Live With Sondra In Studio

From Saigon to Storyland: 25 Years of Spatial Storytelling & the Power of Purpose-Driven Design

Ft. Mel McGowan, Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer of Storyland

Overview

This conversation is for leaders who are passionate about storytelling, curious about the history of the attractions industry, and looking for a practical framework to make experiences actually happen. You’ll hear how a founder whose earliest memories fuse war-torn Vietnam with the lights of Disneyland is building a global practice in “three-dimensional storytelling,” using design as a force for transformation, and challenging the industry to stop ripping out its history and start celebrating the nostalgia that lives in its guests.

1. From Saigon to Disneyland: The Wiring of a Storyteller

Born in Saigon to a GI father and Vietnamese mother, Mel’s earliest memories are bombs in Vietnam — and the lights of Disneyland, where his father did a stint when they returned to the States. After moving back to Germany, he carried “weird wiring memories” of a broken world and a world that could and should be. As a teenager, he wrote letters to what’s now Walt Disney Imagineering with free attraction ideas — and got a “cease and desist, stay in school” form letter back. He was drafting theme park master plans on his bedroom table before SimCity existed, detoured briefly into post-punk music, then went to work for Disney, who paid his way through grad school.

“I just have these weird wiring memories as a kid growing up of this kind of broken world, right? And this kind of world that could and should be, and I think that kind of fused together to create some unique wiring.”

Executive takeaway: Your most powerful creative lens often comes from the intersection of contrasting early experiences. When someone has lived between worlds — war and wonder, brokenness and beauty — they see possibilities others miss.

2. Storyland at 25: Building Outside the Berm

Mel was set at Disney — taken care of, grad school paid for, an amazing run. His brother Peter, who’d done well in the tech boom and was ready to retire at 30, challenged him to think about “transitioning from success to significance.” They joined forces like “Avengers assembling” — Peter brought interactive and digital storytelling; Mel brought “boring old bricks and mortar” (what Disney calls imagineering, Storyland calls spatial storytelling). Founded just after 9/11, they’ve grown to 100+ team members worldwide, survived COVID without layoffs, and operate with lifelong friends as COO and CFO. Only recently did they move from a 20-year “well-kept secret” behind NDAs to a more proactive, visible practice.

“We just thought there might be an itch to scratch and a need in the ‘real world,’ outside the berm, outside the pearly gates of Disney, to bring a little bit more order out of disorder and intentionality into a chaotic, broken world.”

Executive takeaway: The most sustainable creative businesses are built on trust — between partners, between disciplines, and between vision and operations. When you assemble the right people with a shared purpose, resilience becomes structural.

3. The Village of Hope: When Design Becomes Transformation

Mel’s most meaningful project came through family — a cousin’s wife who discovered child sex trafficking and flew to the Philippines to open a shelter. Storyland partnered to design a village for survivors, funded by clients and partners. Mel’s team secured an ocean bluff-top site with 270-degree views, placing perimeter fencing at the base so the girls never see the walls. Instead of dormitories, they designed open-air casitas — six girls and a house mom — around a healing garden with harvested moringa trees and a pavilion for continued education. The result feels like Kona Village in Hawaii — “a taste of heaven on Earth.” Survivors are now finishing school and aspiring to careers in design and architecture.

“In a single seed, you have the potential of an entire tree. But then in the potential of a tree is the potential of an entire forest.”

Executive takeaway: The skills you’ve built in one domain can create transformation in another. When you apply experience design to human restoration, the impact ripples outward — from one life to an entire forest of changed lives.

4. The History and Power of Story in Attractions

Mel traces the industry’s lineage from European pleasure gardens to Luna Park — not unsophisticated “carnie” stuff but a fully realized moonscape with a million incandescent lights that “burned a hole in people’s brains.” Walt Disney didn’t create from nothing — he benchmarked Tivoli Gardens, Knott’s Berry Farm, and trolley parks, then synthesized them. Disney’s fusion of past and future — state-of-the-art technology applied to idealized nostalgia — is “one plus one equal three.” But for years, working with park chains was “pushing a rock up a hill” because operators prioritized new rides over celebrating their own history. Mel and Sondra bond over personal park memories — Sondra’s grandfather starting every Disneyland visit at the Tiki Room, Mel’s adopted brother being called “Kenjiro” for 40 years because E.T. butchered his name — proof that attractions create the most durable, identity-shaping memories people carry for life.

“Even working with chains, it was felt like pushing a rock up a hill because for a while it was always about the bright paint job or the sexy new ride… I’m like, ‘You guys are just missing the boat.'”

Executive takeaway: Your park’s history isn’t a liability — it’s your most authentic competitive advantage. Guests aren’t just riding rides; they’re building family mythology. The operators who celebrate that will tap an emotional reservoir their competitors can’t replicate.

5. The Three S’s and What’s Next: Soil, Silver, Story

Mel’s framework for whether an experience can actually happen:

• Soil: The site or facility — without the right ground, nothing grows
• Story: The IP — the story is what gets people out of their houses
• Silver: The seed capital — enough to instigate soft costs and get the concept in front of investors
• “It’s not gonna happen unless you have all three of these things converging.”

What’s new at Storyland: Ozone, a new software platform Mel calls a “game changer” — like the Unreal Engine but for character animation. Storyland Development & Locations, moving from waiting for the phone to ring to proactively creating experiences from the ground up. And emerging markets in the UAE and beyond.

Executive takeaway: Vision without soil, silver, or story is just eye wash. The winning formula requires all three converging — and partners who can bring the missing ingredients to the table.

6. The Orchestra Pit: Why Every Role Matters

The industry is a collective art form — “so many instruments and so many seats, and that conductor is trying to envision how it all comes together.” Sondra highlights how ticketing and software are the first actual touch most guests have with an experience. Mel recounts being stuck as the “navigator guy” at Universal Studios Osaka, missing the entire arrival sequence because he was glued to the app — and a worse experience at the Osaka World Expo where software “butchered” the guest journey. Both veterans still go to parks and feel the magic — Mel was caught sneaking off from an educational tour to ride Atlantis’s “Not So Lazy River,” and Sondra treasures her Tiki Room tradition.

“You can have a built wonderland, but if you can’t figure out a way to let people get where they need to get, then yeah.”

Executive takeaway: No single discipline makes an experience great. From the architect to the software engineer to the person sweeping the steps — every role is part of the orchestra. The experiences that endure are the ones where every instrument was heard.

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