“This will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done”, said Ken over a beer. We’d been working together for 2 days and I’d been at my new job with Scenario for less than a week. Ken was talking about our project - designing and building 2 complete attractions from scratch for Universal Studios Singapore, in less than 2 years, from half way around the world, and for an owner who wanted it cheap and fast so they could open their primary interest, Singapore’s first casino.
I didn’t believe Ken then. I didn’t even believe him when I was in the middle of it, working 12 hour days for 8 weeks straight. Looking back now, I think he was right, but not for the reasons I would have expected.
Before it was over, I’d architect a theatre, everything in it, and the tool we used to create it. I would lead the design and engineering of every detail of the show through 4 producers, 3 company changes, a 15 hour time-zone difference, workers and languages from 7 countries, and a schedule at least 6 months too short. And I’d co-lead the birth and evolution of systems to make an unproven new design system work in the real world. That was challenging, but that was the job.
What was hard was creating partnership in a team of people with very different perspectives and agendas. What was hard was surrendering to a bureaucracy, a process, and people I didn’t want to trust. What was harder still was trying to create something great and discovering that not everybody cared that it was done right, they just wanted it done.
My family took a vacation to Disney World when I was a kid. My sisters and parents returned with pictures of parades and characters and each other. I had pictures of speakers, lights, mechanisms, structure, and technicians at work. Even then, I was fascinated with the behind-the-scenes of how it worked and how it was built. I knew then that was what I wanted to do when I grew up. So, designing and building part of a theme park was a kind of fairy tale come true for me.
Scenario Design was a boutique scenery company in Los Angeles who’d cut it’s teeth on music video sets back when MTV actually played videos. They’d invested heavily in software and hardware that streamlined the process of building unique scenic pieces and architectural rockwork. The old way relied on hand-built scale-models of clay and foam that craftsmen did their best to match when making the full size final, often onsite in construction conditions. Scenario’s system used high-resolution video game environment software, 3d image scanning, and robotic manufacturing to make the finished work an exact proportioned match to the approved scaled physical models. They’d most recently completed an 8ft tall and 40ft wide Krusty the Klown head for The Simpsons Ride at Universal Hollywood, entirely built and designed using this technology.
Scenario had been approached by Resorts World Sentosa (RWS), the developer building a casino, hotels, and the Universal park in Singapore. USS was to be mostly copies of shows and rides at other parks in Florida, Hollywood, & Japan. But there were two brand-new attractions slated, and they were already behind schedule. Though everything about the shows was still in flux, from storyline to special effects, building foundations were already being formed and structural steel was on order. RWS hoped Scenario’s digital pre-visualization, or ‘pre-vis’, model could help them make up for lost time. Scenario had proven the system worked to build a big-ass static clown head. Two entire shows and the buildings to hold them was a quantum leap - mostly one of faith.
Still a scenic shop at heart, Scenario brought in an ex-Disney Imagineer with experience in managing complete attractions. Tracy Cathy immediately assembled two teams of hand-picked specialty vendors - one for the Journey to Madagascar boat ride, one for the SFX Theatre. These vendors were designers and builders of water and flame effects, audio/video and control systems, moving mechanical elements, theatrical lighting, and animatronic figures. With Tracy leading, they took the shows from rough concepts to defined spaces and approved scripts in a matter of weeks. And they did it all in Scenario’s virtual model, creating a rendered video animatic of the show, with size, positioning, and timing of the set and effects.
This is when I joined the team in May 2008. Scenario had searched extensively for someone with show production experience and technical expertise to lead SFX, and I was recommended to them by a contact via Cirque du Soleil. I moved to LA and jumped right in as Attraction Manager. Coming in, I didn’t know what this would take, and didn’t know the details of most of the pieces.
The vendors on our team all had decades of experience in their specialty, and were a few months ahead of me on this attraction. I dove deep to understand and lead the show, the technology, the team, and the project as quickly as possible. While I was learning about flame systems, color and texture properties of fire-proof building materials, and structural and corrosion characteristics of metal alloys, I was also managing the new process of merging engineering software and creating useful drawings from the virtual video model.
SFX is set in a boathouse in New York City where a Category 5 hurricane is about to blow through. In less than 3 minutes, windows blow in, it rains, signs crash into the building, boats and gas tanks explode, walls are ripped off, the roof falls in, and a ship crashes through the side of the boathouse. We would be blowing up and crashing into our building 10 times an hour, 10 hours a day - and we wanted it to last for 10 years.
