Over at Disney California Adventure, there’s a unique queue and flex space right next to the Hyperion Theater. When the park first opened, this spot featured four playful billboards with Disney characters, styled like tongue-in-cheek ads for shows that “might have played there” in the past. Over the years, the billboards have been updated for different occasions—Pixar Fest, Rogers: The Musical, and every Halloween when they’re re-themed as part of a Treat Stop meet & greet.
Now, the space has a brand-new set of evergreen billboards that will live here moving forward—and I had the honor of helping create them.
The concept was to design something that felt like large-scale attraction posters, each one celebrating the park itself. DCA is especially close to my heart—I helped open the park nearly 25 years ago, and I’ve been its biggest fan ever since. The first billboard celebrates Disney California Adventure as a whole, leaning into that “California Dreamin’” spirit and my personal take on what the park’s theme represents. Another takes the form of a vintage seaside advertisement for Pixar Pier, as if it were one of California’s classic amusement parks. There’s also an art deco-inspired design for World of Color—the spectacular that truly put DCA on the map and elevated it into a world-class Disney park. And finally, one pays tribute to Walt Disney himself, commemorating the opening of his “new” Hyperion Studios, which is what the nearby theater is named after.
This was such a fun project, and I’m grateful for the incredible collaboration with my fellow Imagineers Kendall Elliott, Brandon Franco, and Pat Hand. Big thanks as well to my pal David Yeh for capturing it all through his lens.
