SHOW TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is automatically generated by Descript.  Any errors or omissions are unintentional.

[00:00:00] Kevin Lively: So I was, I was diving into, you know, the really weird, obscure stuff, trying to find these answers.

[00:00:05] Kevin Lively: But Ezra Phineas and Gus, not their official names, but I was also writing a script for a radio show for this project, and I couldn’t have one go say, hey, Hitchhiking Ghost number two, what do you think about this? We had to do their official names. so, we could have gone in there and named them like Mark, Jim, and Bob, but why?

[00:00:23] Kevin Lively:because this is already run, like, it, it’s bigger than us now, like, majority of people know them as Ezra Phineas and Gus, even though they’re not official. Like, to, to change their names would just be a middle finger to all the Haunted Mansion fans out there. And so, we rather than throw that out, we just expanded upon them.

[00:00:41] Jeff Sieh: Oh, folks. Welcome to social media news live. I’m Jeff

[00:00:43] Jeff Sieh: Sieh. And you’re not.

[00:00:45] Conor Brown: And I’m Connor Brown, and this is the show that keeps you up to date on what’s happening in the world of social media and

[00:00:50] Conor Brown: more.

[00:00:51] Jeff Sieh: Have you ever what it

[00:00:52] Jeff Sieh: takes to

[00:00:52] Jeff Sieh: create immersive experiences

[00:00:54] Jeff Sieh: that leave a lasting impression? Are you curious about storytelling secrets behind

[00:00:59] Jeff Sieh: iconic [00:01:00] attractions like the Jungle Cruise and Hyperspace Mountain? Or maybe you’re looking to turn your creative ideas

[00:01:04] Jeff Sieh: into reality. And do something unforgettable. If those questions sound familiar, then you are in for a treat. Today, we’re excited to have a

[00:01:11] Jeff Sieh: guest who has done just that. He’s a master storyteller and former Disney Imagineer, Kevin

[00:01:16] Jeff Sieh: Lively. And he’s here to share his journey, his creative process, and tips for building

[00:01:21] Jeff Sieh: compelling stories. So sit back, clear schedule, clear mind to get ready for this

[00:01:25] Jeff Sieh: week’s episode of Social Media News Live.

[00:01:28] Jeff Sieh: Kevin, how are you doing

[00:01:29] Jeff Sieh: today?

[00:01:29] Kevin Lively: Oh, it’s bright and early. So, uh, shaking the dust off my noggin as we’re heading in, I promise the interview will only get better and better as my brain has the oil running through the motor.

[00:01:41] Jeff Sieh: Yes, yes. It is early in California. That is right.

[00:01:44] Conor Brown: We’re so happy that you were able to get up early for us. We appreciate you, and we’re so excited

[00:01:49] Conor Brown: for this episode. But first, if you don’t know who Kevin is, You

[00:01:53] Conor Brown: should. Kevin Lively is a former Walt Disney Imagineer with years of experience crafting stories and creating

[00:01:59] Conor Brown: [00:02:00] immersive experiences. His contributions to Disney parks includes projects

[00:02:04] Conor Brown: such as Zootopia at Shanghai Disneyland, the reimagining of Mickey’s Toontown, and the original Toontown.

[00:02:10] Conor Brown: He is perhaps best known for his work with

[00:02:14] Conor Brown: the Jungle Cruise and outside of Disney, Kevin’s storytelling expertise spans theme parks, museums, historical landmarks, and other immersive

[00:02:23] Conor Brown: entertainment where he brings his creative vision to

[00:02:26] Conor Brown: life in each project. Thanks so much again for being

[00:02:29] Conor Brown: here today, Kevin.

[00:02:31] Kevin Lively: Oh, my pleasure. This can be fun.

[00:02:32] Jeff Sieh: So, to shout out to our sponsors of the show, our friends over at Ecamm. Conor and I are heading over to Creator Camp later,

[00:02:38] Jeff Sieh: well, actually next week. So, if you’d like to learn more about what they can do, their amazing community, go to ecamm. com forward

[00:02:44] Jeff Sieh: slash Jeff. You save 15 percent by using code JEFF15 in

[00:02:49] Jeff Sieh: your checkout process. So, ecamm. com forward slash Jeff. So I’m going to jump into it because I am so excited and stoked to have Kevin here. just right off the bat, Kevin, I [00:03:00] wanted to ask you about this creativity and world building that we’re going to talk about today. Can you tell us how your experience at Disney kind of shaped your approach to storytelling, especially in creating those immersive experiences?

[00:03:12] Jeff Sieh: Mm

[00:03:13] Kevin Lively: Yeah. So with the, with writing for Disney, especially Imagineering, you are paired up with the best of the best. you’re paired with the people that you grew up looking up to, reading their books, trying to figure out your own path. And so, one of the biggest things you learn, working at Imagineering is trust, and trust that everything that you’re working on is in the best hands possible.

[00:03:36] Kevin Lively: And also the teamwork that goes alongside with it. It’s setting aside egos. It’s, it’s working together for the greater good, through all the trials and tribulations, all the things that pop up, all the, uh, budgetary constraints, all the practicality, all the practicality. Because everything sounds great on day one when it’s blue sky.

[00:03:54] Kevin Lively: but once you’re going through the process, you start, realizing how, real world [00:04:00] physics or real world budgeting or guest behavior or laws or, or things like that can get in your way. but you, you work together and you know the greater good because you know the end product is going to be fantastic.

[00:04:15] Kevin Lively: so that’s one of the biggest lessons I learned there, is just trust, and you also, like, part of that too is, I, I think a lot of people end up at Disney because it is almost like that, that shining light on the hill as far as careers go in the creative industry. There’s a lot of, imposter syndrome going in to there, but as you trust everybody else, you also have to trust in yourself, which is something that, you know, somehow took years and years to try to figure out, and trust in myself and go, no, I’m, I’m supposed to be here.

[00:04:47] Kevin Lively: I’m, I’m somehow on the same level of all these really amazing designers and writers, before me. And so that was another big lesson is just, you know, trust in myself and my process and. [00:05:00] And what I’m able to deliver to a team.

[00:05:02] Conor Brown: That’s great. You know, I like that you brought up you’re working with your heroes at Imagineering, right? And that can be a daunting and an imposter syndrome. But, you know, as you were at Disney, You also brought all of your previous experiences with the parks and with that intellectual property and those characters and stuff.

[00:05:24] Conor Brown: So I wonder how, how you’re able to balance that. So, you know, some things you worked on like

[00:05:29] Conor Brown: re imagining Mickey’s Creating Hyperspace Mountain. And then also, you know, the enhancements of Jungle Cruise and the creation of Jungle Skipper or Canteen at the Magic

[00:05:39] Conor Brown: Kingdom. Those are all, you know, properties that are super beloved with characters that people really, really, really love to see each and every time they go to the park.

[00:05:48] Conor Brown: So Kevin, how do you balance that creativity of, of

[00:05:52] Conor Brown: trying to come up with something new and keep it going

[00:05:54] Conor Brown: forward, but also knowing that People have really strong

[00:05:58] Conor Brown: ties to these beloved [00:06:00] characters, and you also

[00:06:00] Conor Brown: have ties to these beloved characters. So, how do you balance that

[00:06:04] Conor Brown: creatively?

[00:06:05] Kevin Lively: Toontown and Jungle Cruise because their age, and when they were designed and the target audience, those are two completely different case studies, but, you know, we can talk about like the classics, so something along the lines of Jungle Cruise, and you’re talking about something who, you know, my parents and their parents, like they could have been on Jungle Cruise.

