Subscriber Exclusive: Bonus Q&A with Jason Surrell, themed entertainment creative

Jason Surrell, long-time Disney Imagineer and Universal Creative, has had a hand in many major projects at Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando. Here, he continues our conversation from the Fall issue of Attractions Magazine, this time with a focus on what inspired him, his work on Star Wars projects, the effects of FastPass on design choices, the lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and his thoughts on the future of themed entertainment.

During your childhood, did you have an inspiration for becoming a Disney Imagineer?

We were a Disney family; the movies, the Sunday night TV show. We grew up with Walt Disney World, and I was fortunate that my parents were able to bring us down roughly once a year, from 1975 through my freshman year of college. I was first exposed to Walt Disney World when I was five, and that took over everything else.

It was all down to Walt Disney, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg; the classic story-tellers of my generation. Walt is a fixture for many generations, including my parents, but Lucas and Spielberg were the poets of Generation X-er’s youth, growing up with Star Wars, and “Jaws,” and Indiana Jones. All of those influences fed what I wanted to do.

Can you give us a little background into how and why you became a Disney Imagineer and part of the Universal Creative team?

Unlike today, where you have SCAD [The Savannah College of Art and Design] and all these other schools that have themed design programs, there was nothing like that. I had always intended to go to film school, to be a film director.

When I was in junior high and high school, Michael Eisner and Frank Wells took over Disney and reinvented it, and then I got this business bug, where I said, “I still want to be in entertainment, but I want to be an executive. I want to run something.”

Instead of going to film school, I went to business school up in Ohio, at Miami University, which was the best university in the state — but then it was the process of that first Epcot show that triggered the lightbulb again. I was like, “No, you idiot, you need to be hard-core creative. You don’t want to be an executive.”

By the time I got the first Universal gig [writing for Halloween Horror Nights in 1994] and was getting paid to create, I went into my counselor’s office and said, “How do I get out of here the fastest? I’m making a living as a writer, but I don’t want to not finish, because I want it for me, and I don’t want my parents to fly down and kill me.”

He said, “You’re one class away from a business minor, so take that and you could finish next semester with a Liberal Studies degree.” So that’s what I did, and wound up graduating in the spring of 1994.

You were involved with the original Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, but you got your start with Star Wars Weekends, correct?

I spent some time at Walt Disney Entertainment and was part of the team at Star Wars Weekends from 2008 through 2011. That’s where I got to really delve into the world of Star Wars, because I primarily focused on some of the behind-the-scenes programming, specifically, the making of “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” so we got to produce a new show every year that took guests behind the scenes of “Clone Wars.” That was a lot of fun.

How difficult was it to be involved with the biggest franchise in movie history?

For me it was a dream come true, because George Lucas, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones were among the most influential things in my life. Prior to the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney, the prequels had finished, it didn’t look like there were any new movies on the horizon, so it was a little looser than you might expect. They were a little more irreverent with the characters, like with “Hyperspace Hoopla,” and I contributed to that. But to be totally honest, it wasn’t my favorite thing, because, as a Star Wars kid, I took it really seriously.

That’s why, over time, I wanted to focus on the behind-the-scenes stuff. It was more what I was interested in, and I’d rather be totally faithful to the characters. In that way I got to know Dave Feloni and a lot of the “Clone Wars” actors: James Arnold Taylor, who played Obi Wan; Ashley Eckstein, who was Ahsoka Tano, she’s our son’s godmother. That’s also how I got close to Warwick Davis, [who played] Wicket the Ewok and Willow and Professor Flitwick [from the Harry Potter films]. He’s now our daughter’s godfather and his wife is our daughter’s godmother. Star Wars has been an incredible gift in our lives.

In 2010, we did an event called “Last Tour to Endor” to mark the closing of Star Tours to pave the way for the new one, so I got to write and direct the first Star Wars fireworks spectacular, called “Symphony in the Stars,” and then I got to do this irreverent Star Wars–Indiana Jones mash-up at the Epic Stunt theater, called “Raiders of the Lost Jedi Temple of Doom.” That was okay, because the story allowed for the irreverence.

