Toy Story Mania: How I beat Pixar's John Lasseter

I was resigned to a crushing and humiliating defeat when I climbed aboard Toy Story Mania with Pixar chief John Lasseter.

Lasseter had quite literally invented the new dark ride at Disney’s California Adventure — shepherding the interactive 3-D attraction from concept to reality. Played the game hundreds of times. Held a top score in the 300,000-plus range.

I’d heard tales of Lasseter’s legendary competitive streak. Walt Disney Imagineers had forced the pugnacious Pixar pooh-bah to sit on his hands during the ride to get his feedback on the atmospheric theming, lest he feel compelled to blast off a few shots.

The game is that addictive. You can’t not play. It’s just not possible. But to learn, you must. And I did.

Before my showdown with Lasseter, my best score was 165,000 and change. So I sought guidance. And sat on my hands.

What I learned reinforced some of my initial instincts: 1) focus on high-value targets around the corners and edges of the video screen, 2) shoot continuously while moving from one bull’s eye to another.

What I didn’t know also surprised me: triggering the many hidden “Easter Eggs” that unlock the big bonus-point targets requires teamwork and precision timing.

Mouse Planet staff writer Adrienne Vincent-Phoenix showed me the secret to unleashing a shower of 2,000-point balloons in the Bo Peep dart-toss game. The trick: shoot four of the five balloons in each of the hovering clouds before popping the fifth and final balloons at the same time as your partner. Teamwork triggers similar bonus-point deluges in the Green Army Men game and the Saloon scene.

Kind and wise Imagineer Estefania Pickens taught me my most valuable lesson: the proper shooting position. The keys: Arm raised at a right angle to shoulder level, elbow literally in your opponent’s face, drawstring bob squeezed between your index and middle fingers, a delicate, almost imperceptible trigger motion like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings.

By the time I met Lasseter, I was prepared but not delusional. My two-fold goal was simple: learn from Obi-Wan and take my punishment like a man.

Like any chief honcho of a creative company, Lasseter was kind and gracious as well as goal- and results-oriented. His game-playing advice throughout the ride wavered somewhere between benevolence and expectation.

So as not to bore you with all the play-by-play details (he took a Lakers-like early lead, I battled back a la the Celtics), I’ll cut to the chase: When the final scores flashed up on the big board, I was shocked to have outscored the legendary John Lasseter 205,400 to 200,100.

Upon further reflection, I’ve come to realize that he probably let me win. That he is so good as to be able to lose at will by a few thousand points. To boost my ego. Inflate my self-worth. And provide my happily ever after ending.

But I have no shame. A win is a win. I’ll take the W any way I can get it. And proudly proclaim: I beat the master.

Find the latest amusement and theme park news at the
Los Angeles Times Funland blog: www.latimes.com/funland

— Brady MacDonald, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

[Photo: Disney]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 3:13 pm by Brady MacDonald and is filed under Celebrity, Disney's California Adventure, Family & Kids, Orange County, Theme Parks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.