Creating Immersive Stories for Park Visitors

Welcome to the Park Leader show, where we are changing the landscape of leadership in parks and conservation. I'm your host, Jody Mayberry, and this episode we are. Well, we have a guest who is the retired president of Walt Disney Imagineering, Bob Weiss. Bob, I'm so happy to have you here with us. Jody, it's always a pleasure to talk with you, and this is an incredibly esteemed group. I feel humbled to have a chance to chat with this

group that you brought together. So thank you. I'm excited. Well, yeah, this is neat because Bob and I have done three episodes of the Jody Mayberry show together, but Bob is a big fan of park. And I said, let's talk to some park people, too. Let's do an episode of the Park Leader Show. So here we are. Bob has recently come out with two

books. I'll tell you the second one later. It's a fun read. The one relevant to our conversation is Dream Chasing My Four Decades of Success and Failure with Walt Disney Imagineering. Phenomenal book, full of great stories.

And what delighted me when I opened the book, I just start reading part one, and it starts at Disneyland, and you get just a little ways in page 10. And it tells about a camping trip when Bob was younger that his whole family did. They just set out in a camper van and ultimately to Walt Disney World. Along the way, visited some of the national

treasures that we all love. And I love that you started off with that trip, Bob, and you even mentioned that that shaped how you view America, that trip, so. It certainly did, Jody. I mean, you know, I'm a product of the, you know, I was born at the end of the Baby Boomers, 1957. And, you know, there's. I'm sure we. We all like to talk history in this group, but, you know, you had a combination of Eisenhower starting the federal highway system that allowed people to crisscross

America really easily. And, you know, you also had the, you know, you had the car companies coming out with first vans, right? They didn't even call them minivans then they called them vans. But it was a van the whole family could get into, travel comfortably. So combination of great roads, great van vehicles, and suddenly you have a real increase in the

family vacation. You know, the family vacation. So mom, dad, 2.5 kids going out and, you know, sometimes camping, sometimes staying in lodges or motor lodges. So that's definitely my upbringing. And, you know, I have a lot of joy in my life and joy when I think back of my parents who are not here anymore, you Know, thinking about Father's Day being this week, just thinking about places we went, the fantastic national park sites, campgrounds, you know, what

a great way to grow up. I was the same way. I grew up camping and exploring. I grew up in Illinois and we always went west. Then I eventually just moved out west. And I like that you started with that story, said it shaped how you view things, and then you went on to have just a fabulous career that I read through the whole book. When you would do something spectacular, being biased towards parks myself, I would always say, well, that's because Bob

went on that great road trip to national parks when he was younger. You learn a lot about, about everything from that. And, you know, my father worked on the space program, worked on helping eland the first people on the moon as an aeronautics engineer. And these were times when he had, you know, long days, long, you know, long filled days as a, as an engineer. My mother worked. So those couple weeks in the summer became really important to family to

be together, you know, and it's. That family connection is, I think, a big part of Disney too. It's like, you know, you find people that have really busy times with their daily life and their kids are stressed and they're stressed and, you know, so many things. And that's also always been something about Disneyland or Disney World is to go down there and just say, you know, we're going to put our phones away, we're going to put our troubles and our work and, you know, all those

things away. Just focus on family, on enrichment, on great experiences. That really is what everything is about, right? That's really what all the, all of what we do is setting the stage for people, families of all kinds to enjoy that time away. When I first became a park ranger, my first mentor in parks, we used to just go on walks. He told me, you have to fall in love with the park before you can do anything else here. He would encourage me

to just go for hikes. Sometimes he would come with me, sometimes we do opening shifts together. And he would just talk about parks and the philosophy behind parks. And one thing that I still remember, I never thought about it this way. He said that people come to parks for recreation, or at least they think they do. What they're really coming to parks for is recreation, because they come to us and it's like a recharge. Nothing

else matters while they're here. All that there is is the park. And then they get recreated, they get recharged, they go back to their life. And there's A sense of awe that you have. You know, a sense of awe that you see the world as bigger than you see it in your daily life. You know, it's bigger than you, and it's. It's a sustainable outside of things that you see change every year, these are things you can come back to again and again. That's really a huge thing. And

