July 30, 2025 • 29 mins
“When you're creating something new, nobody can tell you how to do it because it hasn’t been done yet."
Notable Moments
00:52 – Ron’s Disney legacy and first meeting with Jody
02:45 – Behind-the-scenes stories of parades and halftime shows
03:31 – Founding Disney Theatrical and Broadway tales
05:27 – Ron on budgets and working with Michael Eisner
06:55 – Teaching philosophy and student impact at UCF
10:16 – Value of live Q&A during teaching events
11:10 – Concept for a comprehensive Disney show history book
13:05 – Teaching career before and after Disney
16:03 – Encouragement to students: “Take no prisoners”
17:17 – Creating the Wild West show for Euro Disney
22:14 – On innovation: “Look again. There’s always another answer.”
23:22 – Ron and Lee on candor, truth, and leadership
27:17 – Final voicemail from Ron to Jody
Several years ago, Lee Cockerell surprised me when he said Ron Logan wanted to meet me. Ron, a Disney Legend who led global live entertainment for Disney, had seen my work with Lee and wanted help with legacy projects. That one introduction became a years-long friendship filled with stories, lessons, and laughter.
Ron never did anything halfway. Whether we were watching videos of Disney parades or Super Bowl halftime shows, he narrated every decision with incredible detail and purpose. He’d talk through the music, the floats, the camera angles. Every element crafted for the perfect guest experience. It was storytelling, design, and leadership rolled into one magical conversation.
We never recorded a podcast together, something I regret. But I do have clips that are small treasures of his voice and wisdom that I’ve held onto. In this episode, I share some of those pieces with you. You’ll hear Ron reflect on budget discipline, the value of good teams, and his unwavering commitment to teaching the next generation.
Ron Logan was a master of his craft and a generous mentor. He taught that creativity is problem-solving with heart and his legacy proves it. I miss him. But I’m honored to share his voice with you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome to the Jody Mayberry Show.
Several years ago, Lee Cockerel surprised me.
By now, you probably are familiar with Lee
Cockrell. He is the retired executive vice president
of Walt Disney World. For more than 10 years,
we've done the podcast Creating Disney Magic together.
(00:25):
If you haven't listened to that podcast, certainly check that
out, but that's not what the story is about.
Lee Cockrell surprised me when he told me that Ron
Logan asked for Lee to introduce us.
If you're not familiar with with Ron Logan, let me
give you a brief introduction, because then maybe you'll understand
(00:49):
why that was a nice surprise. Ron
was retired executive vice president of Walt Disney World
Entertainment. He produced all live
entertainment worldwide for Disney, as well
as five super bowl halftime shows. So you
can imagine I thought it was pretty cool to have the chance to meet
(01:10):
Ron. Our initial meeting
turned into so much more. When we first
met, Ron told me that he had asked Lee to introduce us
because he wanted some help with legacy work.
He had a long, wonderful career, and now
Ron wanted to leave behind some work to help people
(01:32):
after he was gone, something he would be remembered for. That's what
he meant by legacy work. And he saw the work that I had
been doing with Lee, so that's what he wanted to talk about.
Well, over the next three years or so, Ron and I
formed a really unique friendship. When I would
visit Orlando, Ron and I would get together at his house
(01:55):
or at his office, and we would hang out. I think Ron
enjoyed having someone to tell all of his stories to, and I was
certainly happy to listen to them. Sometimes
Ron would put on a video of a parade, and as
the parade was going on, he would explain why they did what they did
during that parade, down to every little detail.
(02:18):
Ron wanted to make sure that you would have a
great show, no matter where you were standing in the parade route
and no matter which side of the float you were looking at.
He got out a video of one of the halftime shows he produced.
And just like the parades, he talked about all of the
details and what it took to pull off a halftime show.
(02:40):
This particular one, the performers were Phil Collins and and
Christina Aguilera. So he told stories about working with them
and some of the details, what it took for their performance.
Same thing with the iconic illumination show from
Epcot. Ron put in that video and he broke down
(03:01):
every minute of this show to explain why they did what they did
and the story of how it came to be and what it took to
put pull that show off in the first place. And it just kept getting
better. Ron was the founder and president of Disney
Theatrical. He told me stories about Beauty and the Beast and
the Lion King, what it took to produce shows, how
(03:24):
Disney got on Broadway. Talked about the music and
the stage sets and the performers. It. It
was really good. All these wonderful stories. And we
never recorded any, any of them. And I never had Ron
as a guest on my podcast, and I always thought that was
a missed opportunity. The last time I
(03:46):
saw Ron, we spent eight hours in his office. He told
stories, of course, because that's what Ron did. And we worked on plans
for an event that he wanted to do. When we had
gone through all of that, we went out to dinner. And then I never
had the chance to see Ron again. He passed away just a
few weeks later in August of 2022.
(04:10):
Ron had a great career. He left a
wonderful Legacy. He was 84 years old. He'll. He'll
be remembered for all the work he did at Disney. He won the Disney
Legends Award. He has a window on Main street at Walt Disney
World. It's right above the barber shop if you ever want to check it out.
