Dream Chasing in Tokyo Disney: Insights from Imagineer Bob Weis
So I’m late with this podcast. I’d like to blame Hurricane Helene, but in truth it really just brought things to a standstill, without even really touching the greater Orlando area. But it did give me a chance to cuddle up to my new favorite book Dream Chasing: My Four Decades of Success and Failure with Walt Disney Imagineering by Bob Weis and foreword by Bob Iger. This is an amazing book, and I wanted to draw from it and a few other resources to share the experience of bringing Tokyo Disney to life. People talk about how amazing the Tokyo Disney Resort is. But for all of the resorts world-wide, it has some of the least shared stories. This podcast imparts some of those stories from Bob’s eyes, as a newly hired Imagineer brought to create this park from the ground up to the creation of Tokyo DisneySea years later. Join us as we go Dream Chasing in Tokyo Disney: Insights from Imagineer Bob Weis.
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Who is Bob Weis?
Bob’s work with Disney spans over some forty years, from 1980 to 2023. It also canvasses a great many projects that started with the creation of Tokyo Disneyland, and is where the focus of this podcast is going. But Bob went on to lead out on the Disney-MGM Studios, on conceptually shaping Tokyo Disney Sea, and in trying to bring forth Disney’s America, a park that Michael Eisner considered his favorite and one that never saw the light of day.
He left in 1995 to go into his own adventures. And perhaps there wouldn’t even be a book about him if he had never rejoined the organization. But in 2007 he was brought aboard to address all the wrongs of what was Disney’s California Adventure. That led to a 1.1 billion dollar re-design and expansion that involved adding Buena Vista Street, Radiator Springs, and new attractions to Paradise Pier in the form of Toy Story Mania, The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure and World of Color. He then went on to spearhead the enormous struggle of bringing Shanghai Disney to China. And then afterwards, from 2016 until 2022 he served as president of Walt Disney Imagineering, in a time where Covid was shaping everything across the globe–especially the work of the Disney parks.
Any of the projects and activities Bob was involved in are podcasts in and of themselves. I wanted to focus primarily on the Tokyo DisneySea work he did. And that’s the heart of this podcast. I also will bring in a few additional quotes from Jim Cora’s book, Not Just a Walk in the Park. Jim was a key operations head for Tokyo Disney during many of these same years. And he is a leader whose experiences reflect the challenges of bringing what is arguably the most amazing parks in the world to light.
Note that the book focuses on Disney as part of a Disney Editions release. And rightly so. People are buying this book because it’s a Disney book. But there are many other chapters in Bob’s life outside of Disney that are not part of that book. Perhaps some day, we’ll hear about those times and how he applied not only what he learned from Disney to those experiences, but also how those experiences shaped him.
Building Tokyo Disneyland
By the time Bob started, agreements had already been put in place between Disney and the Oriental Land Company (OLC). Those negotiations had gone on for a long period, partly because Card Walker, the head of Walt Disney Productions, had served in the Navy during World War II and had to come to terms with his own personal feelings for the very nation that had killed many of his comrades. But ultimately it was signed. The problem was, that it was going to be constructed at the same time Epcot was being built. And already all hands were on the Epcot project. That left a small band of Imagineers to handle this project. And Bob Weis was one of them.
By this time they had also pretty well determined what the park would look like, While most think of it as the best of Disneyland and Walt Disney World, in truth, it’s really more like Magic Kingdom. Jungle Cruise, The Enchanted Tiki Room, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland layouts are MK. Small World has a Disneyland look on the outside, but is the flooded plain look on the inside like Magic Kingdom. Only Space Mountain, and Pirates and the accompanying New Orleans Square as part of Adventureland is the more Disneyland like, though there are differences there too.
111 acres compared to 77 at Disneyland and 100 at Magic Kingdom. If there is anything to contrast the TDL and MK parks, it’s the size of walkways in the park. Some thoroughfares look like they could have been transitioned into freeways. They are that wide, and with a painted surface.
But at this time none of that had been even built. Bob’s first job back in Glendale was to help organize all the tasks that would be done. He used colored cards and formed a wall of tasks and assignments, and then kept it continually updated. He earned the title Wall Master Weis. His immediate manager would look at this wall and begin to recognize that some projects were either slow in their movement, or not moving at all. He would refer to them as “Dead Rats”, and encouraged everyone to keep an eye for these “dead Rats” as they would potentially hinder the project making completion. At one point, close to Halloween, Bob found a large plastic black rat at a gag store and slipped it up behind a translucent light panel. This resulted in screams when the lights came on the next day, followed by laughter.
What brought Bob to Tokyo to join the team there was a dead rat known as signage. Bob’s focus was on establishing signage–Disney Style–throughout the entire park. This involved relocating to Tokyo after having created entire books that showcased what all the signs at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom looked like. With a small Japanese team he had to work with vendors to create what would come to be approximately 4000 signs. He came in well over his head, and with more questions from vendors that he could ever answer. With no computers, and just an early Panafax machine the job held difficult challenges. Time zone differences between Japan and California didn’t help. But Bob worked through problems one at a time and began the process to create the necessary signage.
In creating greater relationships with the workers, he would go visit them at their work sites where the signs were being created. Bob shared a particular story about one carver making signage for Fantasyland attractions. We share this story in the podcast
When Bob returns from Tokyo he comes back to the office where the focus had been on building Epcot. In the podcast we share how other Imagineers received those working on the Tokyo Disney project.
Tokyo Disneyland Improved
Curiously, his next assignment was to add “color and fun” to Epcot, because there was not enough kinetic energy and vitality to this project either. After working on that he ultimately came back to projects to improve Tokyo Disneyland. Jim Cora gave context to The operation by saying Tokyo was not necessarily a hit at least in terms of projection numbers. It had a big parking lot, but many didn’t drive cars, and there was no train station yet to take you there, so you had to get off and take a bus. Eventually a train station was put in around 1988 and it made all the difference in the world. But back then no one would take off work in the week, but it was crowded on weekends, but terribly empty during the week. The organization worked to bring buses of school groups to fill the difference.
What saved Bob Weis from massive layoffs after Epcot and Tokyo Disneyland was an opportunity to join Jim Cora, who led the Disneyland International group, in managing the ongoing relationship with Tokyo Disney. The Japanese in Jim’s view are not good at making something, but they are phenomenal at making something better. To this end, the group wanted to get Tokyo Disney to think in terms of a five year master plan to continually improve the parks. Bob’s role was to help design and illustrate what these projects might look like. Together they made a pitch that was well received and ultimately led to additions like The Electrical Parade (1984), Big Thunder (1987), Star Tours (1989) and nearly ten years later, Splash Mountain (1992). Also Tokyo Disney began to build hotels on its property, creating new ways to spread attendance throughout the week.
The LA Times thought the investment in Tokyo Disney would be paid in seven years. Actually the initial investment paid in 4 years. Perhaps Bob would have continued on with more Tokyo projects but his attention refocused by the arrival of Michael Eisner and Frank Wells who wanted to build out big in every direction. What was a concept for a pavilion at Epcot, soon became a multi year effort to construct Disney-MGM Studios.
Pitching a Second Park in Tokyo
Eisner and Wells thought the idea of a studio park was a great opportunity for building synergy with the entire organization. So when the idea of building another park in Tokyo came about In 1987 Frank Wells started conversations with the Oriental Land Company to build just that, a studio park. A number of conversations took place, but all of them showed that OLC management tepid about the idea of a studio park. Bob encouraged Frank to meet with OLC’s leader 1:1 to really find out their interest in a studio park. Frank was skeptical, but did so, only to return with news that the Studio park was done.
Bob was part of that team that determined that what was a Tokyo Disney “Land” could be complemented by what would be a Tokyo Disney “Sea”. It built on the premise that the organization should take advantage of its location to the ocean. In truth, as Jim Cora puts it, Japan is an archipelago made up of thousands of islands with shorelines stretching over 18,000 miles. No point in Japan is more than 93 miles from the sea. The Japanese believe that Japan itself was a “gift from the sea”.Ji In short, the sea is important. Creating a fantasy around this makes for an ideal companion to the Disneyland Park next door. Bob adds to this his initial thoughts of attaching the ocean just across from the sea wall into the park. The photos that follows show this:
Note that I initially thought it was based on the Port Disney concept for Long Beach. Bob Weis takes the origination from a different view, and in fact the only thing similar to Port Disney was Mysterious Island, and slightly a Grecian village, that would become more an Italian one in Mediterranean Harbor. OLC never wanted to do animals or in this case an oceanarium with real sea life.
Why This Book is Great
Straight up. You should buy this book, Dream Chasing. Here’s why:
- This book has substance. The book highlights many projects which are simply not detailed like the making of Disneyland or the first years of Walt Disney World. As one who has studied the history of this company, and has written about it, many a page if not most offered a new insight I didn’t have.
- The book honors so many people who anonymously were part of WED and later Walt Disney Imagineering.
- Not that people who don’t chase their dreams don’t experience personal costs, but this book is not only honest about the toil involved in being an Imagineer and the cost associated with it, even when dreams do come true. If you dream about becoming an Imagineer, this is a must read. And know that you may walk away re-thinking that dream.
- The book showcases several internal bureaucratic obstacles at Disney without just simply turning them into villains.
- Bob Weis seems to have kept a sense of humor about it all, and can even find some rainbow at the end of most dark tunnels. At least, he still seems to be chasing new dreams to keep him focusing on possibilities moving forward.
I should also note that Jim Cora’s book is also a great read, Not Just a Walk in the Park gives great context to many of these earlier periods of time by someone who was really a leader in making Tokyo Disney a reality, and as I recall, is the only Disney associate to have a window on the streets of Tokyo Disney. I have been remiss not covering some great insights from this book as well, and will do so sometime in the future. But know that his book is also so worth reading.
As a note at the beginning of the book, Bob talks about the fact that “we all dream”. But the real message is not about having dreams, but chasing them. Intentionally, persistently, relentlessly chasing them. And all the while knowing that not all of them will come true. But somehow in the chasing, we will see much more of our dreams come true than simply having them.
Souvenirs for You and Your Organization
Consider the following thoughts as they relate to creating your own organization.
- What are the “Dead Rats” in the work you do that are being ignored and that keep your efforts from moving forward? How do you pay attention to them?
- How do you build relationships with others around you, whether a colleague or customer or even a vendor?
- Are others unappreciative of the work and effort you are putting forward? What are the underlying reasons for that?
- What is your five year plan and how do you see it moving forward?
- More than having a dream, how can you intentionally, persistently and relentlessly chase our dreams?
- Have you done your homework to identify the true costs of chasing those dreams? If so, are they dreams worth chasing? Are there ways to mitigate the costs without sacrificing unduly for the dream?
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