August 20, 2025 • 31 mins
“When people dream of being a Cast Member or a Park Ranger it’s less about the pay and more about being part of something special.”
Notable Moments
2:13 – Going from urban planning to Disney to traveling the backroads of America.
4:30 – Similarities between theme parks and natural parks
7:37 – Why uniforms tell stories too
13:35 – The “dream job” appeal of park rangers and Disney cast members
17:16 – Three threads Sam sees across Disney, Universal, and parks
19:25 – How parks decide what story to tell
25:08 – The “layer cake” of storytelling
27:40 – Freeman Tilden’s principle of provocation
29:36 – Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride as a parable
This conversation with author and urban planner Sam Gennawey explores the surprising similarities between theme parks and national parks. Jody Maberry and Sam discuss how stories are layered, why interpretation matters, and what makes an experience stay with us long after it’s over.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Foreign
to the Jody Mayberry show. And this
episode, we have a guest who has written
more fabulous books. Well, he's written more than that. I have four of them
and. Well, let me start with how I first
met Sam Jinway. Not met. Heard of how I first heard
(00:22):
of Sam Jinway. I was talking to someone from Universal, and he
said, if you're really interested in knowing about how
Universal got here and what's going on, you've got to read J. Bangs.
So that was my introduction to Sam Genway. I got J.
Bangs. Then I read Universal versus Disney. Then
I bought the Disneyland story, which is still on my shelf. And
(00:44):
then not long ago, a book called Sacred
Landscapes came out, and I said, wait a minute. This is the same
guy that writes about theme parks, and he's now writing about national
parks. I've got to talk to him. So that's how we got
Sam Jinway on the show today. Hi, Sam. Hi. I'm doing good. How are you
doing today? I'm doing great. So this
(01:06):
is such a. For me, this is fascinating
that you wrote some great books about theme parks,
and then your next book is about national
parks. How did you get from themed parks to. To national
parks? It's a good question. If I think about it, my entire
professional career has been worlds colliding,
(01:27):
where two things come together that seem, in my mind,
are very much the same to other people, though that's not
necessarily the case. So I was an urban planning consultant. I wrote a bunch of
master plans for cities in California and Nevada. And since I was in
Southern California, I had to learn a lot about people always use
Disneyland as the reference. Well, why can't we have a Main street like Disneyland? Why
(01:49):
can't we have this like Disneyland? So that got me going down the rabbit
hole to learning everything about the design DNA of
Disneyland. And then when that book took off, that was Walt Disney and the
Promise of Progress City and the Disneyland Story, the Unofficial Guide.
And then when those books sold well, I was asked to do a book about
Walt Disney World, but I wasn't really interested in Walt Disney World, so I said,
(02:11):
let me go ahead and write about Universal Studios. Nobody's really ever written a book
about the history of Universal Studios, which became Universal versus
Disney. And then Jay Stein, who was the guy who created the Universal
Studios theme parks, especially the Florida one, contacted
me, goes, I want to set the record straight. I want you to come up
to my house and I want you to interview me, and I want you to
redo the book so that we can give all the right credit to the right
(02:33):
guys. And I'm going, oh, well, that's cool. And then when I met him, I
thought, I'm just going to write a whole book about you. And that's Jay Stein,
which was an incredible experience. And he's a wonderful man and I adore him
immensely. And so, hi, Jay. If you're listening to this, I'm going to make sure
he listens to this sort of thing. So it's all about worlds
colliding. You know, you can't walk away with the fact that Disneyland is one of
(02:54):
the best urban environments. James Rouse said this in the early 60s that it was
one of the best things ever in urban planning. A lot of professionals kind of
poo poo it because they just think it's a theme park. But then I
realized, well, most of you have never designed anything that matters as much
to people as Disneyland. So it may just be a theme park, but it's better
urban design than a lot of the stuff you folks have done. Same thing now,
(03:16):
especially with the way that Universal has been going and their talented crew
that they have. And yeah, I mean, the same thing happened to me when
I decided to drop out, retire, buy a van, and go
traveling around the country and visiting national parks. I started
picking up on the idea that a lot of the stuff that I wrote about
Disneyland and Universal apply to the national park.
(03:38):
So in my head, they're all the same thing. I mean, there's slight
differences. The national parks tend to be a bit more authentic because they're on
the space where this stuff happened. Theme parks tend to be a bit more of
an homage. They've taken the ideas of those authentic places
and transplanted them to make it more convenient for visitors.
But they're, to me, in my head, they're still pretty much the same sort of
(03:59):
thing. That is so interesting to hear. Dwan Rivers and I have
a presentation and workshop that we do that is
about natural parks versus theme parks. And we
start off saying, sam, I don't know if you know Duan
Rivers, but we are not very similar people. He's in
the city, I'm in the country. Just there's so many different things. He
(04:21):
worked in theme parks, I worked in natural parks. So we start off saying,
Duan and Jody are so different. Theme parks and natural parks
are so different. But then we end up going towards,
well, really, they're very similar and they do
the same things. And I've always said when it comes to a
park, every park has trees and Trails. So
(04:44):
what do you do to make sure people come back to your park or
come to your park and not the mall? And I've always said it's
three things. Hopefully you do all of these well, but at least
do one of them really well. And that is service.
How good are you at customer service, the staff that you have and the stories
that you tell? Yeah. And then that's where dejuan and I break
(05:06):
apart. And I talk about, learn stories
from natural parks because we're very good at interpretation.
I know you've got to study that. And then dejuan talks about urn,
stories and the experiences that you get at theme parks.
And that workshop, Duan and I having those talks
is what really excites me. Your book is
(05:29):
fabulous. It's a great quick drive through of all
the national parks. Not all of them, but a lot. A lot are
covered. 390 of the 433. Just amazing.
And I like the idea of how you were
so well studied in theme parks and you had that mindset
when you go to national parks. And I just don't think there's that
(05:51):
many. Well, I just think you are uniquely qualified
to be able to talk about both spaces because
you had one foot in there. So with
that background of what dejuan and I talk about now I'm
interested in getting your take in how themed parks
and natural parks are similar. So let me
(06:13):
divvy it up in this way. In the real world, the world that we
exist on a day to day level, there's a certain level of messy vitality.
That messy vitality is that not everything necessarily aligns
and is. And there's differences in the built environment. And the messy
vitality is good for you because it keeps you alive, awake, more engaged within
your community, within that space that you're in. If there's too much messy
(06:36):
vitality, it can feel very oppressive and scary as an environment.
Theme parks and national parks are different in the sense of that they
eliminate the visual contradictions. They eliminate those
things that don't align with whatever is the story
of that particular place. And what happens is that your
lizard brain kind of relaxes. You're not as defensive within
(06:58):
your space and you're more willing to accept whatever is the
stories that are being told or exhibited within those particular
places. So that's where I think that the two really, really come together
is this lack of visual contradictions. In the case of a theme park,
you're generally creating a backstory for every design element that
you're doing. As a way of sort of guiding that development.