Well, since Ron and I never recorded a podcast episode together,
(04:32):
I'm going to reach into my audio archives and share
some Ron Logan with you. We really
didn't record all that much together, but I do have a
short recording that we never ended up using for or anything. It
was something we were doing with Lee Cockrell. Now there is a long
episode of Creating Disney Magic that
(04:55):
includes Ron Logan. When Ron passed away,
Lee and I did an hour long episode
about Ron that included an
interview that we had recorded with Ron. But what I'm going to share with
you is something else from my archives that we didn't use.
It's not an interview. It's just some pieces of
(05:17):
Ron's wisdom broken into segments. In this first
segment, Ron talks about the relationship of
budgets and producing live entertainment.
There was one question that you guys sent me about
how do you handle show that was going to be over budget? I never had
a show over budget. Never had a show over budget because you, in
(05:38):
the process, you go through, if you manage it appropriately,
if you overspend in one area, then you underspend the next time.
And your producers know that that's the case with Eisner.
You know, tell them I said, I'm not going back for any more money. We're
not going back for money. So we got to make it work for the money
we got. And that discipline really works.
(06:01):
I find when you really Say
no long enough,
somebody will figure out something for you to say yes to. You know,
if you've got good people, the key is good people working
for you. While Ron mentioned how important it is to have good
people working for you, what Ron loved telling stories
(06:23):
about his team and what they accomplished and how creative and
powerful a good team can be. After Ron's
legendary career with Disney, he was a professor
at University of Central Florida Rosen College of
Hospitality Management. He loved it there. In
this next segment, Ron is talking about his approach to
(06:46):
teaching his students and about
events such as parades. So you'll hear that coming right
here. Everything I do live
ends up online anyway. I have to do that for the students who
opted not to come to class live because
of the pandemic. So everything that I actually do in that class
(07:10):
is taped, including the original
lecture. I do the original say if I talk
parades, that would be the subject
and I would talk two or three different four parades.
And then they go online and see additional ones.
But I set up the premise and parade routes and circular
(07:34):
parade route and you know, 30 minute limit on
going past the guests, all that kind of stuff. And then
they go online to see the rest of parade.
What a great approach to have students learn theory in the
classroom and then watch a parade to see what they learned in
action. Ron believed everyone who watches a
(07:56):
parade should have an excellent show. I told that no, no matter where they're
out at on the parade route. Well, he would teach that concept
to the students. He'd talk about that in the class
and then afterwards the students could watch a video
to see those concepts in action.
Not many professors can back up a classroom lecture with the three o'
(08:18):
clock parade. Let's return to Ron
talking about teaching in the classroom. Well, and I had
to limit those because I had an hour and 15
minutes. So each lecture was an hour and 15 minutes.
Again, my history doesn't change and my,
(08:38):
I haven't changed even philosophically on
anything that does your creativity since that time,
if anything, I've just, I've refined it more.
I love talking about it and I,
I do. It was online and we. And it
was a thing where students could ask questions somehow
(09:03):
because the questions help me refine what I
talk about based upon who's
taking the course because I like to make it
interesting to the specific student.
Ron said my history doesn't change and my
philosophy doesn't change. That's worth noting.
(09:25):
I've worked with Lee Cockrell for 10 years now and he's
been preaching the Same message that the entire time we've worked
together and he was preaching the same message for
decades before I met him. Legends like Lee
and Ron don't change. They teach what they believe
and it never changes over time, never changes.
(09:48):
Also, I like what Ron said about how questions help him
refine what he teaches. It did not change what it taught.
It just helped him teach, teach better. Well, speaking
of questions like his students would ask him, Ron
and I had been talking about doing a live event with Lee Cockrell.
And in this next segment, Ron will talk about
(10:11):
using a question and answer segment during a
live event. And then especially if it has a thing where
there's a live segment of real time
questions and answers. Because it. Sometimes you
think people get what you're talking about
and what you miss from a live class. They have no way of
(10:34):
asking the question that they may not totally understand
because there's so many different backgrounds of the
students that you have so many different levels of knowledge. And
so, yeah, I would be interested in that because I like
doing it. I mean, it's like I get the best
(10:54):
reviews I ever gotten from these students. And it makes
you feel good that you're doing something worthwhile. Ron and I had
been talking about putting his wisdom and stories into a
book. Here's Ron talking about one of his
ideas for a book. I actually have another thing that
I'm thinking about making a book. And it's a
(11:16):
chronological twin to
that book where my team and I, we, we
took every show done at Disney
from 1955. This is, you know, this is called 55
to 2000, right. Where I
recorded with my team historically
(11:38):
every show, parade and special event done by this
Disney company worldwide. And
it really good. Anyway, it's so precise. I
included the logos of the event
in that book. And this met was meant to be a twin
to this, the one that I published. And I, and
(12:01):
I've talked to this, the courseback people who did this book,
they're interested too. And I would have to.
The thing about the book, what I'm talking about is we did
one page with all the stuff, didn't do anything on the backside.
So we can make it smaller just by printing on the other side,
(12:21):
which we didn't at the time. And the other great thing is I have all
that information digitally. It's all digitally
done, so I can hand it to you and it could be done in
one half day. Before joining the Walt
Disney Company, Ron Logan was a teacher. And upon
retiring from Disney, he went back to being a Teacher.
