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We all know that Walt told many stories to the world.

What I think about every time I walk down Main Street

is the fact that he knew that there was a value in nostalgia,

but he was also a real futurist.

He created the fine balance between

the world of yesterday, the world of today, and the world of tomorrow.

In many respects, that's what Disneyland is.

Now we want you to share with us our latest and greatest dream.

That's it, right here.

Disneyland.

We hope it will be unlike anything else on this earth.

A place of hopes and dreams, facts and fancy, all in one.

It's incredible to be here,

thinking back to what Walt was talking about

and being immersed in the world that he was describing

and what he was dreaming about building.

As a young boy, you can just imagine how much he inspired me.

You know, I was stumped one day when a little boy asked,

"Mr. Disney, just what do you do?"

Well, I said, "Sometimes, I think of myself as a little bee.

I go from one area of the studio to another and gather pollen

and sort of stimulate everybody.

I guess that's the job I do."

Nothing excites me more than to hear a storyteller tell a great story.

When I looked at Pixar and Marvel and Lucasfilm, and then at 20th Century Fox,

I saw a collection of wonderful stories,

and if we could bring all that into the Walt Disney Company,

it would greatly expand the canvas

and enable the company to grow and to be successful for years to come.

One of the things you discover when you work with a great storyteller is

the fact that they own their own stories in many respects.

They come from within them, from their hearts.

They're an extension of who they are as people,

and they're very intimately connected to the stories that they're telling.

And I think it's really important when you work with a storyteller

to understand that.

More than anything else, every theme park attraction that exists,

exists because a great storyteller told a great story.

It's that simple.

The origin of all this is play.

When you go back and remember what it was like to be a kid,

and you have two little plastic figures,

and suddenly your brain goes...

...into this reality that you are crafting.

To me, Disneyland was that on a grand scale,

that as soon as you walk into the space, you are invited to play.

I grew up in a small town in suburban Minnesota, and once a year-ish,

we would drive our VW camper bus out to visit family in Southern California.

And the highlight for me,

sadly, wasn't seeing, like, my grandparents or aunts and uncles.

It was going to Disneyland.

To me, it was like, "Okay, yeah, let's get this picture taken

so we can get out and experience this place."

And I would plan for months.

They had a Super 8 camera.

I was trying to like, you know, on that two-and-a-half-minute reel,

maximize the footage so I could capture it, because it was so magic.

To this date I think Pirates is, like, the best ride.

I just remember feeling as though I had gone into a dream.

Dead men tell no tales!

It's just such great storytelling.

You go in, you fall asleep, you've experienced this whole thing,

and then you come up, and you wake up out of it, and you're like,

"Did I just... What just happened?" You know? It's magic.

I think the thing that got me into animation was the illusion of movement.

And I figured that out pretty quickly on a flip book,

that I could draw a dot, and then it would grow into a line

and it would curl around and become a table and...

And just, "Whoa, it's moving!" That was amazing to me.

And the more I got into it, the more I realized, you know,

the movement is actually secondarily important to the story itself.

So, by the time I left school, I think I was just really amazed by storytelling.

I figured I was gonna be an animator even though my drawing was... I struggled with.

And then instead, for reasons I can't fully explain,

I came to this completely unknown computer studio

that nobody had heard of, called Pixar.

It wasn't even a studio. It was, like, a computer company.

They made hardware and software and then, on the side, commercials.

And that's why I came in.

And then one thing led to another, and I was the supervising animator on Toy Story.

I didn't know I could do that.

To infinity and beyond!

And getting in on the ground floor of that

was life-changing for me.

We saw ourselves as, like, the rebels.

There was this kind of push-pull of, like, "I want to push the boundaries.

Animation can do anything."

And, uh, I came up with this idea about monsters.

There's nothing more toxic or deadly than a human child.

A single touch could kill you.

Boo!

I don't really remember anybody saying, "You're gonna direct it."

It just sort of mutated into that.

I barely made it through by the skin of my teeth.

I almost got fired, I'm sure, multiple times,

because the story just was not coming together.

But, I survived.

You can't just make a movie based on what you think people will want.

It has to be sparked by something that you feel deeply as a person.

And so, you know, one thing just leads to another.

I think it was in 1999 when we first came up with the door vault as a concept.

And it was literally like 30 seconds until we were like,

"That would make a great theme park attraction."

But for one reason or another,

whether it was the technology wasn't there or the budget wasn't quite right,

it just kept getting postponed.

So, it's very exciting now that they're finally building it.

Pixar Pier.

California Adventure opened up a great opportunity for all these Pixar films.

Probably the greatest compliment you could give any of us was,

"We're gonna make an attraction out of your movie and put it in Disneyland."