(07:20):
You know, you want to make sure the building's the right size and it has
the right doorknobs and the right windows and everything to support that story.
In the national parks, the backstory is kind of pre written because
it's already there. And then what you're trying to do is you're trying to extract
the best of those backstories to exhibit. So that's why you have
interpretive signs that are very carefully placed and in a
(07:41):
sequence so that they tell a story as you go through that particular space.
Every building has a backstory. There's something about it that
you're trying to enhance or you're trying to tease out of it. Whether it's
architecture of Parkitecture from the 30s or the
railroad architecture from before that, or Mission 66 with
their modernist sort of bent to it, or now the sustainability
(08:04):
architecture that, that you're seeing in the buildings, there's always an
explanation. There's always another little flyer that tells you how that
particular building function. So in a sense, it's easier and
it's harder. The story's pre written for you. You just have to have the talent
to be able to figure out what to extract out of it. You don't have
the choice like in a theme park. You have a little bit more flexibility in
(08:25):
a theme park because you can do whatever you want to do within that space
as long as it's relevant to the story. So that's, I think, really
the primary difference now there is a sort of not to be unfair to
the National Park Service people. In a lot of cases, they sort of poo
poo theme parks as being artificial. But then I've been finding,
as I've been working with park rangers, especially the younger park rangers, they,
(08:48):
they get it. They love when they see that. I've written about Disney and Universal.
I think it's how I've gotten a lot of my volunteer gigs is because they
want to have somebody that has that as a background. And I find that
kind of, kind of funny. But, you know, and it was the same sort of
thing with when I was doing real cities versus understanding how theme parks
work. I was always. Architects usually didn't like me to a certain
(09:08):
extent. And then they would sort of figure out that I had something going on
with it. And then my problem with National Park Service is
occasionally I would call our uniforms costumes and they would take
offense to that. But, you know, it is a costume to me
is it's a piece of Clothing that has significance beyond that of
the person who's wearing it. And boy, when a ranger is wearing its flat cap,
(09:30):
you know that ranger's a ranger. And there's a certain story, that background with it.
And it's a great, great authority tool as well, too. Yeah, it is.
And I do have to comment on what Sam just said. I
one time was in full uniform, and a friend who
had not been to the park before was at the park and saw me, and
she said, oh, my goodness, you look so nice in your costume. And
(09:52):
I had to stop her. And I said, wait a minute. Yeah, she almost ended
up in handcuffs, Sam, because you just don't call a park
ranger uniform a costume. I've been very, very careful to never,
ever to refer to it as a costume. It is a uniform. And
the difference is too, because as a volunteer, I'm like an old Apple
computer. I'm completely dressed in beige. And the rangers, of course,
(10:14):
have the gray and the green. And when, like, the store people or
something would call me a ranger, I'd always stop them saying, I'm not a
ranger. A ranger is a very special thing. They have special
training. They wear badges. They have very specific uniforms that
they wear. They. They have certain training. Have you ever noticed you never see a
ranger, at least one that knows what they're doing, wearing their flat hat indoors?
(10:35):
It's part of the protocol. You always had to take your hat off right when
you're in indoors. So there's. And there's a more of a military bent to it
as well, too. There's a deep military thing that runs underneath all
the national parks that I think most people visit, visiting, don't ever see.
But when you work there, you recognize it's another military organization
in many respects. Yeah. In many ways it is.
(10:57):
And Ranger in got its start. I'm
almost going into park leader show mode. But I will
say the history of park rangering goes back to the
founding of Yellowstone. And the first ranger was
Harry Yount, but prior to him, the park was
patrolled by Calvary. Yeah, the U.S. army.
(11:20):
So that's where, when the Park Service was started, it
was kind of modeled after what happened at
Yellowstone before there was a Park service. So that's. That's part
of where it comes from. And I. Walt Disney did, you
know, one of the reasons why the idea of people wearing name badges at
the theme parks, that was Walt Disney's idea. That was something that was never done
(11:42):
really before. And Walt was inspired by the rangers wearing
badges at the National Parks. In fact, for the first couple of years,
it was a brass pin that the cast member wore that didn't
have their name on it, but it had a number on it. And Walt always
had number one, and he always wore it underneath his lapel. And he
would turn it around and going, look, I've got a badge.
(12:04):
So he was a very weird dude. I'll have to give him credit for that.
Yeah. Well, it's fun to talk about that, and I could go into
that much deeper than I probably should on this show. But
I will also say, if you're interested in hearing more about
what Sam has to say about his experience directly in parks, he
was a guest on the Park Leader show. So you can find that episode where
(12:26):
we talk very specifically about parks. But, you know, I love
parks so much that it's too easy for me to go down that road
and. All right, let's go down the road you want to walk down. Yeah,
that's. Well. So this is one of the directions
I'd like to go, is there are.
This is one of the things that I have found out that early
(12:48):
in doing what I do, I thought if
people find out I was a park ranger, they're not going to think I was
relevant. So I used to talk more about having an
MBA and the business work I've done, but there are a lot of
MBAs out there. Not that many people, it seems, get
to hang out and talk with a park ranger. So when I give
(13:10):
presentations, I always talk parks at the
beginning because it fascinates people. So
having been in both, what is it about
if people find out you work at Disney, they're all excited. If
people find out you are a park ranger, they're all excited. What is it
that stimulates people about those two things? Working at
(13:32):
Disney or working as a park ranger? Oh, good question.
You know, one of the things that I. I would say that it would be
is that there's sort of an assumption that if you're working,
especially on the front line, and I'll talk more about the front line people at
the park. So that would be the park rangers, that would be the cast member
at the theme parks and whatever Universal calls their
employees these days is that you are in a job
(13:56):
that is a dream job that everybody wants to work in because
they want to live in that work in that environment that you're at. They also
make the assumption you're probably not necessarily making a whole lot of money, but
you don't care because you're more involved in the Mission. The people
who are in the frontline cast members of Disney, the park
rangers, everybody sort of admires because they're doing it
(14:18):
because it's the right thing to do. It's not that they're going to make a
lot of money, but it's the right thing to do as a job and they're
envious of that. We also, I think, project our fantasies of the idea.
Like I would always want to be a jungle cruise skipper or the
monorail pilot. I'd take either of those jobs in a heartbeat if I. If I.
If I could do that sort of thing. And then I also used to joke
(14:39):
that if I retired, when I retired, I wanted to be one of the train
work in the locomotives at Disneyland and drive around the park on one
of Walt's little locomotives and stuff like that. So it's a
very enviable job because of the environment in which you're working in. And that
must make you a very special person because you have a job in that environment.