While RWS was building the park, it was Universal’s name on it, and their standards applied. Over years, they had evolved a comprehensive but cumbersome protocol of engineering reviews intended to ensure safety and guarantee longevity of the equipment. It usually took a year or more of engineering before fabrication began, which itself took months more. We were slated to open in December 2009 and needed to start fabrication right away, but had barely begun the engineering. We would wrestle the competing needs of rushing to build and slowing to review.
Further complicating the project, Scenario’s finances broke down in the fall of 2008. As we were pushing ourselves and our team for long hours and compressed timelines, paychecks started to bounce and vendor invoices went unpaid. I’d been through this before both as an employee and employer and now added diplomacy, negotiation, creative financing, crisis counseling, and open pleading to my job description. Even as the power was going out and collectors were at the door, Scenario was bought by KHSS, a drywall and theming contractor best known for custom facade work in Las Vegas. I’d worked with them on Aladdin & Paris just as they were starting-up 10 years prior. Scenario had already partnered with CW Driver, a construction management company, to joint venture on the Singapore projects. We found ourselves with a new employer, a new JV partner, a new name (Integrated Design Build - iDB), and a whole new set of personalities, procedures, and office politics.
Over the next year, most of our team moved to Singapore while a few of us stayed in LA to work with our vendors to build and test the complex custom assemblies for the show. Negotiating between the owner, our internal team and the vendors, I was the primary advocate for the final quality of the show, which was compromised more than any of us liked. Juggling the demands of creative performance, engineering reliability, visual aesthetics, architectural integration, and the constant schedule pressure of trying to do it all it too fast to do it right, we were all skating the edge of ‘good enough’ and trying not to slide off into mediocrity. We only partially succeeded.
There are a million details I could share. How we found major physical conflicts between set pieces and the building steel, sometimes not until we were installing. How the custom boats and trusses we built started to crack and break apart during testing. How a labeling error by a European valve manufacturer almost delayed the opening of the entire park. How our Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan installers had no tools, or better yet, drills that only ran in reverse. How 4 people died on the jobsite in a single month because it was unsafe. How things fell from catwalks and mosquito fumigators couldn’t be seen for the fog they walked through, unmasked.
And the great things, the beautiful surprises. The pride of shop welders satisfied in the quality of their craftsmanship. The laughing and joking that followed harsh meetings because we were all in it together. The sight of Indian workers holding hands in hard hats as they worked. The Singaporean custom of saying ‘Just one thing’ before a barrage of 20 probing questions. Incomprehensible emails and texts from Japanese and Chinese foreman with phrases like “It is understood that I am important”. Standing in the theatre with my art director and seeing what he’d envisioned brought to life around us. Listening to controls programmers passionately debate the finer points of coding because they loved what they did. Seeing the first audiences jump, scream, and laugh at the right moments. Unexpected friendships with extraordinary people. A simple smile of thanks and acknowledgement from somebody who knew what all we’d gone through, and what we’d given up.
And what I learned personally. About materials and processes and building things. About humility and acceptance and commitment. About how people will work harder to avoid a difficult problem, or person, than to confront it head on. About setting things on fire 10 times an hour for 10 years. About how to build a theme park, and how not to. About Singaporean kopi, and chicken and rice. About the illusion and reality of a nearly-benevolent dictatorial democracy. About how the most unexpected people do the most extraordinary things. And how the expected people sometimes don’t do anything at all. About when I compromised, and when I wouldn’t.
We all started wanting to build something we could be proud of. And this was cool - a theme park half way around the world. It was a great thing to tell our friends and family. And in the end, we did build it, and we do have something to be proud of. It may not look exactly like what we imagined, or what I imagined as a kid with my camera at DisneyWorld. But it’s real, it’s open, and people enjoy it everyday.
The real accomplishment isn’t what the audience sees when they stand in the theatre for 3 minutes. Our real accomplishment is that most of us worked everyday to bring our best when all that was wanted was just ‘good enough’.
We provided the best value we could, and that made the experience valuable for us. And I think that’s the kind of value you can only get from something hard. So Ken may have been right, it may have been the hardest thing any of us have ever done. But really, if it wasn’t, why bother?