I remember the first time seeing a Woody walk around.

I think I cried.

As we're designing the characters and the stories,

we are thinking, "Let's get the audience in lockstep,

so that they believe and feel the same things the character does."

And then you see kids come up,

and to them it's as though they're in the movie,

or that the character stepped out of the movie,

and they already know this guy,

because they've had a whole emotional experience with them.

I think it's what we all want as filmmakers, as artists,

is to somehow, like, reach into ourselves, create something that then will...

Like a music box, you can crank it up and play it back for someone else,

and it plays that same feeling that you had.

I'm the voice of Kevin, the bird from Up.

Uh, we needed some sound, so I just went...

And that's what's in the movie.

Ah!

I remember it was 1989, and I got an internship at Disney Animation.

I was so excited.

And they said, "You're gonna animate on this thing for EPCOT."

And so I did some of the exploratory first scenes of Buzzy,

which was a preshow for Cranium Command.

- What's your name, recruit? - Buzzy, sir.

Do you think you're ready to pilot a brain, Fuzzy?

That's Buzzy, sir. Oh, yes.

Of course, the whole thing takes place in the brain,

in the body of this kid.

Years later, when I came up with the idea for Inside Out,

I realized there probably was some inspiration there.

I didn't put it together at the time.

I'm Sadness.

Oh, hello. I-- I'm Joy.

That's Fear.

This is Disgust.

That's Anger.

I think the first character that sort of emerged was Anger.

He was just like a square, you know.

It is weird to visit a country

where I can't speak the language, I've never met a single person,

and yet, millions of people are going to connect to this character

that, halfway around the world, I drew on a napkin eight years ago.

Making movies and being part of the theme park attractions

are a way to sort of say, "You're not alone.

You're not the only one that feels this way." And it connects people.

It brings people together in ways that are kind of beyond my dreams.

Can you get it to stop? Can you get it to stop?

Let's see.

We got... What...

Hey, we did it.

All right. Let's turn it the other way.

It's slippery.

It's a feeling that we're all connected,

that we're all sharing this story together.

And I think that's what Disney does so well,

is to take these stories that are kind of weird and specific

and make them universal.

I've been fortunate enough to be

the steward of worlds that have come before and evolve them.

That's a very specific type of world-building,

because you're not starting it from scratch.

You're adhering to what came before, but trying to forward it and progress it.

Sometimes with new technology, sometimes updating it for these times

but still preserving what made it a world to begin with

and what was created before you.

Disneyland is my favorite of all the parks.

I love that Walt was there.

It's funny because people think of Disney or Disneyland as nostalgic,

but it's difficult to keep in mind how cutting edge

all of that technology was when it was originally presented to the public.

I think the mix of the old and the new

makes something relevant to all of us collectively.

My relationship with Star Wars started back in '77

when I saw the first film, and I was, like, ten.

That was the right age to see that film.

It's like talking about Disneyland.

We take it for granted now because we've all grown up with it.

It's been almost fifty years.

It's hard to express in the context of that era how significant that film was.

I think, when you first see Star Wars,

one reason it connects so powerfully is you really do feel like Luke.

It's so instantly relatable.

You feel like someone that's, you know, in this very small place,

and that there's a much bigger, brighter galaxy out there,

and you know your life is gonna drive you towards that.

As a kid, I think it's just so powerful

because you know that's a journey, really, that you're going to go on.

My mother told me when I left Pittsburgh, you know,

"You'll find your mentors out there."

I just had no idea that among them would be people like George Lucas.

That was a big shock.

If you look at George Lucas, he was like our Walt Disney.

He was the guy that created it all,

and we played in his sandbox and told his stories.

Do you wanna hold him? Do you wanna hold the baby?

That's your great-great-great-grandfather.

It is. It is.

He's very much like Yoda. He would say things like, "Dare to be great."

You've got the dark side and the light side.

One is selfless, one is selfish, and you wanna keep them in balance.

George, as a Jedi Master does,

he expands your view of not just the world but yourself and what you're capable of.

In George's framework, that's the top hierarchy,

and so, we never want to disturb what he did.

It's more of a, like, passerby-moment throwaway, you know.

It's like Apocalypse Now. It adds a little menace.

When I worked with Jon Favreau, that's been a great collaboration.

As you know, we made the series The Mandalorian, which was super fun.

We added something to the world that wasn't there before,

but it just became a history that wasn't known.

Worlds have history, not just in the banged-up armor or the blast marks,

but there is a spoken history that comes across in the characters.

They have a lived experience, and so we're tying new things to old things.

This is the way.

This is a bit of history.

These are props and droids and vehicles that were created over the years

for the various TV series that we did.

