Disney Work

My Work at Walt Disney World

As an Entertainment Technician at Disney, I work backstage on our live shows and experiences to make sure our shows run and are well maintained. Throughout my time at Disney I have been able to be involved in a number of the shows at Hollywood Studios and now over at the Galactic Starcruiser. I moved from being a general technician running shows at Jedi Training and Voyage of the Little Mermaid to being a Crew Chief in charge of maintaining the quality of the Effects, Video, and Show Control Elements for our Hub and Sunset Nighttime Shows.

I do not have a particular technical focus, but my knowledge and experience does cover a vast amount of different technologies and aspects of theatrical shows across Hollywood Studios and beyond. The skill that has carried me the most throughout my time here has been an acute attention to detail. I tend to notice the smallest things that others might overlook and can tell you immediately if something with one of our Nighttime Shows is off--even if it takes a bit more time to pin point what the issue is. With this attention to detail I became a crucial part of maintaining the alignment of our projectors on Tower of Terror and the Chinese Theater--even before I was the Video Crew Chief. I take a lot of pride in the work that we did leading up to Beacons of Magic to get our Tower of Terror projections looking their best for the content provided by our artistic team.

Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser

Atrium Photo from The Verge.

I was fortunate to be brought over to the Starcruiser in January of 2022 to take over for their departing Lighting, Video, and Effects Crew Chief. When talking about this venue, it's easy to refer to it as one single show, but in reality, it is more comparable to a park or land. Over 2 days there are 15 different types of shows that are run by technicians, and 30 individual shows that are run. There is a small crew running various elements of those shows, and interfacing with complex show control systems throughout the building. Overall, the systems we interface with daily require a deep understanding of Show Control and networking of systems within the building as often we are controlling elements of the building that do not fall under the Entertainment umbrella to maintain. The whole two day entertainment show has to hit certain markers for non-entertainment elements to be triggered for our passengers, and our technicians need to have a high level of understanding to troubleshoot in the moment as there aren't many opportunities to recover from a system going down.

Part of my role through opening was helping ensure all of out technicians had a base level understanding of how the Show Control System works. As a facilitator for the program's basic class run for Disney Technicians, I modified the normal 16 hour class into a 12 hour version that was more specific to our uses at the Starcruiser and also to allowed the class to fit into a tight schedule to ensure all of our technicians could be trained in the short timeframe that we had the training rig available. I also worked to ensure that we could find a period of days where we optimized the number of people who were able to take the class in a short period of time and managed to get 14 out of the 16 technicians into two sessions, with the remaining two being easier to put into the normal sessions.

I have also been able to develop a strong understanding of the story and how our tech elements work with and impact the story elements. Due to the nature of the experience, it is important to understand how minor changes can have major impacts, and a deep understanding of how the story integrates into the the tech is extremely useful.

Bridge Training Photo from Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times.

Gaya Dinner Show Photo from Click Orlando.

I have also had the chance to build out a number of complex Excel sheets that aid in our daily operation. These are all built out to be themed to the building as well as relying pretty heavily on macros and VBA code in the background to aid in ease of use.

Lightsaber Training Pod Official Marketing Photo.

Hub and Sunset Blvd Nighttime Spectaculars

During my time on our nighttime shows, I was one of the first Laser Operators trained after the opening of Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular in 2016 which led to my heavy involvement in the effects systems used for that show. I was made the backfill for our Effects Crew Chief and eventually took over the role officially in Fall of 2019. When the Parks were starting to re-open from the Pandemic I was lucky enough to be brought back to help open Hollywood Studios--the only remaining Crew Chief of our Nighttime Shows to come back to the company after the Pandemic. from July 2020 thru August of 2021 I worked as the sole Crew Chief to maintain the Effects, Lighting, Video, and Show Control elements of our show with the assistance of our Park Crew Chief partners, and eventually re-opened the show as the Show Control and Video Crew Chief.

Jingle Bell, Jingle BAM Finale Sequence. Official Marketing Photo.

Magma Flame Effect from Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular

In my various Crew Chief roles with our Nighttime shows, I was able to work with all levels of the Entertainment process as well as with vendors to install new shows and elements, and maintain the ones we already had. Due to the nature of the projection shows on the Chinese Theater, we were in a constant cycle of updating content in one show, or bringing a whole new show to life after Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular opened.

In my time at the venue, I was also able to work closely with the teams installing and upgrading our Tower of Terror Projection shows leading up to the opening of the Beacons of Magic 50th Anniversary Shows. As the Effects Crew Chief, I was able to be around for effects testing that didn't ultimately make it into the final show. And as the Video and Show Control Crew Chief, I spent many overnights with the team, tweaking the alignment and helping them as they perfected the model of the building that helped them build a beautiful look for the Tower as part of our 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Walt Disney World Resort.

Sunset Seasons Greetings 2018 Toy Story Module. Photo from Blog Mickey.

Disney Movie Magic Finale Sequence. Official Marketing Photo.

Wonderful World of Animation Finale Sequence. Official Marketing Photo.

Daily Show Tracks

Voyage of the Little Mermaid. Photo from Kevin Yee/Ultimate Orlando.

My beginnings at Walt Disney World were at Voyage of the Little Mermaid (VOLM) and Jedi Training Academy. as a brand new technician in 2014, I was put largely at VOLM for the first number of months. In my time there, I was trained in all tracks on the deck, show control, and as a relief Crew Chief. With VOLM, consistency, timing, and spatial awareness is key--during the opening number, everyone is quite literally in the dark, handing off puppets and running around the back of the stage to get everything where it needed to be.
I was able to work through show down scenarios as a Daily Crew Chief at VOLM, and in a particular situation crafted a solution, pulling a part from a different element, that kept the show running for a number of weeks while we waited for a replacement when a major piece of the scenery went down.

My time with the Jedi Training Academy helped develop my ability to multi-task on a pretty extreme level with the original show. With JTA, I learned all of the tracks available there, and the most fun and complex one was our main Audio track. It was always exciting to run the show as you were jugging microphones for the cast, music levels, music tracks, line playback, saber audio, all while watching the show for visual cues and listening of audio and manager called cues. The original show utilized two separate Instant Replay banks to play all of the audio cues, and it was important to know where each cue was on the banks as a quick glance because of the varying pacing of the show.

Jedi Training: Trials of the Temple (JT3), was a similar show, but less complicated to run. I was also trained in each track that ran the new show. Both Jedi Training shows were one of the most fun shows I've been able to run at Disney. With new kids for each show, it was always unpredictable and entertaining.

Jedi Training Academy. Photo from Key to the World Travel.

Voyage of the Little Mermaid. Photo from Kevin Yee/Ultimate Orlando.

Jedi Training: Trials of the Temple. Photo from Undercover Tourist.