I'll just say, Jodi, I mean, your mentor was right. And I'll just say that one of the things Walt Disney told all of his top park designers was to go to Disneyland once a week. And he just said, just walk around, just sit on a park bench. Just sit somewhere and watch what people

do, watch how they react, watch how they see the place, because that's the biggest insight you could possibly have it to the audience and what they're thinking and what their needs are. And that is such a great thing park rangers can do, too. Just look at how people recreate. Look at what they do. And Walt had so. I've heard so many good stories about that on how. How he learned how many trash cans you should put out and how far

away all came from observation. Well, the story I heard, you would know better than me, Bob, that they gave out candy at the entrance, and he would watch how far people would go before they'd throw it on the ground. And he'd say, okay, I haven't heard. That, but that's a great story. Yeah, that's what I had heard anyway. So it's. It's really interesting timing right now. We're talking natural parks, and we're talking themed parks. And Disney just recently announced

that their new addition at Walt Disney World is. Is forest themed, but centered around a national park, Piston Peak National Park. Also at Disney World, it's something very park themed. The Wilderness Lodge, which I'm sure you know very well, Bob, that is my favorite place to stay because it just. It feels like you're at Yellowstone as it's supposed to. The. The chimney

someone pointed out. While I was there, a cast member pointed out the chimney is the Grand Canyon and that it has all the layers of the Grand Canyon. And cast members are dressed as if they work at a park. There are a lot of high ends. And there's two directions I want to go with the conversation. One is I just highlighted some inspiration that Disney has gotten from national or state parks or natural parks. And then what can we. In parks?

When I say parks, I'm always talking natural parks. But I get. In your world, when we say parks, it's Theme parks. But what can natural parks learn from themed parks? Because more or less in the same business, and you're really good at customer service, you're really good at designing places that are very efficient in moving people, in serving people through design. So that's what I want to do. Find out what Disney learned from natural parks and what natural parks can learn from Disney.

Well, certainly, you know, Disney has learned from parks to create environments that. What people want to be in and that are inspiring, you know, and, you know, I think back to when, when I worked on Cars Land for Anaheim. The designers of Cars Land of the Movie were obviously inspired by parks, and they did the mountain range and things, but they made it into a car's mountain range. Right. They made it into Cadillac, Cadillac mountains and things like

that. So it's always heavily driven by story, but it can be very inspired by reality. And I know that the Cars team, as an example, went out and drove from Oklahoma across the southwest to see the mountains, the. The roads, the diners, you know, really to

absorb that history. And I know that also when Disney was doing things like the Wilderness Lodge, they spent a lot of time looking at the great lodges that were built, you know, around the national parks and put a lot of effort into making you feel like you are in that kind of, you know, national park escape experience, back to nature experience. So those learnings go back and forth. I think the biggest difference, obviously, Jodi, is Disney's environments are created. They're created and they

follow a story. They follow, you know, a story in a Disney point of view or in a natural point of view. So Joe Rody creates, you know, Animal Kingdom in a view of Africa or a view of Asia, but it's still his artistic view. It's still storytelling from an artistic point of view. It's not real. You know, it's not. It's real in the sense that it's really there, but it's not real in the sense that you deal with true reality. You deal with not just reality, but you deal with the stewardship of

those places. You are the stewards of those natural places as well as being the storytellers. So we're both storytellers. It's just that we. We do it in a different. We use a different technique. We both need to preserve the quality of the experience. We both need to be great hosts of people, lots of people, and we are great storytellers about what the environments that we. We have around us. Yeah, that. That is so neat to hear that it's both Sides,

it's. It's all about story. That's. That's what we do in parks, is we try to tell stories. We National Park System. I think one of their biggest jobs is to protect and preserve the stories of the United States just as much. As it is stories and the places and also the helping people see them and appreciate them, helping to interpret them such a way that they recognize why this is so significant, why it's important that this be part of our nation's heritage.