These miniatures were created by John Goodson

to use the same techniques that were used in the original films in the '70s

when they didn't have CGI, and motion control repeatable miniatures

was the way that you got the effects that were so groundbreaking at the time.

Good news about that technology is it still holds up,

but it takes a lot of care, slower,

but it does have a feel, and we love doing it.

Star Wars, probably more than any other genre that I know, is about

how it feels and about the world that was built.

A lived-in feel, a tone, a level of detail.

It was about oil stains and burn marks and patina, you know?

It's the scuffing on it, it's the history that's implied,

that you would never see in sci-fi before this.

It's amazing when you walk through the kind of tunnel into the park.

You do feel like you're transported into the galaxy far, far away.

When Disney purchased Lucasfilm, immediately a lot of people jumped to is,

"Wow, is Star Wars gonna be in the park in a bigger way?"

So the potential was just enormous.

Ladies and gentlemen, Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge is now open!

I think that the difficult thing was narrowing it down to, like,

what could you actually do?

The ride, the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run

was, uh, something that the Imagineers actually approached Jon and I about.

They had put things into the ride

that they weren't able to exploit when they first released it.

They wanted to upgrade it, which Jon and I are like,

"You're asking us to help you work on a ride at Disneyland.

Yes, we will help you do this."

I love what the Imagineers do and what they build and how they build it.

It's just this awesome process of creating this adventure.

How do we work the Mandalorian into this? How are you going to see Grogu?

Because if he-- he's part of the ride, we have to be able to see them.

Ready, and action!

How many planets could they go to?

What planets are we gonna go to? It was great.

Thanks to Hondo's intel, we know they're on Tatooine.

Grogu and I will meet you there.

It's such an impressive machine, the way that ride functions.

There are different avenues now. I can see things more clearly as I'm piloting.

Each role now has a clear function.

You can totally get in an argument with your family

if you're not doing well on the ride, because it will be somebody's fault,

which I think is awesome.

There's a tunnel. Get down, down, down. There you go.

- Hey! - Good job! Good job!

Most times I'm at the park, oddly, I'm with Jon Favreau.

And we just go around. We ride stuff together, and it's...

We always come out of it excited, you know, especially if we're shooting,

because we see the love that people have, and we're like,

"All right, we need to get back to work now.

We need to give them something great."

This is one of the Quonset huts in Thunder Alley.

They were auto body shops and hot rod shops,

and now we're using it to make Star Wars,

which I think is consistent with George Lucas's inspiration as well.

And here are some of our animatronic stars.

These are the Anzellans.

And here, of course, we have my old buddy. This is Grogu.

He wasn't called Grogu at the time, but at the end of the first episode,

the Mandalorian was searching for a bounty that was 50 years old,

and I thought it would be a really cool twist to have the 50-year-old

be of a different species, and it would still... It would be very young.

And so he had to make a moral decision

as to whether he was going to go through with it.

And ultimately, he couldn't.

He ended up saving this little guy.

Off to the side, there's actually four human puppeteers

who are each controlling a different aspect of his expression

from his arms to his eye movements to his ears.

Even though we're looking at technology, at the end of the day,

these are all creatures that are human-made and human-performed.

There's a tremendous emotion that's captured in these characters,

as well as the BDX droids over here.

On the one hand, you have the great design,

but you also have the performances that the puppeteers are doing.

And underlying it all is the technology of machine learning

that allows them to balance on the bipedal movement,

which is very complicated to do, to create that level of balance.

And Disney and the Imagineers were generous enough to lend them to us

to include in The Mandalorian and Grogu,

and so you'll see them walking around and helping that world feel real

and also consistent with Galaxy's Edge.

Disneyland is a place you grew up feeling, uh, in awe of when you're young,

and now I have characters I've created that are in the parks.

Now actually filming there, I think I've grown to appreciate it more.

I always found Oswald as a very appealing character,

not just because of the aesthetics and because he was such a front-runner

of the whole Disney aesthetic,

but also the story of how, in losing the rights to Oswald,

that Walt and Ub Iwerks created Mickey,

and that became the initial chapter in everybody's understanding

of the legend of Walt Disney and everything that followed.

I wanted to do something with that character.

And so I'm in the midst of making that now

and really trying to pay homage to the history of animation and of Disney.

We're interested in doing things that are fun

and bringing pleasure and especially laughter to people.

And so at Disneyland, we're inheriting something,

and we're iterating on top of it.

But I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing:

That it was all started by a mouse.

I'm happy to be a part of that legacy.

I remember when I was a little girl,

I loved anything that had to do with fantasy and imagination.

I want to be inside the castle. I want to be immersed in everything.

That's always how I was. It all comes back.