(12:44):
Ron was always a teacher at heart. That's why he was
so pleased to be a professor at UCF Rosen College of
Hospitality Management. He was delighted to
teach and inspire the next generation of theme park
entertainers and operators. Here's a clip of Ron
talking about his teaching. Well, I got lucky
(13:06):
in regard to being remembered with Disney. But
then they, once you become that legend thing, it's
just, it's like you retired. Well, I didn't retire.
They went back to teaching because I taught college
50 years ago for 12 years at Long Beach City
(13:26):
College before I went to Disney full time. Yeah, I was at Long Beach
City College at a 250 piece marching band, two jazz
groups and I gave that up to go to Disney full time.
I was there 29 years and then I
didn't like retirement again
so I went back to teaching. So
(13:48):
I spent a little time at a place called Stetson, which is a college
and opened the one in Celebration. They have a,
you know, part of their college is at Celebration
which is, you know, Disney place where you live.
And I spent some time there and I enjoyed it.
(14:10):
Taught different things, put together a
ballet company of all things and got into
electronic music which was a whole bizarre whole
field. You know, I did a concert with 32
computers where I conducted
conducting. 32 computers and they all had things that
(14:32):
they, they added as pieces of the orchestra
sounds pre recorded. But we recreated, we
recreated, not recreate. We created a
moment with all these like one computer would have all these kinds of
things now that you. And then you go to one computer to the other. So
it's literally a. Which would be great on the Internet right
(14:55):
now, you know, with the way they way they do
zoom and stuff. These virtual orchestras are put
together and man, tons of people would show
up to hear that. But Stetson College
up in Deland, the main campus of Deland was really well known for
that. To where anybody got in electronic music went there to
(15:17):
school rather than UCLA or any place else. So I did
that and then I ended up going to
Rosen College which was my going to heaven because
it's just the perfect place for everything. It's my background.
Next I'm going to share a clip of, of a message that
Ron would give to his student. It's a message that, that
(15:41):
is relevant for all of us. And also during this clip we will get
our first guest appearance from Lee Cockrell.
Kind of it's short but if you pay attention
you will hear Lee laugh. Lee will come up
later but for now all you get is this short
glimpse of Lee laughing while Ron is talking.
(16:03):
And I tell my students that I said, you're graduating at a perfect time
where you can take the knowledge you now have and you're ahead of every other
student because you're here in this
auditorium. Well, they're out sleeping at the
beach or whatever, but go after it in
my, you know, my own thing. Take no prisoners. You can get out there and
(16:25):
be successful. In this next clip, Ron is
going to share a story about creating the Wild west show for
Euro Disney. And for the first time, not
counting his laugh in the last clip, Lee Cockrell's
going to show up. It's stories like this that I just love
to hear Ron tell. And not so much
(16:47):
for the insider Disney stuff. Yeah, that's always
fun. But to hear how Ron solved
problems and how he thought about things, that's what
always amazed me, the way Ron would think through
problems and get creative solutions for them. I
almost feel like Ron considered himself a problem
(17:10):
solver as much as he considered himself an entertainer.
But here, here's the clip. Ron talking about the Wild West Show.
I had committed to being an authentic show. This is
a Wild west show in Euro Disneyland, Disneyland, Paris. Now,
Eiser agreed with it. It's going to be a real show. So we
really studied the old, you know, I went to Cody, Wyoming,
(17:33):
did the museum, studied everything there and got to see Buffalo
Bill's old costumes and posters. And they actually let
us use some of the posters and saw an early
movie of the Wild west show when it was
basically writers, Russian Cossacks,
(17:53):
cowboys and Indians and Argentine gauchos in it.
But they also had Sitting Bull in. Well, anyway,
went to that thing and so we started. Now, let's be authentic. So we bought
all Indian ponies, no problem,
real buffalo, because they have buffalo in Europe, but they're little.
(18:15):
The ones in our buffalo here are big because of eating
all the grain and stuff in the Midwest.
So we bought buffalo here at the last
minute. We were about to ship all this stuff to Europe because we
bought this big farm. We spent a million dollars
on this farm and readjusted it and built
(18:37):
pens for the buffalo because they'll go through anything, you know,
they have a little brain. And all of a sudden I find out I can't
send buffalo to France because of a beef
embargo against that. So I
talked to some of my people, I said, find out what we can do. And
they said, we found it. We found out. He said, we can
(18:57):
sell it to Canada and then they can sell them,
they can send them to France. So that's what we did. We took all of
our stuff, actually sold it, got a bill of sale,
went to a guy we trusted in Canada, and then from there
went all the way to Europe. So we had challenges like
that when it came to it. We had to, with that Wild
(19:21):
west show, we had to once a year fly our entire
cast from the US To Miami for a
weekend so we could keep our green card to be able
to work in France. So we had a lot of things we had to
learn about that. But that show was
absolutely authentic. Got so many awards
(19:43):
and it's still going. I mean, it's still playing
and good food, man. Hey, and I'm from
Oklahoma, so I know it's authentic. And you even hired some of the cowboys
from Oklahoma and Texas. Yeah, we did a lot of them.
