specialized field, you know, you might might check them out.
Speaker 1: I don't know how good they are, they seem to
Speaker 1: get pretty good ratings. Yeah, if you get a chance
Speaker 1: to see some of the old wonderful World of Disney
Speaker 1: shorts as well that Disney would actually walk through and
Speaker 1: talk about the design of these attractions, um, those are
Speaker 1: also very useful. Yeah. But anyway, that wraps up this
Speaker 1: discussion about imagineering. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Paul,
Speaker 1: Hope that answer your question. If any of you have
Speaker 1: questions for us, you can send them into our email
Speaker 1: address that's tech Stuff at tell stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon.
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