Episode 2: Meet an Imagineer who built a wish

Last summer, Disney Cruise Line released its fifth and most technologically advanced cruise ship yet: Disney Wish. We’ll meet Laura Cabo, a creative executive at Walt Disney Imagineering, who shares the excitement and challenges in designing a cruise ship that’s nearly as long as the Eiffel Tower, and how Imagineers turn visions into reality.

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TRANSCRIPT

LAURA CABO (IMAGINEER): Welcome to my garage. This is my brain. This is where I have to make the magic happen. 

CHAD COHEN (HOST): Laura Cabo is a Disney Imagineer. For the last five years, many of them surrounded by blueprints and scale models from her garage here in Los Angeles—thanks to the pandemic—she’s been running the creative design of a cruise ship nearly as long as the Eiffel Tower: the Disney Wish.

CABO: The scale of it is unbelievable. You know they’re 1.2 million square feet at least. They’re more than three football fields long. But a Disney cruise ship, there’s no other cruise ship like it.

I’m Chad Cohen, a filmmaker at National Geographic. And you’re listening to Overheard, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world. 

This week: I’m here at Disneyland to talk with Laura Cabo about the Disney Wish. We discuss what it means to be an Imagineer and how she turned her vision for the Disney Wish into reality. 

The Walt Disney Company is majority owner of National Geographic Media.

I worked with Laura and her team to produce a documentary on the making of the Wish—coming soon to Disney+—and for over a year, I got to follow her from her small California garage to the enormous shipyard in Germany where parts arrived from all over the world to assemble into what is basically a floating Disney castle. 

She’ll tell you how it happened right after the break.

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COHEN: Laura leads the creative development for the current fleet of Disney cruise ships, but she got her start as an architect dreaming up structures meant for solid ground.

Among her many architectural feats, she helped design the Cleveland Botanical Gardens and Ohio’s Glasshouse before designing hotels and other buildings for Walt Disney Imagineering.

(To Cabo) What’s an Imagineer? Walt Disney Imagineer. 

CABO: It’s 146-plus disciplines, right? Engineers, architects, interior designers, aerospace engineers, show production designers, music. I mean, you name it, we do it. We are the creative arm of The Walt Disney Company. So we design everything within the parks, the resorts, and our cruise ships.

COHEN: Was the first your first cruise ship then?

CABO: Yeah, mm-hmm, yeah. 

COHEN: So what was that like?

CABO: It was hard to imagine when you kept walking around this big steel vessel that still didn’t have a lot of finishes on it. How long does it take to finish? How does it finish? When do we have time to go in there and do all of our show production and planning?

COHEN: Unlike a land project, you can’t make changes in quite the same way, right? I mean, things are—you can and I know you did—but I mean, things are pretty well boxed in. You need to make these decisions—

CABO: Ahead of time. And then you have to live with that because you’re not going to easily change steel. You’re not going to create a two-story space somewhere else.

COHEN: So for me, someone from outside with the job of bringing to life what you’re bringing to life, you’ve got, you know, this thing—it’s not a boat. It’s a ship. We have to be very clear. That was told to me very early on—

CABO: Yes, never call it a boat.

COHEN: Never a boat. And, you know, it’s 144,000 gross tons. It’s nearly as long as the Eiffel Tower, three football fields, like all the big crazy dimensions. So on that grand scale you’re designing, but then it’s also these tiny, tiny, tiny details that maybe the guests will notice. Maybe they won’t. Someone will at some point.

CABO: And I think that’s the thing about Imagineering and about Disney is that there is so much thought put into everything that even if the guest doesn’t outright notice everything, it’s all leading to this huge emotional thing that they feel.

COHEN: All right. So to someone who doesn’t know anything about cruise ships, how would you describe a cruise ship?

CABO: Oh my gosh. OK. I was someone who knew nothing about cruise ships five years ago. So how would I describe that? I was stunned when I walked into a shipyard hall for the first time, and it just struck me like I’m standing in front of the pyramids. It’s huge. It’s just inconceivable how people can build this and put something so gigantic together. And then how does the weight of it not plunge through the concrete floor of the dry dock? I don’t understand that. It should just dissolve.

COHEN: Yeah, let alone float on the surface of the ocean.

CABO: Right, right.

COHEN: So when it comes to a ship and designing the space, the interior, and I guess somewhat exterior space of the ship, you’ve got steel, you’ve got restrictions for, I would imagine, height and weight and all these things, like how much flexibility is there? And how do you kind of push that?