So I think that's part of it. It's something all of us, no matter what
(15:01):
we do in life, we all kind of want to be a cast member at
the park and work our favorite ride or work our favorite show or something like
that. Or be a ranger in a national park and be able
to walk around in that great environment and live in that great environment.
And we are easily able to dismiss all of the negatives
about either of those jobs. The low pay, the miserable living
(15:23):
conditions and all that kind of stuff because it's such a cool place. And how
many places do you work in your lifetime where you get to work at
such a cool place? That doesn't really happen for most people. So we're
mostly jealous of you guys. I think that's. I think that
that's funny. My. My daughter now works as
a seasonal park aid at the park she grew up in.
(15:45):
And that's a pretty interesting story in itself.
But I. Of the years I was a park Ranger, I bet
200 times they had to be. At least 200 times
people came up to me and said I always wanted to be a park ranger,
but. And then gave the story of why they never did. But it
is such. I've found it is just one of those dream
(16:08):
job scenarios that people think, well, that's what I. If I could
have done what I really wanted, it would be a park ranger. And you really
think about it. It's. You could probably count on one hand how many
jobs that are out there, how many careers that are like that. There's not very
many. Yeah, that is a good point. That's. And so
I always make sure that I tie in park ranger
(16:30):
stories. And we did a workshop that it was me, Juan Rivers,
Bob Allen, Rick Allen. And here are these
pillars of Disney experience that have done
so much. So there's three of them and a park ranger
and one lady made my day. She came up after and said, I
really enjoy the Disney stories, but you talking about parks was the
(16:52):
best part. And I said, you're right, it was. I, I like
talking parks too. Yeah. Yeah. So when it comes
to. You've covered, I think, the three best shows
in the country, Disney, Universal and Parks
Now. Yes. What if you had to pick three threads that
kind of weave through all of those experiences? What would they
(17:15):
be? I would say that one was the revelation.
The revelation of, of how similar both theme parks and national
parks were. And even when I've looked through all the literature and one of
the nice things about working in the national parks, I had access to the libraries
at each of the parks. I don't think anybody else has ever written about this
this way. So that revelation was just mind blowing to
(17:37):
me. Another threat to it is the people I get to
work with, as I mentioned earlier, people who tend to work at the
theme parks, especially in the front lines, and some of the executives, people like
Tom Morris and people like that over at Disney, there's a
special personality that fits very nicely and I enjoy being around
those personalities and that passion of all the people that I've met.
(17:59):
And I think that the third thread is it's really, really
fun, especially in the national parks to live in. But quite
honestly, I was visiting, especially when I've written both the Universal and the Disney books.
I was living in those theme parks, as I'm writing, especially
Disneyland, because Disneyland, I had a special bench at Tom Sawyer
island at Disneyland where I wrote the Disneyland story that was
(18:21):
just across from where the. For where the Mark Twain was because it was a
great place to sit Universal. I had to write most of that
outside of the park because Universal was very loud and in your face.
Then it was very difficult to concentrate. So quite honestly, I
wrote most of that at a horse racing track and then would visit Universal. And
then of course, I live inside the national parks as a volunteer. And that's
(18:43):
the third thread. It's really fun to live in a place that isn't like the
rest of the world. And then maybe it's because of those lack of visual
contradictions a term has Come up as the architecture of reassurance.
There's something about living within the architecture of reassurance
that's quite a fantasy. And it's not like the rest of the places. And I
enjoy that. I like living in fantasy environments. Okay, now
(19:05):
to me, this is the meat of our conversation because you
have seen how Disney puts stories together. You've seen how
universal put stories together. Now you've seen how
parks put stories together. So Sam mentioned that
it's one big difference is theme parks. You get to decide
what story to tell. Yes. National parks, natural
(19:27):
parks. The story is already there. You just have to
tell it. So I'm going to pick one park that I
remember an interpreter doing a phenomenal job. Have you been to Wright
Brothers National Monument? The one, the where? The Kitty Hawk one.
Yes, Kitty Hawk. Yeah. Yeah. So there
is a clear story to tell there because of the event that took
(19:50):
place. If you're not familiar, it's where the Wright brothers had their first,
second and third flights. So the first time anyone had ever flown.
And it is a wonderfully American story.
Very important story. But there is a lot of different ways you
can tell that story and pieces to include or not include.
And I went to an interpretive talk there by a ranger and she
(20:13):
did phenomenal. I thought I knew a lot. I
learned things I didn't. I got excited to learn more. I did it
before walking the grounds because I just wanted to hear what she
had to say first. And I think I probably
spent an extra 30 to 60 minutes
at various spots because of how she told the story.
(20:36):
Okay, good. So that's the setting. And I think this can
apply across any business. How
do you determine how to tell your story?
Because you've seen it done in so many ways now. What have you seen
works that is successful? So I think that the
story that they trying to tell there and I'll also say the Dayton
(20:58):
Aviation as well, because that's kind of its sister park in Dayton, Ohio. The
Wright brothers studio used to be. Now it's a Greenfield village
tied to Disneyland and stuff is.
It's methodical research. They want you to know
that by the time you got to Kitty Hawk, that the Wright
brothers had already been for years going to that same place doing
(21:20):
all of their testing. And everything was methodical. When they got the whim
that they wanted to create a powered flight machine, they wrote to the
Smithsonian and got copies of every single book and literature that was out
there and then methodically worked through all that to figure out what they can
learn. From the past. And so what you see at the
memorial now is the culmination of years
(21:42):
worth of very methodical research. So the lesson that you
should take away is that if you're really interested in something,
do the homework, because that's where the discoveries come. And then
the next one is be open minded. So they were looking
at all the literature and all the literature was basically showing them all the mistakes.
Now it wasn't done and then it was. I don't know if it was Orville
(22:05):
or Wilbur off the top of my mind, but he was sitting around and he
was pondering one of these things and he was holding a tire tube
box for a bicycle because they were making bicycles, right? They were bicycle nuts.
