Imagineers bring Nemo's world to life
COURTESY WALT DISNEY IMAGINEERING
When The Seas with Nemo & Friends opens in October in the former The Living Seas at Epcot, it will showcase three milestones for Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) innovation and creativity. Those milestones span character animation, set design and image projection.
The new attraction is based on the highly successful Disney/Pixar computer animated feature Finding Nemo. Imagineer Jerre Kirk was assigned the dual role of project and construction management.
The first phase of the project was the creation and installation of Nemo’s Garden outside The Living Seas about two years ago. Then the very popular Turtle Talk with Crush Theater was installed, followed by phase three, Sea Base.
“This was a re-do of the circulation space, merchandise area and the aquarium area outside the ride,” Jerre said of the work that was done before he joined the project. The third phase introduced a new color scheme to the entire pavilion, which had to be done while the Coral Reef Restaurant remained fully operational.
The fourth and current phase is the attraction The Seas with Nemo & Friends, where the Nemo character brings it all together. The pavilion’s Sea Cab Ride closed six years ago after operating for 15 years. The Sea Cabs took Guests from the sea floor to Sea Base Alpha by way of a scenic aquarium.
Jerold Kaplan, principal engineer, said the biggest challenge from a ride and creative interface was tying into the existing ride around the aquarium.
“The portion of the old ride that ran around the fish tank is the existing ride system,” he said. “We snipped track off where it went in and out of the fish tank. The 280 feet of track we added is in the space that used to be theaters and the hydrolators that took Guests to the Sea Cabs.”
The new attraction will transport Guests through nine scenes, the first being a beautiful reef where Guests will find brightly colored, realistic undersea life. The next scene is “Mr. Ray’s Field Trip,” and scene three is called “Where’s Nemo?” where Guests will encounter Dory and Marlin searching for Nemo.
“The coral in these first three ride scenes is a new technique,” Jerre said. “They are very thin castings of fiberglass that never have been done before.”
Principal Production Designer Ed Hanna worked with Senior Production Designer Eric Miller and Production Designer Gary Graham to refine the technique until it was just right for the coral. Allen Jones and Julie Bilski, art directors for paint, also added to the process. “The technique allowed us to recreate the beautiful undersea world that was designed by Pixar for the film,” said Kathy Mangum, WDI vice president and project creative director.
Innovation also is embedded in the finale. It includes a song titled “Big Blue World” in which the characters bid adieu to Guests. The entire cast of animated characters is projected to appear as though they are inside the pavilion’s giant saltwater tank, swimming with the real fish. “We’ve never done projected animation into an aquarium,” Jerre explained.
The scene is an example of new technology driving an attraction. The projection technology in the finale scene was developed by R&D Designer Alfredo Ayala.
“He [Alfredo] played with it, developed it, and set up a demonstration,” Kathy said. “That demonstration really opened up the opportunity for us to create the finale. The technology really drove what the creative application could be.”
Imagineers had to tweak the animation and the projection to create the right effect. “Pixar was on site several times to go through the animation to get it right,” Jerre said.
Jerre and other Imagineers will keep their eyes fixed on the anglerfish that chases Marlin. The anglerfish moves at incredible speeds and with great agility, so Imagineers had to find a way to make it look incredibly real. Making the anglerfish move the right way required extensive modifications of existing technology and lots of trial and error.
When the attraction opens in October, the marquee will read The Seas with Nemo & Friends, complete with three Audio-Animatronics seagulls chattering “mine, mine.”
“We’ll have a brand new entry statement with Crush, Bruce, Mr. Ray, and many, many other fish,” Jerre said.
“What’s so important about this attraction is that it revitalizes the whole pavilion for us,” Kathy said. “The aquarium is so stunning, and [this] was our chance to take it, extend it, and do the overlay, using storytelling with classic Disney characters to introduce Guests to the pavilion. It was too good to be true,” she added.
And it’s a new chapter in the life of a long-standing icon at Epcot. “Epcot is about exploring new places, and it was a natural fit to tell the story by using these characters,” she said.
