CELEBRATING 15 YEARS
hired into Imagineering, and I was working with the original team that designed the original Disneyland with Walt Disney, and had just opened Disneyworld. They were starting on Epcot and the World Showcase, and several other things at that time, and I was offered a position going directly into Show Design. This meant I could go back to California where I was from and become an Imagineer. (I had been hired by Walt Disney World right out of college and sent to Orlando to direct HOOP DEE DOO, a Wild West Dinner Revue which opened to great success.
It’s still running there – the
most successful dinner experience at WDW and, I believe, in the world now. It’s been running for over 40 years!) Becoming an Imagineer — that was a dream of mine since I was 12 years old. I was there during a period where amazing things were going on and I was working directly with these guys, and to this day there still is really not a book about how you design a theme park; it’s still a medium where the only way to learn it is to get in and find mentors, and learn by doing it. Back then that was really true; I came out of theatre so I had learned to absorb things very quickly. You get thrown in at the deep end, you listen, absorb, observe, adapt and learn. That two years at Imagineering was nothing but learning more and more, but at the time I did not think of it that way because I was just jumping in. You were allowed to make mistakes, but not the same mistake twice. It was a valuable education. The same thing happened when I directed Masters of the Universe, the movie – you can read book after book about directing a movie,
challenges that you have to face, with things you might never have done before, and to succeed you have to figure it out. Your experience and your associates, made over a lifetime of other challenges, comes into play. You follow your instincts.
CI: Your current project with Cirque du Soleil is intriguing – on paper that seems a match made in heaven. GG: Yes, in that case we are not designers for
hire, we are joint venture partners with them; it’s not without its challenges of course but what we are aiming for is something completely new. What we are trying to do is take all those years of creating immersive attractions and all of Cirque’s experience with live entertainment and create what I am calling “the world’s first Experience Park.” You don’t just go into a ‘land’ here, it’s not Tomorrowland or Fantasy- land. You go into a series of different worlds we are creating where the show happens all around you, above you, behind you, in the trees, in the lakes, mountains, wherever you are. It’s like you are Alice in Alice in Wonderland, or Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit – you are on a journey through real places where magic happens along the way and where the world responds to things you do and say. Every time you visit the attraction, the experience will be
and you can take classes, but when you are in that chair and you have to make a hundred decisions every 20 minutes…that is the crucible and either you are up for it or not. Because I came to it from theatre I equated it to doing a new play every hour. Each setup, the lights, the set, location, wardrobe, shoot the scene, and it’s over. The next setup is a new mini play, all over again. Every project – if it’s worth doing – has a challenge or series of
slightly different. The enchanted forest will be different each time you visit; you’ll see different things every time you come to the park. I don’t think you could attempt this unless you had a partner like Cirque du Soleil. There is nothing like this in the world right now.
CI: Your career path, as I have mentioned,
is quite unusual – what did you actually want to do when you were young?
GG: I used to say, when I was in the eighth
grade and my friends asked me that, ‘Well, I would like to be like Walt Disney in a way.’ They’d ask what I meant, I’d explain that it was about using my imagination – of course, when you’re a kid you don’t think of all the problems Disney had to face through those years, you think of the creative things – making the movies and creating theme parks. I would tell my friend, ‘I feel like when Walt Disney wakes up in the morning, he thinks “Today I’m going to work on a movie, or a theme park, or work on a new animated cartoon” and I liked that idea. I guess in a way I have achieved the goal – though not quite on the scale Disney did, but back then I did not know what the other side of it all required — what it takes to achieve all of that, the organisation, the meetings, letters, emails, compromises. I think I basically wanted to make people happy. I think there is something noble in that, in being able to help people forget their problems for a while, especially as the world is even more pressured and stressed out today than it was when I was young. It’s not curing cancer, but maybe it’s not so far from that either, in a way. If you’re giving people happy times, a chance to enjoy life with friends and family, that is not a bad calling.
CI: What is it that makes your work stand
out? Why would a developer or owner come to you? GG: Well, if you want a “basic casino” you
probably don’t need us. There are other designers that specialize in that kind of thing. But if you are looking for something that has mass public appeal, that has an integrated design that merges entertainment, food, retail, gaming and other resort elements, we are quite expert at that. If you are looking for a design that will stand out in an iconic way – if you want to create a true destination resort, then I think that is what we do: we create timeless destinations.
DECEMBER 2016 25
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