CABO: Yeah, so I like to think of it as there are a lot of restrictions, in terms of all of the things you specified. The ship is moving. So you have to be really careful with how you design things—chandeliers and things that might move on the ship. You can’t have that. And then there’s a whole host of materials. Anything you might use in the interiors has to meet very strict international marine organization standards. So in some regards it is challenging. But in other regards, from a Disney storytelling point of view, it’s sort of boundless. But it’s a very different thing to build a ship.

COHEN: Yeah, I mean, one of our first things that we shot for the film, we went over to Germany and we found out the bridge was being installed. Even the giant blocks of the ship. It’s built Lego-style. They will lower that thing to place and they’re measuring millimeters.

CABO: It’s unbelievable how they can do that. Like we were there together when the gigablock, as we call it, the midship, right? It floated in from another part of the world. That’s the other thing—is they build the ships in parts in many different places. And then at some point they sail the sort of section of the ship. It’s sort of crazy. 

COHEN: It is.

CABO: And they sail that over and then they put it into the hull and then they marry it to the foreship. And then the astounding thing to me is they just—there’s like a seam, right, that runs around the whole entire ship where the foreship joins with the midship and the midship to the aft. And that’s a weld. Just a weld. But the weld is apparently the strongest thing in the world.

COHEN: That’s what they told us.

CABO: And it holds these ships together. 

COHEN: Yeah. It’s amazing. It really is. 

After the break, we’ll hear more from Laura Cabo. She’ll tell us what it takes to become an Imagineer and the last moments of finishing the inside of the ship while it sailed from Germany to the site of its first maiden voyage in Port Canaveral, Florida.

(To Cabo): So why don’t we talk about the grand hall? So that one is kind of important because it’s where you enter the ship, right? And set the tone.

CABO: Right. Sets the tone for your entire cruise. So we want to ensure when the guest walks in there that they’re just in awe. You know, they should walk in and think, “Oh my gosh, how can a space like this be on a ship?”

COHEN: I think what was interesting to me is that it’s a choice that you have to make on a ship more than anywhere else. It’s not like you can expand into something else. And having a big, wide open space in a steel structure that floats. It was a challenge. It’s a challenge to go three decks high for that. Or more. Is it more? 

CABO: It’s three.

COHEN: Yeah, three decks high. So, you know that’s something that in a big wide open space it’s not something that’s easy to do. It costs.

CABO: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yes. And then we have to be very careful with weight distribution across the ship. So just as we’re sort of being boundless with our imagination, we also have all of these critical things that we have to meet and check off. And so it’s a balance of technical as well as creativity. And the other complexity is the logistics, ensuring that we’re going to get materials that need to come from China or maybe, the stern character in itself was— 

COHEN: Stern character.

CABO: Yeah, Rapunzel was created in the desert in California. 

COHEN: I’m sorry, I interrupted you. Tell me, what’s a stern character? 

CABO: OK, so the stern character is unique to Disney. We have a stern character, which is a giant statue that’s attached to the back of the ship, the stern of the ship. So in the case of the Wish, that is Rapunzel. And I believe she has like over 50 feet of hair that just winds around and she’s dangling from her hair on these posts that come out of the back of the ship. And she is literally painting the name of the ship on the back.

COHEN: I love it. With her size-22 women’s shoe.

CABO: Yeah, like sort of the size of Shaquille O’Neal or something like that. 

COHEN: Oh gosh. So not that big then. Or bigger. Cool. All right. So there’s Rapunzel and her hair and her feet. Is there anything on the ship that you just are so proud of, love so much? And you have, like, a feeling that maybe guests won’t notice it and you want them to?

CABO: Oh, that would be so many things. Oh my gosh. In the Imagineering space for the kids, it’s the first Imagineering-inspired room in the kids space. And it’s to give them a peek at what it’s like to be an Imagineer and do things. So there are an assortment of things that are there to sort of celebrate some of our Imagineers. So if you look, you’ll see some of the hard hats and it has the names of our team on there. And then—I didn’t know this. I didn’t know they were doing—there’s a little thing that they named for me. It’s just a vial of red paint that’s in that space. And I think it says, I don’t know, Cabo Red or something like that, but there’s those little, little things.

COHEN: You actually have a little less leeway on the ships because people will walk by a spot many times a day. So what kind of—maybe tell me that and what kind of additional pressure that is?

CABO: Yeah, I mean, because our guests are living on the ship, they’re coming in contact with everything more closely, right? So they can scrutinize everything. So we need to make sure that the details are there and they’re authentic and they’re maintainable. It’s sort of all of that, to make sure that that guest who’s walking past this day after day, many times, right? And they’re seeing everything. It has to be completed at a really beautiful level of detail and convincing.