I'm a fairy-tale girl,

in terms of perseverance and dreaming and transformation.

Fairy tales are designed specifically

to help us cope with the scary things in life.

We grew up in the '70s in Rhode Island,

and our parents were divorced when I was really young,

so my sister and I were alone a lot, and we looked after each other.

My sister was the very responsible one, very strong, very sturdy, very resolved,

and I was the spinning wild child.

I felt like I was always clunky,

and so I grew up with a lot of insecurity,

questioning of myself, apologizing a lot for myself.

You apologize for what makes you unique or weird,

and I think I was very susceptible to that.

I think then they didn't have the diagnosis of ADHD,

but it was very clear that's what I was.

Huge imagination. Couldn't pay attention to save my life,

to anything other than the stories I wanted to tell.

I was drawing all the time. I was daydreaming all the time.

So no matter what was happening in my life,

I could escape into these fairy tales of promise.

I was 12 when I got to go to Disney World and Disneyland the same year,

and it was a dream come true.

I was amazed at how immersive it was.

It was like a feast for my imagination.

Cinderella, to me, was, like, my biggest role model,

because it didn't matter what she did,

she couldn't get it right in this family. It wasn't allowed.

- Please, you don't think that I-- - Hold your tongue!

And yet she persevered and she connected with her own imagination

and she found ways to cope.

And then doors started opening for her,

and opportunities started happening for her.

♪ So this is love ♪

So I think I held on to those kinds of things.

♪ So this is ♪

♪ Love ♪

Possibility made real is one of my favorite things to experience,

and Cinderella does that in spades.

My journey into becoming a filmmaker was very long and very circuitous.

I have these movies and I have these stories and characters in my head.

And as soon as I found screenwriting,

it was like the chaos of my brain found a way to organize it.

And then, when all of a sudden I walked through the doors of Disney animation,

my entire childhood made sense to me.

When I came to Disney, I was supposed to be there for eight weeks

to help write a draft of Wreck-It Ralph.

And then they liked my writing, so I was doing Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen.

We would talk a lot about, like, what are the things we haven't seen?

We talked a lot about how in storytelling,

female characters are always pitted against each other.

- Give them here! - Oh, no!

Ooh! And look that's my sash!

There was always jealousy. "She's the pretty one."

When we first came into Frozen, Elsa was originally going to be the villain.

But we could not stop empathizing with her.

And by them being sisters as well,

it was really difficult for us to ever see Elsa turn on Anna.

So the freedom to have two sisters that are rooting for each other

and who are desperate to be together,

and they can save each other from parts of the world that aren't fair,

I think that came a lot from how my sister protected me.

You sacrificed yourself for me?

I love you.

These powers we have within us that we think we have to censor,

and really getting incredible mentors who gave me permission to not censor that.

Bob Iger said to me, "I just want you to be fearless."

♪ Let it go, let it go ♪

Like Elsa and Anna, just be fearless.

And that permission to be fearless,

I think, was perfectly timed... ...and what I needed.

♪ Let the storm rage on ♪

♪ The cold never bothered me anyway ♪

Oh, my God.

This is unbelievable. Oh, my God!

This is actually my first trip to the Frozen land in Paris.

There's the North Mountain.

I can't believe this.

It's real. It's... This is Arendelle.

You truly feel like you're walking into the story.

It's incredible.

For all of us that grew up with Disney

and got to see what Walt created, you just wanted to touch it. That's all.

You didn't even think about getting to contribute to it in any way

that it's gonna be a part of something that he started.

I can't wait for my sister to see this.

My sister's gonna be here. She's my Elsa.

I'm with the girls again. I'm with the sisters.

They're in my head every second.

And so to come in, I felt like they were there.

I felt like I was coming home to their home.

You're here!

Hi, Olaf.

- Hello, new friends. - This is the most incredible experience.

Are you waving?

Can you wave to the camera?

I feel like it matters because this is how we find who we are.

It's through these stories that connect us all.

This is how we find our potential. This is how we get through our adversity.

Everybody, this is my sister.

Hi, everyone.

She flew all the way from North Carolina for this one ride.

Yeah. Look at this.

♪ Do you want to build a snowman? ♪

♪ ...free ♪

♪ Let it go, let it go ♪

It's how the stories came from us, started by all of that inspiration.

Look at that. Oh, my God.

♪ Stay in and cuddle But put me in summer and I'll be a... ♪

- Happy snowman? - Happy snowman?

Exactly.

It's like I want to absorb every part of it.

Yeah.

Elsa's ice magic really makes the place shine.

Mostly because ice is shiny.

You're right, it is.

It's such a powerful feeling.

Being able to immerse yourself in the park and immerse yourself here.

