Attractions Expert Q&A: Kathrynn Cobbs Digenova

By Kendall Wolf

Before Universal Studios, Digenova was a Production Manager and Design Manager for Thinkwell Group, managing project schedules, budgets, and client relations. She led project teams and ensured consistency with third-party licensors and IP holders. Kathryn was also a Supervisor and Performer at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood.

What theme park souvenir might we be surprised to find on your shelf, and what is the story behind it?

I’m literally looking at it! When we were living in China for a couple of years, working on Universal Beijing Resort (UBR), we went to Shanghai Disneyland quite a bit. We literally just stayed at the Disney hotels and went to the park. There was this little tin in the room that had a tiny washcloth, and I thought it was so cute. Andy, my husband, thought, well, you love it so much, let’s just keep it. We have a wall in our house of all the different places we’ve traveled and worked, and it’s one of my favorite theme park souvenirs. I look at it every day and think about all the times we went there.

What theme park have you always wanted to visit but have never been to? 

Probably Tokyo Disney Sea. I’ve done the Disney parks. I’ve done pretty much all of our Universal parks, but I’ve never done Tokyo. We had such grand plans during the pandemic, and knowing some really talented designers that worked on that, I’ve always wanted to see what their theming looks like because I’ve heard it’s just gorgeous. That’s the fun part of this industry, going to a theme park like that and knowing, oh so-and-so, was responsible for this rock work, and the carving is beautiful, and this person produced this attraction, and wow, it really came together. So it’s kind of fun and I find a lot of joy in getting to see the cool things that my colleagues, past and present, have all done. 

Was there a theme park or attraction that made you want to be in this industry, and how did it inspire you? 

I grew up in Southern California, and I was 20 minutes from Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, an hour away from Universal Studios Hollywood, and two hours from SeaWorld. So I was right in the center of a lot of different theme parks. As a kid, getting to visit all those parks was really inspiring to me artistically. When I was 16, I got a job at Disneyland, and that sort of launched me down this path.

But more so than that, my grandfather was one of the chief architects of what was then Marriott’s Great America in Gurney, Illinois. Now it’s a Six Flags Park, and my uncles actually still do quite a lot of work on it because they’re architects and designers that do some themed entertainment work as well. But my grandfather worked on the American Eagle attraction. I just thought it was so cool as a kid, getting to go there and being able to hear from my mom that her dad built that roller coaster, and she got to be friends with Bugs Bunny in the park. And it kind of lived on in my bloodline. 

And funny enough, because my husband grew up in that area, that was like his local theme park. He went there a bunch, so it’s been very meaningful for us. I just got to ride it again. I hadn’t been in years, but last year we got to go to the park and ride American Eagle a couple of times, and it’s just fun and nostalgic and still great! It’s definitely older now, but a nice wooden roller coaster. It’s got to be one of the older roller coasters in the country at this point, but yeah, that’s still rocking and rolling, right? 

What was your favorite ride or attraction as a child, and why?

As fun as American Eagle is, it’s definitely an intense roller coaster. As a child, I just thought it was neat, but I really wasn’t up for riding it over and over. So even though it wasn’t necessarily a ride attraction, I loved Animazment in the Fantasyland Theater at Disneyland. It was a stage show that they did there for many years. It has, to this day, been one of the most influential shows I’ve seen and carried into my career. Obviously, as a child, you really connect to the movies, the IP, and the characters, of course, but even more so the spectacle, the transitions, and how it all came together. I really loved it. It was definitely a must-see every time we went as kids. When I was young and had my first job at Disneyland, I got to do a show in that same space. 

Was there a ride attraction or character that frightened you as a child? 

I think my mom would say all of them. And now, with my daughter and watching her experience, I kind of see that. She was so excited at six months old to meet Donald Duck; it was the cutest thing. And then, at nine months, she was terrified. And then we took her at a year, and she was sort of somewhere in the middle. So I’m experiencing it through my daughter now. I can see how that fluctuates over time, but yeah, I think in theory, the idea of a giant duck or a large dog coming towards you might be cute, but in practice, for a child is pretty traumatizing!

What is the oddest or coolest job you’ve ever had in a theme park? 

In my first job, I was a character performer at Disneyland. As they say in our industry, I was “best friends” with one of the princesses, also known as a Pageant Helper. It was a special time in my life and career that I look back on very fondly now. I got to really be an impactful and positive part of so many families and their children’s lives at that young stage. 

And I have so many good stories and memories of getting to meet children over and over again, of them celebrating their birthdays or some milestone. And I made this really strong connection with this one child and his family, so much that they would write to the parks whenever they were coming to make sure that they got to see “their person.” They had a young boy who had just been diagnosed with autism, and the whole family was going through it with him. That’s such an impact on the family—and I thought— how do we give him the best life? It was such a cool experience to be part of this young boy’s childhood in such a positive way. So it was really this ongoing, special thing for a couple of years that I got to be a part of. And I feel so privileged that I got that experience.

I think about that a lot, and I totally carry that with me as we create these experiences of, like, wow, there is a child out there, and this is everything to them at this moment, in this stage of their life. And I think that is such a cool thing and such a great positive driver for doing what we do. So it was very special, this incredibly sweet family, and it was like, this is where I belong. 

What ride or attraction do you think everyone needs to experience and why? 