[00:06:25] Kevin Lively: It goes back generations. people have a tie, even down to the Jungle Cruise Skipper Cruise, every, every Skipper thinks that their generation was the best. And everyone after them, like, oh, kids these days, they don’t know what they’re doing. Back in my day, our Jungle Cruise was the best because we did X, Y, and Z.

[00:06:41] Kevin Lively: but because there’s such a strong emotional pull to things like that, especially with Jungle Cruise being one of Walt’s attractions, something that Walt Disney personally worked on, in the design, you know, we have videos and pictures of him on the boats. We know his apartment was literally like 10 feet away from the hippo pool.

[00:06:58] Kevin Lively: There is such a big Walt connection [00:07:00] with that and anytime you touch something that Walt worked on there is going to be a little bit of friction between the fan community and the designers and you know trying to move forward which is really weird because Walt was always plussing things even when Walt was alive the Jungle Cruise was the most updated attraction. about the parks, you, know, Jungle Cruise and Tomorrowland were constantly in a state of being updated and, and plussed as, as he said. But I think the key to that is, you have to realize what it is that makes that attraction special. I, I compare it to, visiting grandma, right? If you go and you see, you go visit grandma, and she has a new dress, and maybe she did her hair a little bit different.

[00:07:41] Kevin Lively: That’s still grandma, right? Like that’s the woman I grew up going to her house every Easter and Christmas. That’s, that’s my grandma. But if you go and you visit grandma and she now has tattoos and like a pink Mohawk, and she’s wearing like a death leopard shirt, like, Whoa, what did you do to my grandma?

[00:07:56] Kevin Lively: And it’s kind of the same type of pull, right? So you, [00:08:00] you don’t want to go up there and just make changes for the sake of making changes. decisions have to be made. deliberately, and you have to go in there with the best intention. And I think when you get a team that really has their heart into a project, like our, our Toontown team, was fantastic in that regard.

[00:08:17] Kevin Lively: We had people who grew up, Toontown opened up in 93. So this is a really interesting timeline when you, when you look at it. So Toontown opened up in 93. So the people who designed the initial Toontown are the, are certain generation who grew up with certain characters. Now, 1993 for someone who’s like me, I’m 39.

[00:08:35] Kevin Lively: my other designers are around the same age, but we grew up with a completely different view of what Mickey and Friends and Toontown could be because of things like Disney Afternoon. So we grew up with Goof Troop. So Max, to the previous generation, Goofy’s son was known as Junior, right, in those old school shorts.

[00:08:54] Kevin Lively: And that’s why there’s a picture of Junior, who’s like a red headed version of a younger Goofy, hanging in Goofy’s house. [00:09:00] But we grew up with Max. We grew up with Goof Troop and a Goofy Movie. And so for us, we had to infuse those, but we also had amazing versions of like Huey, Dewey, Louie, and then Webby.

[00:09:10] Kevin Lively: And then even the way Webby has changed since she debuted in the original DuckTales into the newer DuckTales. You know, there was more empowerment and more character development and more of a role model for young girls. So like, well, even though that’s our Webby is the Danzel in distress, this new generation knows her as a completely different character.

[00:09:28] Kevin Lively: So we need to make sure that we kind of stick to that newer one looking forward, So that’s, it’s, it’s really finding that balance and understanding your audience that’s going to help you set, help set you up for touching these beloved attractions. And I think when people know. That decisions are being made by people who genuinely care and it’s not being made by, we have to do this because it’s, it’s being, it’s, it’s a forced issue or a decision of being made because of budget constraints.

[00:09:55] Kevin Lively: if you have the best intentions and like the purest of hearts in any project you do [00:10:00] creatively, that’s going to yield the best results. And I think your audience appreciates that.

[00:10:04] Conor Brown: Yeah. so

[00:10:07] Jeff Sieh: that you would work on, you know, it’s not, it’s not Kevin just went and did the Jungle Cruise re, you know, redo or whatever. How, how big typically are your teams that you work with on these projects?

[00:10:17] Kevin Lively: we hope

[00:10:21] Kevin Lively: you have a project, you’re, you want to start with what I call The Holy Trinity of creative, and that’s going to be your creative director, your producer, and your writer. So your creative director is going to have the vision, your producer is going to have the know how, and your writer is going to be able to put everything together into a cohesive story.

[00:10:38] Kevin Lively: Now, soon after that, your team starts growing, as things need. So you start bringing in artists, you start bringing in designers, sound engineers. The teams grow and grow. And Honestly, like, the best way to tell how big a team is, is they post big team photos at the, at the end of things. in the end, as a writer, we’re usually used at the very beginning to get everything up and rolling.

[00:10:59] Kevin Lively: And then [00:11:00] once we have a story that’s, you know, hefty enough for, say, the graphic designers to read the story, understand the assignment and work their magic, we come in at the very end. start doing the documentation and the training and, and things like that. So, the writers are the, are the bread of the, of the project sandwich.

[00:11:18] Kevin Lively: We’re also not like the creative directors wherein we need to be on, on the ground every day. we’re not on site art directors. Those people are gonna be more involved with other people. So, there’s team members who worked on stuff who I never met and I, for as far as I know, they might not even exist.

[00:11:34] Kevin Lively: Just because the way the paths cross, so teams get really big. Also, you have to look at the team as a whole too. So you have your design team, but you also need to have your support operations. These are the people who are going to be running these attractions after you toss them the keys. you also have a whole team of people who design training programs.

[00:11:54] Kevin Lively: And so I, as a writer, I would work with them a lot to make sure that, our story was being delivered by the cast members. [00:12:00] You also have marketing people, you have custodial, you have people developing food. So, I mean, it’s, it’s a giant team effort at the end of the day.

[00:12:09] Jeff Sieh: Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, you mentioned world building, when we were

[00:12:13] Jeff Sieh: kind of our off, time discussions and, you said it’s a huge part of

[00:12:16] Jeff Sieh: your work and like, how do you, first of all, explain what world building is, because I think that’s a term that a lot of people maybe not, don’t know or understand.

[00:12:23] Jeff Sieh: And how do you go about, about like starting a new world building project? Do you have specific processes you do to, you know, develop this internal world? I’m just kind of fascinated by this whole world building concept.

[00:12:35] Kevin Lively: Yeah, so role building is, it’s something that I think people kind of just take for granted. Think of your favorite movies, for example. look at the world of Star Wars, like, Star Wars is not on Earth, they’re not in Texas, Florida, or Bakersfield, they’re in a galaxy far, far away. Right, so they have, with, if you were to go visit the world of Star Wars, there is an entire history what have led to whatever moment in time you’ve landed on [00:13:00] that Star Wars timeline.

[00:13:01] Kevin Lively: There’s cultural norms, there’s special foods, there’s laws, there’s different types of aliens that you interact with, there’s different types of droids. different uses for those droids, it’s different architectural

[00:13:13] Kevin Lively: building within its world building, because if you look at the world of, say, Tatooine, it looks completely different than Coruscant, and that’s for a reason. world building is this, is the exercise of building a world from scratch, and it’s something we do as kids. When we’re playing and we don’t even realize it.

[00:13:30] Kevin Lively: And unfortunately, I think a lot of people lose that when they grow up. Zootopia is another fantastic example of world building. You have this world of animals, which we’ve seen many, many times before, but they really took a different angle.

[00:13:47] Kevin Lively: Greece.