COHEN: So Disney Imagineers, do you have any early memories of National Geographic? 

CABO: Of course. I mean, who didn’t grow up with National Geographic magazines filling their bookcases or in huge stacks? I mean, the photography was so beautiful and it really made me want to travel. And I mean, I grew up as a Navy brat, as we say. So I moved like 18 or 19 times. And I loved being—I was always in the U.S., but I loved being in different parts of the U.S. and I just loved the different cultures and the people and the food. And so my whole adult life for work, I have traveled the globe. 

COHEN: Yeah. You had said to me that you kind of see National Geographic as kind of a natural—

CABO: Absolutely. You know, National Geographic makes the real world fantastical. Like it focuses on just the beauty that you find in the design of a plant, a leaf, a fish. I mean, it makes things extraordinary, real life extraordinary. And at Imagineering we create fantastical worlds that we bring to reality. So I think it’s a perfect pair. It’s a yin-yang. 

COHEN: I love that. That’s cool. Do you have any advice for—we get a lot of people wanting to be Nat Geo Explorers, photographers, filmmakers, maybe a little bit once in a while. What’s your advice for people looking to be an Imagineer?

CABO: Well, I mean you need to be a passionate storyteller first and foremost in whatever it is you do, whatever your expertise is—aerospace, engineering—you know, I had an engineer tell me once, they felt they were the most creative of everybody because they have to take these crazy insane things we dream up and make them work. So they have to be phenomenally creative because they’re dealing with realities and they have to push the limits.

COHEN: What’s it like having this blue-sky, out-there idea and then sharing that with the folks who do actually have to—I know it’s your creative overview, but then someone actually has to go and do what Lara says she wants to do. Like, what is that like? Did they say, “No, no way, no, we’re not going to do that?” Or do they ever push back and say you’re crazy? 

CABO: No, I don’t think so. I mean, there may be constrictions, maybe, that they make us aware of.

COHEN: Gravity or laws of physics. 

CABO: I don’t think I’ve ever heard an Imagineer say to another Imagineer, “No, you’re crazy. You can’t do this.” It’s really more about, OK, let’s find a way. Let’s see what are the things that are blocks for us and how can we overcome it?

COHEN: So sometimes a constraint becomes an opportunity and you’re creative people and you can make something better out of whatever that potential challenge is. 

CABO: Yeah. And I think people who hear ideas and say, “Oh there’s no way you can do this,” I don’t think Imagineering is the right place for them. You know, it’s all about, How do we get this done? I mean, it all goes back to Walt. He had this dream of a theme park in a little orange grove. And everybody he talked to was like, You’re crazy. You can’t get this done. And he found a group of people that he christened Imagineers, and they got it done. And look what it’s grown into. I think he’d be a little surprised—not totally surprised—by what it’s become. 

(Sound of fireworks. Air horn plays “When you wish upon a star”)

If you like what you hear and you want to support more content like this, please rate and review us in your podcast app and consider a National Geographic subscription. That’s the best way to support Overheard. Go to natgeo.com/exploremore to subscribe.

And if you want to see our documentary—and I sure hope you do—we’ve included a link in the show notes. It features Laura Cabo along with many of the other Imagineers behind the project.

It’s called Making the Wish: Disney’s Newest Cruise Ship and it will be on Disney+ February 17. 

And while you’re there, check out the docuseries The Imagineering Story about other imagineers all over the world. 

That’s all in your show notes, they’re right there in your podcast app.

CREDITS

This week’s Overheard episode is produced and engineered by senior producer Brian Gutierrez.

Our other senior producer is Jacob Pinter.

Our producer is Khari Douglas.

Our senior editor is Eli Chen. 

Carla Wills is our manager of audio. 

Davar Ardalan is our executive producer of audio. 

Our photo editor is Julie Hau.

Hansdale Hsu composed our theme music. 

This podcast is a production of National Geographic Partners. 

Michael Tribble is the vice president of integrated storytelling. 

Nathan Lump is National Geographic’s editor in chief. 

And I’m your host, Chad Cohen. Thanks for listening, and see you next time. 

SHOW NOTES

Want more?

The documentary Chad made with Laura and other Disney Imagineers is called Making the Wish: Disney’s Newest Cruise Ship. It will be available on Disney+ March 3. 

And while you’re there, check out the documentary series The Imagineering Story about other Imagineers all over the world.