The story was that these two fans were making fan films. One was doing a Star Wars, one was doing an Indy, and they combined them. The ultimate compliment there was that George Lucas was in the audience. They took me up to him afterwards and he said, “Yeah, you did a great job combining the two worlds.”

When you made the move to Universal, you had a hand in Jurassic Park River Adventure. What was that like?

That was amazing, because I was so young. [I got] to write dialogue for John Hammond, and one draft had the granddaughter, Lex, all grown up.

Who is responsible for that terrifying dinosaur head at the end?

That’s one of those things that I think a lot of people have taken credit for, but I believe it was Landmark Entertainment, with what was then called Planning and Development at Universal, on the very first one, in Hollywood. That opened in 1996, which was three years after the first film.

At that time, an attraction opening three years after the movie was really quick. Today we can almost do things the same year, if you plan properly and have confidence in the property. But they definitely wanted to pull out all the stops because they knew they had a winning film on their hands, and they wanted to make sure it had that epic finale.

There has been a lot of talk about FastPass+ lately, with some big changes at Walt Disney World. When the system began, how did that second queue impact Imagineering choices?

When FastPass was introduced, it was largely operationally driven, so we at Imagineering were like, “Wait a minute. We rely on pre-shows and queues to tell stories.” So now we have to think about our stories differently to make sure those who are using the FastPass, or Express Pass at Universal, get the same narrative experience. They’re blowing through some of these areas that we had previously relied on to tell stories.

What effect has the pandemic had on Disney Imagineers and Universal Creatives, who have been laid off or have found other work?

One of the interesting things — and this has been happening for a while, but definitely in the wake of the pandemic — when you have people from Universal and Disney leave, and fan out throughout the industry, like with the pandemic, the winds of change have pollenated many of these smaller firms, so that you’re actually spreading that expertise and that know-how to the smaller firms, which I hope, overall, is just going to elevate the quality of work throughout the entire industry.

I tend to take a spiritual view of my journey, and looking back across 30 years, if I’m certain of anything, it’s that I’m generally where I need to be when I need to be there, so I really just have faith in that idea. Sometimes it’s unexpected and difficult circumstances like the pandemic, like mass lay-offs that spur change. I’ve learned to take the longer view, see the big picture, don’t focus on the tumultuous things that are happening now, but just go with it. Ride the wave.

Is there one attraction or project that occurred while you were working at Disney or Universal that you wish you’d thought of or been involved with?

Probably the modern classics. Indiana Jones Adventure, Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and the Amazing Adventures of Spider Man; those are high water marks on the industry that took place while I was in it.

I did have the opportunity to work on subsequent versions of Tower of Terror, so I did get a little taste that way. I didn’t get to work on the first two iterations of Harry Potter, but I did do Potter work, so I got a taste of that as well. Anybody in the industry is going to point to the Wizarding World as a high point.

What do you see as the future of themed entertainment?

I think it will be back with an absolute vengeance. We’re seeing that already, with Epic Universe turned back on, things reopening, and people are going to want to get back to the lives they had as quickly and safely as possible.

The way I viewed the pandemic from Day One is that it’s essentially the bio-medical equivalent of 9/11, in that there is this tragic, change-making, tumultuous event that rocks our world and spurs very severe short-term measures. As the years go by, and the further away we get from the event, a lot of those extreme measures will fall away, until eventually you’re essentially left with normalcy.

This is 20 years since 9/11, and we’re used to getting to the airport two hours ahead of time. We’re used to more stringent security measures in public places, and I think the same thing will happen due to the pandemic. You’ll probably have more people, years from now, wearing masks on planes.

You’ll probably have more hand sanitizer. You may have a little bit more social distancing, with people not wanting to be on top of each other, but eventually the masks are going to go away, the plexiglass is going to come down, and we will be back to normal.

In the future, we may design queues differently, where there isn’t much close contact with people, like in the zig-zagging queues, so it could have an effect on how queues are designed. Not drastic, but we may be able to more organically incorporate those elements into our experience going forward.

You can read our full interview with Jason Surrell now in the digital version or print version of your Fall 2021 issue.