It becomes a part of who you are and it empowers you to build your own stories.

It's just an incredible thing. It's unlike anything, really.

I wish I could spend the whole day with you.

Aw!

Disneyland and the Disney parks are so ingrained

that it's sometimes hard to pinpoint an exact first memory.

I feel like it always "was."

I was a shy kid, so I never really waited in line to see the characters.

I was too intimidated.

But it really was the experiences. It was the dark rides.

The crossover between the park-building and place-building,

and filmmaking.

The notion of immersive worlds,

whether that was a theme park or a movie,

were almost one and the same to me.

I think I was there opening year of Star Tours.

If you've ever dreamed of taking off into space,

then Star Tours is for you.

And that was my two great loves, Star Wars and Disney Parks,

coming together for the first time in a way that blew my mind.

I can remember being on Space Mountain for the first time.

I love nighttime exterior interiors.

And Space Mountain is a nighttime exterior interior.

You know you're going into a building,

but the minute you rocket into that launch, you're out amongst the stars.

That is incredibly magical.

It really did permeate my soul, the notion that the future is good.

The future is progress, and tomorrow can be great if you make it great.

And I just... I bought into that, hook, line and sinker.

They talk about, in this industry in particular,

you better get used to rejection, early and often.

I wanted to go to film school

starting when I was 17 years old, and I started applying,

and I kept getting rejected, and I got rejected four or five times

before I eventually got accepted.

And that, I think, just gives you a perspective

on not to stop and not to give up.

And what is every Disneyland firework show and parade about?

It's about belief. You know, your dreams will come true if you just believe.

It can sound overly simplistic,

I think some people roll their eyes, but that is in my bloodstream

from those songs.

And from those shows.

And I look at it as, don't just close your eyes and wish.

Open your eyes and work towards that belief.

But have the belief in yourself to keep working hard to try to make it happen.

It really was about 30 years ago that my love of the parks

and my love of movies led me out to LA, led me to go to film school,

led me to get an internship, which led me to Marvel Studios.

That was my entryway into producing.

And that first film we decided to do ourselves was Iron Man.

So, we went from being responsible for the delivery of zero films a year

to suddenly, within two years, delivering two movies.

And that was Iron Man, which we thought was a risk,

and it was The Incredible Hulk, which we thought was the safe bet,

uh, because Hulk was much, much, much more famous than Iron Man was at the time.

The opening weekend success of Iron Man 1,

the following Monday, we announced Iron Man 2,

Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers.

Here we are, we've announced it, get ready for people to just go nuts,

and there was nothing.

And that was when I realized, "Oh, of course.

Hollywood is full of announcements of things that never happen."

I found inspiration from Walt.

Walt's Folly, that's what they called Disneyland. Walt's Folly.

I always carry that with me.

There is nothing better than looking back on one of the greatest things ever made

and realizing it was difficult. It was a hard journey.

Because I think that gives all of us hope

that our hard journeys might have a happy ending.

And that's certainly how I felt.

Today, I'm happy to announce

that Disney has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment.

When Disney bought us, it changed everything.

Keep in mind, we'd only made Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk at that point.

When you realize Bob Iger is trusting you,

you feel the pressure to deliver on that trust and on that belief.

And he was very, very, very good at instilling:

If you believe in it and you stay true to that belief, it's gonna work.

Everything we do is to try to get the audience who is in the theater,

who is on the attraction vehicle,

to get the emotion you want out of it.

And to have them carry that back into their real life.

I do believe we've only scratched the surface

of what can be done with our characters and with our worlds in the parks.

And that's exciting to still feel

like you're at the very beginning of what's possible

with bringing these characters to life.

There are so many details within a land.

My favorite detail in a land is the construction wall...

because a construction wall means more is coming.

It means the adventure continues.

Walt always said, "The park's never finished,"

because Avengers Campus is great, but the universe is much, much bigger.

And to be in the middle of that expansion now and this growth is pretty amazing.

How are the guests gonna feel when they first see the size of this?

'Cause I think this is much bigger than most people are anticipating.

This attraction will take people on a tour throughout the universe.

We are going to move from environment to environment, from screen to screen.

The Imagineers mocked this up in Glendale.

They'll sit you on a rolling chair and push you around a version of the track.

And you've got your 3D glasses on and you look at the screen,

and what's astounding is the point of view of the screen moves with you

based on where you're looking.

Even on my rolling chair in Glendale, it looked amazing.

I think it's our jobs to ensure that they remain the best places people can go,

to ignite your imagination, your hopes and dreams,

and that's driving you towards the optimism that Walt always saw,

and that Bob would push forth.

That the future can be and should be better,

but it only will be if we make it so.