===
The above is my story about my experience on this project. There are hundreds of other stories and experiences from the people who shaped their lives around helping to open and run this park. I got to work with a few of them closely, and I’m better for it. My thanks, love, appreciation, and respect to them all, especially those below.
Our internal iDB team: Tom Stapleton, Tracy Cathy, Dave McGlothlin, Chris Graber, Daniel Lucas, Shelly Wang, Dan Rey, Matt Wilt, Liz Mojica, Kelley Ritch, Larry Reinhold, Melissa Corrado, Paul Williamson, Tom Zaczyk, Jeff Bara, Mason Schmitz, Steven Rambousek, Aaron Scarfia, Jared Webster, Tim Dude Johnson, Charlotte Mok, Michael Liew, and Mohammed the disco-van driver.
Attraction Services: Ron Griffin, Melissa Townsend, Joel House, Rick Bentley, Maurice Aboulache, Dave Graul, Catherine Griffin, Gregory Arndt and their entire engineering, shop, and install team.
LA Propoint: Mark Riddlesperger, Susie Pucelli, Eric Gill, John Torres, Chris Collis, Ryan, Thor, and their entire engineering, shop, and install team.
Electrosonic: Chris Conte, Les Hill, Dan Laspa, John Bush, Karl Hartsler, Andy Batwinas, Phil Shaw, Ryan McDowell, Jason Valenzuela, and their entire shop and install team.
Birket: Brian Kuhar, Felisha Birket, Claudia Park, and Jet Zaleski and their entire shop and install team.
Ptarmigan Lighting: Dan Harvey, who was the the entire install team, and Simon Fraser, who was the entire shop.
The Creative Team: Steve Ryan, Chris Ellis, David Kneupper, Tony Mitchell, Ross Edwards, Fabian Yeager, and Mark Andrew.
RWS / Universal: Alan Nicholson, Matthew Penrose, Don MacClean, Chris Patrick, Rob Sullivan, David Crater, Dan Kent, and Rob Johnson
USS Technical Services: Rodney Johns, Vincent, Luis, Eswaran, Wee Hsieng, Teck Choon, Boon Liang, Kok Eng, Kok Sun, and Ganesh Babu
Singapore Architects & Consultants: Claudia Nam, Jenny Dimiling, Joe Koh, Leo Mauricio, Allan Tay, Stuart McKay, Kelvin Chen, Ronald Guerrera, and the crews at Park Engineering and JPL.
I didn’t believe Ken then. I didn’t even believe him when I was in the middle of it, working 12 hour days for 8 weeks straight. Looking back now, I think he was right, but not for the reasons I would have expected.
Before it was over, I’d architect a theatre, everything in it, and the tool we used to create it. I would lead the design and engineering of every detail of the show through 4 producers, 3 company changes, a 15 hour time-zone difference, workers and languages from 7 countries, and a schedule at least 6 months too short. And I’d co-lead the birth and evolution of systems to make an unproven new design system work in the real world. That was challenging, but that was the job.
What was hard was creating partnership in a team of people with very different perspectives and agendas. What was hard was surrendering to a bureaucracy, a process, and people I didn’t want to trust. What was harder still was trying to create something great and discovering that not everybody cared that it was done right, they just wanted it done.
My family took a vacation to Disney World when I was a kid. My sisters and parents returned with pictures of parades and characters and each other. I had pictures of speakers, lights, mechanisms, structure, and technicians at work. Even then, I was fascinated with the behind-the-scenes of how it worked and how it was built. I knew then that was what I wanted to do when I grew up. So, designing and building part of a theme park was a kind of fairy tale come true for me.
Scenario Design was a boutique scenery company in Los Angeles who’d cut it’s teeth on music video sets back when MTV actually played videos. They’d invested heavily in software and hardware that streamlined the process of building unique scenic pieces and architectural rockwork. The old way relied on hand-built scale-models of clay and foam that craftsmen did their best to match when making the full size final, often onsite in construction conditions. Scenario’s system used high-resolution video game environment software, 3d image scanning, and robotic manufacturing to make the finished work an exact proportioned match to the approved scaled physical models. They’d most recently completed an 8ft tall and 40ft wide Krusty the Klown head for The Simpsons Ride at Universal Hollywood, entirely built and designed using this technology.