Right. That's so important. Let's talk turkey for a second, Jody. I'm going to talk about some of the lodges, and I'll tell you if you. Look, I know you love the Wilderness Lodge. I love the Wilderness Lodge, too, But I also love Ioanni. I love the Yellowstone. I love as many lodges as I have been in. And I don't think that somehow our leaders are able to get the concession errors to do as good

a job as they should. And I'm not talking about making them more luxurious or anything like that, but I think not enough money goes. Somehow, you guys know how it works, but not enough money goes to the preservation of those buildings, the, you know, the quality of them. If you compare the level of quality of, let's say, Wilderness Lodge to Yellowstone, you'll see big gaps in quality. I think you. You'd have to admit that. But the other thing is, I don't think

the concessionaires who operate the hotels are held to a high enough standard. From a

storytelling point of view, whenever you go into the Wilderness Lodge, the story is being reinforced. Right. The Animal Kingdom Lodge is being reinforced all the time. I'd like to see more interpretation. I'd like to see more of your leaders, more of your park interpreters involved in the hotel experience so that they really become places where you are completely immersed in that world. I have to say I've never thought about that. I've

stayed at some beautiful lodges. I'm going to use the Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier, Montana, as an example. It's the most recent one I've stayed. At, and I've never stayed there, so I'm at a disadvantage. But tell me about it. Okay, so it's historic, it's beautiful. It's one of those great lodges that the railroads built in the. At that point of time to get people to come out. Like the El Tovar and Griffin to the Bryce. Yeah, yeah. Just beautiful, beautiful

lodges. And I feel now that Bob says that what he. He did, I feel like that might be part of what's there? That. Okay, the lodge is the story. You're here to stay at the lodge. You're here for access to Great Glacier national park. And perhaps not enough is put into. What is this the story of the people coming here? What are we trying to tell them? What are we trying to show them? So if that's you notice, think of. Yourself, Jody, as some hybrid, let's say. Let's say that. Let's

just make this a brainstorming. Let's think of the resorts possibly as a hybrid between the Eltavar Lodge, which I love, it's one of my favorite places on Earth, and Colonial Williamsburg. So, you know, the Colonial Williamsburg is a place where you get to see people doing traditional crafts and food and things of how people lived at that time, that you could bring those things to

life in these lodges. You could have kids go in and be able to cook traditional food, you know, from the time period that goes back to the railroad lodges or, or have more activities that kind of bring it to life, not make it too, you know, entertainment driven, but. But really bring those lodges to life. I think a food could be more authentic in general. I think, at least in places I've stayed. And I think the. The interpretation and

the appreciation I'm getting. What I'm getting at is the appreciation of these incredible, especially the ones that you said are built in the. The railroad days. The appreciation of those landmarks to be the best they could possibly be. I think there's a gap there that we could still go after. So let's say the National Park

Service brought you in just to say. We've heard you, Bob. We want you to turn the lodges around, fill the gap in appreciation, fill the gap in interpretation, raise the quality of the experience, raise the quality of interaction between our visitors and our staff. Where do you begin? I'd have. And maybe they have it so I could be

talking out of turn. I might have all your friends mad at me, but I'll say that I'd have pretty stringent requirements on the concessionaires, because these are all operated by concessionaires on not just operations and maintenance, but on interpretation on the, you know, making sure that they're using the park rangers, make sure they're using the teams to really appreciate every

aspect of the history of every building that they have. I'd like to see them required to do authentic food, sustainable food, you know, activities that. I mean, look how wonderful it is that that mule ride still exists at the. At the Grand Canyon. It's incredible, right, that to make sure authentic activities are still going on to the

degree that they can. This is not a national park example, Jodi, but I worked for many years with Kennedy Space center and as you know, Kennedy Space center is incredible natural environment filled with alligators, wild birds and things like that, wetlands. But my

client there was the operator of Kennedy Space center for NASA as a concession to operate the visitor center, the, the bus tours, all those things. So very similar in scope, I think, to what you have to do in these big properties. But they had pretty stringent requirements for interpretation. They had to be out there selling the NASA message of why NASA is important, why Kennedy Space center is

important, why space exploration is important. So anything that they did had to have a, a part of it that was story driven, that was message driven. And so when they improved a restaurant or something like that, they had to show how it was going to improve the overall visitor experience, not just earn more on burgers or something like that. So I liked the way they did that. And in fact, when the concession came up for renewal, the concessionary that I was working with basically put in a

huge amount of capital. They said, we're going to update all these buildings, we're going to update all the kitchens, we're going to retell all the stories over about a 10 year period. So they really, they really put up and in that, as a result they get, you know, a lot of millions of people go through there. But the evaluation that NASA had for them was how well are they going to tell the NASA story? How authentic are they going to be and how are they going to get more people

