Attractions Expert Q&A: Michael Libby

By Kendall Wolf

Worldbuildr’s proprietary software enables remote collaborators to see and test all project elements in virtual reality before it’s built. Michael Libby is always on the lookout for new and exciting ways to apply cutting-edge technologies to help his clients succeed both practically and creatively.

What theme park souvenir might we be surprised to find on your shelf, and what’s its story?

Anyone who knows me wouldn’t find anything very surprising – and I have to preface this by saying that the best job I ever had was as Skipper on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. When my dad was young in the ’50s, he took some cross-country trips to Los Angeles from New York with his parents, and in 1956, they went to Disneyland (about a year after it opened). My aunt got a lunch pail with the Jungle Cruise, and I still have it.

Another souvenir is framed on my wall: the casings from the last two bullets I fired on the Jungle Cruise. They’re blanks, but they’re still cartridges. We used a real 38 caliber Smith & Wesson that had been modified to shoot blanks, but you still needed to load it every trip.

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

It was Tokyo DisneySea for years, but I finally got a chance to go there, so I’d probably have to say Shanghai Disney. It’s the last Disney Park I’ve never been to.

I’ve also really wanted to visit Efteling in the Netherlands. That would be my number one choice. It’s so beautiful, so unique, so bespoke. I just need an excuse to go.

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

It’s hard to pick just one. I would say probably Terminator 2:3D or Back to the Future: The Ride. At the time, a lot of Disney attractions based on IPs were very much like “book report attractions” that just retell the story of the films, but the Back to the Future ride and the Terminator 3D show were both kind of like unofficial sequels, and they really expanded the worlds of those franchises in a way that is now common sense.

In Terminator 2: 3D, Cyberdyne’s latest invention, the T-1000000 (the large spider-like version of the T-1000), is like an extension of what’s next and helps with the world-building of the franchise itself. Both of those were done in such a creative way, and the storytelling is so unique to the medium of location-based experiences— it hooked me.

The Back to the Future ride really is a master class in storytelling for theme park attractions because there are several segments in the queue, and each segment has the same media loop on the monitors, but as you move through the different segments, it escalates in terms of pace, content, danger, and menace, and it’s just fantastic.

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

The first time I went Disneyland (it was before California Adventure, so there was a parking lot and more of an approach to the front gate), my parents told me that even just seeing the monorail go by, I turned them and said, “I like this place.” I was three.

But my favorite ride as a kid was probably Haunted Mansion. I had my first kiss on Haunted Mansion.

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

I have a very specific memory of standing in line for the Body Wars ride at Epcot and getting quite concerned.

This would’ve been probably around 1990 when it was still a very new ride, so it had a long wait time. As I moved slowly through the queue with my family, the media on the queue monitors started talking about the shrinking technology that would be used to make us small enough to go inside the human body. My parents absolutely did not tell me that it was all pretend, and instead played into this idea that we were essentially going to be lab rats for the ride’s fictional Miniaturized Exploration Technologies Corporation. The other guests around us in line were so amused by my visible concern (and were also probably bored), so they started playing into it, telling me they were also worried that the shrinking technology might not be completely safe (keep in mind that the “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids movie” was still very much in the cultural zeitgeist at the time). 

When we finally boarded the simulator vehicle, I spent the whole time on the ride absolutely terrified that they wouldn’t be able to return me back to my normal size. Let’s just say my suspension of disbelief was a bit less discerning at that age.

What was your oddest or coolest job in a theme park or your company?

The coolest theme park job I ever had was back in 2007. They were redoing the Submarine Ride into Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. That ride operates very similarly to the Jungle Cruise, with eight vehicles at a time that load guests, then unload guests, and there’s an operator in every vehicle, which isn’t usual.

Because of my experience with the Jungle Cruise – and I had worked my way up to becoming a lead and a trainer – they brought me over to be a lead for what’s called the test and adjust phase (the final phase where Imagineering is onsite to finish the construction, but they’re also testing it with the operators as they complete their installation). I was one of the very first people signed off to operate the submarines.

The submarines are considered heavy machinery, so they had to be driven by someone in the Teamsters Union (all ride operators are in the Teamsters Union, but Imagineers are not). They had to do show programming for the ride from inside the submarine so they could sit in the guest seats and look out the portholes to see the lights and animatronics, but they couldn’t drive the submarines to get to the spot they needed to be in to see out the portholes. So that was my job.

I would have an eight-hour overnight shift (from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.) Rich Rothschild was the creative director for Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, and I would literally drive Rick to a scene, park, watch him work for four hours, drive him back for lunch, drive him back from lunch, and watch him work for another four hours – and I did that every day. Just watching him work, I learned so much about creative direction for these rides at an incredibly young age.