We got from Kissimmee. Yeah, right. We have great lot of
cowboys in Florida. Now that you've heard Ron talk
(20:05):
about what it took to create the Wild west show, or
at least you heard a piece of it, it seems like a good time
to share what Mark Twain said to Buffalo
Bill Cody about the Wild West Show. Mark
Twain said, I have now seen your Wild west show two days
in succession. Enjoyed it thoroughly. It brought
(20:28):
back to me the breezy wild wildlife of the Rocky
Mountains and stirred me like a war song. The show
was genuine cowboys, vaqueros, Indians,
stagecoach costumes, the same as I saw them in the
frontier years ago. Your Pony Expressman was
as interesting as he was 23 years ago. Your
(20:50):
bucking horses were even painfully real to me as I
rode one of those outrageous ones for nearly a quarter of
a minute on the other side of the water. It is said
that the exhibitions in England are not distinctly American.
If you take your Wild west over, you can
remove that reproach. That's what Mark Twain
(21:13):
said about the original Wild West Show. And when I heard Ron
Logan talk about recreating the Wild west show,
this is what I thought of Mark Twain
talking about how distinctly American
the Wild west show was. And Ron Logan had
the chance to recreate that, to recreate
(21:36):
what Buffalo Bill Cody originally did and to
recreate what Mark Twain saw and
considered distinctly American. That's why I
loved these Ron Logan stories, just all that went into it.
When Ron told stories, it was really easy to get
wrapped up in the magic of the live shows and the theme parks.
(21:59):
But I always liked that there was a lesson or an inspiration wrapped
in to his stories. So in this next clip,
Ron's talking about figuring things out when something
becomes difficult, let's figure it out. There
will be an answer, there'll be another answer. Just
look again and because if you're creating
(22:22):
something new,
there's always another answer. If you're
recreating something old, then you end into trouble.
We don't do it that way and we never did it that way.
When you're creating something new, nobody can tell you because
it's new. You haven't done it yet. And
(22:45):
there's a secret there too. That's why so many people hold
their concepts to their vest. They don't want people to
know what the news like on tv and they're not going to tell you what
the new story is because they don't want to give it away. You know,
it's a simple concept of protecting what you got.
(23:06):
Because you don't do that, somebody will get in your way
to find some way to stop you from doing that.
In the final clip that I'm going to share with you, Ron
and Lee are talking about candor.
Lee has a way of doing it too that I, that I've always
respected is a way of looking at you
(23:30):
to here comes the truth.
And Lee is really good at that. Then you know
you're in trouble. You know, you better re listen
well. I think you do that too, Ron. Totally. And that's. I tell people
now, they say what is the best solution for solving a problem?
I said the truth. If everybody knows the truth,
(23:53):
then you can solve it. And I mean, and the truth's hard. People don't want
to hear it. I mean, don't be afraid, don't be afraid of the truth.
It's the way you tell it, the way you approach
it. It's a way you set it up. Because
you know, a lot of people in the world that don't want to hear the
truth, you know, isn't that the truth? It's like your mother, they
(24:15):
always tell the truth. The mothers truth according to
them. Right? It's been
fun guys. I'm glad that was the final clip.
That one was a glimpse into what it was like when Ron and
Lee had conversations. And being in the same room with those two
was always wonderful. They had a long, wonderful
(24:38):
shared history at Disney. Their friendship kept up after
they both had retired from Disney. And when they were together
they told stories about some of the of the big projects that
they worked on and the people that they worked with and what they thought about
leadership and service management back then and how it applied
today. I Learned more listening to those
(25:01):
conversations than I ever did in a classroom. Well,
I hope that you enjoyed this tribute to Ron Logan.
I missed my opportunity to ever have Ron as a
guest on this show. I, I hope these clips that
I've shared have given you a good introduction into who Ron was.
(25:21):
He was a tremendous man. I, I miss
him. He, he was wonderful. But I'm glad
I got to share a piece of Ron with you. Thank you for spending
the time with me and Ron Logan today and thank you for
listening to the Jody Mayberry Show.
(26:05):
Well, you are probably expecting some clever
Sugar J message here at the end. When you get Sugar J,
you just don't get one of those fun, clever
Sugar J sayings. But what you will get, I think
is something more special. It just felt better
to do something to add to the tribute of Ron
(26:28):
Logan than to have one of those Sugar J sayings.
What I'm going to share with you is the last
voicemail I ever received from Ron Logan.
When he would call and I didn't answer, he always left a
long voicemail, at least a minute every time, which I always
appreciated. And in this one, you may
(26:51):
remember, you may have heard that I have kind of a funny
outgoing message. If you call me and I don't answer, I want to
leave a good impression because it could be the first time
someone has ever called me. So I try to make a good impression with
my outgoing voicemail and it is mildly
humorous and you'll hear Ron reference that, you'll hear him
(27:13):
start to kind of laugh as well as he's leaving a message.
So here it is, the last voicemail
I ever received from Ron Logan. It'll give you a glimpse into
something very personal. This is just what he was like when he'd call and,
and leave a message. You heard several
clips of him talking about bigger things.
