SOTTOSTUDIOS
EXPERIENTIAL SOLUTIONS
World-Class Innovation and Design begins with Experience
Sotto is featured in the epic Disney+ miniseries.
The New Reality. If there was ever a time to reimagine your business model, it’s now. Attractions that “worked” last year, may not “work” in tomorrow’s world of regulation and Covid19. As terror forever changed the way we deal with public safety, pandemics forever alter how we treat customers psychologically, spatially, and invasively. The “shared experience” of customer interaction, mass events ( i.e, sports, concerts, dining, or theme parks), require solutions that go beyond medical or even operational solving.
Our 40 years of guest behavior experience makes us uniquely qualified to adapt your customer journey in a reassuring way that brings them back. We leverage our deep contacts in innovation, science, technology, industrial design and more to bring the right minds to your challenge. In the past, we have reimagined the “Curb to Gate” Airport terminal experience, the process of automotive buying, in- home experiential media, and more.
Beyond the Learning Curve
More than a decade of Eddie Sotto's years in entertainment design were spent at Walt Disney Imagineering. Rising to the role of Senior Vice President of Concept Design, he was given a wide ranging portfolio of projects to preside over, such as Main Street USA at Disneyland Paris, driving the early creative development of the Indiana Jones Adventure, and directing the design of Tokyo Disneyland and it's master planning. Returning from Paris, he was responsible for innovation with his own Disney "incubator" called the Concept Development Studio, where they “pushed the envelope” by developing smart wireless toys, On-line worlds, mixed reality coasters, and Disney's first “trackless” dark ride, "Pooh's Hunny Hunt." This gamechanging ride system was 20 years ahead of it’s time and became the technical foundation for today’s epic Disney attractions like “Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance”, “Ratatouille” and “Mystic Manor”.
Other projects the studio spawned include “Mission:Space” Attraction for EPCOT Center, the “media as architecture” facade of ABC's Times Square Studios, and the award winning “Encounter” Restaurant at the Los Angeles International Airport. A half billion dollars in executed magic.
Prior to Disney, Sotto began his career at 21, "cutting his teeth" on projects for Knott's Berry Farm, Landmark Entertainment Group, and Six Flags. Today, SottoStudios remains a Disney resource and also consults to NBC/Universal, Cedar Fair, Sea World, Paramount and others.
He is quoted more than 400 times in the encyclopedic Bible of the industry, "Theme Park Design and the Art of Themed Entertainment." and is featured in the epic miniseries, “The Imagineering Story” on the Disney+ network.
SottoStudios employs the best in class to bring you the finest creative breakthroughs and focused execution. We exist to help our clients as our partners develop their projects from concept to completion. Each assignment is unique and we bring the right talent to the table to make magic happen at a budget and schedule that works for you.
VIDEO Interview: Experiential design of theme parks.
Eddie Sotto takes us to Disneyland Paris to explain the experiential design process.
CASE STUDY
Main Street USA. Disneyland Paris
Since it opened in 1992, Disneyland Paris has been Europe's Number 1 Tourist destination with over 14.8 million visitors annually. 89% of guests express a desire to return and 93% recommend the resort, adding 50 Billion Euros in added value to the French economy, while being the largest single site employer in France.
All the Details. A closer look at Main Street USA
Details that tell a story. Adapting something as uniquely American like "Main Street USA" to a European audience required making it as richly cultural as Europe itself.
Parents are accustomed to going to museums with their children and feeling good about it. Main Street was the first thing you encounter at the park and had to set the right tone. More than quaint shops and stores, this Main Street became a "living museum" of Americana with permanent exhibits showcasing the Statue of Liberty and the Age of Invention. Eddie has always been fanatical about details and this project is no exception. His team was driven to prioritize "the story" over ornament. Detail cannot be for it's own sake.
"If it's not interesting enough to photograph, we shouldn't be building it," Sotto advised the design team.
Living the details.
The image gallery highlights the richness of Main Street, but also includes Sotto's own intricate sketches of those facades and their details. You can see how close the final product was to those early thumbnails and sketched elevations. Interior sketches, such as the office of the Camera Shop were generated by Eddie to ensure the right intent was achieved when buying the props. Sotto did a final placement of each object in the office himself, pretending to be the proprietor. When satisfied, he laid the rimmed spectacles and coffee cup down on the desk, locked the room and never returned.
This "method acting" approach and passion can be applied to your project in a way that makes it both relevant and authentic to it's audience. Great theming comes from a real place, from real research and is not merely copied or traced, but begins with a story and real emotion that informs those details.
The Result
Bringing fictional history to life is an art in of itself. The Camera Shop and it's proprietor were very real to Eddie and the guest cannot explain it, but they feel the presence as it was born of something real. Every time you doubt the fantasy, details keep you in it. Suspension of disbelief.