In the press photo of the opening ceremony of the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, Bob Iger and John Lasseter are on stage, and there are all the Nemo characters and confetti and a big celebration — in the distance in the lagoon is one of the submarines that’s parked perfectly for the photo. If you look in the porthole, that’s my face.

I was also the guy who took VIPs around when they wanted to visit, as I was one of the few people signed off to drive the submarines. Early one morning, before the ride opened, I was asked to drive around four passengers: Tony Baxter, Steve Jobs, Bob Iger, and John Lasseter.

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

The academic answer is probably Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance because you can explain to somebody why that ride is amazing. In terms of one that somebody has to experience, I’m going to say Avatar: Flight of Passage at Animal Kingdom because if you try to explain it to someone by saying, “It’s very similar to Soarin’ Over California,” that doesn’t do it justice at all.

It really is like the visceral feeling of being there, and the music and the amazing display with incredible colors and high frame rate and the whole lead up to it in Pandora and the queue — I think that’s one that you can’t academically study; you have to see it.

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

It’s amazing how much my taste buds have changed over time. I always like different ethnic foods like Epcot has at Eating and Drinking Around the World. Their Food and Wine Festival also really appeals to me, but there’s no Korean food or Korean Pavilion, and I love Korean food, so I would say more international cuisine.

You’re a walk-around character for a day; who do you choose?

Maybe Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park (Jeff Goldblum’s character). I’d get to have my bare chest exposed. And I’m a scientist, which is sexy. One who talks about chaos theory and how man should not be playing with the power of God to create life. That would be my schtick that I would start talking to people about.

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

I would like to see more interactive attractions where you’re not shooting at targets and getting points. That is a soap box I will die on.

There were some initial successes with Men in Black Alien Attack, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, and Toy Story Mania, which were early interactive dark rides where you’re shooting at targets and getting points. And I get it; it works great, but somewhere along the way, the term “interactive dark ride” became interchangeable with “shooting dark ride,” but when you look at video games, not every game is shooting at things and getting points.

But in fact, there are many other types of games with different game mechanics. Racing, chasing, puzzles, wordplay — the list goes on. There are so many different types of games, yet all we’ve seen are shooting rides. I think part of that is because game design is a relatively new discipline, and I don’t think it’s even a conscious decision that’s being made; it’s just that most people assume that shooting is interactivity, and they’re not even thinking that there are other things you could be doing. Let’s try to experiment with some of those other mechanics.

Like Wordle. What would Wordle the Ride be like? Let’s talk about it. And brainstorm about it. But let’s make it something different than shooting.

Do you have any interesting theme park pandemic stories?

In the short term, it was obviously terrible for our industry, but in the longer term, it has actually been really good for my business because Worldbuildr makes digital experiences that operate in parallel with the physical experience. The pandemic accelerated a lot of this technology and people’s acceptance of it, so that even if the technology wasn’t ready yet for the metaverse, people were aware of and ready for the metaverse, so all of a sudden, the type of work we’re doing at Worldbuildr was much easier to explain to people.

Things just kind of leveled up, and we advanced technologically in terms of remote collaboration and virtual worlds and even taking meetings over Zoom. We never would’ve done that — we only did that because we had to. We had that technology before the pandemic, but the idea of having a Skype call with someone was such a niche concept; nobody did that. Once it became normalized, we realized we didn’t have to drive to that meeting; we could just have a video call.

Can you talk about what you are working on these days?

We are working on the same thing we’ve been working on for the last five years. Worldbuildr has been providing project-based services for clients to bootstrap the development of our own software products. We’re just about finished, and in November (around the time of IAAPA), we will launch the public beta version of our software.

It is content creation software, and it’s meant to be an authoring tool for immersive attractions. The shorthand phrase that I like to use to describe it is our product is like Roblox but for design professionals – an easy-to-use interface for project teams to collaborate, import their 3D models, their audio files, their video files, and get an experience going digitally without needing to know how to code or be super technical.

So, this idea of paying a studio to give you an animated fly-through of something is what we’re trying to end. We want you to create that yourself and have it not be something static that’s a fixed thing because concepts are always changing over time. This is like designing a ride by playing a video game. So, it’s always real-time, you’re always editing, and you’re always seeing other people’s edits. You can see how the ride path affects the lighting or media design and, when one thing changes, how it affects all of these other components. You’ll be hearing more about it in the coming weeks and months. It’s very complicated to build, but if we did our job right, it’s very simple to use.

You are going to your favorite theme park or attraction; which people (dead or alive) are you taking with you?

My 16-month-old nephew, but in about a year or so when he’s two and a half, almost three – I think that’s the sweet spot. Sometimes, we get jaded about what we do, and the best cure for that is to go with someone who’s young and has never been before and see it through their eyes. It’s just such a wonderful thing, and you totally realize, oh yeah, I’m through the looking glass on this one. I’m in the industry now, so, for me, it’s not about feeling those things myself; it’s about creating those feelings for other people.