As the Disney Destiny sets off on its inaugural journey, the team that build some of its most popular areas speaks out
Courtesy: Walt Disney Co.
Officially, the Disney $DIS Destiny, the entertainment giant's new cruise ship, which set sail on its maiden voyage Nov. 20, was built in the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany. Workers there assembled the 144,000 gross ton steamer and ensured its seaworthiness. But it was Disney Imagineers who created the areas people will remember.
Imagineers is the team that helps physically create the Disney magic, dreaming up and building the attractions in theme parks, overseeing the design and flow of public areas and managing special events. And while they're best known for animatronics and rides, they're just as crucial on the smaller scale of a cruise.
Quartz was recently offered a voyage on a media preview on the Destiny by Disney. While there, we spoke with several Imagineers who worked on what are bound to be some of the ship's most popular gathering spots.
With the exception of the AquaMouse water attraction, this is the spot on Destiny where you're most likely to see Imagineering flexing its muscle. The Haunted Mansion Parlor is a bar that's themed around the popular theme park ride. Madeline Weber is an Imagineer who has been working on the Destiny and the Disney Treasure project for the past three years. She likens the experience to stepping off of a Doom Buggy on the ride and entering one of the mansion's rooms – only with a nautical twist.
The Parlor is a fairly small space, holding about 50 people at a time. Designing something that size is different than a theme park ride visited by thousands of people a day.
"One of the things about Haunted Mansion is it's an intimate ride," she says. "So we're able to really bring people into a very concentrated story of the Haunted Mansion Parlor. What happened to the captain? Why is his hat in the fish tank? There are all these little clues we're able to leave, whereas if it were a bigger location, yes we might be able to fit more people into it, but we might not be able to bring the level of detail in."
While portraits on the wall will transform, blink, and occasionally break out into song and many of the familiar ghosts from the ride will appear in the mirror behind the bar, Weber says her favorite part of the Parlor is a plate hanging on one of the walls that has original Haunted Mansion concept art from founding Imagineer Harper Goff etched into it. It's a small touch, but it's one that ties the original Mansion to this most recent incarnation of it.
This bar is themed around Pirates of the Caribbean, which exists in five Disney theme parks. Imagineer Beth Burkhardt says the team wanted to incorporate some elements from all of those rides, as well as the films, to honor the attraction's history. There are pieces of eight from the Pirates films. The Kraken is a nod to the Shanghai Pirates ride and the lanterns over the bar are inspired by Paris' version. The room's rug features Jack Sparrow's compass, which points to that which he wants the most. (In this case, the compass points right at the bar's impressive collection of rums.)
"We wanted it to feel like the pirates cobbled together a space for themselves, so you'll see all kinds of finishes and furniture styles," she says. "It looks like they pillaged and plundered a bunch of junk to create this space."
This Broadway-style retelling of the 1989 animated film is a Destiny exclusive. The focus, as you might expect, is on acting and singing, but there are Imagineering touches, like Hercules' battle with the Hydra. Jeff Conover, creative director of puppetry, articulation, and design, was in charge of the creation of that mythical beast (and others in the show).
The Hydra heads are operated by puppeteers who carry the 22 lb. puppets on hiking backpacks, letting them incorporate their own body movements along with Hydra's head(s). As cartoonishly realistic as the Hydra looks, it's a low-tech affair. The heads Hercules severs are lopped off by pulling a ring release. When Hercules is swallowed, actor Cory J. Bradford simply slips into a slit in the mouth. And the mouth itself is operated via a pulley. That low-tech approach is very deliberate, says Conover.
"We try to keep things as low tech as possible because they have to be maintained," he says.
Inspired by Doctor Strange's New York abode/sanctum, The Sanctum is the largest bar on the Destiny. It's family friendly during the day and has more adult activities in the evening. It's decorated with items that will be familiar to fans of the film series (such as the cloak of levitation in a case behind the bar and the Eye of Agamotto).
It's not a place where Imagineering is the first word to spring to mind, but this is an area where theming was the priority, not effects. But Burkhardt said there are things she enjoys about both of those sorts of projects.
"When you go into the Haunted Mansion Parlor, you are truly immersed in that story and you feel like it's an extension of the ride," she says. "[In the Sanctum], we were able to do something different and new for the first time – and that's always exciting. We had to look at what were the color and texture palettes that inspired the film and how we [could] make it feel like Doctor Strange in a confined space."
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