And he started playing with it and he was bending it and he. That's when
he came up with the idea that everybody else who's trying to make an
airplane was making a static product. The plane was
(22:26):
rigid and it was just going to either fly or not fly. And it was
a bicyclist and guys who make bicycles who realize
when you ride a bicycle, the bicycle doesn't hold you up. It's. You're
constantly making slight little adjustments while you're riding it
that make the thing stand up and go the way that you want. Why don't
we do that with an airplane? And so they for years were starting
(22:48):
to play with that idea and then it was the climax. What that park
really shows is the climax of all of that research. The fact that they
built one of the very first wind machines ever in aviation. All of
that research went into making a successful product. And you know,
there's a great three dimensional life skies sculpture
that's from a famous photo that's there on that property that
(23:11):
shows you what it was like when they were first launching off their airplane. And
you can stand amongst that and be like a participant. And I'm sure almost
everybody who visits it have some family member going like this, you know, with their
hand over their face and going, oh, let's go look at that. And then when
you walk from what looks like a giant wing down the hill
to where the first flight, second flight, third and the fourth flights, how long they
(23:32):
went, you all of a sudden appreciate, oh, wow, this is all
very methodical. Also, it has one of the greatest mission 66
visitor centers by the way too. It's a very modernist visitor center
and I like that kind of architecture. And this one is a fabulous building. So
I think that that's what you. It wasn't just happenstance These are guys
who worked it step by step by step in order to
(23:55):
find success. And if you walk away with nothing else, you
realize that if you put your mind to it and you do this step by
step sort of way of going, you can do virtually anything that
you want to do. What a great lesson to learn. I think more than just
flying, that. Was a great takeaways on the
story and what, what you learned now with that and
(24:17):
what you've seen at Disney and what you've seen at
Universal when it comes time to tell a story.
And I personally feel that parks are
up there with any theme park and how good they are at telling
stories. So two parts. How do you decide? Because
what you just talked about, the Wright brothers, there's a lot of story to tell,
(24:38):
and, and you did a great job at highlighting what they
tell. So when you have something like that, a big
story to tell, how do you determine what pieces? I know you've had to do
that with your books. You've had to determine what parts to tell. And
then from your experience, what have you seen
that makes a story worth telling? Because we've both
(25:00):
been there to write brothers, and now we're still talking about it.
So something worked in the way they told us that story. So I, I
think that. And this is, I think one of the hardest things to do, it's
being the editor. You have to edit, so you have to
recognize who's your audience, how much knowledge the
audience is bringing to that particular story.
(25:22):
You need to take that audience and you need to give them
a layer cake of stories. So there has to be something that's big,
bold, and right at the top, that no matter how little interest you have or
just showing up, you go, ooh, ah, this is really cool. This is neat. And
then you need to drill down to the next level of story, so if somebody
does bring some prior knowledge, they can learn something more that adds to that
(25:45):
prior knowledge. And then you can dig down to the next layer, which is
a story that is not directly related, but related. So, like, for instance, in
a Civil War park, it's mostly about the chess pieces and how everything
moved around. But you'd have to start telling the story, at least for now,
about slavery, because that's the reason why you had a battle in the first place.
And then you have to have that fourth story, which is the deep dive for
(26:07):
the uber geek who is going to a place that's like that, where they
want to learn more, and they may even have more knowledge than many of the
rangers that they're talking to because it's something that they've been passionate
about for their entire lives. So it's layering
the cake of stories so that you don't offend any of those
different parties. And your best hope is to watch it
(26:29):
dribble on down to those deeper and deeper levels. And that not a
Disney park, not a Universal park, not a national park. But if you've ever been
to Meow Wolf, any of the Meow Wolf facilities, like Santa Fe in
Las Vegas and Texas and stuff like that, and Denver I guess is the other
one. All of those are multi layer stories. So even if you just walk
in, you're going, ooh, cool environment. This is really neat. Nice, I like this. And
(26:50):
then you learn there's a thread that's holding all these things together and you pick
up on that thread, ooh, this is even better still. There's something more to learn.
And then if you're just an uber geek about it, you can go down and
it's basically a novel's length worth of backstories that tie
it all together. And it's that ability to edit, be able to
display what you've edit and having a clear understanding as the
(27:11):
designer of what it is that you're trying to tell so that you don't confuse
people and you also don't get them to blur on stuff that's just completely
irrelevant to the story. Because you can do that in the real world. You can
get lost. It's like looking in your phone and doing that doom
scrolling kind of thing. You may have been looking for one piece of information when
you started. There's a. And then you're going off well on tangents and it becomes
(27:32):
sort of a waste of time. And the parks don't have the ability to waste
your time. They can't afford you to waste your time. They want you to. They
want you to do what they want you to do. Yeah. The father of
interpretation is Freeman Tilden. And he
said the chief aim of interpretation is
not education, but provocation. And in
(27:53):
what you were talking about, I think that is a theme
through all that in national parks, you go away wanting to
learn more. Once you get home, you still want to keep finding out
more about it. And the same happens if you visit
Disney World. You go home and you want to watch the movies
and you want to buy the toys and you just want to keep going deeper
(28:14):
because you've been provoked in that way to keep learning
more and keep reading more. Yeah, every time I've Talked about the Matterhorn,
for instance, at Disneyland. Most people don't realize that was based on a movie called
Third man on the Mountain, which is about Zermatt, Switzerland and the first guy
to climb the Matterhorn and stuff like that. Well, whenever I mention that it's Third
man on the Mountain is the backstory to this, and it even has a theme
(28:36):
song that comes from that movie and stuff. I've had a lot of people go
back and want to see the movie, and then they realize it's an extraordinarily cool
film. I mean, if you've never seen it, it's a live action Disney film. It's
got great actors in it, it's a compelling story. They
did real mountain climbing and stuff like that. And if you'll notice, especially
in the Walt Disney days of it, and those who really followed him
(28:57):
afterwards, is they want you to, once you've seen their movie, go back and see
what maybe the source material was or learn more about that particular
backstory so that you can have better understanding, because then you become more
endearing, endeared to the story. So, yeah, it's tough,
though. It's really, really hard to do that. Most bad theme
park attractions are bad because whoever was writing
(29:19):
the story didn't have enough layers, was missing
something on it. I mean, I, I one time I was standing in the line
for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, really one of my favorites. The only ride
at Disneyland, by the way. Everything else is an attraction or an
adventure. It's the only ride. And I was standing in line
and somebody said, oh, it's just a kid's ride. And
(29:41):
I turned to them going, it's not a kid's ride, it's an adult
ride. It's a parable of life that you get behind a car, you become
reckless, you create all this havoc, and then you end up going to hell.
And when they got off at the end of the ride, they came up to
me afterwards going, yeah, you're right, because I just, I
was, to me, it was a stress reliever ride. Have you ever been on Mr.
(30:03):
Toad and you're feeling really frustrated? Just act like you're really driving the
car. You're pretty much by yourself, so you can just be yourself
and just drive ferociously like, you know, an episode of Top Gear.
And you will come off that ride feeling very satisfied.
Well, Sam, this has been a fun discussion. I know you and I can keep
going for quite a while, but if someone
(30:26):
wants to connect with you and just find
out more, because I'll tell you, what Sam's doing now is fascinating.
The theme park books are wonderful, but me being a parky,
I love sacred landscapes. I love what Sam's up to. So, Sam, where can
people find out more about you? Well, I creep out with social media.
So really Facebook is the one place. So just find me at Sam Genoway,
(30:48):
which is G e N N a W e Y
and friend me or write to me or something like that. We'll become friends.