[00:13:47] Kevin Lively: These [00:14:00] animals live in harmony? So because of that, their world building, you can see different sized benches, different sized cars, there are different types of advertisements, food prices, food processes.

[00:14:17] Kevin Lively: they have a very special diet in the world of Zootopia. you can eat fish. That’s the only meat that they eat because apparently fish don’t have souls or something. Um, yeah, they, they, it’s interesting because when we were working on that, we were given like the whole, like, sheet of, like, here’s the rules for Zootopia, and there was like, no lizards, like, only non domesticated mammals, no, no primates.

[00:14:37] Kevin Lively: And then you’re looking at the poster for the new one, and you’re like, hey, that’s a snake. I was told I couldn’t use a snake. So even worldbuilding can shift, as your, as your world grows. So I’m, I’m excited to see where they’re taking, uh, Zootopia, just to kind of see, like, wait a second. alright, that’s why you can use a snake, I understand.

[00:14:54] Kevin Lively: but yeah, that’s worldbuilding, it’s, it’s pretend, it is, a lot of people do it with their tabletop games, [00:15:00] if you’re building a, a D& D campaign, you’re building your own world, even if it’s, you know, I’m building my own village, and here’s a blacksmith in a, in a tavern, I can go visit. So there’s, you know, it can be as small as that, but it can be as big as building, say, like, the MCU.

[00:15:14] Jeff Sieh: Very

[00:15:14] Conor Brown: Yeah, that’s super interesting. You know, that’s interesting with the Zootopia thing. Like

[00:15:18] Kevin Lively:

[00:15:18] Conor Brown: you were given like guardrails of, of sorts. I know like you could come up, Kevin could come up with an idea in blue sky and someone could say, all right, run with it. Do a treatment, go, go for there. But you can also just be assigned a project and say, hey, here’s the story we want to tell.

[00:15:34] Conor Brown: You got to write it now.

[00:15:35] Kevin Lively: So like, what do you, what’s easier to work on? Something where you’ve started with the idea or an idea that you have these guardrails on that might help shape the story, but you can only be confined with, within that.

[00:15:48] Kevin Lively: Yeah, I, I think that it’s easier to work with something that has been established, that has the rules. just because the, most important groundwork has already been completed, at, Disney, they [00:16:00] often, talk about Marty Sklar and his philosophy that the scariest thing in the world is a blank sheet of paper because you have to make the first mark.

[00:16:07] Kevin Lively: but it’s also the most exciting thing because you get to make the first mark. So, you know, there is a trade off there, but as far as like ease goes, working with something that is pre established is definitely much easier, because you also have a lot of things to immediately go off of.

[00:16:22] Kevin Lively: And, as far as like working with me goes, it’s good to set up rules, because if you don’t set up rules Who knows where we’re going to end up? And so, it’s good for me to have a guide map because sometimes I can take things really far and we have to pull back. so yeah, I would definitely say, the key to that though, it’s the trap you don’t want to fall into when using pre existing IP or intellectual property is you don’t want to just show us what is already on the screen.

[00:16:50] Kevin Lively: Because then it just becomes like a three dimensional photo op. So we would always say like, what is just off camera? What is around that corner that the camera and the [00:17:00] film doesn’t get to take us to? And those are the places that are more exciting for us to visit. Because then we’re really, we write our own fan fiction that is, that becomes reality, which is pretty fun.

[00:17:11] Jeff Sieh: That’s awesome. Kira has a great question that I want to pull up. She goes, well, first of all, Dustin says Zootopia is still one of

[00:17:18] Jeff Sieh: his family’s favorite movies of all time. but Kira says, love this discussion so much. When you world

[00:17:24] Jeff Sieh: build within the parks, how much do you balance the designing of the world

[00:17:29] Jeff Sieh: of a specific attraction with the world of the land

[00:17:32] Jeff Sieh: it lives in?

[00:17:32] Jeff Sieh: That’s really interesting. That’s a great question, Kira.

[00:17:34] Kevin Lively: so the it’s, it’s, let’s talk about Cars Land real quick, because Cars Land is like the biggest, biggest exception to the rule. You know, there’s a, there’s a story that Imagineers love to tell, about a little kid who visited Cars Land and asked if that’s where they filmed the movie.

[00:17:50] Kevin Lively: Because, The Imagineers, who worked on Carzine when it first opened up, knocked it out of the park and, and, and everything. but at the same time, they knew [00:18:00] that they had to deliver on certain plot points and character introductions in the e ticket attraction Radiator Springs Racers. That the attraction itself takes place at a different time than the rest of the land, because when you think about it, when you’re driving through Radiator Springs Racers, right before you take off the finish line, Doc Hudson is there. but the rest of the Cars Land story, you have Cruz Ramirez driving around. They were not in Radiator Springs at the same time. So sometimes you do have to make those type of exceptions just to satisfy the guests and guests expectations. But I think That’s what’s special is, is the suspension of disbelief, when you’re going into any themed land like that. When it came to Zootopia, if you’ve watched any of the ride throughs of Zootopia Hot Pursuit, we used that as an opportunity to explore the districts that we weren’t going to be able to show In the mainland, because we knew we wanted the land itself to be the big city metropolis at the hub of it, but we weren’t going to be able [00:19:00] to visit the rainforest district or the tundra district or anything like that.

[00:19:03] Kevin Lively: So this was our opportunity to really blow that land out and almost turn it into a window into the rest of the Zootopia world.

[00:19:10] Jeff Sieh: Very

[00:19:11] Conor Brown: That’s all. That’s really cool. You know, you’ve doubled down on, on world building. You have this new world building subscription box and it’s kind of geared towards

[00:19:19] Conor Brown: those, those younger creatives, right? And to help them develop their own creative process and explore their creative process, talk a little bit about what the subscription box is and, and what inspired you to, to get it going.

[00:19:33] Kevin Lively: sure. So, my kids do so many different subscription boxes. they’re homeschooled kids also. So they, they get out and they do a lot of, you know, activities, my youngest is doing engineering several times a week and that’s like her jam. She is all about her STEM classes and that’s like the highlight of it.

[00:19:48] Kevin Lively: And my wife teaches art, actually, just past this door over here. She has her whole art studio, and it’s filled with kids like every day, and she’s teaching art lessons. For years, she was like, hey, you need to teach this [00:20:00] to kids, you know, teach your, theme park design for kids. And I’m like, I was really hesitant on doing it.

[00:20:05] Kevin Lively: at the beginning of the summer, though, she was like, she can, she finally convinced me, hey, you know, so I, I set everything up, made the flyers, and I’m like, hey, I’m teaching theme park design. Went to events and pitched it and everything, but like no interest right off the bat, but people were really interested in an at home version, something that they could do.

[00:20:25] Kevin Lively: And so I’m like, okay, so we took the idea and we retooled it. Didn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. and what it boiled down to was a world building. Cause I was watching my wife do one of her art lessons and she was trying to explain, like, she was teaching a character design to a teenager and talking about like, well, what is this world and what is their story?

[00:20:43] Kevin Lively: And I was like, oh. That’s what I can pull from my experiences is world building. as a kid growing up in the 90s, I had Roller Coaster Tycoon, and I spent way too many hours playing that game. And, uh, yeah, that, that was probably the most formidable, thing, as far as theme park design goes. [00:21:00] That and any books, like the Imaginary Field Guides, anything I can get my hands on.