to want to come out there? You don't really have, I don't think you have a problem in the parks of people wanting to go. I just think those things that are run not by parks, but maybe by concessionaires need a boost in storytelling. So, you know, that's what I would do. I would say let's tell the story of the native people that were here. Let's tell the, let's bring it to life with native arts and crafts. The way that actually,

as you know, the railroads were that way, right? The railroads brought these big warehouses where they brought all the crafts of the people out there to sell and food and things like that. I think we could just do more. That's, you know, that's my feeling. I like this, Bob, because it moves away from. You're staying at a lodge, so, so then you can go into the park. And many of

the lodges are in the parks and so it works Out. Well, because that's what a lot of the price at the lodge is, much like it is at Disney World. You're paying for the proximity. You're on the rim of Bryce. Right? Yeah, that's absolutely the reason. Right. So that's another reason why I think you don't want to hold back. Because if you say we're the best hotel in Anaheim because we're right next to Disneyland and you let the place decline, and this has happened at Disney, the Disneyland hotel

had. Had declined a lot. I was involved in restoring it and it was because the room rates were crazy because it was hooked up to the Monroes station to go right into Disneyland. So you kind of say as a management, it's easy to say, well, we don't need to do that because the room, the place is full all the time. But you still have a responsibility, especially for we serve the public. Right. You still have a responsibility to

do it great. Make the food great, make the experiences great. Have some, you know, entertainment and music and, you know, all those things that are easy to cut out of the budget, but they're really part of bringing the experience to life. At parks, we quite often put so much work into an interpretive plan for the park, work into how are we going to interpret certain stories. And then rangers themselves might come up with interpretive presentations or programs. They're going

to agree they're fantastic. That's what I really love about what you all do is this human interpretation by the rangers who love it. Right. Who know, who tell you a story about it and you had no idea what you're really looking at. That's amazing. And I just. That's where I think bringing that even more so into bringing to life the resort experience is great. Be great.

Disney has done so well with concessions that as a guest, you don't even know where the line is because your standards and your quality is so high on concessions that it might as well be a cast member because the expectation is so high. What advice do you have to help us get there where concessions are just as good as the park ranger you might meet when you're on a trip? Well, Disney went

through this too. There was a period of time when the concessions were, you know, the burgers were all the same. The, the concept. And a lot of people, we did focus groups and a lot of people said, well, you know, the foods, the food is what it is. It was almost like they were resigned to it as well. We're Disney, so it's. The food's going to Be terrible. And what that comes from is in a situation where your volume is guaranteed, if you're inside the park, you've got no place else to

go. Right? So it's the same as being at El Tilar. Right. There's no place else to go. You can't go get food somewhere else. So you can get to some level of quality, but you might not be willing to exceed that quality because your operating costs are high and all those things. But what Disney started to do was bring back chefs at individual properties. So they tried to do less with overall institutional food and do more property

by property. So the food person, the chefs and the dining people at the Animal Kingdom, who are kind of representing Africa and Asia and the world, they can have one kind of food experience. And it doesn't tie at all to the Wilderness Lodge experience. That's a completely different experience. Right. And that's where the storytelling really comes in. And they can let their chefs have some fun with. With different food items, different food events, different

wine selections. I'd last counted, I heard somebody say that there were a hundred different olive oils at Disney World. There used to be one olive oil, because they just bought it institutionally. But then they found, well, if you're going to empower chefs a little bit, they're going to say, I want my olive oil. And that guy at Animal King is going to want a different

olive oil than the guy at another resort. So it is about thinking that the creativity that you have in so many ways in your arrangers and in your leaders and the creativity they have for these places, let that extend to merchandise. Let it extend to the dining experience. Everybody should be caring, caring, caring about telling that story. That's what Disney tries to do. I'm not saying we do it

