Walt Disney Imagineering Quotes

Are you’re looking for theme park design inspiration? Are you trying to find that perfect quote from some of the best designers in the theme park business?

We’ve pulled together inspirational quotes from Walt Disney Imagineering and their fellow Disney Imagineers that will inspire you as you dream of designing the next amazing theme park attraction, show, ride, or new theme park. To begin, here’s some quotes from Walt Disney about his theme parks and Imagineering.

Cinderella Castle Concept Sketch
Image courtesy Disney.

Walt Disney Quotes About Imagineering

All I want you to think about is when people walk through or have access to anything you design, I want them, when they leave, to have smiles on their faces. Just remember that. It’s all I ask of you as a designer. – Walt Disney

I could never convince the financiers that Disneyland was feasible because dreams offer too little collateral. – Walt Disney

Herbie, I just want it to look like nothing else in the world. And it should be surrounded by a train. – Walt Disney

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We call them gag sessions. We get in there and toss ideas around. And we throw then in and put all the minds together and come up with something and say a little prayer and open it and hope it will go. – Walt Disney

Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it and work at it until it’s done, and done right. – Walt Disney

We keep moving forward, opening up new doors, because we’re curious….We’re always exploring and experimenting. – Walt Disney

When we consider a new project, we really study it – not just the surface idea, but everything about it. And when we go into that new project, we believe in it all the way. We have confidence in our ability to do it right. And we work hard to do the best possible job. – Walt Disney

Cinderella Castle Concept Art
Image courtesy Disney.

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Disney Imagineering Quotes

If I could pick any job here, I’d move my office to the Imagineering building and immerse myself in all that lunacy and free-thinking. – Michael Eisner

Walt Disney Imagineering is a true Renaissance organization. The only people I see who are successful at changing the world are right here-people with every special dreams. – Ray Bradbury

Build this? Are you kidding? Sure we can build this! – Kathy Mangum

One of our first ideas for Main Street was a corset shop called ‘The Wizard of Bras.’ For some reason, Walt didn’t like it. – Bill Martin

In the early days of Disneyland, it was incredible that WED accomplished all of the things it did because we were just a little machine shop and a tiny model shop. Of course, everything is bigger and better today, but I’ve never become blasé because I continue to have the feeling that Walt is looking over my shoulder. – Harper Goff

If the spark of an idea is strong, it will never fade away. Even if it travels only far enough to appear on that first piece of paper, there it will patiently remain until the time is right for it to re-ignite.

Floating between luminous clouds of endless possibilities and our unbounded imaginations, the idea grows where it goes. In the beginning, the only thing we do not allow in our world of fantasy is a tight pull on the tether of pracicality.

On in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life. – Joseph Conrad

Cinderella Castle with bubbles
Cinderella Castle – Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World Resort

The roots of Mickey’s Ten Commandments came from the inspiration and teachings of those great Imagineers-and from a host of amazing talents we had the good fortune to work with or simply meet and share ideas with. – Marty Sklar

Our guests don’t go out of the parks whistling the lights or the architecture. – John Hench

Poor taste costs no more! – Herb Ryman

When we open a new attraction or whole park, you can’t say, ‘I did this,’ or ‘I did that,’ because so many talented hands have touched it. It’s a ‘we business’ – not an ‘I business.’ – John Hench

The key to the success of It’s a Small World was that in creating it, we all remained faithful to the mood and feel of Mary’s (Blair) design. – Rolly Crump

There is nothing we do here that is not creative. There is nothing creative that we do not do here.

Engineering here is the collision of art and science. It’s imagineering. – Bran Ferren

Engineers everywhere are problem solvers. In this respect, we are no different than outside engineering firms that design and build complex projects like oil refineries. But at Imagineering, there something about the nature of what we do and our unique product that makes our jobs more challenging, interning and fun. – Art Henderson

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