[00:21:03] Kevin Lively: But there just wasn’t a, there wasn’t a lot. We didn’t have Behind the Attraction, or the Imaginary Story, or Disney even at all. And so, I designed something that I wish I had as a kid. So, what I came up with was, imagine what, and it’s a rolled building in a box. And every month, you get a different subscription box and inside there is a writing prompt.

[00:21:23] Kevin Lively: It’s, I, I call it kind of like the treatment that writers get handed if they’re not invited to the first day of creative design. So it’s super vague. And so they kind of have to put on their Imagineer hat. And start justifying, like, or filling in all the blanks, like a Mad Lib on steroids. We’re, but we’re not prompting you to change what exactly thing, but we’re trying to get the, the, the gears turning in your head. And so, also inside there, I call it the wildcard dice. And so, rather than just like, okay, here’s my prompt and this is the story I write. Now you can take your dice [00:22:00] and for the first month, it’s different types of characters. And the first story, the first creative prompt is all about like a ghost town, inhabited by real ghosts.

[00:22:08] Kevin Lively: So, say I went through, I did the exercise, and I created a whole ghost town world, and I named my saloon, and all that stuff, but I want to do it again. Now I can roll the dice, and now what does it look like if it’s all robots, or if it’s all dogs? So you can then redo it. And then the cool part is, next month there’s going to be a whole new writing prompt, there’s going to be a whole new wildcard dice.

[00:22:30] Kevin Lively: So now you can take the story, the theme for next month is going to be world, world building wizards. So all medieval stuff. But I can then apply my wild card dice from month one and roll it into over there to see what a medieval world would look like if it was all cats, things like that.

[00:22:46] Jeff Sieh: I love it.

[00:22:47] Kevin Lively: And then also included, we do an interview with a pro.

[00:22:50] Kevin Lively: So the very first month I interviewed Madison Alford. Who was an intern, with our story development team. And now she’s off at Falcon Creative, working on some really cool stuff. so we [00:23:00] talk about theme park design and her passion for video games. And we do some brainstorm. So there’s a magazine that has part of the interview, but because the interview ended up so really good interview, it’s a lot of really fun content that I think a lot of young creators can pull from. we’re posting the whole thing for our subscribers on there. So it’s actually ended up being a 27 minute interview instead of the Proposed 10 minute interview. I was shooting for just because I couldn’t edit so much out of it. then also in each box, you’re going to get a world building activity, something to help help you get your ideas off off your page and into the physical world.

[00:23:35] Kevin Lively: So in a month one, we do, uh, create a tombstone. So we have a ghost town. And so we, we, run through, we teach you how to do, starting with a wood cutout, but doing the texture of like, you know, black and gray sponge paint to get that concrete look. And then also a little bit about how to write an epitaph or what belongs on a tombstone that can let you help tell the story of your world. So that’s month one. Month two is going to be [00:24:00] a whole different ball of wax, diving into the world of like dragons and wizards and stuff like that. But it’s a lot of fun just trying to get the word out about it because that is the biggest challenge. Is I’m, I’m pretty sure I can, I can sell a lot more of these if more people just knew about them, but therein lies the, the marketing challenge.

[00:24:19] Jeff Sieh: well, there’s a lot of marketers here in the audience, but also there’s a, also a lot of teachers and I just, when I see this, cause my wife’s a teacher and I’m like, this is, would be so cool for like kids and, and to do. And, and, oh my gosh, I wish I could go back to school now. No, I don’t, but it would be fun.

[00:24:35] Jeff Sieh: I mean, I’d be, I’d just say,

[00:24:36] Kevin Lively: one thing I’m working on is a teacher pack. Like that’s, I’m trying to hammer out that, but one of the complications is every classroom is a different size. So I’m trying to figure out how to, how to, do this realistically.

[00:24:48] Jeff Sieh: But yeah, if your kids are, I

[00:24:49] Jeff Sieh: mean, this is, this is something I think they would have a ball with. So, oh, well, this is good. Kira says, literally sending to

[00:24:57] Jeff Sieh: my family right now, my niece might be getting a [00:25:00] subscription box for Christmas. So, yeah. So, thanks Kira for that. and anybody, uh, this is, Yeah, help Kevin out, send this idea and his, uh, we’ll, we’ll put it in the show notes

[00:25:11] Jeff Sieh: where you can actually go and get his, I think it’s on his, it’s on your website as well, too,

[00:25:15] Jeff Sieh: right?

[00:25:16] Kevin Lively: No, it’s on imaginewhatbox. com and it takes you to the Patreon. So I’m putting everything onto the Patreon. format. And it’s nice too because one of the things I want to encourage is people submitting what they create. And so by using Patreon, I can then go through and I can post like, Hell, look at, look what Sally did with, with her story.

[00:25:34] Kevin Lively: you know, somebody wrote this story. Somebody created a recipe based off of their things. And so it’s not just for writing, it’s for all types of creatives. because as I mentioned before, when it comes to, you asked me, would you rather do original or start from a blank sheet of paper? Starting with something kind of lowers the anxiety levels, for anybody to kickstart a project.

[00:25:53] Kevin Lively: And, you know, Walt famously quoted saying the best way to do something is to stop talking and start doing. So this is [00:26:00] hopefully going to help push some people in the right direction to get their creative expressions out.

[00:26:04] Jeff Sieh: Well, don’t, uh, don’t tell Lou he’ll get a big head, but

[00:26:07] Jeff Sieh: it’s on his coin, that quote that he gives out at Momentum, so. That’s a great, great quote. Don’t tell him

[00:26:12] Jeff Sieh: that, though, because he will never, he’ll never hear the end of that. so let’s jump in really quick. I want to do a shout out to our sponsors, Ecamm.

[00:26:19] Jeff Sieh: You can find out more about them at ecamm. com forward

[00:26:21] Jeff Sieh: slash Jeff. Use code JEFF15 to save

[00:26:23] Jeff Sieh: 15 percent on your first purchase. Creator Camp is coming up and we’re going to have a special, little episode

[00:26:28] Jeff Sieh: later today. So, make sure you check the, your,

[00:26:31] Jeff Sieh: notifications because we’re going to be, doing another live.

[00:26:33] Jeff Sieh: But, really quickly, I want to talk about telling your

[00:26:36] Jeff Sieh: company’s story. Because so many people struggle with this. You’ve talked and you’ve helped companies. Tell their

[00:26:42] Jeff Sieh: stories. You’ve trained them and whether they’re real fictional or something in between. So Kevin, how can businesses

[00:26:49] Jeff Sieh: create a compelling

[00:26:50] Jeff Sieh: narrative that resonates with their audience?

[00:26:53] Jeff Sieh: It’s really noisy out there now. So how can

[00:26:56] Jeff Sieh: companies use their story to kind of differentiate themselves [00:27:00] from their competition?

[00:27:01] Kevin Lively: Well, I think you kind of just hit it right there. It’s like, what’s different about your company? What makes you uniquely you? and then how do you present that? Now, my specialty is going to be in a physical environment. So if you are a restaurant owner or you own a boutique or anything like that is, that’s how I can help you kind of tell that story.

[00:27:19] Kevin Lively: And using a fictional, using the fictional business of the Jungle Navigation Company from the Jungle Cruise, we did the, Skipper Canteen out in Magic Kingdom, and now the, the story for that one is that is the headquarters of the Jungle Navigation Company. That is where the skippers, who drive the boats, that’s where they go and get their food.

