An Interview with Imagineer Neil Engel
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The entrance to Superstar Limo
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LP: In your bio it says you worked on Super Star Limo?
NE: Super Star Limo was my show and ABC Soap Opera Bistro.
LP: Can you talk about Limo a little bit?
NE: Limo is a Disney turn on Hollywood, again the hip, contemporary Hollywood, that was really designed to be a show for the whole family. When you look around DCA, one of the things that we wanted to include in it was something that had its roots in classic Disney, black light rides, color and kind of a crazy driving of a pretty, pretty car is a hallmark of a lot of our shows. So we said how can we do that and still be contemporary and still be Hollywood? So what Super Star Limo is is a chance for the whole family to experience the inside of Hollywood. What is it like for you to be the star? For you to experience the 15 minutes of fame everyone supposedly gets according to Andy Warhol - all in 3 1/2 minutes? So what it is, is our pastiche on Hollywood and in a sense we overloaded it with lots of scenery, and lots of visual gags because you’re driving through a city and a city by its very nature is oh my God what’s that, oh my God what’s that, you know? So it’s really supposed to be kind of like in your face and oh, I’d have to ride that ten times to really see what’s really going on. It was really on purpose that way.
Superstar Limo Celebrities In addition to Joan Rivers who "announces your arrival" in the attractions queue, guests encounter caricature animatronics of Cindy Crawford, Tim Allen, Jackie Chan, Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith, Drew Carey, Cher, Regis Philbin and Whoopi Goldberg. |
LP: What is the technology of Joan Rivers and the agent? Are they puppets?
NE: Yeah, they’re puppets. We worked with this team of puppet designers and makers and it actually takes four people each to run each one of those. We wanted to keep them very similar in look to our caricature profiles inside the ride so we kept that same sort of caricaturized, kind of Hollywood goony kind of feel.