Ken Pellman: TEA Party 2012 Takes over Disneyland Hotel
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Animal Kingdom is connected to the real world, and his team spent two months analyzing the meaning of “Animal” and “Kingdom”. These considerations made things more cohesive and efficient going forward as design decisions would already have guidelines based on those considerations.

Aulani broadcasts “indigenous art” as a design style, not “Disney”, hence Mickey and Minnie appear as tourists, because they are not part of the indigenous story of Hawaii.

Joe’s comments and explanations were a pot of gold for anyone studying successful design.

In the afternoon, there was a presentation for the show spectacular, "The Magic, The Memories, and You!" with Greg Atkins, Daren Ulmer, Tom Zofrea, and Alan Bruun.

They explained that the request to “do a slide show on the castle” sounded cringeworthy, as evidenced by the grumbling expressed as blowback to idea. As we know now, however, the show is beautiful.

Executing the concept turned out to be highly complicated, with one of those complications being that the two “screens” – Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom (Walt Disney World Resort) and the Disneyland “it’s a small world” façade, are so different, beyond the fact that one is a “portrait” and the other a “landscape”.

Calling this a slideshow is like calling Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room a bird cage. The buildings are used as a canvas while “mapped projection” incorporates hundreds of ever-new images of the guests themselves from the day of the performance, mixed with Disney icons and music

 
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Greg Atkins (Video Director, Consultant), Daren Ulmer (Mousetrappe, Media Creative Designer/VFX Supervisor), Tom Zofrea (Art Director), and Alan Bruun (Show Director).

As the team explained, they wanted to honor the architecture and create something nobody had ever seen before, while meeting a very tight deadline.

After that, and second to last presentation of the day, was the "Attraction Refresh" award winner, Star Tours - The Adventures Continue with Tom Fitzgerald. The update to Star Tours implemented “re-ridability”, as guest can ride 54 times and not repeat the exact same sequencing of the experience.

Tom went over the project development process, and addressed the issue of the setting being between Episodes III and IV of “Star Wars”, yet some aspects of the attraction not lining up with the chronology of the films.

Day Two was capped off with a no-host mixer at the Hearthstone Lounge at the Grand Californian.