[00:27:39] Kevin Lively: That was, that’s their mess hall, right? You have the company, you have the boss’s office up on the top floor. the skippers who are your servers are, you know, people who also drive the boats, at least in our story, you know, in real world, you know, lines of business don’t cross, but in our story, you know, one day, Marc, your, your waiter can be your, Skipper the [00:28:00] next.

[00:28:00] Kevin Lively: but we wanted to be able to tell the history of that, of that company. And we did that a lot with props and decorations, photos, and certificates, things like that. One of the most, you like a high level of the jungle navigation story? it was started by Dr. Albert Falls, who was a member of the Society of Explorers and Adventurers.

[00:28:20] Kevin Lively: that’s why he started the Jungle Navigation Company was to move Carl up and down the river for himself and his fellow society members. Dr. Falls had his wife, Marie, Victoria Marie Falls, also, uh, working there, helping him out. but also his granddaughter came and lived with them, because she was the wild rambunctious.

[00:28:38] Kevin Lively: She caught her, her grandfather’s spirit of adventure. And she was too much of a handful for her, stuffy academic parents. So they’re like, how about you go live with grandma and grandpa out in adventure land? so she did. And so, unfortunately, because Dr. Falls was a member of the society, he was gone a lot.

[00:28:55] Kevin Lively: So young Alberta Falls, named after her grandfather, was raised by Skippers. [00:29:00] And that goes back to the core reoccurring theme across the Skipper Canteen and the Jungle Cruise as a whole. Is the idea of family and it is not just, mom, dad, 2. 5 kids and a dog, but family are whoever are most important to you in your life.

[00:29:17] Kevin Lively: it’s, you know, it’s my, my best friend. I’ve known her for 25 years and she, uh, the kids call her aunt. She is not any way related to me. We kind of look alike, but she is no way blood or, or relation to our family, but she is Aunt Ducky to my girls. the same idea goes for when you’re working on the Jungle Cruise as a skipper, your crew is who you spend your holidays with.

[00:29:41] Kevin Lively: there’s a story that, my buddy, Kyle, who had Tales from the Jungle Cruise, he interviewed skippers dating back all the way back to opening day. but after 9 11, all the Skippers, cause Disneyland closed, went back to one Skipper’s apartment and they spent the day together, watching everything unfold.

[00:29:58] Kevin Lively: And so in a way, like, this becomes [00:30:00] your family. we had, Skippers who were away from their family, who couldn’t join their family for Thanksgiving. We even invite them over to our house for Thanksgiving dinner. And so we wanted, I wanted to carry that reoccurring theme of family across the board when you look at it.

[00:30:14] Kevin Lively: So in our story, Dr. Falls mysteriously disappears, Alberta takes over the company, and they start struggling because her grandpa’s not there with the society. So, one person, one guest comes and says, Hey, have you guys considered, offering jungle cruises? You know, you guys are experts out here. How about you show us around?

[00:30:32] Kevin Lively: And that’s what kicks, kickstarts the whole Jungle Cruise experience down on the dock. So, when we talk about the history of the Jungle Navigation Company as a whole, one thing that I think a lot of guests overlook, but it’s my favorite detail in the entire restaurant, is when you walk into, the main area where you first check in, and there’s a big fan going back and forth like this, and they say, Oh, this is our biggest fan.

[00:30:54] Kevin Lively: On the wall, you’ll see two portraits. You’ll see a portrait of Dr. Falls and a portrait of Albert [00:31:00] Falls, and they are about the same size, spaced out separately on the wall, but if you look in the middle, the paint is about the same size as the Dr. Falls portrait, but it’s a little bit darker, because that’s where Dr.

[00:31:12] Kevin Lively: Falls portrait used to hang when he ran the company, and so the sun coming through the windows Washed out the rest of the paint. So leaving like a dark stain there. But when Alberta took over the company, she had her more abstracty Pablo Picasso esque portrait, cause she’s a free spirit, up on the wall and she made them, you know, equally as important there, but, right across from there, we also have a whole chain of these amazing awards that Dr.

[00:31:40] Kevin Lively: Falls had for being a business owner. And then you see that the name changes. And all of a sudden, Alberta becomes the businesswoman of the year, and she goes in there and she starts writing in, like, crossing out businessman, puts in businesswoman, and she goes down, and eventually at the very end, you’ll see that they change the actual [00:32:00] copy on the certificate to be printed as businesswoman of the year.

[00:32:03] Kevin Lively: So it’s talking about that evolution of her as an owner. we have her office door, where it used to say Albert Falls, she added an A, because she’s now the boss. but we also wanted to talk about all the skippers along the way. So any way we could pay tribute to, to Jungle Cruise skippers and who they are.

[00:32:20] Kevin Lively: So we have a series of trophies from their extracurricular activities, from their softball league, all the way to bubblegum chewing. And, we hang the banners from their opening day as the Jungle Navigation Company to, the very first Jungle Cruise they had. we also have a detail in there because, Jingle Cruise was one of the first things I created.

[00:32:39] Kevin Lively: And that’s the holiday overlay for Jungle Cruise. So, if you look up there, we have a shelf of Christmas decorations. And because I was like, well, we, if this is the headquarters of the Jungle Navigation Company, they have to store their Christmas decorations somewhere. So we have a lone shelf sitting up super high and it has a crate with just like garland and stuff flowing out of it.

[00:32:59] Kevin Lively: [00:33:00] Now, originally I’m like, okay, can we take that down during Christmas and start using it? But I think that just became too much of

[00:33:05] Jeff Sieh: Right, right,

[00:33:06] Kevin Lively: a thing. but yeah, but it’s a matter of how do you layer in those stories and what is that message you want to get out? So the message we wanted to talk about was Alberta being an amazing businesswoman, you know, trying to escape the shadow of her grandfather and also her relationship with the Skippers. And another really key important thing about the Skipper Canteen and its story, It was actually kind of forced upon us and that it really kind of shook up the entire Society of Explorers and Adventurers as a whole. I was actually the third writer assigned to that project. they wanted me to do it originally, but since I was still a contractor, they couldn’t just bring me in because they had other writers.

[00:33:43] Kevin Lively: who needed the hours? So they gave it to one person and they did the initial development. and then they jumped ship for another company and then they brought in somebody else and he lasted like a week or so. I’m not sure what happened to him, but he got pulled. And then they brought me on, but one of the things that the first writer did [00:34:00] was, we want to have the Society of Explorers and Adventures as a dining room, which is really weird, right?

[00:34:06] Kevin Lively: Like, oh, this is a secret society, but I can go eat inside there with like,

[00:34:09] Jeff Sieh: right, right,

[00:34:11] Kevin Lively: I’m not even a member. and so that was one of the key changes, components to Alberta’s story is that she’s kind of jealous, resentful that her father spent so much time being a member of the SEA. And how stuffy and, and business forward they were.

[00:34:24] Kevin Lively: It wasn’t really her style. So opening up this private dining room was no big deal to her. It seemed like the natural solution. Like, well, I got hungry people. I got this room over here. I’m not joining anytime soon. I’d rather go hang out with my friends at the Adventurers Club because they’re more of my speed. So let’s just open up let’s open up the secret bookcase and let people go eat in there. and, and, that really informed a lot of the rest of the Jungle Navigation Company and the SEA story moving forward. but those are ways to tell a fictional story inside, a real environment. Now, if you’re trying to tell your your story, like be proud of those accomplishments.

[00:34:59] Kevin Lively: You know, there’s a reason [00:35:00] why we put those certificates up on the wall. Let people know about your credibility, your journey to getting to where you are today. we we had a restaurant, we had lunch at a local restaurant, a barbecue place, and their competition, barbecuers, so all their trophies are hanging up on the shelves, their plaques and stuff, and that helps tell their story and builds to their credibility.