Scenario had been approached by Resorts World Sentosa (RWS), the developer building a casino, hotels, and the Universal park in Singapore. USS was to be mostly copies of shows and rides at other parks in Florida, Hollywood, & Japan. But there were two brand-new attractions slated, and they were already behind schedule. Though everything about the shows was still in flux, from storyline to special effects, building foundations were already being formed and structural steel was on order. RWS hoped Scenario’s digital pre-visualization, or ‘pre-vis’, model could help them make up for lost time. Scenario had proven the system worked to build a big-ass static clown head. Two entire shows and the buildings to hold them was a quantum leap - mostly one of faith.
Still a scenic shop at heart, Scenario brought in an ex-Disney Imagineer with experience in managing complete attractions. Tracy Cathy immediately assembled two teams of hand-picked specialty vendors - one for the Journey to Madagascar boat ride, one for the SFX Theatre. These vendors were designers and builders of water and flame effects, audio/video and control systems, moving mechanical elements, theatrical lighting, and animatronic figures. With Tracy leading, they took the shows from rough concepts to defined spaces and approved scripts in a matter of weeks. And they did it all in Scenario’s virtual model, creating a rendered video animatic of the show, with size, positioning, and timing of the set and effects.
This is when I joined the team in May 2008. Scenario had searched extensively for someone with show production experience and technical expertise to lead SFX, and I was recommended to them by a contact via Cirque du Soleil. I moved to LA and jumped right in as Attraction Manager. Coming in, I didn’t know what this would take, and didn’t know the details of most of the pieces.
The vendors on our team all had decades of experience in their specialty, and were a few months ahead of me on this attraction. I dove deep to understand and lead the show, the technology, the team, and the project as quickly as possible. While I was learning about flame systems, color and texture properties of fire-proof building materials, and structural and corrosion characteristics of metal alloys, I was also managing the new process of merging engineering software and creating useful drawings from the virtual video model.
SFX is set in a boathouse in New York City where a Category 5 hurricane is about to blow through. In less than 3 minutes, windows blow in, it rains, signs crash into the building, boats and gas tanks explode, walls are ripped off, the roof falls in, and a ship crashes through the side of the boathouse. We would be blowing up and crashing into our building 10 times an hour, 10 hours a day - and we wanted it to last for 10 years.
While RWS was building the park, it was Universal’s name on it, and their standards applied. Over years, they had evolved a comprehensive but cumbersome protocol of engineering reviews intended to ensure safety and guarantee longevity of the equipment. It usually took a year or more of engineering before fabrication began, which itself took months more. We were slated to open in December 2009 and needed to start fabrication right away, but had barely begun the engineering. We would wrestle the competing needs of rushing to build and slowing to review.
Further complicating the project, Scenario’s finances broke down in the fall of 2008. As we were pushing ourselves and our team for long hours and compressed timelines, paychecks started to bounce and vendor invoices went unpaid. I’d been through this before both as an employee and employer and now added diplomacy, negotiation, creative financing, crisis counseling, and open pleading to my job description. Even as the power was going out and collectors were at the door, Scenario was bought by KHSS, a drywall and theming contractor best known for custom facade work in Las Vegas. I’d worked with them on Aladdin & Paris just as they were starting-up 10 years prior. Scenario had already partnered with CW Driver, a construction management company, to joint venture on the Singapore projects. We found ourselves with a new employer, a new JV partner, a new name (Integrated Design Build - iDB), and a whole new set of personalities, procedures, and office politics.
Over the next year, most of our team moved to Singapore while a few of us stayed in LA to work with our vendors to build and test the complex custom assemblies for the show. Negotiating between the owner, our internal team and the vendors, I was the primary advocate for the final quality of the show, which was compromised more than any of us liked. Juggling the demands of creative performance, engineering reliability, visual aesthetics, architectural integration, and the constant schedule pressure of trying to do it all it too fast to do it right, we were all skating the edge of ‘good enough’ and trying not to slide off into mediocrity. We only partially succeeded.
There are a million details I could share. How we found major physical conflicts between set pieces and the building steel, sometimes not until we were installing. How the custom boats and trusses we built started to crack and break apart during testing. How a labeling error by a European valve manufacturer almost delayed the opening of the entire park. How our Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan installers had no tools, or better yet, drills that only ran in reverse. How 4 people died on the jobsite in a single month because it was unsafe. How things fell from catwalks and mosquito fumigators couldn’t be seen for the fog they walked through, unmasked.