(27:37):
Well, this is just Ron leaving an everyday
message for me and I think it gives you a glimpse into
his personality and just what he was like. And it's very
meaningful to me because it was the last one, the
last message I ever received from Ron. Morning,
Cody, it's Ron Logan. Evidently
(27:59):
you're one of the things you just mentioned either one of those.
I'm just calling because we wanted to get together sometime
on this trip. I understand you were here through
the 20th of July,
so next week would be a good time for us to meet up.
(28:21):
If you have time to do that, give me a call here at
home and we'll see we work something out. I'm
pretty free most of next week.
I could. Where I could come in. Probably the office
would be the best place to go, because you know where that is.
(28:41):
And we could talk in there and it could be
probably any day.
Well, let's talk and see what works out. You
may be at the beach right now, I don't know, but. So give me a
call here at home and we can talk about it and figure out when we
might want to personally get together by.
Welcome to the Jody Mayberry Show.
Several years ago, Lee Cockerel surprised me.
By now, you probably are familiar with Lee
Cockrell. He is the retired executive vice president
of Walt Disney World. For more than 10 years,
we've done the podcast Creating Disney Magic together.
(00:25):
If you haven't listened to that podcast, certainly check that
out, but that's not what the story is about.
Lee Cockrell surprised me when he told me that Ron
Logan asked for Lee to introduce us.
If you're not familiar with with Ron Logan, let me
give you a brief introduction, because then maybe you'll understand
(00:49):
why that was a nice surprise. Ron
was retired executive vice president of Walt Disney World
Entertainment. He produced all live
entertainment worldwide for Disney, as well
as five super bowl halftime shows. So you
can imagine I thought it was pretty cool to have the chance to meet
(01:10):
Ron. Our initial meeting
turned into so much more. When we first
met, Ron told me that he had asked Lee to introduce us
because he wanted some help with legacy work.
He had a long, wonderful career, and now
Ron wanted to leave behind some work to help people
(01:32):
after he was gone, something he would be remembered for. That's what
he meant by legacy work. And he saw the work that I had
been doing with Lee, so that's what he wanted to talk about.
Well, over the next three years or so, Ron and I
formed a really unique friendship. When I would
visit Orlando, Ron and I would get together at his house
(01:55):
or at his office, and we would hang out. I think Ron
enjoyed having someone to tell all of his stories to, and I was
certainly happy to listen to them. Sometimes
Ron would put on a video of a parade, and as
the parade was going on, he would explain why they did what they did
during that parade, down to every little detail.
(02:18):
Ron wanted to make sure that you would have a
great show, no matter where you were standing in the parade route
and no matter which side of the float you were looking at.
He got out a video of one of the halftime shows he produced.
And just like the parades, he talked about all of the
details and what it took to pull off a halftime show.
(02:40):
This particular one, the performers were Phil Collins and and
Christina Aguilera. So he told stories about working with them
and some of the details, what it took for their performance.
Same thing with the iconic illumination show from
Epcot. Ron put in that video and he broke down
(03:01):
every minute of this show to explain why they did what they did
and the story of how it came to be and what it took to
put pull that show off in the first place. And it just kept getting
better. Ron was the founder and president of Disney
Theatrical. He told me stories about Beauty and the Beast and
the Lion King, what it took to produce shows, how
(03:24):
Disney got on Broadway. Talked about the music and
the stage sets and the performers. It. It
was really good. All these wonderful stories. And we
never recorded any, any of them. And I never had Ron
as a guest on my podcast, and I always thought that was
a missed opportunity. The last time I
(03:46):
saw Ron, we spent eight hours in his office. He told
stories, of course, because that's what Ron did. And we worked on plans
for an event that he wanted to do. When we had
gone through all of that, we went out to dinner. And then I never
had the chance to see Ron again. He passed away just a
few weeks later in August of 2022.
(04:10):
Ron had a great career. He left a
wonderful Legacy. He was 84 years old. He'll. He'll
be remembered for all the work he did at Disney. He won the Disney
Legends Award. He has a window on Main street at Walt Disney
World. It's right above the barber shop if you ever want to check it out.
Well, since Ron and I never recorded a podcast episode together,
(04:32):
I'm going to reach into my audio archives and share
some Ron Logan with you. We really
didn't record all that much together, but I do have a
short recording that we never ended up using for or anything. It
was something we were doing with Lee Cockrell. Now there is a long
episode of Creating Disney Magic that
(04:55):
includes Ron Logan. When Ron passed away,
Lee and I did an hour long episode
about Ron that included an
interview that we had recorded with Ron. But what I'm going to share with
you is something else from my archives that we didn't use.
It's not an interview. It's just some pieces of
(05:17):
Ron's wisdom broken into segments. In this first
segment, Ron talks about the relationship of
budgets and producing live entertainment.
There was one question that you guys sent me about
how do you handle show that was going to be over budget? I never had
a show over budget. Never had a show over budget because you, in
(05:38):
the process, you go through, if you manage it appropriately,
if you overspend in one area, then you underspend the next time.
And your producers know that that's the case with Eisner.
