June 24, 2025 • 34 mins
"Storytelling is the bridge between awe and understanding, whether you're in a theme park or a national park."
Notable Moments
01:05 – Bob’s national park road trip that shaped his worldview
05:24 – “Recreation” vs. “Re-creation”: the true power of parks
06:10 – Walt Disney’s advice: walk the park, observe the guests
08:41 – How Disney draws inspiration from national parks
12:19 – Gaps in concessionaire storytelling at national park lodges
14:51 – Bob’s advice for elevating the lodge experience
16:15 – Lessons from Kennedy Space Center concessions
20:39 – Making food and retail part of the park’s story
28:16 – Advice for up-and-coming park leaders
32:14 – Why rangers are just as iconic as Disney cast members
In this inspiring conversation, Bob Weis, former president of Walt Disney Imagineering, joins to explore the intersection of themed and natural parks. In his new book, Dream Chasing, Bob discusses how his childhood road trip to national parks shaped his creative path and what natural park leaders can learn from theme park storytelling. From immersive lodge experiences to the role of frontline staff, this episode offers practical and visionary ideas for elevating the park guest experience.
Read the blog for more from this episode.
Connect with Bob Weis
Order the book – Dream Chasing
Resources
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
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
(00:24):
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
(00:46):
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.
(01:08):
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
(01:30):
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,
(01:52):
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,
(02:14):
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
(02:36):
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
(02:57):
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
(03:19):
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
(03:41):
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
(04:04):
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
(04:25):
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.
(04:47):
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
(05:09):
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
(05:31):
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
(05:54):
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
(06:16):
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
(06:38):
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.
(07:00):
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
(07:21):
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
(07:44):
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?
(08:07):
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,
(08:29):
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
(08:53):
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
(09:16):
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
(09:38):
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
(10:00):
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
(10:22):
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
(10:45):
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
(11:07):
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
(11:29):
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
(11:51):
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
(12:13):
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
(12:35):
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
(12:56):
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
(13:18):
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
(13:40):
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
(14:02):
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,
(14:23):
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
(14:45):
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
(15:07):
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
(15:28):
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,
(15:50):
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
(16:13):
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.
(16:35):
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
(16:57):
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
(17:19):
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
(17:40):
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,
(18:01):
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
(18:23):
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
(18:46):
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,
(19:08):
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
(19:29):
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
(19:52):
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
(20:14):
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
(20:37):
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
(20:58):
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
(21:20):
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
(21:43):
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
(22:05):
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
(22:28):
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
(22:50):
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
(23:13):
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,
(23:35):
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
(23:58):
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
(24:20):
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.
(24:43):
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
(25:05):
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
(25:27):
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
(25:49):
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
(26:11):
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
(26:33):
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
(26:55):
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
(27:17):
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
(27:39):
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
(28:02):
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
(28:23):
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
(28:46):
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
(29:08):
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
(29:30):
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.
(29:53):
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.
(30:16):
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
(30:39):
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
(31:02):
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
(31:23):
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,
(31:45):
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
(32:08):
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
(32:30):
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
(32:52):
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,
(33:14):
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
(33:36):
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
(33:59):
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
(34:22):
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.
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
(00:24):
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
(00:46):
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.
(01:08):
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
(01:30):
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,
(01:52):
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,
(02:14):
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
(02:36):
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
(02:57):
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
(03:19):
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
(03:41):
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
(04:04):
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
(04:25):
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.
(04:47):
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
(05:09):
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
(05:31):
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
(05:54):
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
(06:16):
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
(06:38):
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.
(07:00):
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
(07:21):
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
(07:44):
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?
(08:07):
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,
(08:29):
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
(08:53):
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
(09:16):
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
(09:38):
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
(10:00):
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
(10:22):
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
(10:45):
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
(11:07):
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
(11:29):
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
(11:51):
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
(12:13):
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
(12:35):
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
(12:56):
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
(13:18):
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
(13:40):
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
(14:02):
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,
(14:23):
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
(14:45):
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
(15:07):
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
(15:28):
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,
(15:50):
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
(16:13):
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.
(16:35):
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
(16:57):
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
(17:19):
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
(17:40):
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,
(18:01):
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
(18:23):
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
(18:46):
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,
(19:08):
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
(19:29):
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
(19:52):
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
(20:14):
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
(20:37):
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
(20:58):
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
(21:20):
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
(21:43):
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
(22:05):
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
(22:28):
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
(22:50):
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
(23:13):
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,
(23:35):
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
(23:58):
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
(24:20):
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.
(24:43):
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
(25:05):
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
(25:27):
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
(25:49):
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
(26:11):
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
(26:33):
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
(26:55):
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
(27:17):
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
(27:39):
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
(28:02):
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
(28:23):
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
(28:46):
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
(29:08):
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
(29:30):
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.
(29:53):
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.
(30:16):
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
(30:39):
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
(31:02):
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
(31:23):
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,
(31:45):
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
(32:08):
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
(32:30):
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
(32:52):
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,
(33:14):
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
(33:36):
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
(33:59):
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
(34:22):
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.
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