My first visit to Disneyland was before I turned one. I don’t remember it, of course, but I’ve seen the photos. I’m in a stroller, beaming under the shadow of Sleeping Beauty Castle.
By age seven, I started visiting Walt Disney World regularly. And even then, I noticed something that stuck with me: everything worked. The monorails glided in silence. Animatronics hit their marks every time. The rides ran like clockwork. As a kid, I didn’t have the language for it, but I knew it wasn’t just magic. It was engineering.
Watching the Magic Work
What amazed me wasn’t just the characters or the fireworks, it was the systems behind them.
I’d watch cast members sync ride loading with uncanny precision. I’d spot sensors on trackless ride vehicles. I’d try to figure out how animatronics like the pirate captain or the yeti moved so smoothly. Even in shows like Fantasmic or World of Color, I could see the choreography between lights, music, water, and machinery, and I wanted to know how it all came together.
Disney wasn’t just a theme park to me. It was a live, working machine.
The Spark That Started It All
Some kids leave the parks wanting to be a princess or a pirate. I left wanting to be an engineer.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Disney planted that seed. I wanted to build things that felt alive. Things that worked reliably, invisibly, beautifully. So I studied engineering. I learned about systems, automation, real-time processing, and how to think like both a builder and a problem-solver.
I wasn’t chasing Disney exactly, I was chasing what Disney represented: tech that supports story, infrastructure that feels effortless, and complexity that hides behind joy.
How It Still Shapes My Work
Even today, the way I lead and build software is influenced by what I saw in those parks:
- Reliability matters. If a ride breaks, it breaks the story. Same goes for software.
- Design and operations aren’t separate. The best systems are built with both in mind from the start.
- User experience isn’t just UI. It’s how the system feels, stable, seamless, intuitive.
And maybe most of all: the best engineering disappears. When you do it right, people don’t notice the tech, they remember the moment.
A Lifelong Connection
I’ve visited the parks more times than I can count, and every time I go back, I still find myself scanning the ceiling of Space Mountain for projectors or watching how quickly cast members reset after a show ends. The curiosity hasn’t gone away. If anything, it’s grown.
I’m a theme park nerd, sure. But more than that, I’m someone who believes that engineering can create experiences people remember for life.
And that belief started at Disney.