If you’ve ever walked through a Disney theme park and marveled at the magic around every corner, chances are Marty Sklar had something to do with it. For over five decades, Marty was at the heart of Disney Imagineering, helping to create and expand parks all over the world. With his memoir, Dream It! Do It!: My Half-Century Creating Disney’s Magic Kingdoms, Marty pulls back the curtain on his extraordinary career, offering fans a rare peek into the inner workings of Disney’s most magical innovations.
PREMISE
This book is part memoir, part behind-the-scenes guide to Disney’s theme parks. Marty Sklar’s story begins in 1955 when, as a UCLA student, he was hired to write content for Disneyland—just one month before the park’s grand opening. From there, Marty’s career took off, guiding landmark projects like Epcot, Tokyo Disneyland, and Disneyland Paris. The book includes insights into Marty’s relationships with Walt and the Imagineers, the challenges he faced balancing creativity with business demands, and ultimately, how Imagineering grew and evolved into what it is today.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
From the publisher:
Marty Sklar was a student at UCLA and editor of its Daily Bruin newspaper in 1955 when he was recruited to create an 1890s-themed newspaper, The Disneyland News, a month before the theme park opened. After graduating, he joined Disneyland full-time in 1956, where he held responsibility for most of the park’s publicity and marketing materials.
In 1961, he moved to WED Enterprises, renamed in 1986 to Walt Disney Imagineering, where he worked on attractions for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. For nearly ten years, he wrote personal materials for Walt Disney for use in publications, television and special films. In 1974 he became vice president of concepts/planning, and guided the creative development of EPCOT.
As vice president of creative development, executive vice president and then president of Imagineering for nine years, Sklar supervised the design and construction of Tokyo Disneyland, the Disney-MGM Studios, Disneyland Paris, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Disney California Adventure Park, Tokyo DisneySea, the Walt Disney Studios Park and most recently Hong Kong Disneyland.
MY REVIEW
I absolutely loved this book. I think it’s a really good balance of personal biography and Disney “behind the scenes” storytelling, which gives you some really interesting perspective on the personalities and people behind imagineering’s early days. Marty worked side by side with Walt, so the book is peppered with anecdotes on Walt himself and his ideas/way of thinking.
I also really enjoyed learning more about the strategy behind the development of the Disney parks around the world – how they chose the locations they did, how each developed its own personality, and how all still follow Marty’s famous “Mickey’s Ten Commandments”, his core principles for creating immersive environments.
And finally, I think this book offers some really interesting perspective on the challenges of leading creative teams within a corporate environment. How do you balance creativity and innovation with business needs and limitations? How do you bring “right brain” creatives and “left brain” engineers together? I think this aspect of the book would appeal to a wide audience, beyond just Disney fans themselves.
All that’s to say, I highly recommend this book!