Designer Times
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43. King Kong Head - Monster size - proof of concept

Universal Studios had received fan mail addressed to King Kong year after year since the 1930's. The Universal Studios Tour had long been planning a second Studio Tour to be located in Orlando Florida not far from Walt Disney World. A King Kong Attraction was to be a major feature of this new Florida Studio Tour. Universal's theme park design staff had requested a preliminary Conceptual Design from the Elliott Group Architects located in Costa Mesa, California. Elliott's King Kong Attraction design was submitted to Universal in April 1981.

Peter Alexander, a former WED Imagineer, became a Show Producer at Universal around this same time and later was assigned to Produce the King Kong Attraction for Universal Studios Tour Hollywood (UST). Peter and I had worked together at WED on the Tokyo Disneyland Project. At Animated Show Productions in Arleta, California, we had completed the Conan Serpent for (UST), and Universal had now decided to put King Kong in Hollywood, rather than Florida. Peter approached us to continue further with the plan the Elliott Group had come up with for King Kong.

I had become comfortable with designing the 24 foot tall Conan Serpent and was eager to try a 30 foot tall King Kong. Within weeks we had a very good plan for the whole attraction. Tom Reidenbach had developed a practical show layout scale model, while Dave Schweninger had scoped out all the show systems. I had made drawings of how we would build the King Kong Animated Figure. UST's President Jay Stein and a limo full of suits came out to Animated Show Productions to see our presentation.

First, they wanted to know how tall 30 feet was. We had mounted a full size painted Kong face on top of our building. Their limo pulled up and the guys got out.....yeah, that things gonna be tall alright! Then we put on our Kong dog and pony show with tons of scale models and artists renderings. I proceeded to calmly walk them through my scheme for this giant fur covered mechanical machine. They were startled but very cautious. By the end of the meeting Dave had convinced them to build Kong's legs first and test our way up from there. But it made more sense to build a working head first, then I would know how big the legs would have to be later.

We started right away on developing everything that the attraction would need. Not a real production go-ahead, but enough money to prove whether this massive deal would actually work. All our departments plunged into every show detail. UST wanted to see a realistic demonstration staged theatrically with sets, music, sound, light, and of course a fully animated King Kong head. A lot of quick decisions were required right off without waiting to test monster sized stuff.

One decision was to sculpt the Kong face with the mouth partially open so as to allow it to open and close. One of our very astute engineers, Glenn Austin, pulled me aside to say it "aint gonna work" and told me why. The sculpting department had their executive orders and were not going stop. This was to be the first lesson on "why things don't scale up worth a darn". We later found out way too late that Glenn was right.

I concluded that weight will be absolutely crucial to the success of King Kong, so I needed to develop entirely different structural details....no chance to scale up related animated figure designs. I even went so far as to use fiberglass tubing in the Kong head framework, which was basically an aircraft-like space frame. These tubes were joined at small lightweight welded steel joints with bearing mounts and clevis fittings. But the fiberglass skull shell and the facial skin were awful heavy. Our shop guys still had a hard time understanding LIGHT WEIGHT.

The giant eye mechanism was a conventional scale up complete with a thick plywood base. There was no time to argue.....the entire shop plunged onwards to make the demo date. We rigged up an overhead set to simulate an elevated train track. The sound guys installed the most believable traveling sound gag. A helicopter circled overhead as a train passed by. The Kong head was staged with shoulders set on the shop floor which placed Kong's eyes level with guests seated in a Backlot Tram mockup seat. To make Kong come alive, we added "Kong Breath" made from a rotted wet sheepskin coat under a fan that blew out his mouth at the guests.

The whole King Kong demonstration head set up was finished just hours before the UST guys were to see the whole show. The sound and lights were perfect.....with your eyes closed you could "see" the passing train and the helicopter overhead. Kong looked fabulous while motionless bathed in a very dramatic low light level ready to be awakened by the animation controls. The whole shop team eagerly awaited the first motion checks. Head up/down......right/left.....head tilt, all OK. Mouth open/closed. Oh Oh. Almost no movement even at full air pressure on the mouth air cylinder. Only a slight opening, and a stupid duck quack look when trying to close. Glenn the engineer stood by with a silent snicker while our management burned in misery.