Paul Torrigino’s stories last fall about the never-built Dragon
Tower attraction (read part 1 |
part 2) were very well received
and prompted many questions about his work on the Maelstrom attraction at
Epcot’s Norway pavilion. Paul returns with a multi-part series about his experiences
with the Maelstrom.
In part 1 of this series (link),
Paul described the origins of the Maelstrom attraction and how it became its
current format of a time-travel ride. In Part 2, (link)
he looked deeper into the design and early construction of the attraction.
Today, Paul continues the series by looking the construction and assembly
of the attraction on site at Walt Disney World. – Mark Goldhaber
The sculpture and model shops
For me, the sculpture shop and the model shop at Imagineering
was always the heart of the place because that’s where everything goes
first from paper to reality. Over the years I would always pop in to the
sculpture shop to see what the latest was (trying not to be too much of
a nuisance!).
In the early 1980s when Blaine was still there, I would go in once in
a while to see what he was up to, and he was always very friendly to me.
One time he was sculpting away at a beautiful bas relief piece for EPCOT;
it was an art nouveau cartouche for the French pavilion and it had some
scrollwork and a classical female head in the middle of it. I was in awe
of his talent. He would tell me things like, “The more you do, the
better you’ll get,” and he would point out that he looked for the
basic forms in a piece and work those out first.
The Imagineering sculpture shop has always been a world-class shop because
of the amount of effort they put into everything, and also because they
always have the most talented people around working in there. Nothing
leaves that shop that isn’t the best it could be. Today Valerie Edwards
is the head of sculpture there and she is another amazing talent, born
to sculpt, and carries on the great Imagineering sculpting traditions
admirably.
The polar bear
When Peter sculpted the polar bear, he did quite a bit of research to
get it as authentic as possible, and it was pretty much a straight copy
of a real giant polar bear. The neck does look awfully long, but you know,
that’s the way they really look. If anything, I think the head might be
a tad big, but other than that it’s pretty good. If you do a quick picture
search on the web for a standing polar bear you’ll see what I mean.
The giant polar bear was quite impressive when they built it on the floor
at MAPO [Disney’s Manufacturing and Production Organization, derived from
MAry POppins]. I think it was about 10 feet tall. It was more impressive
standing right next to it than it was in the ride, I think, because you
go by it so fast.
An unidentified construction worker shows just how tall the polar bear
figure is. Photo courtesy of Paul Torrigino.
When the polar bear figure went to figure finishing, it was a special
challenge for fur expert Helena Hutchinson. She commented on how long
the neck was, and how much the head moved, and that there was no under-support
for the fur at the neck because of all the animation. But she worked her
usual magic and came up with a special spandex under-layer that kept everything
in place.
Helena worked in the figure finishing department at WDI [Walt Disney
Imagineering] since the mid-1960s and worked on every attraction they
did from Pirates of the Caribbean on up until she retired in the 1990s.
She was the resident fur expert and was especially good with difficult
figures that had a lot of animation. One of her best, I think, is the
tiger in the Jungle Cruise. It had quite a bit of neck movement, and she
did a beautiful job of airbrushing the stripes onto the fur.
I was lucky enough to get to work side by side with Helena for some years
in the 1980s and she taught me so much! We had the best time together.
She has a great subtle sense of humor, and we laughed so much every day!
She was a pure joy to work with and she’s one of the classiest, most charming
ladies you’d ever want to meet.
Helena Hutchinson puts some finishing touches on the three-headed troll
figure. Photo courtesy of Paul Torrigino.
Usually when the figures came off the production line from MAPO, the
body shells were naked fiberglass cut up here and there to allow for the
movement of the animation. Her job for fur type animals would be to find
a suitable flexible fake fur cloth and tailor it to the figure, making
essentially a body suit. Parts of it would be glued down directly to the
body, and other parts would be cleverly made to move along with the animation
over the open spots on the body shell.
Helena had all kinds of little tricks to make that work, and she used
Velcro, snaps and spandex; sometimes creating a type of girdle if needed
to keep everything in place and also allow for the greatest range of motion
possible. After the fur was on the figure, it would be shaved to length
here and there if necessary, and hand colored with an airbrush, and then
any special touches would be added, like whiskers, manes or whatever else
was needed, depending on the type of animal it was.
Special effects ideas
While the figures and sets were in production, the special effects were
also being worked out. During the model-making phase, we worked with Jim
Mulder from the special effects department, who was assigned to our ride.
Jim was probably the best of the new generation of special effects guys
around and we were really lucky to have him. So as we were coming up with
the ideas, we would talk it over with Jim and he would take our initial
idea and expand on it. The biggest effects challenge of the ride was creating
the storm in the oil rig scene at the end of the ride, and he was up to
it.
Jim had a lot of ideas on how to do it, and early on he thought about
using a giant Tesla coil to make real lightning! Somehow he got a hold
of a guy who specialized in artificial lightning and he did a mock-up
for us.
For a few days, they took over the new metal shed building built to house
the Star Tours simulator mock-ups and he set up this giant Tesla coil
metal column thing about 10 feet high or so with a big metal ball on top
of it. He would fire it up and there would be an explosion with a 15-foot
bolt of lightning shooting out and crashing into one of several receptacles
in the corners of the room.
It was quite shocking (pun intended), frightening and loud! That day
you could hear the explosions all over the Imagineering property. Great
effect, but no one could figure out how to pull it off without electrocuting
people, since our vehicles were boats in real water! So we didn’t get
to use the effect.
Disney muralist Bill Anderson paints the large backdrop for Maelstrom’s
waterfall scene. Photo courtesy of Paul Torrigino.
Jim came up with a host of other great effects including a whole bank
of Pani projectors to project the stormy sky and lightning in the scene.
The big oil rig in the last scene was one of the few pieces we vended
out, and it was made of metal by a model company in Houston. It was made
in sections and then reassembled on real concrete legs in the scene in
Florida.
Coming next week
In the next part of the story, Paul discusses the construction and assembly
phase of the project on site at Walt Disney World.