That's kind of what I've limited my social media because I'm an old man. And
that's the social media that old men use is Facebook. And then
we'll be able to be in touch that way. All right. Well, Sam, this
has been a great conversation. Thanks for being our guest today. Thank
(31:11):
you very much for having me. And thank you for listening to the Jody
Mayberry Show.
It's after lunch and he's full as a goog. It's Sugar J.
Foreign
to the Jody Mayberry show. And this
episode, we have a guest who has written
more fabulous books. Well, he's written more than that. I have four of them
and. Well, let me start with how I first
met Sam Jinway. Not met. Heard of how I first heard
(00:22):
of Sam Jinway. I was talking to someone from Universal, and he
said, if you're really interested in knowing about how
Universal got here and what's going on, you've got to read J. Bangs.
So that was my introduction to Sam Genway. I got J.
Bangs. Then I read Universal versus Disney. Then
I bought the Disneyland story, which is still on my shelf. And
(00:44):
then not long ago, a book called Sacred
Landscapes came out, and I said, wait a minute. This is the same
guy that writes about theme parks, and he's now writing about national
parks. I've got to talk to him. So that's how we got
Sam Jinway on the show today. Hi, Sam. Hi. I'm doing good. How are you
doing today? I'm doing great. So this
(01:06):
is such a. For me, this is fascinating
that you wrote some great books about theme parks,
and then your next book is about national
parks. How did you get from themed parks to. To national
parks? It's a good question. If I think about it, my entire
professional career has been worlds colliding,
(01:27):
where two things come together that seem, in my mind,
are very much the same to other people, though that's not
necessarily the case. So I was an urban planning consultant. I wrote a bunch of
master plans for cities in California and Nevada. And since I was in
Southern California, I had to learn a lot about people always use
Disneyland as the reference. Well, why can't we have a Main street like Disneyland? Why
(01:49):
can't we have this like Disneyland? So that got me going down the rabbit
hole to learning everything about the design DNA of
Disneyland. And then when that book took off, that was Walt Disney and the
Promise of Progress City and the Disneyland Story, the Unofficial Guide.
And then when those books sold well, I was asked to do a book about
Walt Disney World, but I wasn't really interested in Walt Disney World, so I said,
(02:11):
let me go ahead and write about Universal Studios. Nobody's really ever written a book
about the history of Universal Studios, which became Universal versus
Disney. And then Jay Stein, who was the guy who created the Universal
Studios theme parks, especially the Florida one, contacted
me, goes, I want to set the record straight. I want you to come up
to my house and I want you to interview me, and I want you to
redo the book so that we can give all the right credit to the right
(02:33):
guys. And I'm going, oh, well, that's cool. And then when I met him, I
thought, I'm just going to write a whole book about you. And that's Jay Stein,
which was an incredible experience. And he's a wonderful man and I adore him
immensely. And so, hi, Jay. If you're listening to this, I'm going to make sure
he listens to this sort of thing. So it's all about worlds
colliding. You know, you can't walk away with the fact that Disneyland is one of
(02:54):
the best urban environments. James Rouse said this in the early 60s that it was
one of the best things ever in urban planning. A lot of professionals kind of
poo poo it because they just think it's a theme park. But then I
realized, well, most of you have never designed anything that matters as much
to people as Disneyland. So it may just be a theme park, but it's better
urban design than a lot of the stuff you folks have done. Same thing now,
(03:16):
especially with the way that Universal has been going and their talented crew
that they have. And yeah, I mean, the same thing happened to me when
I decided to drop out, retire, buy a van, and go
traveling around the country and visiting national parks. I started
picking up on the idea that a lot of the stuff that I wrote about
Disneyland and Universal apply to the national park.
(03:38):
So in my head, they're all the same thing. I mean, there's slight
differences. The national parks tend to be a bit more authentic because they're on
the space where this stuff happened. Theme parks tend to be a bit more of
an homage. They've taken the ideas of those authentic places
and transplanted them to make it more convenient for visitors.
But they're, to me, in my head, they're still pretty much the same sort of
(03:59):
thing. That is so interesting to hear. Dwan Rivers and I have
a presentation and workshop that we do that is
about natural parks versus theme parks. And we
start off saying, sam, I don't know if you know Duan
Rivers, but we are not very similar people. He's in
the city, I'm in the country. Just there's so many different things. He
(04:21):
worked in theme parks, I worked in natural parks. So we start off saying,
Duan and Jody are so different. Theme parks and natural parks
are so different. But then we end up going towards,
well, really, they're very similar and they do
the same things. And I've always said when it comes to a
park, every park has trees and Trails. So
(04:44):
what do you do to make sure people come back to your park or
come to your park and not the mall? And I've always said it's
three things. Hopefully you do all of these well, but at least
do one of them really well. And that is service.
How good are you at customer service, the staff that you have and the stories
that you tell? Yeah. And then that's where dejuan and I break
(05:06):
apart. And I talk about, learn stories
from natural parks because we're very good at interpretation.
I know you've got to study that. And then dejuan talks about urn,
stories and the experiences that you get at theme parks.
And that workshop, Duan and I having those talks
is what really excites me. Your book is
(05:29):
fabulous. It's a great quick drive through of all
the national parks. Not all of them, but a lot. A lot are
covered. 390 of the 433. Just amazing.
And I like the idea of how you were
so well studied in theme parks and you had that mindset
when you go to national parks. And I just don't think there's that
(05:51):
many. Well, I just think you are uniquely qualified
to be able to talk about both spaces because
you had one foot in there. So with
that background of what dejuan and I talk about now I'm
interested in getting your take in how themed parks
and natural parks are similar. So let me
(06:13):
divvy it up in this way. In the real world, the world that we
exist on a day to day level, there's a certain level of messy vitality.
That messy vitality is that not everything necessarily aligns
and is. And there's differences in the built environment. And the messy
vitality is good for you because it keeps you alive, awake, more engaged within
your community, within that space that you're in. If there's too much messy
(06:36):
vitality, it can feel very oppressive and scary as an environment.
Theme parks and national parks are different in the sense of that they
eliminate the visual contradictions. They eliminate those
things that don't align with whatever is the story
of that particular place. And what happens is that your
lizard brain kind of relaxes. You're not as defensive within
(06:58):
your space and you're more willing to accept whatever is the
stories that are being told or exhibited within those particular
places. So that's where I think that the two really, really come together
is this lack of visual contradictions. In the case of a theme park,
you're generally creating a backstory for every design element that
you're doing. As a way of sort of guiding that development.
(07:20):
You know, you want to make sure the building's the right size and it has
the right doorknobs and the right windows and everything to support that story.