And the great things, the beautiful surprises. The pride of shop welders satisfied in the quality of their craftsmanship. The laughing and joking that followed harsh meetings because we were all in it together. The sight of Indian workers holding hands in hard hats as they worked. The Singaporean custom of saying ‘Just one thing’ before a barrage of 20 probing questions. Incomprehensible emails and texts from Japanese and Chinese foreman with phrases like “It is understood that I am important”. Standing in the theatre with my art director and seeing what he’d envisioned brought to life around us. Listening to controls programmers passionately debate the finer points of coding because they loved what they did. Seeing the first audiences jump, scream, and laugh at the right moments. Unexpected friendships with extraordinary people. A simple smile of thanks and acknowledgement from somebody who knew what all we’d gone through, and what we’d given up.
And what I learned personally. About materials and processes and building things. About humility and acceptance and commitment. About how people will work harder to avoid a difficult problem, or person, than to confront it head on. About setting things on fire 10 times an hour for 10 years. About how to build a theme park, and how not to. About Singaporean kopi, and chicken and rice. About the illusion and reality of a nearly-benevolent dictatorial democracy. About how the most unexpected people do the most extraordinary things. And how the expected people sometimes don’t do anything at all. About when I compromised, and when I wouldn’t.
We all started wanting to build something we could be proud of. And this was cool - a theme park half way around the world. It was a great thing to tell our friends and family. And in the end, we did build it, and we do have something to be proud of. It may not look exactly like what we imagined, or what I imagined as a kid with my camera at DisneyWorld. But it’s real, it’s open, and people enjoy it everyday.
The real accomplishment isn’t what the audience sees when they stand in the theatre for 3 minutes. Our real accomplishment is that most of us worked everyday to bring our best when all that was wanted was just ‘good enough’.
We provided the best value we could, and that made the experience valuable for us. And I think that’s the kind of value you can only get from something hard. So Ken may have been right, it may have been the hardest thing any of us have ever done. But really, if it wasn’t, why bother?
===
The above is my story about my experience on this project. There are hundreds of other stories and experiences from the people who shaped their lives around helping to open and run this park. I got to work with a few of them closely, and I’m better for it. My thanks, love, appreciation, and respect to them all, especially those below.
Our internal iDB team: Tom Stapleton, Tracy Cathy, Dave McGlothlin, Chris Graber, Daniel Lucas, Shelly Wang, Dan Rey, Matt Wilt, Liz Mojica, Kelley Ritch, Larry Reinhold, Melissa Corrado, Paul Williamson, Tom Zaczyk, Jeff Bara, Mason Schmitz, Steven Rambousek, Aaron Scarfia, Jared Webster, Tim Dude Johnson, Charlotte Mok, Michael Liew, and Mohammed the disco-van driver.
Attraction Services: Ron Griffin, Melissa Townsend, Joel House, Rick Bentley, Maurice Aboulache, Dave Graul, Catherine Griffin, Gregory Arndt and their entire engineering, shop, and install team.
LA Propoint: Mark Riddlesperger, Susie Pucelli, Eric Gill, John Torres, Chris Collis, Ryan, Thor, and their entire engineering, shop, and install team.
Electrosonic: Chris Conte, Les Hill, Dan Laspa, John Bush, Karl Hartsler, Andy Batwinas, Phil Shaw, Ryan McDowell, Jason Valenzuela, and their entire shop and install team.
Birket: Brian Kuhar, Felisha Birket, Claudia Park, and Jet Zaleski and their entire shop and install team.
Ptarmigan Lighting: Dan Harvey, who was the the entire install team, and Simon Fraser, who was the entire shop.
The Creative Team: Steve Ryan, Chris Ellis, David Kneupper, Tony Mitchell, Ross Edwards, Fabian Yeager, and Mark Andrew.
RWS / Universal: Alan Nicholson, Matthew Penrose, Don MacClean, Chris Patrick, Rob Sullivan, David Crater, Dan Kent, and Rob Johnson
USS Technical Services: Rodney Johns, Vincent, Luis, Eswaran, Wee Hsieng, Teck Choon, Boon Liang, Kok Eng, Kok Sun, and Ganesh Babu
Singapore Architects & Consultants: Claudia Nam, Jenny Dimiling, Joe Koh, Leo Mauricio, Allan Tay, Stuart McKay, Kelvin Chen, Ronald Guerrera, and the crews at Park Engineering and JPL.
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