The Imagineering Story: Help Them to See Strategically

by · March 26, 2026

This is the fourth of a five part series based on lessons learned from The Imagineering Story: The Official Biography of Walt Disney Imagineering by Leslie Iwerks. We’re covering five things that those of us in the church world can take away from gifted artists, thinkers, creators, and engineers. See the Top Ten Quotes post here, or get started on the series here.

Walt Disney was a train fanatic.

Maybe it had to do with the era in which he came of age. Perhaps there was nostalgia for the three days on the rails from New York to California, on which he created his beloved Mickey Mouse.

Either way, Walt’s train fascination followed him for the rest of his life. When he and Lillian broke ground on their new home west of Beverly Hills in 1949, the plans included

…the track for a small-scale, 7¼-inch-gauge train, just big enough for adult passengers to ride atop the cars like Gulliver in Lilliput. The layout was roughly oval, with an additional figure eight behind the house and a tunnel beneath Lillian Disney’s flower garden in the front of the property. The ninety-foot tunnel was designed with an S-curve, so the exit was not visible from the entrance, creating a few moments of thrilling darkness for passengers. Traversing the uneven terrain and crossing over itself, the layout included three bridges, a forty-six-foot trestle, and eleven switches.

Trees and shrubs were relocated or brought in to block sightlines and muffle the train sounds on adjoining properties. The tunnel through the front yard preserved the atmosphere of a completely separate domain—the serenity of Lillian’s flower garden, visible from the house.

In other words, Lillian didn’t want the Lilly Belle to interrupt her serenity, and Walt didn’t want her serenity to interrupt his Lilly Belle.

Even in 1949, Walt was planting the seeds for different kinds of sightlines. Five years later, when Disneyland began to come up out of the ground, Walt employed those same techniques in his “new kind of amusement park.” About Walt’s backyard train and Lillian’s garden, Iwerks notes that “guests enjoying either experience might not even be aware of the other.” That same principle carried into Disneyland, where “guests on Main Street, U.S.A. would never know there was an exotic Jungle Cruise right behind City Hall.”

Walt understood something we often overlook: people don’t need everything at once. They need the right thing at the right time. You’ve experienced this in just about any Disney park you’ve visited:

The park surrounded visitors with an all-encompassing dream reality—or rather, a series of dreams, represented by the four lands, by Main Street, U.S.A., and by the all-important hub. Going from one land to the next, or from the hub into any of the five realms, was like a motion picture dissolve, as the design elements of where you had been gradually blended into those of where you were going.

“It’s an experience you get through time,” John Hench explained…“It’s the same kind of unfolding that goes on in a [motion] picture or a book, for that matter. And the transitions from one place to another have been carefully thought through.” He compared the passage from one land to another to “a segue in a piece of music, and it happens so easily that people don’t really realize what’s happening.” The experience even began with a kind of opening credits—the giant floral portrait of Mickey Mouse just inside the entrance, beneath a depot sign reading DISNEYLAND in the train station above, serving as a title card. The entry plaza was followed by a dissolve to the first scene: the gradual reveal of Main Street, U.S.A., as guests passed beneath the train tracks and walked up the slight slope into the Town Square.

That “dissolve” has continued through the decades into even the most recent worlds that Walt and his successors have created. For example, in both Disneyland and Hollywood Studios’ Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge:

All the entrances would be tunnel-like, so that Batuu came into view only as guests descended and re-emerged on the other side. “One of the biggest things I think we as a team are proud of are the cinematic reveals,” Beatty said. “What we love as storytellers is not showing you everything at one time. What we like to do is [as you] come in, give you a little taste of it, a moment where you [think]…‘Just look at this building. This is the droid shop. This is incredible.’ And then as you turn the corner, we open this amazing view up to you.” As guests wander deeper into the land, each new reveal was designed to evoke awe and excitement. “We’re always pulling you through the scene to a destination you just haven’t seen yet. All these details start to come together to create those cinematic moments.”

Takeaways for the church world:

Walt and his Imagineers latched on to a key truth of communication: we should give people a map, not a menu. We see this most clearly not in a 20th century entertainer, but in a first century rabbi:

  • To the crowds that followed him: “With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it.” (Mark 4:33)
  • To his disciples: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” (John 16:12)
  • To Peter, after he’d confessed him as the Christ: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17)

One of the many things we can learn from Jesus is that you don’t put it all out there in the first conversation. To do so is overwhelming. To do so gives far too many inputs. To do so means people will experience paralysis by analysis, and in asking them to choose, they’ll often choose nothing.

Jesus led people a few steps at a time “as they were able to hear it” and as they were able to bear it. The Imagineers create strategic reveals to “give you a little taste of it” and “to evoke awe and excitement.”

Let’s think about our own reveals. Our own comms strategies in churches. Our own predetermined ways to get people from Point A to Point B.

I don’t care how big or how small your church is. I don’t care how developed (or not) your assimilation process is. Anything that a newcomer is seeing for the first time has the potential to be confusing at best and overwhelming at worst. So let’s not throw it all at them at once. Let’s not give them a garden party and a train ride. Let’s not walk them through Tomorrowland to the beat of jungle drums. And dare I say it, let’s not shove all of Christian history and our doctrinal statement and every ministry option and a booklet of our small groups into their first-time guest bags.

Let’s slow-roll the reveal. Let’s give them one thing at a time. To do so is a kindness.

Related posts:

See all the posts in this series:

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