100%, but the goal of. Let's go back to Cars Lane for a second goal of Cars Land is to put you in an environment which you're already in, to tell a great story, which you already have and you're already doing. But it's also to have every part of that music, food, merchandise, experience, live entertainment, every part of it. Landscaping, to be a part of telling that story. And if you've spent any time at a Disney property, you can feel it. I think you would. Can correct me if I'm wrong, Bob, but

everything is deliberate. If you walk through any Animal Kingdom, every plant that's there is deliberate. Every tree, every direction of the sidewalk, it's all on purpose. Now, maybe we don't. We don't have that quite to the same extent in parks. But park planners do get to play a role in how the areas, many areas in a park look. And you have real, you have the real place,

you have real materials, you're not synthetic. Disney's very synthetic. But it's, you know, we do our best to make it artistic, but you're in the real places. You're in the real power of these places. You know, when you're walking the edge of the rim at Bryce, you know exactly where you are. And that's one of the most incredible places on

earth. Right. You know that. So you have that. And you know, many of the, many of the lodges are so, are older, which is what makes them charming, I'm sure, because they were built at a, at a time. They were, you know, integrated into the landscape so well, that is really an incredible thing. And so. But this side probably challenge there is they're only a certain size, there's only so many of them, you know, so they're,

I guess the way to think about them is that they're, they're national treasures. Right. And so every one of them should be absolutely incredible in every way because they are national treasures. Yeah. What a great way to look at this. Every year I go visit Glacier national park and usually end up staying at Granite Park Chalet. And Bob, if you're not familiar with it, it is a chalet built by the railroad that is depending. It's roughly an 8 mile hike to get to 8 mile hike into the

wilderness. But when you're there, there is one park ranger assigned by the National Park Service to keep an eye on things and protect from bears, that sort. But the chalet itself is ran by a concession. So the staff, there are concession staff, but hikers that show up and people that spend the night. I think there is no difference. There's no crossover. People don't think, oh, the guy in that uniform is National Park Service and these people dress like this there work for a

concession. All they see is Glacier National Park. That's all they want to see. That's all you want them to see, right? It doesn't matter to them how we say the same thing at Disney. Sometimes we have a fight between the food people and the consumer products people and imagineering people. And we always say is, look, nobody out there knows that. What they know is Disney and we're all Disney. So they don't care that this was run by somebody else that run it. You know, it's an

integrated message and that's great. I think what we should do is I should train this year and the next time you go to Glacier, we should go together. And I'll walk in the eight miles with you, and you can hang out with your family and I'll hang out, but I'll walk in and we'll do a podcast from Glacier together and we'll talk. Oh, that. That sounds tremendous. I. Bob, I actually had to cancel my reservation at Grandpar Chalet this year. Extremely hard to get. It's like winning the

lottery. And I had to cancel my reservation this year. But next year when I get that reservation in January, that's when you do them. I'll let you know. Bob, prepare for a hike because we're going in. I'm going to. I think we should do it together, but these are the best. I don't want to sound critical. What I really want your folks to know is that the happiest days of my life are when I find out that I got

into El Tawar, you know, and that I can. And the way I. The way I've done it several times, which I love, is to get on the train and Union Station in LA to Flagstaff, and then get to Flagstaff, of course, you know, get a car, get out to El Tavar. But these places are incredible. Every one that I've ever been to, you know, you go into that classic, beautiful dining room at Aulani Ahnee. Sorry, Aulani is the Disney one in Hawaii. You go into that beautiful room

for a beautiful meal. They're so fantastic. They're such important parts to park history. I would say, I would fear to put it this way, that our government understands how important you all are, that they understand how supported you need to be, how dedicated you all are, that this is not like stuff we can let go. This is stuff we have to preserve. This is our. For our grandchildren and their. Their grandchildren. Right? Yeah. That is one of the great things about the work

we do when we're in parks. We're in the forever business, because forever business. Absolutely. Yeah. It never ends. Bob, I have one final question for you. First of all, let me say I appreciate the direction you took. The conversation that you just went right to the lodges talking about what we can do to help build a more immersive experience for park visitors. I think that was a great conversation. What advice do you have for an up and coming park leader who wants to have an impact? Well,

I think you're all. You're all incredible people and you wouldn't be in this business if you weren't. And you wouldn't be in the parks if you didn't have that feeling of stewardship. And as you said, your mentors had love for the place. We're very. I know that the national park has a great group.

