MIDDLE EAST
95 percent of its ride systems either installed or in the warehouse ready to go . “ And we ’ ve got a good 50 percent of all the shows either in the warehouse or on the water which is a tremendous accomplishment by our guys ,” Priddy adds . “ The goal is to get in and start playing with it so we can make sure we can dig out all problems and deal with them as early as we can . The role of the project manager and the technical division is to look for bad news . It is to look for problems and deal with them now . Not later . We ’ re doing a great job .”
Without exception , everyone we spoke to at Dubai Parks and Resorts had a love of theme parks running through their bloodstream . A passion that Priddy epitomises . He says : “ I majored in theatre technology in UCLA . That is really all about lighting , audio , rigging , scenic construction and stuff like that .” This eventually led to a call from Walt Disney requesting that Priddy join its team building scenery for the Epcot Center . “ Typically theme parks at that time used the Hollywood film studios to build all the scenery but it didn ’ t have the capacity for Epcot so we needed to set up our own . So we built 3.5 million square feet of scenery plus Tokyo Disneyland at the same time and
“ When we mature as a park and we have the right dialled-in level of talent , I know for a fact that we will become known as one of the top innovators in the business ”
– Matthew Priddy , CTO
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