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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

Publicity still of Disney Ride Soarin

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, July 15, 2019 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

photo of Mark Sumner

Mark Sumner

"The Art of Invisible Engineering"

ABSTRACT -- Imagine you have been given the task of designing a rocket to take a crew to Mars. You know just what to do, but at an early team meeting an executive says "but it can't look like a rocket; we need it to look and feel like a unicorn. And by the way, the seats have to accommodate both a four-year-old or a three-hundred-pound adult, and we need one to blast off every 15 seconds for the next forty years". Welcome to the world of Disney theme park ride engineering!

When most people think about riding an attraction at a Disney theme park, they expect to be immersed in the story and experience. They don't give a second thought about the how. And that's how it should be; Disney is an entertainment company, not an engineering company.

Modern amusement rides are a mix of advanced engineering and cutting-edge technology. The hardware and software must be safe, robust, reliable, maintainable, affordable and meet a myriad of regulations. But by design, the engineering remains in the background.

Working as an engineer in a business where engineering is not the primary product produces unique challenges. This presentation explores both the challenges and rewards of working on the technical side of a creative entertainment company. It will follow the making of the first Soarin' attraction at Disney California Adventure theme park from initial concept to opening day, showing how the interaction of the artistic and technical divisions shaped this attraction. The presentation will also discuss the importance of being able to effectively communicate technical concepts and challenges to mostly non-technical team members; sometimes with amusing methods.

So, sit back, relax and please keep your head, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times!

SPEAKER -- Mark Sumner has spent forty years designing large scale amusement rides. He retired as Executive Ride Project Engineer from Walt Disney Imagineering in 2018 where he spent over twenty-six years inventing, developing and building ride systems for some of Disney’s biggest theme park attractions. He was the principle ride engineer for the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror® (Florida, California, Paris), Test Track® (Florida), Grizzly River Run® (California), Soarin’® (California, Florida, Shanghai, Tokyo), Radiator Springs Racers® (California), Roaring Rapids® (Shanghai), Pirates of the Caribbean® (Shanghai) and Guardians of the Galaxy® (California). He has been a contributor to numerous other Disney attractions. Mark was the first recipient of Walt Disney Imagineering’s Spirit of Innovation Award.

Early in his engineering career he worked designing petrochemical plants, cryogenic heat exchangers, and nuclear fuel handling systems. In the mid-eighties he was Senior Mechanical Engineer for the development of the W. M. Keck Telescope and Observatory; a joint project between Caltech and the University of California to build the world’s largest optical telescope. Mark spent four years at Caltech doing design work and two years in Hawaii assembling and commissioning the telescope and observatory atop a 14,000-foot mountain.

Mark has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from California State Polytechnic University and is a multi-state Licensed Professional Engineer. Although retired, he continues consulting in the fields of both amusement rides and large optical telescopes.

Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov