When Walt Disney and his merry band of Imagineers began putting together the concepts and designs that would eventually become Disneyland and Walt Disney World, they did so while thinking about amusement parks in an entirely new way. For Disneyland and its successors to work, they’d need to be about more than simply cheap thrills and entertainment – they’d have to tell stories, and they’d have to be forever trying to top themselves in search of the next great story.
Over time, these ideas resolved themselves into a usable vocabulary shared among Walt Disney’s Imagineers. Some of those words and phrases were coined by Walt himself, while others developed along the way. But, in all, Walt Disney and his team invented a whole new language to describe their theme parks.
That jargon is still in use today, and to truly understand the ways Imagineering works to build and improve the Disney parks, you must first understand the language they speak to each other.
Let’s take a look at a few pieces of an Imagineer’s lexicon:
1. Plussing
Image: Disney
Disney parks are designed such that they will never be completed. They are living, breathing works of art and, as such, they are constantly being revised and edited. Even attractions that are viewed by the general public as perfect are not above a casual refurbishment or a slight renovation here or there.
While Disney fans may get frustrated when Jack Sparrow is added to their beloved Pirates of the Caribbean, or classic Disney characters are added to the scenes of It’s a Small World, this is actually in keeping with a grand tradition among Imagineers: Something called “Plussing.”
In Walt’s mind, every single experience in his parks could be made better. Whether it’s due to new technology being developed, new information being learned after years of operation, or simply the changing spirit of the times, no attraction should be set in stone. Imagineers are taught to always be looking for ways to improve Disney attractions, and that process is called “plussing.”
Sometimes, plussing is wonderfully successful. Take, for example, Disneyland’s Space Mountain, complete with an on-board, synchronized soundtrack. While that attraction didn’t debut with such a score (in fact, composer Michael Giacchino was only about 10 years old when it opened), Imagineers rightly realized that music could help push the experience of the thrilling coaster to the next level.
On the other hand, sometimes plussing leads to disaster like, say, The Enchanted Tiki Room (Under New Management).
On the whole, plussing is a noble exercise by Imagineers: It always pressures them to seek to make things better – even if it does sometimes backfire.
2. Audio-Animatronics
Odds are, if you’re reading this site, you know what an audio-animatronic (or AA) character is. But, if you don’t (like this poor fellow), fear not: Here’s an easy explanation and history.
The Walt Disney Company began its life as an animation studio, crafting animated shorts and, eventually, feature films. After Disneyland opened, Walt and his Imagineers realized that they would want to bring the same type of character movement and design from their animated films into the parks, and that would require an entirely new type of technology.
Eventually, through trial and error, the Imagineers landed on a system based on pneumatically (and eventually, hydraulically) powered robots. The movements of the robots could be recorded into a sequence, and then that sequence could be set to a piece of audio – like, say, music or a voice recording. When played back, the whole thing would look like a real, moving character. And, when multiple animatronics were used together, they could perform a scene.
One of the first large-scale showcases of this technology was the original Enchanted Tiki Room, which opened at Disneyland in 1963. And then, for the 1964 World’s Fair, Walt and his team produced one of the most realistic animatronic characters to that point – a model of President Abraham Lincoln, who would rise and deliver a moving speech as part of the Fair’s Illinois pavilion.
Audio-animatronics quickly became synonymous with the Disney company, and they are still used in attractions around the world – everything from classic rides like Pirates of the Caribbean to the new Little Mermaid attractions at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
In fact, animatronics are so widely-used, the word itself has lept beyond the Imagineers’ lexicon and is often used interchangibly with “robotic character” in non-Disney situations as well.
3. Weenie
A funny thing happens at Walt Disney World’s Epcot. Although it has a very high hourly capacity, Spaceship Earth’s line usually is at its longest earlier in the morning, and it tails off throughout the day. Why is that? A few reasons, actually: For most, it’s the very first attraction they encounter, and for some, Spaceship Earth is an iconic and important ride that must be experienced early.
But, on some level, part of the reason why Spaceship Earth earns such a lengthy wait in the morning is that people are quite simply drawn to it. There’s something about its massive scale and intricate architecture that grabs the retinas and doesn’t let them go until you’re safely seated in your time-traveling vehicle.
Structures that possess this effect – the visual tractor beam – actually have a name in Disney circles: They’re called “weenies.”
A weenie serves a few purposes from an Imagineer’s perspective. The first is that visual tractor beam thing – they draw guests toward them, either by being visually impressive or offering some form of preview of a thrill to come, like the drop on Splash Mountain.
The second thing they do is offer a visual anchor off of which the rest of a park or land can draw its inspiration from . The clearest example of objects that fill this role are the various park icons – the castles, Spaceship Earth, the Tree of Life, etc. Not only does Spaceship Earth draw guests toward it, but it is a central focal point that all other nearby buildings must fit alongside of. As such, these weenies control a large part of the aesthetic look of a given park or land.
A good rule of thumb for identifying a weenie is this: If you’re staring slack-jawed at something for more than a few seconds, it’s probably a weenie.
4. Contradictions
Dreams usually have something of an internal logic. Even if you’re able to fly in a dream, it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary to you – it simply is the truth of that dream. However, if in the middle of that dream, a blaring alarm goes off in your ear, that disrupts the internal logic of the dream, causing it all to come crashing down and, eventually, you wake up.
Disney’s attractions and parks actually operate much in the same way as a dream. They establish a set of rules, and if those rules are broken, the magic dissipates. For example, Frontierland is designed to look like an old Western town – sort of the last settlement on the edge of the wilderness. How would you feel if you were walking through Frontierland and, suddenly, you saw a cast member walking around in his Space Mountain outfit. It’d be pretty jarring, right?
Imagineers call these moments “contradictions,” but what they really mean is “magic killers.” Disney goes to great lengths to mitigate any moments like this that could arise, most famously constructing an underground tunnel system beneath the Magic Kingdom that prevents out-of-place cast members and the like.
Ideally, everything at a Disney park should follow a consistent internal logic and feel. The only exception being when Disney internationally wants to manipulate that logic, like at the end of MuppetVision 3D, when the theater blows up and you see Disney’s Hollywood Studios beyond the theater wall. In this moment, the internal logic is broken – you’re back in the theme park — but the result is a classic Muppets-style joke.
Ultimately, the goal is for Imagineers only to show you what they want you to see, so that even if you think you’re getting a peek behind the scenes, it’s all an intentional effect in service of telling a great story.
There are countless other pieces of Imagineering jargon worth exploring, and this is only a taste. But, these words all fall into a similar realm – they were invented to describe ways of telling a story better. Since day one, Disney’s parks have been about telling great stories; Imagineers just needed a vocabulary to use while doing so.