[00:35:22] Kevin Lively: when you see that, you’re like, okay, this food is probably pretty good, and then you get the food and you’re like, okay, this is worth it being a little bit more expensive than if I went to go get a burger somewhere else, but it’s also really, really good. but also I love when, our local Trader Joe’s does it, and I think it’s a Trader Joe’s thing in general, but they went through and they found a bunch of old historical photos.

[00:35:42] Kevin Lively: of our town of Bakersfield, probably from the Kern County Museum. But it’s not necessarily the Trader Joe’s stories, because Trader Joe’s wasn’t founded here, but it’s the story of the community. And that’s the message that they try to put out throughout all their stores when you go there.

[00:35:58] Kevin Lively: It’s all very [00:36:00] community centric. They’ll put a lot of iconography from your city and your town. You know, iconic buildings, whatever, if you have orange groves or probably you see those up on the wall. we have Buck Owens as like one of the, key members of the Bakersfield sound, so we have him and Merle Haggard up on our wall, but it’s adding those components that help tie you to your audience.

[00:36:21] Kevin Lively: in ways that you otherwise couldn’t is another fantastic way to kind of force that story in. It’s not necessarily your story, but it’s the story that you’re trying to tell. Because at the end of the day, they are just trying to, you know, sell you on like, Oh no, hey, we’re part of the community. We’ve been here forever.

[00:36:37] Kevin Lively: And I think they do a good job on, on that front.

[00:36:40] Jeff Sieh: One of the things I heard you say too is, and I remember this the first time I went to Disneyland when I was a kid, is the detail. Like even like you’re talking about the pictures and, and one’s off and it’s darker where a picture used to be. I remember, I have a specific memory of the first time I was at the Haunted Mansion and looking at how detailed the paint was [00:37:00] just on the, the iron on the outside.

[00:37:02] Jeff Sieh: Like, you know, because I’ve been to like Worlds of Fun and all these other like amusement parks, but when you went into Disney. Everything, the detail was spot on and that impressed me as a young boy. So I think the D and, and we need to do that with our companies is have that detail and tell that story.

[00:37:18] Jeff Sieh: Like you said about the accomplishments I think is so, important not to like, you know, brag all the time in a humble brag, but actually just, but have a place where you show what you’ve done. And like, this is, this is stuff I’ve done for these, these people. So

[00:37:32] Kevin Lively: yeah, in, in regards to the details, Joe Rohde speaks to it the best. He. He’ll talk about like a door in animal kingdom. And where you know you’re standing 20 feet back it just looks like a wood door but then you get you know go five feet back and you’re like oh you start seeing all the all the weathering in the metalwork and things like that.

[00:37:49] Kevin Lively: But when you get super up close that’s when you really see all the the hard details all the You know, the, maybe where the insects started eating the wood away, things like that. So there are layers. You [00:38:00] don’t have to, if you’re just running a local diner, you don’t, I don’t think you have to go into that microscopic storytelling detail if you want to.

[00:38:07] Kevin Lively: Awesome. More power to you. but yeah, but just getting closer and closer, the details get, it’s funny because the exact opposite in high school, my, my high school tech theater teacher said, Your set has to look good from somebody 20 yards away riding a horse.

[00:38:22] Jeff Sieh: I remember

[00:38:22] Kevin Lively: Yeah, but, but when it comes to, you know, theme parks where I can get up there and I can literally touch things, you have, your detail has to get a lot cleaner.

[00:38:30] Kevin Lively: and that goes with storytelling details too, because, everyone has a, a pocket computer and a, camera to take pictures and show things to other people around the world. And if you make one little slip, they will let you know, because you have that level. That’s a great thing though, because that means your audience is bought in and you have set up an expectation that they want you to deliver on.

[00:38:52] Kevin Lively: And so some people see that as like, Oh man, these nerds, like, no, that’s a great thing because these people are invested in your story and your world. [00:39:00] They want to. You want to be completely immersed. That’s a, that’s a good problem to have.

[00:39:05] Jeff Sieh: That’s cool.

[00:39:06] Conor Brown: And I’m going to piggyback off of that because, Jeff, I think, I think Kevin gave some great examples already of companies outside, so I’m going to jump to another one. And funny, that Trader Joe’s one, the Trader Joe’s here in Orlando might have a mural of a castle that looks very familiar. to another castle in Orlando.

[00:39:23] Conor Brown: So it’s all about sticking it with the community, but that thing of, of people connecting to your story, Kevin, you know, imagineers create the idea, right? You write the idea, then the imaginary team also works to build the idea, but at some point along the line, it’s then handed over, it’s handed over to park ops to run, and then.

[00:39:44] Conor Brown: Of course, it’s handed over to the guest to actually experience it. So how do you balance something like you have an idea for a story, but then park ops has to work to actually make it run every single day. And the guest has to also interpret it [00:40:00] every single day. They might interpret it a different way than what you had planned.

[00:40:04] Conor Brown: Do you ever go back and say, okay, let’s change something because the guest is, is working with it like this. So how do you balance that? Just going in, it’s not going to be perfect from the start.

[00:40:12] Kevin Lively: So you do what you can. Now it’s interesting because I kind of made a role for myself when I was at Imagineering as the, the IP guardrail, godfather type guy, where if you wanted to work with one of the original IPs, come check with me. And, we’ll make sure it’s all lined up. So if you want to do a comic book about the Haunted Mansion, you know, come, come speak with us at Imagineering.

[00:40:34] Kevin Lively: Talk to me, talk to my buddy Juleen, who is my, my partner in crime. And we’ll make sure it all lines up, with our canon. Because it was unsupervised for decades. So that is why you see things like for the Haunted Mansion, like one character can have like three or four different official names. It’s because different projects were just running with what they wanted to do, or rather than check in with their partners, they would do a Google search, which [00:41:00] is like, we were like, whatever you do, you know, if you’re going to Google something, just put it in an email, we’ll give you the right answer.

[00:41:05] Kevin Lively: and so the work we did with that and, and laying the groundwork for things ahead helped out a lot. Because things like the Haunted Mansion, when you don’t provide those answers, guests are going to want to play armchair imagineer. And that’s when they start going in and adding their own names and their own backstories.

[00:41:23] Kevin Lively: So when we were doing the Ghost Post, which is a subscription box that we did, there was only 99 of them made or something like that, 999. It was a super small limited run, but we had a radio show component. And before that, Ezra, Phineas, and Gus, We’re not the Hitchhiker’s official names. Those were, made by, I want to say either Florida cast members or, or, or guests.

[00:41:46] Kevin Lively: Those were unofficial, not in Imagineering documentation anywhere. And I was going back. one of my, fun things I used to do is I, we have file boxes filled with historical documents with like handwritten notes from like Exit 10CO and John Hench. So [00:42:00] I was, I was diving into, you know, the really weird, obscure stuff, trying to find these answers.

[00:42:04] Kevin Lively: But Ezra Phineas and Gus, not their official names, but I was also writing a script for a radio show for this project, and I couldn’t have one go say, hey, Hitchhiking Ghost number two, what do you think about this? We had to do their official names. so, we could have gone in there and named them like Mark, Jim, and Bob, but why?