I think we’ve built a lot of great things at Universal, and there’s a lot more on the horizon! But probably because of my experience in China, I think that the Pirates of the Caribbean at Shanghai Disney is one of the best attractions in the world. And I hope everyone in our industry can get the opportunity to experience the theming of that ride. The story of the attraction, and the scale of it, combined with the innovative technology is just beautiful. It is a wonderful marriage of so many things we all try to get right.

If you were tasked with creating a new theme park food, what would it be?

Oh, gosh, I’m such a theme park snacker! I love a good random seasonal event that just has small plates of things. Universal Studios Florida has been doing that with Mardi Gras and Halloween Horror Nights. Like, just these little one-off things. I’ll be honest with you, there is not a food item in the parks right now that I feel is missing, but I would say pizza fries are the best. Pizza Fries are a seasonal offering for Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Florida. They’re so good! It’s exactly what they sound like—pizza on top of fries. I would honestly just like to see more pizza fries, more variations, and more regular offerings.

You’re a Walk Around character for a day; who do you choose?

If I could relive the experiences I’ve had, that would be amazing! But honestly, I joke about it all the time. I always say my retirement plan is to be a Wandkeeper in Hogsmeade. 

The Wandkeepers do the Ollivander’s wand experience in all of the Hogsmeade lands. We have those adventures here in Orlando, at Universal Beijing Resort, Universal Studios Hollywood, and Universal Studios Osaka. So it’s all over the world. It’s really cool, basically recreating that experience from the first Harry Potter film where Harry gets his wand. The Wandkeepers are these wise, kind of cheeky, mostly scripted, but just a tad improvised characters. And I just think that’s so fun. That’ll be my retirement job.

What types of attractions would you like to see more of and why? 

I have two answers: I would love to see more story coasters taken further because they’re such unique experiences combining the ride systems and traditional dark ride storytelling. But the other thing is that we are behind but starting to catch up industry-wide, with amazing live entertainment and stage shows.

I think we’re living in the age of the story coaster, with the Guardians of the Galaxy ride at Epcot and also Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure at Islands of Adventure. We’re living in this wonderful hybrid of what a coaster system mixed with a dark ride can be like, and I would love to see more of that in our industry.

It’s such a tough thing to add to a program successfully and then make it something people want to spend 20 minutes out of their day doing. And I think we’re all starting to push the envelope and make great strides in the entertainment sector. I think magic can happen—Untrainable at Universal Beijing just won a THEA Award—and it is such an immersive theatrical experience. For a show that’s about 25 minutes, you gain so much. 

Also, the Bourne Stuntacular in Universal Studios Orlando is another great example of how we’re applying technology and themed entertainment storytelling to a theater experience, with the automated moving set pieces and the giant LED screen that changes the scenery. We can do so much now to create such different and unique environments on stage. 

But we’re at the tip of the iceberg of what could be! Just bringing in more methods that we apply to our theme park storytelling and live entertainment and seeing what could happen. And it’s such a cool way for audiences to be introduced to theater because, frankly, people aren’t making it out to Broadway shows the way they used to. And so theme parks are the frontier of theater and theatrical entertainment, and I think we should give the audience the quality theatrical experience they deserve.

Do you have any interesting theme park pandemic stories? 

Other than trying to build an entire resort during a pandemic? I mean, we all sort of do. It was simultaneously one of the most challenging but best experiences. We had to stay on track with this park through a global pandemic where pipelines for materials, supplies, and travel visas were restricted. I was scoped on a lot of live entertainment for that park, and trying to hire and get visas and then bring over the actors so we could get into a rehearsal was really challenging. I’m really proud of the teams that we worked with, collaborating together and being able to find solutions to getting this park completed in the middle of a pandemic, while we lived in sort of this bubble in Beijing. 

And it was such a weird bubble because of how the lock downs happened in Beijing. We got stuck in the U.S. for a few months, and they closed the border. When we finally got back to Beijing, we were in for a solid year. And the way they handled those lock downs, there were not a lot of COVID issues, not a lot of COVID cases, and they were being tracked. So we had this normalcy in this bubble outside of what was happening in the world. And that was such a bizarre experience.

Can you talk about what you’re working on these days? 

No. But I would say Universal has a lot of exciting things that we’ve announced recently. And there are more exciting things on the horizon. Lots of epic things to come. That’s the PR line, right? 

You’re going to your favorite theme park. Which industry people alive or dead, are you taking with you? 

It’s such an interesting question, and I’m sure I could give you some brilliant answer, but truly the greatest joy has been going with my daughter, and I want to take her to all the parks that I’ve been to with my husband and just be able to travel as a family and enjoy these parks together. It’s been the greatest experience of my career, honestly. I’m just so excited to be able to do that someday and see and live that experience through her eyes. 

It will be the most rewarding thing one day, being able to take her back to UBR and walk through the Minion Land and point to the things that I spent two and a half years working on, and to walk through WaterWorld and say, “there’s the statue that Daddy made sure happened.” It’s going to be such a cool thing. I don’t think any other experience with any other person, alive or dead, could ever compare. 

We just took her on the Haunted Mansion ride a couple of weeks ago. She loves It’s a Small World. That’s her favorite ride. Right now, we are desperate to take her on ET at Universal Studios Florida. She is four inches away. 

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Kendall Wolf is a long-time consultant in the themed entertainment industry. She has worked with designers, producers, and fabricators to help developers create unique and successful projects around the world. In 2017, she introduced Merlin Entertainments to a development group in Sichuan province for the first Legoland park in China. Kendall continues to consult for the developer to open more themed resorts in China.