In the national parks, the backstory is kind of pre written because
it's already there. And then what you're trying to do is you're trying to extract
the best of those backstories to exhibit. So that's why you have
interpretive signs that are very carefully placed and in a
(07:41):
sequence so that they tell a story as you go through that particular space.
Every building has a backstory. There's something about it that
you're trying to enhance or you're trying to tease out of it. Whether it's
architecture of Parkitecture from the 30s or the
railroad architecture from before that, or Mission 66 with
their modernist sort of bent to it, or now the sustainability
(08:04):
architecture that, that you're seeing in the buildings, there's always an
explanation. There's always another little flyer that tells you how that
particular building function. So in a sense, it's easier and
it's harder. The story's pre written for you. You just have to have the talent
to be able to figure out what to extract out of it. You don't have
the choice like in a theme park. You have a little bit more flexibility in
(08:25):
a theme park because you can do whatever you want to do within that space
as long as it's relevant to the story. So that's, I think, really
the primary difference now there is a sort of not to be unfair to
the National Park Service people. In a lot of cases, they sort of poo
poo theme parks as being artificial. But then I've been finding,
as I've been working with park rangers, especially the younger park rangers, they,
(08:48):
they get it. They love when they see that. I've written about Disney and Universal.
I think it's how I've gotten a lot of my volunteer gigs is because they
want to have somebody that has that as a background. And I find that
kind of, kind of funny. But, you know, and it was the same sort of
thing with when I was doing real cities versus understanding how theme parks
work. I was always. Architects usually didn't like me to a certain
(09:08):
extent. And then they would sort of figure out that I had something going on
with it. And then my problem with National Park Service is
occasionally I would call our uniforms costumes and they would take
offense to that. But, you know, it is a costume to me
is it's a piece of Clothing that has significance beyond that of
the person who's wearing it. And boy, when a ranger is wearing its flat cap,
(09:30):
you know that ranger's a ranger. And there's a certain story, that background with it.
And it's a great, great authority tool as well, too. Yeah, it is.
And I do have to comment on what Sam just said. I
one time was in full uniform, and a friend who
had not been to the park before was at the park and saw me, and
she said, oh, my goodness, you look so nice in your costume. And
(09:52):
I had to stop her. And I said, wait a minute. Yeah, she almost ended
up in handcuffs, Sam, because you just don't call a park
ranger uniform a costume. I've been very, very careful to never,
ever to refer to it as a costume. It is a uniform. And
the difference is too, because as a volunteer, I'm like an old Apple
computer. I'm completely dressed in beige. And the rangers, of course,
(10:14):
have the gray and the green. And when, like, the store people or
something would call me a ranger, I'd always stop them saying, I'm not a
ranger. A ranger is a very special thing. They have special
training. They wear badges. They have very specific uniforms that
they wear. They. They have certain training. Have you ever noticed you never see a
ranger, at least one that knows what they're doing, wearing their flat hat indoors?
(10:35):
It's part of the protocol. You always had to take your hat off right when
you're in indoors. So there's. And there's a more of a military bent to it
as well, too. There's a deep military thing that runs underneath all
the national parks that I think most people visit, visiting, don't ever see.
But when you work there, you recognize it's another military organization
in many respects. Yeah. In many ways it is.
(10:57):
And Ranger in got its start. I'm
almost going into park leader show mode. But I will
say the history of park rangering goes back to the
founding of Yellowstone. And the first ranger was
Harry Yount, but prior to him, the park was
patrolled by Calvary. Yeah, the U.S. army.
(11:20):
So that's where, when the Park Service was started, it
was kind of modeled after what happened at
Yellowstone before there was a Park service. So that's. That's part
of where it comes from. And I. Walt Disney did, you
know, one of the reasons why the idea of people wearing name badges at
the theme parks, that was Walt Disney's idea. That was something that was never done
(11:42):
really before. And Walt was inspired by the rangers wearing
badges at the National Parks. In fact, for the first couple of years,
it was a brass pin that the cast member wore that didn't
have their name on it, but it had a number on it. And Walt always
had number one, and he always wore it underneath his lapel. And he
would turn it around and going, look, I've got a badge.
(12:04):
So he was a very weird dude. I'll have to give him credit for that.
Yeah. Well, it's fun to talk about that, and I could go into
that much deeper than I probably should on this show. But
I will also say, if you're interested in hearing more about
what Sam has to say about his experience directly in parks, he
was a guest on the Park Leader show. So you can find that episode where
(12:26):
we talk very specifically about parks. But, you know, I love
parks so much that it's too easy for me to go down that road
and. All right, let's go down the road you want to walk down. Yeah,
that's. Well. So this is one of the directions
I'd like to go, is there are.
This is one of the things that I have found out that early
(12:48):
in doing what I do, I thought if
people find out I was a park ranger, they're not going to think I was
relevant. So I used to talk more about having an
MBA and the business work I've done, but there are a lot of
MBAs out there. Not that many people, it seems, get
to hang out and talk with a park ranger. So when I give
(13:10):
presentations, I always talk parks at the
beginning because it fascinates people. So
having been in both, what is it about
if people find out you work at Disney, they're all excited. If
people find out you are a park ranger, they're all excited. What is it
that stimulates people about those two things? Working at
(13:32):
Disney or working as a park ranger? Oh, good question.
You know, one of the things that I. I would say that it would be
is that there's sort of an assumption that if you're working,
especially on the front line, and I'll talk more about the front line people at
the park. So that would be the park rangers, that would be the cast member
at the theme parks and whatever Universal calls their
employees these days is that you are in a job
(13:56):
that is a dream job that everybody wants to work in because
they want to live in that work in that environment that you're at. They also
make the assumption you're probably not necessarily making a whole lot of money, but
you don't care because you're more involved in the Mission. The people
who are in the frontline cast members of Disney, the park
rangers, everybody sort of admires because they're doing it
(14:18):
because it's the right thing to do. It's not that they're going to make a
lot of money, but it's the right thing to do as a job and they're
envious of that. We also, I think, project our fantasies of the idea.
Like I would always want to be a jungle cruise skipper or the
monorail pilot. I'd take either of those jobs in a heartbeat if I. If I.
If I could do that sort of thing. And then I also used to joke
(14:39):
that if I retired, when I retired, I wanted to be one of the train
work in the locomotives at Disneyland and drive around the park on one
of Walt's little locomotives and stuff like that. So it's a
very enviable job because of the environment in which you're working in. And that
must make you a very special person because you have a job in that environment.
So I think that's part of it. It's something all of us, no matter what
(15:01):
we do in life, we all kind of want to be a cast member at
the park and work our favorite ride or work our favorite show or something like
that. Or be a ranger in a national park and be able
to walk around in that great environment and live in that great environment.