You know, tell them I said, I'm not going back for any more money. We're
not going back for money. So we got to make it work for the money
we got. And that discipline really works.
(06:01):
I find when you really Say
no long enough,
somebody will figure out something for you to say yes to. You know,
if you've got good people, the key is good people working
for you. While Ron mentioned how important it is to have good
people working for you, what Ron loved telling stories
(06:23):
about his team and what they accomplished and how creative and
powerful a good team can be. After Ron's
legendary career with Disney, he was a professor
at University of Central Florida Rosen College of
Hospitality Management. He loved it there. In
this next segment, Ron is talking about his approach to
(06:46):
teaching his students and about
events such as parades. So you'll hear that coming right
here. Everything I do live
ends up online anyway. I have to do that for the students who
opted not to come to class live because
of the pandemic. So everything that I actually do in that class
(07:10):
is taped, including the original
lecture. I do the original say if I talk
parades, that would be the subject
and I would talk two or three different four parades.
And then they go online and see additional ones.
But I set up the premise and parade routes and circular
(07:34):
parade route and you know, 30 minute limit on
going past the guests, all that kind of stuff. And then
they go online to see the rest of parade.
What a great approach to have students learn theory in the
classroom and then watch a parade to see what they learned in
action. Ron believed everyone who watches a
(07:56):
parade should have an excellent show. I told that no, no matter where they're
out at on the parade route. Well, he would teach that concept
to the students. He'd talk about that in the class
and then afterwards the students could watch a video
to see those concepts in action.
Not many professors can back up a classroom lecture with the three o'
(08:18):
clock parade. Let's return to Ron
talking about teaching in the classroom. Well, and I had
to limit those because I had an hour and 15
minutes. So each lecture was an hour and 15 minutes.
Again, my history doesn't change and my,
(08:38):
I haven't changed even philosophically on
anything that does your creativity since that time,
if anything, I've just, I've refined it more.
I love talking about it and I,
I do. It was online and we. And it
was a thing where students could ask questions somehow
(09:03):
because the questions help me refine what I
talk about based upon who's
taking the course because I like to make it
interesting to the specific student.
Ron said my history doesn't change and my
philosophy doesn't change. That's worth noting.
(09:25):
I've worked with Lee Cockrell for 10 years now and he's
been preaching the Same message that the entire time we've worked
together and he was preaching the same message for
decades before I met him. Legends like Lee
and Ron don't change. They teach what they believe
and it never changes over time, never changes.
(09:48):
Also, I like what Ron said about how questions help him
refine what he teaches. It did not change what it taught.
It just helped him teach, teach better. Well, speaking
of questions like his students would ask him, Ron
and I had been talking about doing a live event with Lee Cockrell.
And in this next segment, Ron will talk about
(10:11):
using a question and answer segment during a
live event. And then especially if it has a thing where
there's a live segment of real time
questions and answers. Because it. Sometimes you
think people get what you're talking about
and what you miss from a live class. They have no way of
(10:34):
asking the question that they may not totally understand
because there's so many different backgrounds of the
students that you have so many different levels of knowledge. And
so, yeah, I would be interested in that because I like
doing it. I mean, it's like I get the best
(10:54):
reviews I ever gotten from these students. And it makes
you feel good that you're doing something worthwhile. Ron and I had
been talking about putting his wisdom and stories into a
book. Here's Ron talking about one of his
ideas for a book. I actually have another thing that
I'm thinking about making a book. And it's a
(11:16):
chronological twin to
that book where my team and I, we, we
took every show done at Disney
from 1955. This is, you know, this is called 55
to 2000, right. Where I
recorded with my team historically
(11:38):
every show, parade and special event done by this
Disney company worldwide. And
it really good. Anyway, it's so precise. I
included the logos of the event
in that book. And this met was meant to be a twin
to this, the one that I published. And I, and
(12:01):
I've talked to this, the courseback people who did this book,
they're interested too. And I would have to.
The thing about the book, what I'm talking about is we did
one page with all the stuff, didn't do anything on the backside.
So we can make it smaller just by printing on the other side,
(12:21):
which we didn't at the time. And the other great thing is I have all
that information digitally. It's all digitally
done, so I can hand it to you and it could be done in
one half day. Before joining the Walt
Disney Company, Ron Logan was a teacher. And upon
retiring from Disney, he went back to being a Teacher.
(12:44):
Ron was always a teacher at heart. That's why he was
so pleased to be a professor at UCF Rosen College of
Hospitality Management. He was delighted to
teach and inspire the next generation of theme park
entertainers and operators. Here's a clip of Ron
talking about his teaching. Well, I got lucky
(13:06):
in regard to being remembered with Disney. But
then they, once you become that legend thing, it's
just, it's like you retired. Well, I didn't retire.
They went back to teaching because I taught college
50 years ago for 12 years at Long Beach City
(13:26):
College before I went to Disney full time. Yeah, I was at Long Beach
City College at a 250 piece marching band, two jazz
groups and I gave that up to go to Disney full time.
I was there 29 years and then I
didn't like retirement again
so I went back to teaching. So
(13:48):
I spent a little time at a place called Stetson, which is a college
and opened the one in Celebration. They have a,
you know, part of their college is at Celebration
which is, you know, Disney place where you live.
