West of WEDWay
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Reader Questions
LaughingPlace.com has forwarded several letters from readers, most of them confirming what I learned when I joined Disney in the 1970s--Disney architecture fascinates many people and motivates a sizable percentage of them to create models, sketches, or art, or to collect photographs and other memorabilia.
One reader asked exactly what I did for WED (now Walt Disney Imagineering). By the time I left, in January 1984, my job title was "Architectural Job Captain," which means that I led a team of architectural drafters in preparing a plans for projects. The only constructed project for which I performed that role was converting the attic above the restaurant at EPCOT's French Pavilion into more dining rooms. I was a senior drafter on projects such as Spaceship Earth and the Odyssey restaurant (next to the Mexico pavilion and since closed). The working drawings for both of those projects were produced by outside firms (Spaceship Earth by Wallace, Floyd of San Francisco, near to the structural engineers, Simpson, Gumpertz and Heger; and Odyssey by an Orlando architectural firm, TLC. Simpson, Gumpertz had vital experience--they engineered the Buckminster Fuller dome at the 1967 Montreal Expo.)
WED hasn't done its own drafting since I left--I was laid off as part of a "reduction in force" after EPCOT and Tokyo Disneyland were done. Drafting was completely eliminated to cut costs. (For the record, I might have been accepted, as were other senior drafters, into the architectural design department, but I asked for the generous severance package instead. I was already moonlighting writing computer software.)
Between the time I joined as a Junior Draftsman and when I left as a Job Captain, I also served as a "Resident Engineer" in Florida while EPCOT was constructed and as the sole Disney Quality Assurance Officer for Tokyo Disneyland in 1983. These roles were not as satisfying as creative architectural work back in the office--I had no training in field quality assurance--but they gave me many once-in-a-lifetime experiences. I almost turned down the post in Japan, but I took the wise advice of my Florida mentor, Bob Smith. He was right--no one has offered to pay my way halfway around the world in 18 years since.
Two other letters from LaughingPlace.com readers stand out. One reader said that my description of WED was a little scary, because although he felt creative enough for Disney, he just couldn't sculpt or put anything down on paper. "I have no artistic talent whatsoever," he wrote. I have good news and bad news. The good news is that Disney, like any large employer, needs a wide variety of skills and temperments. The bad news is that, apart from subjective terms like "artistic" and "creative," the Disney organization rewards communication skills. In architecture or show design, that means being able to "sell" an idea with a sketch on a napkin. Gifted cartoonists--people who can exaggerate aspects of a drawing to better get across the main concept--are highly valued. I have some doodles by Joe Rohde, for example, drawn during a boring meeting in the 1980s. One shows a ball and an angry, determined paddle climbing the Empire State Building--an ad for a monster movie labeled "Ping Pong." (In those years, Rohde was laboring on concepts for Disney Burbank and other non-starters. I was delighted to see that he was not only given the whole Animal Kingdom to design, but given the credit on Disney Channel and elsewhere.)