Dream Chasing: My Four Decades of Success and Failure with Walt Disney Imagineering

Disney experiences enthrall millions of guests around the world. How does it all become a reality? Find out in this action-packed narrative journey!

Dream Chasing is a recounting by author Bob Weis of four decades of creating and seeing to completion challenging projects, leading teams from the top secret, high-tech corridors of Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) to the highest levels of The Walt Disney Company. Our author recounts working on and overseeing projects that took him from Anaheim, California, to the swampy wetlands of Central Florida, and even on to Paris; Washington, D.C.; Russia; Tokyo; Shanghai; and the massive shipyards of Papenburg, Germany.

    As a former Imagineering president, Bob Weis was part of the second generation of Imagineers. His page-turner of a story follows the path of someone who never lost his passion for chasing big innovative dreams in spite of having to navigate over bumpy roads tied to a slew of issues and concerns—grounded in design, technology, politics, and culture (to name a few) just to bring an array of Disney experiences to reality. Bob’s drive was fueled by a belief in something Walt Disney once said: “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible. ”Dreams," as Weis writes, “come from a place of infinite possibilities, from a part of us that doesn’t recognize limits."

     Dreams are exciting, frustrating, and sometimes illusive, as hard to hold on to as pixie dust, like glitter falling through your fingers.”Sometimes they are meant to happen, and they do; sometimes they are meant to happen, and they don’t. But every dream is an adventure, driven by the vision and passion of teams that believe any dream worth doing, is worth chasing."

Bob Weis is a dreamer who believes that if you can imagine it, you can do it. He was an Imagineer over a forty-year span, from 1980 to 2023. In those years, Bob worked on every Disney park and resort around the world. He was president of Walt Disney Imagineering from 2016 to 2022, and a Disney Global Imagineering Ambassador after that. His passion for storytelling and creative collaboration, new technologies, and for the vibrancy of the guest experience has driven him through projects from Tokyo Disneyland (and later its accompanying park, Tokyo DisneySea) and Disney Hollywood Studios to the reinvention of Disney California Adventure and on to Shanghai Disneyland. Weis also led the creative development of the new Triton class of cruise ships, the first of which was the critically acclaimed Disney Wish.Outside of Disney, Weis has served as a consultant to the Kennedy Space Center, Smithsonian, New York City’s Rockefeller Center, U. S. Navy, and Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.