Disneyland's New Autopia
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Interviews

During Sunday's event we had the opportunity to have a brief interview with Cynthia Harriss

Cynthia Harriss takes a ride

LaughingPlace: So what do you think of the new Autopia?

Cynthia Harriss: I think it's fabulous, fabulous. I've ridden it a couple of times, I got a few previews, even before today. And now we'll have to figure out what our favorite car is.

LP: Do you have a favorite yet?

CH: Not yet, I'm still debating, they're all pretty cool.

LP: With the new Autopia you took an existing classic attraction, brought in a sponsor and really made it new again. Will we see a similar thing happen with other Disneyland classics?

CH: We're always open to this. Our objective is to keep Disneyland spectacular and this is a wonderful way for us to - jointly with Chevron - be able to bring to life one of our favorite attractions in a new way and give it a new conceit for the future

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At the Chevron event on Tuesday we were able to speak with Jason Hulst, the designer of the new Autopia cars themselves.

Jason Hulst (left) with Imagineer Bruce Gordon

LaughingPlace: I notice you have your camcorder for this. Are you having a good time?

Jason Hulst: oh yeah, great time.

LP: How long have you worked for Imagineering?

JH: I've been here about four years now. I'm currently over at the studio doing prop design on MosueWorks - TV animation -   but after this project I went over to the studio to start there.

LP: So you don't actually work for WDI?

JH: i was always a consultant for WDI

LP: Was there any particular difficulty in creating the new cars?

JH: Well, yeah. The chassis that we have on the car are the same chassis that were there from the original car. They did a few changeovers by putting in new motors and new bumpers and stuff like that with modifications to update them, but for the most part it's the same chassis that Bob Gurr built back in 55. So one thing that Tony [Baxter] wanted to do was have all three different designs, but they all had to be totally different from each other as far as theming and looks go and apperance. So when you looked at the three of them in a pool together like they are now, that you didn't get confused on what cars were what and that was very hard to acheive because of the chasis that was existing was the same so you're fitting a different car on a existing chassis that had a totally different look. So that was extremely difficult but in the end, with a couple of tweaks, and hammers here and there we got it.

LP: Did you actually come up with the concept for these three specific cars?

JH: Well early on I was doing ideation sketches and presenting them to Tony and we eventually evolved into three different shapes which we defined as a soft shape, a hard-edged shape and a zoomy shape. So I defined those shapes with a circle, a square and a wedge. So that defined a direction and we figured with image boards what would be appropriate for those three directions. So we have the cute car which is kind of this softer shape and then so on with the other designs

LP: Do you have a favorite car style?

JH: Well the sports car's probably my favorite car but when you get them all three cars out here running together they all look so good it's really hard to choose. I think the sports car just because of the ChromIllusion paint that we have on it and we've got the chrome wheels and the lines are different. Kind of has a neat appeal.

Tony Baxter discusses the Autopia and other Disneyland-related items in a June 25th interview
available here