I think they might be in Boulder, which is very data driven, that knows about visitors and the numbers that come in and what people do and all those things that Disney has a similar thing at Disney, there's a sort of a combination of the data and the story. So you know how many people you're serving, because that's really important. And you got to serve them well. You got to do the basics and make sure you're doing that right all the time, every day,

every, you know, day on day, on day. And then there's also telling the story as you're doing that. So I think if you can have the love for the place, which you already have, understand the data, understand the visitor. As Marty Sklar, my old boss at Disney, used to say, know the audience, know who they are, what they're looking for, and then be able to put those together in a great story, a great experience. That should always be the focus, and I think it always is, but it should

always be the integrated focus of everything. Right. And I think it's wonderful. I think what you all do is kind of a mystery at how well you can possibly do it with the incredible size and scope of these places. With probably always challenges with budget. Somebody wants to do a great interpretive experience, and instead we're going to have to replace all the air handlers this summer. Or, you know, it's a constant,

you know, But Disney's very same. Disney's obviously capitalized very well because of as being a commercial enterprise. But the same fights exist. The same fight exists between the basics of operation, the basics of the guest need, and then trying to also tell a great story in between. But I think it's. That is the job. I think it's understanding the creativity and the interpretation of it, as well as the operation and understanding how to weigh those two.

That's really tough. Well, that's. It's great advice. It's one of the biggest challenges of a park leader, and it just doesn't. It never ends. The work never ends. Yeah, yeah. And we. We didn't have the chance to get into it. Perhaps Bob returned someday. But we have many of the same challenges and opportunities as Disney, with less ability to do anything about our own fees and less ability to do anything about our own budgeting. Some of that is

just imposed on Us and we have to do. Yeah, you work within very tough constraints. Your constraints are far tougher than Disney. But it's a similar goal. Similar goals. Right. But, boy, you know, you can assume that the people at Disney, like me, are influenced by what you do. We're influenced by the experiences, the lodges, the landscape, the storytelling, all of that, because you're the most important asset that the field of recreation, as you said, recreation has.

And so we learn from you and we take advantage of that. And hopefully you can learn something from us. We should all collaborate and work together as much as we can support to the country, to the world. Yes, I am here for that. And I don't mean this in a bad way at all. Hopefully. It sounds like a compliment to anyone out in the park, but I feel like seeing a park ranger in uniform in the flat hat is, in its own way, much like seeing Mickey Mouse at.

It's exactly. It is exactly like that, Jody. And I'll tell you that in the park business, the number one thing you can have is an interaction with a castman. If you have a positive interaction with a castman, it is as powerful as what we call a cast member is. You're a park ranger, right. A frontline employee. If you have a positive reaction, it's better than a character. It's better than a ride, anything. The thing you remember is you

met this cast member in Epcot who was born in France, who's at the France Pavilion and helps you out with something, you know, to know something that's an incredibly positive rating thing. And likewise, if you have a negative one, it's the lowest thing you can have. It's the thing that just brings you down. Right. If you have a negative interaction. So the frontline cast member at Disney or the park ranger with the broad hat in the parks is

incredibly important. We should support those people so much because they're out with the public all day. They are the ambassadors of what the place is. Right. And they're number one most important thing. Absolutely. Those are some great words to end on. Bob, thank you so much for being willing. Willing to come and talk to park people. You're a park person, too. Just you wear a different type of park hat. Well, I'm so appreciate it and I hope people will reach out to me on LinkedIn,

because I'd love to meet you all. And I'd love to if you invite me to your park, I'll come. I'd love to. All right. If I could come, I could spend a. A couple years and Just see all the parks I haven't seen. That would be the greatest thing in the world. Well, take Bob up on that. That would be tremendous for you to get to meet him at your park. And again, the book is Dream Chasing My Four

Decades of Success and Failure with Walt Disney Imagineering. I promise not only will you be entertained by this book, you will learn some concepts in this book that you can apply to leadership operations, park design. It's all in here. It's a fabulous book. Thank you so much, Bob, for joining us. It's always a pleasure to talk with you, Jody. Thank you so much. And I hope those who see the book enjoy it. And I know a lot of you folks have long drives across the parks, so there's

an audio book too. Yes, Bob narrates it himself. He did a wonderful job. And speaking of that, I said I would mention Bob's other book. It is called Ghost Dog and it is just a delightful story about Disneyland and a family that visits there. Bob narrates the audiobook so you can listen to that while you drive through park. So check out either one of Bob's books. They're both great. Find him on LinkedIn. And thank you so much, Bob.

Thank you for listening to the Park. Leader show and thank you all for what you do every day.