The WDW News Today Podcast - without News Today · Tom Corless & Eric Morton

Michael Eisner Stories with Imagineer Paul Osterhout - The WDW News Today Podcast: Episode 95

January 31, 2026·1 hr 11 min·10 clips

Eric Morton opens the episode with Tom Corliss and Paul Osterhout, a former Disney Imagineer, and Paul immediately notices how much there is to look at on the office walls. One object catches his eye: what looks like an old lighting fixture, possibly a moving gobo setup. The hosts explain that it relates to the indoor portion of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea at Magic Kingdom, where the goal was to make it look like light was hitting the water even though guests were still underwater. That leads into a brief remembrance of trying to save 20,000 Leagues over the years. From there, the conversation moves into Animal Kingdom and the long-running problem of how to make the dinosaur land relevant again. The hosts note that the damage may already have been done, especially after Dino Rama, and that there did not seem to be a clean way to revive the concept on its own. They discuss the original split plan between Zootopia and Moana, with Paul saying Moana fits especially well because of its conservation theme and Zootopia because of its focus on humanizing animals. The group then settles on Tropical Americas as the more logical direction on paper, since it is a real region that can showcase flora and fauna and still leave room for IP. Australia comes up as another possibility, described as fun, but harder to build attraction ideas around beyond animal exhibits and Finding Nemo. That opens a broader question about whether every Disney park area needs an IP attachment, and the answer is basically no. The conversation also revisits the Chester and Hester era, when the Dino Institute backstory made more sense because it was tied to real archaeological work and the story of a Tyrannosaurus rex specimen discovered in South Dakota or North Dakota, with Disney and McDonald's helping the Field Museum in Chicago acquire it. Later, the discussion turns to theme park budgets, with Tim Delaney's recollection that there was a time when $90 million was considered a strong E-ticket budget and anything over $100 million drew attention. The hosts contrast that with today, when even $90 million would not go very far for an E-ticket. The episode closes with the usual sign-off and thanks, after a long, meandering conversation that moves from one piece of Disney history to the next.

As heard by us

A loose, practical conversation about Disney park memory, DinoLand, Tropical Americas, and budgets.

Paul Osterhout, a former Disney Imagineer, fits well into this free-form WDW News Today conversation. The strongest stretches come when the talk turns to how old park ideas age, why Tropical Americas makes sense as a region-based move, and whether every park area needs an IP…

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Why you'd press play

You want Disney park lore with a former Imagineer who remembers the messy parts.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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