And we are easily able to dismiss all of the negatives
about either of those jobs. The low pay, the miserable living
(15:23):
conditions and all that kind of stuff because it's such a cool place. And how
many places do you work in your lifetime where you get to work at
such a cool place? That doesn't really happen for most people. So we're
mostly jealous of you guys. I think that's. I think that
that's funny. My. My daughter now works as
a seasonal park aid at the park she grew up in.
(15:45):
And that's a pretty interesting story in itself.
But I. Of the years I was a park Ranger, I bet
200 times they had to be. At least 200 times
people came up to me and said I always wanted to be a park ranger,
but. And then gave the story of why they never did. But it
is such. I've found it is just one of those dream
(16:08):
job scenarios that people think, well, that's what I. If I could
have done what I really wanted, it would be a park ranger. And you really
think about it. It's. You could probably count on one hand how many
jobs that are out there, how many careers that are like that. There's not very
many. Yeah, that is a good point. That's. And so
I always make sure that I tie in park ranger
(16:30):
stories. And we did a workshop that it was me, Juan Rivers,
Bob Allen, Rick Allen. And here are these
pillars of Disney experience that have done
so much. So there's three of them and a park ranger
and one lady made my day. She came up after and said, I
really enjoy the Disney stories, but you talking about parks was the
(16:52):
best part. And I said, you're right, it was. I, I like
talking parks too. Yeah. Yeah. So when it comes
to. You've covered, I think, the three best shows
in the country, Disney, Universal and Parks
Now. Yes. What if you had to pick three threads that
kind of weave through all of those experiences? What would they
(17:15):
be? I would say that one was the revelation.
The revelation of, of how similar both theme parks and national
parks were. And even when I've looked through all the literature and one of
the nice things about working in the national parks, I had access to the libraries
at each of the parks. I don't think anybody else has ever written about this
this way. So that revelation was just mind blowing to
(17:37):
me. Another threat to it is the people I get to
work with, as I mentioned earlier, people who tend to work at the
theme parks, especially in the front lines, and some of the executives, people like
Tom Morris and people like that over at Disney, there's a
special personality that fits very nicely and I enjoy being around
those personalities and that passion of all the people that I've met.
(17:59):
And I think that the third thread is it's really, really
fun, especially in the national parks to live in. But quite
honestly, I was visiting, especially when I've written both the Universal and the Disney books.
I was living in those theme parks, as I'm writing, especially
Disneyland, because Disneyland, I had a special bench at Tom Sawyer
island at Disneyland where I wrote the Disneyland story that was
(18:21):
just across from where the. For where the Mark Twain was because it was a
great place to sit Universal. I had to write most of that
outside of the park because Universal was very loud and in your face.
Then it was very difficult to concentrate. So quite honestly, I
wrote most of that at a horse racing track and then would visit Universal. And
then of course, I live inside the national parks as a volunteer. And that's
(18:43):
the third thread. It's really fun to live in a place that isn't like the
rest of the world. And then maybe it's because of those lack of visual
contradictions a term has Come up as the architecture of reassurance.
There's something about living within the architecture of reassurance
that's quite a fantasy. And it's not like the rest of the places. And I
enjoy that. I like living in fantasy environments. Okay, now
(19:05):
to me, this is the meat of our conversation because you
have seen how Disney puts stories together. You've seen how
universal put stories together. Now you've seen how
parks put stories together. So Sam mentioned that
it's one big difference is theme parks. You get to decide
what story to tell. Yes. National parks, natural
(19:27):
parks. The story is already there. You just have to
tell it. So I'm going to pick one park that I
remember an interpreter doing a phenomenal job. Have you been to Wright
Brothers National Monument? The one, the where? The Kitty Hawk one.
Yes, Kitty Hawk. Yeah. Yeah. So there
is a clear story to tell there because of the event that took
(19:50):
place. If you're not familiar, it's where the Wright brothers had their first,
second and third flights. So the first time anyone had ever flown.
And it is a wonderfully American story.
Very important story. But there is a lot of different ways you
can tell that story and pieces to include or not include.
And I went to an interpretive talk there by a ranger and she
(20:13):
did phenomenal. I thought I knew a lot. I
learned things I didn't. I got excited to learn more. I did it
before walking the grounds because I just wanted to hear what she
had to say first. And I think I probably
spent an extra 30 to 60 minutes
at various spots because of how she told the story.
(20:36):
Okay, good. So that's the setting. And I think this can
apply across any business. How
do you determine how to tell your story?
Because you've seen it done in so many ways now. What have you seen
works that is successful? So I think that the
story that they trying to tell there and I'll also say the Dayton
(20:58):
Aviation as well, because that's kind of its sister park in Dayton, Ohio. The
Wright brothers studio used to be. Now it's a Greenfield village
tied to Disneyland and stuff is.
It's methodical research. They want you to know
that by the time you got to Kitty Hawk, that the Wright
brothers had already been for years going to that same place doing
(21:20):
all of their testing. And everything was methodical. When they got the whim
that they wanted to create a powered flight machine, they wrote to the
Smithsonian and got copies of every single book and literature that was out
there and then methodically worked through all that to figure out what they can
learn. From the past. And so what you see at the
memorial now is the culmination of years
(21:42):
worth of very methodical research. So the lesson that you
should take away is that if you're really interested in something,
do the homework, because that's where the discoveries come. And then
the next one is be open minded. So they were looking
at all the literature and all the literature was basically showing them all the mistakes.
Now it wasn't done and then it was. I don't know if it was Orville
(22:05):
or Wilbur off the top of my mind, but he was sitting around and he
was pondering one of these things and he was holding a tire tube
box for a bicycle because they were making bicycles, right? They were bicycle nuts.
And he started playing with it and he was bending it and he. That's when
he came up with the idea that everybody else who's trying to make an
airplane was making a static product. The plane was
(22:26):
rigid and it was just going to either fly or not fly. And it was
a bicyclist and guys who make bicycles who realize
when you ride a bicycle, the bicycle doesn't hold you up. It's. You're
constantly making slight little adjustments while you're riding it
that make the thing stand up and go the way that you want. Why don't
we do that with an airplane? And so they for years were starting
(22:48):
to play with that idea and then it was the climax. What that park
really shows is the climax of all of that research. The fact that they
built one of the very first wind machines ever in aviation. All of
that research went into making a successful product. And you know,
there's a great three dimensional life skies sculpture
that's from a famous photo that's there on that property that
(23:11):
shows you what it was like when they were first launching off their airplane. And
you can stand amongst that and be like a participant. And I'm sure almost
everybody who visits it have some family member going like this, you know, with their
hand over their face and going, oh, let's go look at that. And then when
you walk from what looks like a giant wing down the hill
to where the first flight, second flight, third and the fourth flights, how long they
(23:32):
went, you all of a sudden appreciate, oh, wow, this is all
very methodical. Also, it has one of the greatest mission 66
visitor centers by the way too. It's a very modernist visitor center
and I like that kind of architecture. And this one is a fabulous building. So
I think that that's what you. It wasn't just happenstance These are guys
who worked it step by step by step in order to
(23:55):
find success. And if you walk away with nothing else, you
realize that if you put your mind to it and you do this step by
step sort of way of going, you can do virtually anything that
you want to do. What a great lesson to learn. I think more than just
flying, that. Was a great takeaways on the
story and what, what you learned now with that and
(24:17):
what you've seen at Disney and what you've seen at
Universal when it comes time to tell a story.