When you're world building,

you're trying to put in a sense that there's a lot more to understand

about the world than what you're shown.

The world seems to have its own internal rule set.

It seems to represent an ecosystem.

It has its own internal logic.

It may be fantastic, but it seems plausible.

J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote The Lord of the Rings,

called it "the distant mountains."

In the back of your mind, you know that you could travel

and go climb that mountain,

but it's in the distance and you don't know anything about it.

But it's there. It's a part of the painting.

If you can imagine it, I'm 19 years old,

I've had zero contact with the film industry at all.

I'm going to junior college in Fullerton.

I was studying marine biology. I was studying astronomy and physics.

I was a very vivid dreamer.

I had one dream that was so vivid that I felt compelled to get up

and immediately draw and paint what I had seen.

And that was a bioluminescent forest.

Then you-- you go to the start of the making of Avatar, which...

I'd already been through The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss,

Terminator 2 and True Lies,

and I was looking around for something else to do.

I wanted to push the art.

I wanted to push the tech.

So I thought, "All right, what could do all that? All right, I've got a story.

It starts with this bioluminescent forest."

We want to push animation. We want to push world creation,

asset building, plants, creature animation,

and facial capture and facial animation.

The imagination and the storytelling never changes.

The actual physical tools that you use on a day-to-day basis,

there is not one thing that we use today

that was around when I started making my first film.

But the imagination and the ability to tell a story with pictures...

doesn't change.

We were setting out to do something extraordinary.

We were making an environmental film

for a mass audience, for a global audience.

Anybody at that time would have told you that was a terrible idea.

I think that in our urbanized, digitized society,

I think we're longing for something

and it's only when you see it that you realize that it's missing.

Avatar connected us to a very direct relationship with nature

that we all have as children.

Our love of animals, our love of being in nature, of being outdoors,

of this overwhelming sense of wonder in everything that's around us.

And so then, after that, Bob Iger called.

He said, "I've had my artists at Imagineering,

you know, kind of thinking about something we could do. I'd like to show it to you."

The amazingly creative head of our project, Joe Rohde,

knew that there was a preexisting indigenous culture

that we had created over a period of 14, 15 years and he wanted access to that.

So not only was it a seamless hand-off, it was actually a great collaboration.

This is one kind of habitat.

When we get down into the sump at the center of the valley,

it's moister. It's a little more tropical.

And when we rise up into the mountains, it's a little drier and more arid.

Bob Iger, he kind of took that project, I think, under his wing.

You know, they have to build something that's gonna endure for 20, 30 years,

that can handle the foot traffic, that's safe.

I walked through it ten times while it was being built.

I remember all the concrete foundations and all the girders and all that.

But all that goes away when you see it finished.

There's something just so impressive about walking in

and seeing what appears to be mountains floating before your eyes.

But really those drooping vines are actually the structural elements

holding it all up. So I can appreciate their art form.

The Na'vi have a spiritual connection with their world.

And that makes Disney's Animal Kingdom,

this park, which is based on a deep respect for nature,

the perfect place to connect Pandora to our world.

I think that's part of the power of Flight of Passage.

When they propose that, "We're going to make you an avatar

and you're going to ride on a creature,"

this is something that I had fantasized about for years, you know.

The effect is quite profound. You feel connected,

you feel a powerful sense of something happening inside you emotionally.

On a five-minute ride?

I mean, it would take me two hours in a movie to get you to that point.

This world does everything that Disney would want in an attraction.

Something that fires the imagination, that has a sense of positive energy.

Makes people think, makes people feel.

And it's all right here.

The wonder is right here.

I think there's something about Fantasyland

because it's in the name itself. You're stepping into a fantasy.

As a kid, I don't think there's a ride at Disneyland that I don't love,

but I'd say Peter Pan was one of my most favorite

because stepping into that world and actually being able to fly.

And I remember my mom literally making me a Peter Pan costume

so that I could run around.

I probably jumped off things and it was probably pretty dangerous,

but I wanted to be Peter Pan.

♪ You can fly! You can fly! You can fly! ♪

You're in the darkness.

All of a sudden you fly and you go over London.

You see Hook down there, you see Smee,

which is one of my favorite characters of all time.

The reason why these stories are still in the parks today

is because there's something about them that you fall in love with the characters,

you fall in love with the worlds.

No matter who you are, no matter what age you are,

you're going to go and have a great time. You're going to be transported someplace.

And eventually to be walking into Disney Animation

and feeling like you're about to be a part of that,

it's this amazing responsibility. It's also this amazing opportunity.

I had an interview with a director there named Byron Howard

and he was working on a movie that was very top secret

but had something to do with animals.

And the movie was Zootopia.

