The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Imagination takes wild ride in Disneyland class
Popular course has students designing new attractions for Anaheim theme park
A tour in Adventureland loads guests onto Jeeps for a peaceful safari led by Mickey Mouse. As Mickey begins to narrate, the safari stops when a tree falls, blocking the path.
Mickey tells riders it's about to get rough before turning onto a bumpy road. Things go awry when the group disturbs animals, who give chase.
This ride doesn't exist — other than on paper during a course at UC Riverside.
It came from the imagination of UCR students who are putting themselves into the minds of the best imagineers: what the Walt Disney Co. calls its ride developers.
The student-led course, “Disneyland Imagineer,” blends the magic of Disneyland
with engineering and imagination as students simulate bringing rides off paper and into reality.
Jennifer Ibarra, 20, a third-year education and liberal arts student from
Fontana, is leading 20 students through a class about Disney Imagineering this quarter. She uses guest lectures from current and past Imagineers and offers students the chance to design their own Disney ride.
“The class is basically teaching us the process of creation when it comes to the imagineering lessons and, like, how they create the attractions and theaters, which I genuinely enjoy, ” said Hailie Nash, a 22-yearold computational mathematics major who's taking the course.
Nash, also a graphic design artist, wants to use her knowledge of math, engineering and art to become a Disney imagineer or follow a similar path.
“I originally wanted to go into civil engineering and, to be fair, more precisely I wanted to go straight into mechanical engineering because I was interested in roller coasters, and I think a lot of the math and physics behind the creation of roller