[00:42:23] Kevin Lively: because this is already run, like, it, it’s bigger than us now, like, majority of people know them as Ezra Phineas and Gus, even though they’re not official. Like, to, to change their names would just be a middle finger to all the Haunted Mansion fans out there. And so, we rather than throw that out, we just expanded upon them.

[00:42:41] Kevin Lively: So, we gave them a, a, short little bio. And we blew out the names of Ezra and Phineas to Ezra Bean, because he’s tall and skinny like a green bean. So, we’re trying to fit that Mark, Mark Davis, Exitensio type vibe, and then Professor Phineas Plump, and we made him all about being a carpet bagger, a [00:43:00] carpet salesman, carpet bag salesman, stink oil salesman, who basically dies because he drank his own potion, and then Gus, he didn’t need a last name, because he’s just this little tiny prisoner dude, and we decided, like, he went to, he was a scapegoat, like, he didn’t do anything wrong, he was just, He was, he was sent to a military jail for crimes he didn’t commit.

[00:43:20] Kevin Lively: he’s a member of the A team. And, and so we wanted to go through, we want to embrace, and I worked, hand in hand with Bob Weiss and Tom Fitzgerald. and if you know those guys, they are, they are Mansion fans, like, to their core. So, we felt really good about that, so the names that came up with are now official, and now you’re seeing those roll out, like in video games and merchandise, and it’s, it’s crazy to see characters that I named, you know, things I wrote ending up on products like at Target.

[00:43:47] Kevin Lively: It’s, it’s really, and I walk you through, like, nobody knows, nobody knows I did that. It’s,

[00:43:52] Jeff Sieh: so cool. Well, they do now. I mean, but I mean, it’s, anyway, that’s it. It’s so awesome to hear the back stories and the details [00:44:00] and the things you gotta put your. Your finger on? one of the things I, I want to, so when I, when I was growing up, I was, you know, it was either IILM ’cause that those people did amazing things.

[00:44:11] Jeff Sieh: Like with Star Wars, I was like fascinated with them. Not a lot of information. And, Imagineering, which you would get little bits and pieces, like you said, there was no Disney Plus back then. And now I, ILM has ruled into, Disney is part of the, the package there, but I want to talk about some lessons that you learned from Imagineering as a former Disney Imagineer.

[00:44:29] Jeff Sieh: You were involved in creating both new attractions and those re existing, those existing ones. What was, what is the biggest lesson you learned about storytelling from those experiences? I mean, you were a good storyteller, that’s why you got the gig, but did you learn, what are like the big takeaways that you were like, oh man, I, this is a lesson that I learned from, from my time in Imagineering.

[00:44:48] Conor Brown: and we

[00:44:52] Kevin Lively: I learned, but a lesson that I think WDI.as a whole, has learned over the last few years, and that’s through the amazing work of, Corey [00:45:00] Rouse, who’s, still over there. But that is, one majorly untapped,

[00:45:05] Kevin Lively: tool we had at our disposal, was the cast members.

[00:45:08] Kevin Lively: And these are people who are super passionate about what they do. They go to work every day driving Jungle Cruise boats, or they’re selling popcorn. but they work at Disney, for the most part, because that’s where they want to work. And they can go down the street, in and out, and make a lot more money.

[00:45:22] Kevin Lively: But they’re, they’re passionate about what they do. And so going in there and enabling the cast members to start having fun, giving them permission to play, giving them a role in the show, that has been one of the biggest, you know, breakthroughs that Imaginary has had in like the last 10 years. And you see that.

[00:45:41] Kevin Lively: Through the amazing work they did at Galaxy’s Edge. we did that with the Jungle Cruise and I can talk about that in a second. And then the lessons we learned from Jungle Cruise, it got rolled out over to Mickey’s Toontown and that’s where that training team comes in. but when we were talking about Jungle Cruise and we wanted to, give the skippers more permission to play, because at the end of the [00:46:00] day, Jungle Cruise is operated by humans.

[00:46:02] Kevin Lively: Humans have good days, they have bad days. There’s funny humans and there’s people who struggle to be funny humans. Like there’s a human component about it and that’s one of the magical parts of the Jungle Cruise is that live person. So what we ended up doing was we gave them different, for lack of a better term, Hogwarts houses.

[00:46:21] Kevin Lively: And these were different personality types. That I noticed that I was part of when I worked on the Jungle Cruise. So we divided them up into Jungle Cruise, C R E W S. And these were kind of like the cliques within the Jungle Navigation Company. So depending on how, what type of spiel you wanted to play, how you want to deliver it, what kind of persona you wanted to, to, to show, you know, we can make you a member of the Upstream Society, which were like the hoity toity skippers.

[00:46:50] Kevin Lively: The ones who would rather be out on the shore with a cocktail instead of in a boat. these were the people I worked with who were like the aspiring Broadway performers. we also [00:47:00] had a whole group of like the jock action stars who were more like the rock in the movie. Uh, we had the nerds because I had friends who could tell you about every single plant in the jungle.

[00:47:09] Kevin Lively: we also had the avizraras which were the strange birds and they don’t have their own dorms. They have hammocks hanging up. in the, in the rafters of the Florida Keys. So if you go in the main area of the Florida boathouse, you look up, you’ll see hammocks, people living up there. Those are the weird, the weird skippers.

[00:47:25] Kevin Lively: Like my, my buddy Skipper Dave, who was like watching like a 1930s cartoon do a river spiel. So all these were based on real things, but we were, we enabled them to play. Now there’s also a fine line you have to walk to make sure you’re not giving them a, a spiel. You can’t give them characters because of union guidelines.

[00:47:42] Kevin Lively: And at the end of the day, their job is to safely deliver a Jungle Cruise to guests, and you know, that’s the first key. so walking that balance of letting them play through theme phrasing, permission to let their, their character show, things like that. But that was one of the biggest lessons is if you have amazing [00:48:00] people, like use their amazing talents.

[00:48:02] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, that’s, and, I know the being a Jungle Cruise skipper is like the thing that everybody aspires to. And you actually, if you don’t know Kevin’s story, he actually, I don’t know, it was an official title, but you were like the Jungle Cruise ambassador for a, for a while. I mean, they, they came for you for like, When they had VIP things and when they needed, you know, somebody to talk to the press, you were kind of the guy they went to.

[00:48:25] Jeff Sieh: So,

[00:48:26] Kevin Lively: So yeah, I did a competition, for the Tokyo Disneyland for their 25th anniversary had a competition where they wanted to bring skippers from all around the world to a big gathering at the Jungle Cruise in Tokyo. So, I went through the audition process. first round was just delivering spiel to my managers.

[00:48:42] Kevin Lively: Then it was like managers from around the park. And then the final round of judging, it was down to about eight of us. And our judges included Tony Baxter, Marty Scalar, Kevin Rafferty, John and Nancy Lassiter, and a couple other big wigs. And it was on John and Nancy’s anniversary and Marty’s birthday too.

[00:48:57] Kevin Lively: Um, and so I came in first on that [00:49:00] competition. still one of the most surreal, you know, days of my life. And so I got to spend a week out in Tokyo hanging out with their skippers. And because of that, it wasn’t like an official, like I didn’t get business cards that said Disneyland, or Jungle Cruise Ambassador, but I did become the go to guy.

[00:49:13] Kevin Lively: So, whenever we had the, like the Disneyland Paris Ambassadors came over to like work a shift, I took them around. the first time they were making the Jungle Cruise movie, With Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, I and the, Ailey, Jerry, we took him around and talked to him about everything and did the royal tour.

[00:49:30] Kevin Lively: Then anytime they needed like a Newsweek interview or something like that, I was their go to guy.