When I was a kid, I thought Zootopia was this perfect place.

Ready to make the world a better place?

It's really daunting because you go, "Oh, that's... that's the bar."

The bar is a timeless story that will be loved worldwide forever.

That's a tricky thing to be asked to attempt to do,

but how wonderful that that's the hope.

We knew that we liked the idea that there'd be all these different animals

from around the world.

But how do they all function within one city?

And we needed to make sure that we were building Zootopia

the way that an animal would build it, which would be for everybody.

So everything from an elephant down to a mouse.

And one of the first things we did was we came right here to Disneyland.

And we walked around and said, "Okay, there's many people here all the time,

many different types of people."

And something as simple as walking through the park and seeing a water fountain.

And a water fountain here has multiple scales.

We looked at the hub-and-spoke design of Disneyland.

Because it has this sort of central area.

If you look at Zootopia, there's this downtown area

and it has these satellites around it.

And we loved the idea that

the same way you have Fantasyland and Frontierland and Adventureland,

that you would have Tundratown...

Little Rodentia, Sahara Square.

And for us, it became a really great way to organize it.

I'd say one of the constants at Disney Animation is that

every single film is new. Every single film is different.

The challenges that you face are not the same ones.

For three years, we had a version of Zootopia,

where Nick the Fox was the main character

and Judy Hopps was the side character.

And we made a movie that people felt was good.

It was emotional, there was some funny bits, but it wasn't special.

I remember getting some pretty stark feedback.

"You've created this world that I don't want to spend time in."

As a storyteller, as a world-builder,

someone saying, "I don't want to go there," is devastating.

And the way to solve that was we shifted who the main character was.

So we were seeing this world through Judy Hopps's eyes.

Judy Hopps is an optimistic character. She believes in the goodness of the world.

She loves the world of Zootopia as opposed to Nick who was cynical.

By shifting the perspective of who the main character was, changed everything.

And you, little guy. You want to be an elephant when you grow up?

You be an elephant. Because this is Zootopia.

Anyone can be anything.

When someone says to you,

"Hey, we'd like to create a land that's based off the movie that you worked on,"

the first instinct I have is don't show on your face that this

is the greatest moment of your life

and pretend for a second that you're not that little kid anymore.

That you are, "Yes, I am a... I am a professional.

I'm gonna come in and I will help you with those ideas

for the work that we're doing." But it's not that at all.

It's the fact that we are kids.

It's the fact that we are... ...we are not professionals,

uh, that we are people that love what we do

and we love that other people want to visit those places.

I was a writer on Moana.

That's now coming to life in the parks.

And then after that, I was writer and director of Encanto,

and now Casita is being built in Disney World.

For me, seeing all of those come to life

is incredible and staggering and surreal.

So, hundreds of people that worked on it are going to be able to go to the park.

And seeing their work come to life... incredible.

Then Zootopia 2 came along. We had this idea

that maybe knowing that Bob was a weatherman when he first began his career,

that there, of course in the world of Zootopia,

there'd be some sort of weather mammal.

I remember texting him saying like,

"Hey, would you like to be Bob Tiger the weather mammal in Zootopia 2?"

And immediately he's like, "Yeah. In."

"Hi there, everybody, this is Bob Iger

giving you the weather in Burbank, California.

Tomorrow's weather is again, everything."

I love a good pun. And very quickly, Bob Tiger became a thing.

Tomorrow's weather is again, everything.

I think above all else, Bob wants to go to a place

and have a good time. He wants to step into a fantasy.

He's thinking about it on an experiential level.

How do you bring someone somewhere that's going to matter,

that's going to transport them?

- Did we do it? - We got it.

- We got it. - We got it. Well done.

You and I were together really the first time you saw Zootopia

in the real world, in the physical world.

- Yeah. I literally bawled my eyes out. - I remember that.

After the film came out, and we saw how the people of China loved it so much,

it was a no-brainer for me to say to the Imagineers, "Okay, what's next?" Zootopia.

When you give people an opportunity to actually live in the world...

- Yes. - ...that they saw in our films,

- it's a continuation of the story by us. - It is, yeah. Yep.

But the other thing that's crazy is

it gives people a chance to continue their own Zootopia story.

Exactly.

Our little lemmings going through the little tubes.

Elephant ice cream parlor.

I remember that as a story sketch 13 years ago and now it's a real thing.

Two paws. Yeah. Oh, look at that smile. That's a happy-birthday smile.

- Look, Jared. - Yeah, how heavy is that?

- It's heavy. - Oh, that's got some weight to it...

I didn't... I didn't lift today, but you know...

Look out for the lemming crossing down here.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah. You got to hit the button. Yeah. I mean, look, see?

