In case you haven’t heard, the subs at Disneyland are coming back on June 11th.

They were shut down in 1998 by a cost-cutting corporate regime that saw their expensive upkeep as a threat to the bottom line. The submarine lagoon has been sitting dormant, unused, between Tomorrowland and Fantasyland for nearly a decade.

For the past few weeks teams from Imagineering, Attractions, and Pixar have been busting ass to meet the June 11th opening date.

I know because I’ve been spying on them!

I’ve been casually listening to their radio communications on my scanner every day at work. A lot of interesting stuff gets discussed over those radios!

For example, I now know that the projections in the caverns use a lot of QuickTime and that videos are somehow processed in Adobe After Effects. There are sixteen show scenes, and getting the lighting just right seems to have been the focus of much of the work last week. Today at 10AM there was a visit from some Pixar head honchos, and the stressed voices of the WDI staff prior to that ride-through made it sound like a big deal! I bet John Lasseter was there.

It’s all very exciting to hear these folks scramble to get things ready. It sounds like a lot of work and there’s a lot of coordination between many different teams. Pretty neat.