And I personally feel that parks are
up there with any theme park and how good they are at telling
stories. So two parts. How do you decide? Because
what you just talked about, the Wright brothers, there's a lot of story to tell,
(24:38):
and, and you did a great job at highlighting what they
tell. So when you have something like that, a big
story to tell, how do you determine what pieces? I know you've had to do
that with your books. You've had to determine what parts to tell. And
then from your experience, what have you seen
that makes a story worth telling? Because we've both
(25:00):
been there to write brothers, and now we're still talking about it.
So something worked in the way they told us that story. So I, I
think that. And this is, I think one of the hardest things to do, it's
being the editor. You have to edit, so you have to
recognize who's your audience, how much knowledge the
audience is bringing to that particular story.
(25:22):
You need to take that audience and you need to give them
a layer cake of stories. So there has to be something that's big,
bold, and right at the top, that no matter how little interest you have or
just showing up, you go, ooh, ah, this is really cool. This is neat. And
then you need to drill down to the next level of story, so if somebody
does bring some prior knowledge, they can learn something more that adds to that
(25:45):
prior knowledge. And then you can dig down to the next layer, which is
a story that is not directly related, but related. So, like, for instance, in
a Civil War park, it's mostly about the chess pieces and how everything
moved around. But you'd have to start telling the story, at least for now,
about slavery, because that's the reason why you had a battle in the first place.
And then you have to have that fourth story, which is the deep dive for
(26:07):
the uber geek who is going to a place that's like that, where they
want to learn more, and they may even have more knowledge than many of the
rangers that they're talking to because it's something that they've been passionate
about for their entire lives. So it's layering
the cake of stories so that you don't offend any of those
different parties. And your best hope is to watch it
(26:29):
dribble on down to those deeper and deeper levels. And that not a
Disney park, not a Universal park, not a national park. But if you've ever been
to Meow Wolf, any of the Meow Wolf facilities, like Santa Fe in
Las Vegas and Texas and stuff like that, and Denver I guess is the other
one. All of those are multi layer stories. So even if you just walk
in, you're going, ooh, cool environment. This is really neat. Nice, I like this. And
(26:50):
then you learn there's a thread that's holding all these things together and you pick
up on that thread, ooh, this is even better still. There's something more to learn.
And then if you're just an uber geek about it, you can go down and
it's basically a novel's length worth of backstories that tie
it all together. And it's that ability to edit, be able to
display what you've edit and having a clear understanding as the
(27:11):
designer of what it is that you're trying to tell so that you don't confuse
people and you also don't get them to blur on stuff that's just completely
irrelevant to the story. Because you can do that in the real world. You can
get lost. It's like looking in your phone and doing that doom
scrolling kind of thing. You may have been looking for one piece of information when
you started. There's a. And then you're going off well on tangents and it becomes
(27:32):
sort of a waste of time. And the parks don't have the ability to waste
your time. They can't afford you to waste your time. They want you to. They
want you to do what they want you to do. Yeah. The father of
interpretation is Freeman Tilden. And he
said the chief aim of interpretation is
not education, but provocation. And in
(27:53):
what you were talking about, I think that is a theme
through all that in national parks, you go away wanting to
learn more. Once you get home, you still want to keep finding out
more about it. And the same happens if you visit
Disney World. You go home and you want to watch the movies
and you want to buy the toys and you just want to keep going deeper
(28:14):
because you've been provoked in that way to keep learning
more and keep reading more. Yeah, every time I've Talked about the Matterhorn,
for instance, at Disneyland. Most people don't realize that was based on a movie called
Third man on the Mountain, which is about Zermatt, Switzerland and the first guy
to climb the Matterhorn and stuff like that. Well, whenever I mention that it's Third
man on the Mountain is the backstory to this, and it even has a theme
(28:36):
song that comes from that movie and stuff. I've had a lot of people go
back and want to see the movie, and then they realize it's an extraordinarily cool
film. I mean, if you've never seen it, it's a live action Disney film. It's
got great actors in it, it's a compelling story. They
did real mountain climbing and stuff like that. And if you'll notice, especially
in the Walt Disney days of it, and those who really followed him
(28:57):
afterwards, is they want you to, once you've seen their movie, go back and see
what maybe the source material was or learn more about that particular
backstory so that you can have better understanding, because then you become more
endearing, endeared to the story. So, yeah, it's tough,
though. It's really, really hard to do that. Most bad theme
park attractions are bad because whoever was writing
(29:19):
the story didn't have enough layers, was missing
something on it. I mean, I, I one time I was standing in the line
for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, really one of my favorites. The only ride
at Disneyland, by the way. Everything else is an attraction or an
adventure. It's the only ride. And I was standing in line
and somebody said, oh, it's just a kid's ride. And
(29:41):
I turned to them going, it's not a kid's ride, it's an adult
ride. It's a parable of life that you get behind a car, you become
reckless, you create all this havoc, and then you end up going to hell.
And when they got off at the end of the ride, they came up to
me afterwards going, yeah, you're right, because I just, I
was, to me, it was a stress reliever ride. Have you ever been on Mr.
(30:03):
Toad and you're feeling really frustrated? Just act like you're really driving the
car. You're pretty much by yourself, so you can just be yourself
and just drive ferociously like, you know, an episode of Top Gear.
And you will come off that ride feeling very satisfied.
Well, Sam, this has been a fun discussion. I know you and I can keep
going for quite a while, but if someone
(30:26):
wants to connect with you and just find
out more, because I'll tell you, what Sam's doing now is fascinating.
The theme park books are wonderful, but me being a parky,
I love sacred landscapes. I love what Sam's up to. So, Sam, where can
people find out more about you? Well, I creep out with social media.
So really Facebook is the one place. So just find me at Sam Genoway,
(30:48):
which is G e N N a W e Y
and friend me or write to me or something like that. We'll become friends.
That's kind of what I've limited my social media because I'm an old man. And
that's the social media that old men use is Facebook. And then
we'll be able to be in touch that way. All right. Well, Sam, this
has been a great conversation. Thanks for being our guest today. Thank
(31:11):
you very much for having me. And thank you for listening to the Jody
Mayberry Show.
It's after lunch and he's full as a goog. It's Sugar J.
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