One of the most popular Walt Disney Company adages is “If you can dream it, you can do it.” [It’s a quote often attributed to Walt Disney but actually coined by current Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) Portfolio Creative Executive Tom Fitzgerald for the Horizons attraction at Epcot.] Regardless of the source, sustained success requires that any industry attracts the next generation of dreamers and doers. To that end, in 1991, former WDI executive Marty Sklar introduced Imaginations, a design competition designed to cultivate the next generation of Imagineers.
Imaginations provides students and recent graduates with the opportunity to display their talents to WDI through a Disney-related project. Teams include two to four college students and/or recent graduates from a wealth of disciplines ranging from fine arts and architecture to engineering and urban planning, among others. A project challenge is provided, and the teams work to produce a concept in a way similar to how Imagineers develop their Blue Sky projects. The 2019 competition, which ran from August 2018 to February 2019, instructed entrants to create an experience that explores a natural or ancient Wonder of the World. The projects could not include virtual-, augmented-, or mixed-reality-based solutions and must not contain Disney intellectual property.
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