- Multi-scale across the whole thing. Yeah. - That's for everybody.

- Yeah. - Here we are.

Yeah.

- Hello. - Hey. Hi, you guys.

I don't think they have any idea who we are.

That's good.

The visual experience that you have,

- you almost don't know where to look next. - No.

I think about what Walt really wanted to accomplish

and it was to create joy.

I get so energized, so fueled by seeing the faces on all these people.

I think that when Bob had this idea,

"I want to build Shanghai Disney,"

he wanted that to be something very special, something very unique,

something worth all that work,

but also something that would exceed everyone's expectations.

Thinking about, "How do you excite everybody?

All ages around the world?" takes an incredible amount of focus and detail,

and most importantly, joy and whimsy and wonder.

Great values don't disappear.

They live on. They're still relevant

because those values remain very important to who we are as people.

There was a lot at stake at Shanghai Disneyland.

It was also a very long journey.

From the day that I set foot on the property

to the day that we cut the ribbon on opening was 18 years.

Welcome to the grand opening of the Shanghai Disney Resort!

There was a lot of work, a lot of commitment.

Walt taught us that the stories he was telling

really had universal appeal.

In many respects, they transcended cultures and borders

and they resonated with the people of the world.

But you can't take that for granted.

You still have to have an appreciation for the differences of culture.

But, if done right, the stories have the ability to generate joy,

to create joy and happiness for anyone in the world.

That's just a remarkable, remarkable achievement.

There is news tonight involving our parent company Disney.

The new CEO has been chosen by the Disney board.

Josh D'Amaro will succeed Bob Iger on March 18th

after Bob's nearly 20 years as CEO.

Josh appreciates the value of great storytelling.

I think that was really important in terms of the choice of a CEO.

He also understands what Disney is all about.

I think you have moments in your life that shape you as a person.

And the most powerful moments are typically

ones that are surrounded by people that you love.

And that's why these theme parks are so incredibly important.

And I think that we all know the world needs, right now,

stories of joy and inspiration and optimism.

And, you know, the role of the creator has never been more important.

As we look into the future,

that idea of stories jumping from formats and places,

it becomes even more powerful.

When you operate a company for 100 years,

you think, "Well, we're successful. This works.

So let's just do what we did yesterday again tomorrow."

But that has never been the answer.

One of the things that I think Bob has been exceptionally good at

is not accepting where we are as the final destination

and always pushing us one step further.

There's risk in every single decision that we make.

But you can't help but to think about, "Well, what else?"

We studied different parts of the world that we could expand into.

We like being in this region.

About one-third of the world's population, actually, can get here within four hours.

We view this as an oasis of the world. Not just a crossroads, but an oasis.

We love what Abu Dhabi stands for,

its potential and its dreams, its design ethic.

It is a place that is only pointing to the future in so many different ways

with great enthusiasm and tremendous optimism.

How are you? Good?

You have to think big, you have to build big,

and obviously then you have to build great.

But ambition is, I think, a very, very powerful characteristic.

There's ample room for expansion.

We're building a whole here.

We're not just building a collection of parts here and there

for other parts ultimately to be filled in.

But we're setting out to build something

that I feel people, when they look at it,

will feel, "This is a complete experience."

You are really curating an experience that is paying homage to the past,

giving a glimpse to the future, and cementing our present.

There are so many things that are unique about this project and exciting to us.

So, this is how it was organized back in the 1950s. But here we are today.

We have so many stories. How should we organize our park?

And this is one of the challenges that we looked at.

And the inspiration for where we wanted to go came from here.

Because we were impressed with the diversity of the biomes in Abu Dhabi

and the story that they create.

If you think of classic storytelling,

"once upon a time" is always followed by location.

In a kingdom far away. In a galaxy far, far away.

Placemaking is key to storytelling and it's key to what we do.

Obviously in Imagineering, we're bringing these worlds to life in three dimensions.

Here in Abu Dhabi, we're investing significantly in the creative industries,

because we believe in the creative mind. It's so powerful. It's what connects us.

Whether it was Star Wars or the world of Marvel or Pixar

or just the world of Disney in itself, it's just unbelievable

because you're bringing these amazing imaginations to life.

And I think it's going to be a catalyst

for a brand-new generation of creative thinkers

to create new worlds and to create worlds that connect.

Engaging with storytellers is probably how I derived the most joy

throughout my tenure as CEO.

At times, I've tried to challenge them.

I always tried to support them.

I loved being a partner to them.

I was not a storyteller.

I was there to enable them to tell their stories well.

I think if you tell a great story, its potential is limitless.

You have to have great ambition, you have to dream big.

You have to have a wild imagination

that actually can turn a barren piece of land into just a magical place.