And I spent some time there and I enjoyed it.
(14:10):
Taught different things, put together a
ballet company of all things and got into
electronic music which was a whole bizarre whole
field. You know, I did a concert with 32
computers where I conducted
conducting. 32 computers and they all had things that
(14:32):
they, they added as pieces of the orchestra
sounds pre recorded. But we recreated, we
recreated, not recreate. We created a
moment with all these like one computer would have all these kinds of
things now that you. And then you go to one computer to the other. So
it's literally a. Which would be great on the Internet right
(14:55):
now, you know, with the way they way they do
zoom and stuff. These virtual orchestras are put
together and man, tons of people would show
up to hear that. But Stetson College
up in Deland, the main campus of Deland was really well known for
that. To where anybody got in electronic music went there to
(15:17):
school rather than UCLA or any place else. So I did
that and then I ended up going to
Rosen College which was my going to heaven because
it's just the perfect place for everything. It's my background.
Next I'm going to share a clip of, of a message that
Ron would give to his student. It's a message that, that
(15:41):
is relevant for all of us. And also during this clip we will get
our first guest appearance from Lee Cockrell.
Kind of it's short but if you pay attention
you will hear Lee laugh. Lee will come up
later but for now all you get is this short
glimpse of Lee laughing while Ron is talking.
(16:03):
And I tell my students that I said, you're graduating at a perfect time
where you can take the knowledge you now have and you're ahead of every other
student because you're here in this
auditorium. Well, they're out sleeping at the
beach or whatever, but go after it in
my, you know, my own thing. Take no prisoners. You can get out there and
(16:25):
be successful. In this next clip, Ron is
going to share a story about creating the Wild west show for
Euro Disney. And for the first time, not
counting his laugh in the last clip, Lee Cockrell's
going to show up. It's stories like this that I just love
to hear Ron tell. And not so much
(16:47):
for the insider Disney stuff. Yeah, that's always
fun. But to hear how Ron solved
problems and how he thought about things, that's what
always amazed me, the way Ron would think through
problems and get creative solutions for them. I
almost feel like Ron considered himself a problem
(17:10):
solver as much as he considered himself an entertainer.
But here, here's the clip. Ron talking about the Wild West Show.
I had committed to being an authentic show. This is
a Wild west show in Euro Disneyland, Disneyland, Paris. Now,
Eiser agreed with it. It's going to be a real show. So we
really studied the old, you know, I went to Cody, Wyoming,
(17:33):
did the museum, studied everything there and got to see Buffalo
Bill's old costumes and posters. And they actually let
us use some of the posters and saw an early
movie of the Wild west show when it was
basically writers, Russian Cossacks,
(17:53):
cowboys and Indians and Argentine gauchos in it.
But they also had Sitting Bull in. Well, anyway,
went to that thing and so we started. Now, let's be authentic. So we bought
all Indian ponies, no problem,
real buffalo, because they have buffalo in Europe, but they're little.
(18:15):
The ones in our buffalo here are big because of eating
all the grain and stuff in the Midwest.
So we bought buffalo here at the last
minute. We were about to ship all this stuff to Europe because we
bought this big farm. We spent a million dollars
on this farm and readjusted it and built
(18:37):
pens for the buffalo because they'll go through anything, you know,
they have a little brain. And all of a sudden I find out I can't
send buffalo to France because of a beef
embargo against that. So I
talked to some of my people, I said, find out what we can do. And
they said, we found it. We found out. He said, we can
(18:57):
sell it to Canada and then they can sell them,
they can send them to France. So that's what we did. We took all of
our stuff, actually sold it, got a bill of sale,
went to a guy we trusted in Canada, and then from there
went all the way to Europe. So we had challenges like
that when it came to it. We had to, with that Wild
(19:21):
west show, we had to once a year fly our entire
cast from the US To Miami for a
weekend so we could keep our green card to be able
to work in France. So we had a lot of things we had to
learn about that. But that show was
absolutely authentic. Got so many awards
(19:43):
and it's still going. I mean, it's still playing
and good food, man. Hey, and I'm from
Oklahoma, so I know it's authentic. And you even hired some of the cowboys
from Oklahoma and Texas. Yeah, we did a lot of them.
We got from Kissimmee. Yeah, right. We have great lot of
cowboys in Florida. Now that you've heard Ron talk
(20:05):
about what it took to create the Wild west show, or
at least you heard a piece of it, it seems like a good time
to share what Mark Twain said to Buffalo
Bill Cody about the Wild West Show. Mark
Twain said, I have now seen your Wild west show two days
in succession. Enjoyed it thoroughly. It brought
(20:28):
back to me the breezy wild wildlife of the Rocky
Mountains and stirred me like a war song. The show
was genuine cowboys, vaqueros, Indians,
stagecoach costumes, the same as I saw them in the
frontier years ago. Your Pony Expressman was
as interesting as he was 23 years ago. Your
(20:50):
bucking horses were even painfully real to me as I
rode one of those outrageous ones for nearly a quarter of
a minute on the other side of the water. It is said
that the exhibitions in England are not distinctly American.