[00:49:35] Jeff Sieh: That’s cool. By the way, we have, uh,somebody who crashed the party. Lou Mangiello is in the house saying, is that the Kevin Lively? And

[00:49:43] Kevin Lively: It is!

[00:49:43] Jeff Sieh: how can there be that much awesomeness on one live broadcast? and hashtag super skipper. So yeah, you brought your,

[00:49:50] Kevin Lively: You know how? Because of the fine work at Ecamm, that’s why. Only Ecamm can handle this much awesomeness.

[00:49:55] Conor Brown: That’s right. And by the way, you can find out more about him at ecamm. com forward slash Jeff. go, Gavin. [00:50:00] You know, that, that, you know, you, you bring up the competition and, and your career starting there because I know we were talking before about, you know, my time working in, in the theme parks. You have your, your spiel or whatever you need to get across to deliver, right? And with some guests, they get it right away.

[00:50:16] Conor Brown: With some guests, maybe you gotta repeat it a little, or be a little bit more clear and concise, right? Some, in a perfect world, everyone’s gonna get your spiel the right way the first time, but Kevin, how have you taken, you know, your time being a Jungle Cruise skipper and, and taken those lessons and applied them to the rest of your career in, in storytelling?

[00:50:38] Conor Brown: How has that helped you be a better communicator and, and a storyteller?

[00:50:42] Kevin Lively: Yeah, it’s a matter of gauging your audience. luckily, you know, you have 45 people at a time. You’re pretty close to them. And you can really play to those audiences. So you know, normal boat, you know, it was just a bunch of people from around, from around the country, you know, coming together and doing a spiel.

[00:50:57] Kevin Lively: But one of the oddest boats I ever [00:51:00] had was, it was a giant Japanese tour group. And then like one American family in the back row. Um, so that was, so that spiel, one of the things that the translators who do those tours. they’re not from Disney. They’re like outside tour companies. Like, it’s like, Hey, I can’t move the boat.

[00:51:18] Kevin Lively: If you guys are standing up, like that’s a safety thing. so we had a lot of fun playing with those spiels and I, I changed it up a lot. And the dad in the back was, was really enjoying that. but also like working with, the audience you’re, you’re given, you know, one time we had, I had some nuns like sitting next to me and this is, this is a bad skip because this is not in the spiel, but, you know, So don’t ever do things that aren’t in SPIEL, and don’t say I gave you permission to do things that aren’t in SPIEL.

[00:51:45] Kevin Lively: I had some nuns sitting next to me, and we got to Trader Sam, and I was doing the cannibalism jokes, which are, again, not part of the SPIEL, but they’re there. And I said, oh yeah, Trader Sam, he, he hosted a, um, potluck over at the church the other day. [00:52:00] Asked him if he had any leftovers. He said he had none and the nuns love that joke.

[00:52:05] Kevin Lively: Like they were like over the moon. So like one of the takeaways, like don’t ever tell that joke kids. one of the takeaways is look at your audience and, and, and work towards what they are. If there’s some skippers who go in there and bless their hearts, they, they do the same exact spiel. Like when they pull up to the dock, you know, the exact cadence of exactly every line they’re going to say.

[00:52:26] Kevin Lively: that’s just who they are. You know, they’ve been doing it for 30, 40 years.

[00:52:29] Kevin Lively: But yeah, but if you can, if you can morph your, your spiel, what I would tell my trainees, as long as it’s in the spirit of the spiel, you’re okay. But don’t go there. Make sure this, it’s family friendly, 1938 time period. don’t go up there and do jokes about like Lady Gaga. Like that’s that’s not time period appropriate.

[00:52:50] Kevin Lively: but the other thing I tell them too was, your spiel is. your insurance policy. So if you say something, And somebody gets offended, but it’s in the spiel, hey, you’re covered. if you decide to go out and do [00:53:00] your own thing, hey, that’s on you. And I think That’s a life lesson across the board. Hey, if you play by the rules, man, you’re covered.

[00:53:06] Kevin Lively: as soon as you start to go astray, you’re, you’re, you’re rolling the dice. But Yeah.

[00:53:09] Kevin Lively: that’s, those are lessons you can take away is play to your audience.

[00:53:13] Jeff Sieh: Gotcha. Well, this has been a amazing hour. I could go for another one. Kevin, thank you so much for, I mean, all the details that you’ve given us, the takeaways for writing our own brand story. I’m going to go back and watch this and, and pull a bunch of like, just lessons that I’ve taken away from, You know, your time at Imagineering, and the things that you’ve done on the Jungle Cruise, and all the projects you worked on.

[00:53:35] Jeff Sieh: But I want to give this last bit, to you. I want you to have the floor. Tell people where they can find you, your subscription box, what you’ve got going on, your contact information. The floor

[00:53:43] Jeff Sieh: is yours.

[00:53:45] Kevin Lively: Alright, have your pen and paper ready. Uh, I have KevinLively. com if you want to know more about what I’ve done, if you need any work done. you can look at my professional portfolio. things are listed up there. So KevinLively. com. I also do, art, like tiki style art on the [00:54:00] side. That’s something I started doing when I worked at Disney as my own personal brain escape where I could go and create something without the fear of, notes from executives or budgetary constraints.

[00:54:10] Kevin Lively: And so that goes strong. That’s a little side hobby I have. That’s skipperkevin. com. It’s an Etsy page. And then if you want to sign up for Imagine What and dive into the world of worldbuilding, for you, or for kids, like, Yeah, it’s, it’s meant for young creatives. But there’s also adult coloring books out in the world.

[00:54:25] Kevin Lively: So if you just want something to kind of kickstart your own creative journey, imagine what is there for you. That is imaginewhatbox. com and that’s run through a Patreon. So if you’re going to sign up for that, pro tip, use your web browser. especially if you have an iPhone, because for some reason, Apple’s decided to add like 30 percent to anything you buy on an app

[00:54:45] Jeff Sieh: Yeah,

[00:54:46] Kevin Lively: for some reason.

[00:54:46] Kevin Lively: So yeah.

[00:54:46] Kevin Lively: use your web browser for imaginewhatbox. com.

[00:54:49] Jeff Sieh: Awesome. So much good stuff. Connor Brown, where can we find out more about you and all the amazing vacation planning stuff you’ve got for us?

[00:54:57] Conor Brown: Go to vacationkingdoms. com. Follow me [00:55:00] at vacationkingdoms across the social medias. We’ll help you plan trips to theme parks where some of the attractions we talked about today you get to experience them. So go to vacationkingdoms. com. What an episode. Kevin, you’re the man.

[00:55:13] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, this is, we, and so we had such a great comments from people. such a great episode. Curious saying, thank you, Kevin. Thank you for continuing the Disney legacy and your work design experiences that became core memories for thousands and ask Ralph says, thank you, gentlemen. Love this live show. And,this is perfect ending.

[00:55:32] Jeff Sieh: Utator says, uh, I really need to switch to Mac so I can use Ecamm. I’m watching on Facebook and YouTube to see all the comments. Yes, you do, my friend. You can find out more about them. The sponsors of the show at Ecamm. com forward slash Jeff. Utator, use code Jeff15 to save 15 percent off your purchase.

[00:55:47] Jeff Sieh: And with that, thank you, Kevin, so much. Thank you, everyone who’s watched the show today, shared it out, gave comments. We wouldn’t be able to do the show without you. we will see you guys next time. Have a great weekend. Bye, everybody.