If you take your Wild west over, you can
remove that reproach. That's what Mark Twain
(21:13):
said about the original Wild West Show. And when I heard Ron
Logan talk about recreating the Wild west show,
this is what I thought of Mark Twain
talking about how distinctly American
the Wild west show was. And Ron Logan had
the chance to recreate that, to recreate
(21:36):
what Buffalo Bill Cody originally did and to
recreate what Mark Twain saw and
considered distinctly American. That's why I
loved these Ron Logan stories, just all that went into it.
When Ron told stories, it was really easy to get
wrapped up in the magic of the live shows and the theme parks.
(21:59):
But I always liked that there was a lesson or an inspiration wrapped
in to his stories. So in this next clip,
Ron's talking about figuring things out when something
becomes difficult, let's figure it out. There
will be an answer, there'll be another answer. Just
look again and because if you're creating
(22:22):
something new,
there's always another answer. If you're
recreating something old, then you end into trouble.
We don't do it that way and we never did it that way.
When you're creating something new, nobody can tell you because
it's new. You haven't done it yet. And
(22:45):
there's a secret there too. That's why so many people hold
their concepts to their vest. They don't want people to
know what the news like on tv and they're not going to tell you what
the new story is because they don't want to give it away. You know,
it's a simple concept of protecting what you got.
(23:06):
Because you don't do that, somebody will get in your way
to find some way to stop you from doing that.
In the final clip that I'm going to share with you, Ron
and Lee are talking about candor.
Lee has a way of doing it too that I, that I've always
respected is a way of looking at you
(23:30):
to here comes the truth.
And Lee is really good at that. Then you know
you're in trouble. You know, you better re listen
well. I think you do that too, Ron. Totally. And that's. I tell people
now, they say what is the best solution for solving a problem?
I said the truth. If everybody knows the truth,
(23:53):
then you can solve it. And I mean, and the truth's hard. People don't want
to hear it. I mean, don't be afraid, don't be afraid of the truth.
It's the way you tell it, the way you approach
it. It's a way you set it up. Because
you know, a lot of people in the world that don't want to hear the
truth, you know, isn't that the truth? It's like your mother, they
(24:15):
always tell the truth. The mothers truth according to
them. Right? It's been
fun guys. I'm glad that was the final clip.
That one was a glimpse into what it was like when Ron and
Lee had conversations. And being in the same room with those two
was always wonderful. They had a long, wonderful
(24:38):
shared history at Disney. Their friendship kept up after
they both had retired from Disney. And when they were together
they told stories about some of the of the big projects that
they worked on and the people that they worked with and what they thought about
leadership and service management back then and how it applied
today. I Learned more listening to those
(25:01):
conversations than I ever did in a classroom. Well,
I hope that you enjoyed this tribute to Ron Logan.
I missed my opportunity to ever have Ron as a
guest on this show. I, I hope these clips that
I've shared have given you a good introduction into who Ron was.
(25:21):
He was a tremendous man. I, I miss
him. He, he was wonderful. But I'm glad
I got to share a piece of Ron with you. Thank you for spending
the time with me and Ron Logan today and thank you for
listening to the Jody Mayberry Show.
(26:05):
Well, you are probably expecting some clever
Sugar J message here at the end. When you get Sugar J,
you just don't get one of those fun, clever
Sugar J sayings. But what you will get, I think
is something more special. It just felt better
to do something to add to the tribute of Ron
(26:28):
Logan than to have one of those Sugar J sayings.
What I'm going to share with you is the last
voicemail I ever received from Ron Logan.
When he would call and I didn't answer, he always left a
long voicemail, at least a minute every time, which I always
appreciated. And in this one, you may
(26:51):
remember, you may have heard that I have kind of a funny
outgoing message. If you call me and I don't answer, I want to
leave a good impression because it could be the first time
someone has ever called me. So I try to make a good impression with
my outgoing voicemail and it is mildly
humorous and you'll hear Ron reference that, you'll hear him
(27:13):
start to kind of laugh as well as he's leaving a message.
So here it is, the last voicemail
I ever received from Ron Logan. It'll give you a glimpse into
something very personal. This is just what he was like when he'd call and,
and leave a message. You heard several
clips of him talking about bigger things.
(27:37):
Well, this is just Ron leaving an everyday
message for me and I think it gives you a glimpse into
his personality and just what he was like. And it's very
meaningful to me because it was the last one, the
last message I ever received from Ron. Morning,
Cody, it's Ron Logan. Evidently
(27:59):
you're one of the things you just mentioned either one of those.
I'm just calling because we wanted to get together sometime
on this trip. I understand you were here through
the 20th of July,
so next week would be a good time for us to meet up.
(28:21):
If you have time to do that, give me a call here at
home and we'll see we work something out. I'm
pretty free most of next week.
I could. Where I could come in. Probably the office
would be the best place to go, because you know where that is.
(28:41):
And we could talk in there and it could be
probably any day.
Well, let's talk and see what works out. You
may be at the beach right now, I don't know, but. So give me a
call here at home and we can talk about it and figure out when we
might want to personally get together by.
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