Today, I’m visiting West Edmonton Mall, home to Professor WEM’s Adventure Golf, Galaxyland and a whole lot more. We spent about five years at the mall, back in the late 90’s, re-theming the five-acre indoor theme park and the golf, and many other smaller projects. While much has changed in the mall and the theme park, the golf remains the same. The Marine Life area is still there, but most of the other projects we did through the mall have long since disappeared. The staff at the Mall has kept things well maintained, and it was a pleasure to see our work holding up after almost three decades of heavy use. As I walked around, memories flooded back of our wonderful crew and the good times we had. The work was challenging, but the team was up to the task and then some. Those were the days!
West Edmonton Mall
It seems like ancient history now, but we incorporated as the Imagination Corporation in 1991 so we could tackle much larger and more complex projects. In the next years, it was a time of tremendous learning as we rapidly gathered better tools and methods and trained an expanding crew. An unbelievable opportunity presented itself in 1995 to completely re-theme the five-acre indoor theme park, Galaxyland (formerly Fantasyland) at West Edmonton Mall in Alberta. Our mandate was challenging and started with a single small project - adding a kids’ play area in the center of the five-acre indoor amusement park. The owners loved this first phase, and we were awarded the ‘contract’ to redo the entire project, one attraction at a time.
We relocated to Edmonton with a small but eager crew. There was never a master plan to guide us. The operations manager would talk with me about a particular area, and I’d then go back to my temporary studio to work up some concept drawings, which we would present to the owners and settle on a contract. Then we would begin work. We started early each day (6:00 am) and worked four hours behind locked gates and then another four hours while the park was open. We were considered to be part of the show. Each time we neared completion of our current project, I would go for another walk with the operations manager to pick out another attraction. I’d do more concept drawings and then again present them to the owners for consideration.
This cycle would repeat continuously for almost five years as we worked our way through the theme park and eventually out into the mall to put a new face on other attractions. We weren’t permitted to shut down an attraction for more than one day, so we had to plan our time efficiently. It was a challenging and exciting time as I learned to transfer my skills and ideas to a young and talented crew. Our mandate was to build every piece as if it came from one mind and hand. All through this time, our crew, our selection of tools and our ability to tackle ever more complex projects were continually expanding. At the peak of this project, our crew numbered twenty-one people. Although I still tried my utmost to be hands-on, the reality was that I was now in management and the bulk of my time was spent enabling our crew, planning projects and dealing with clients.
We had indeed jumped to light speed and continue to fly to this day!
Something fishy
When we were at the West Edmonton Mall applying a new theme to Galaxyland the fellow who we reported to would sometimes ask me to ‘go for a walk’ in the mall. We would most often go to an existing attraction. He would then ask me to come up with an idea to make it work better. One time we walked to the Sea Life Caverns. This was an aquarium that was situated in the ‘basement’ of the mall. I was told that people had been literally walking over a beautiful attraction without even realizing it was there. Over a period of years the mall owners had ‘tried everything’ from buildings to all types of signage. With so many things going on in the mall visitors simply did not take notice. Ideas came to my mind in an instant (as they often do) and I promised him a sketch (with a price tag) in a few days. True to my word I did. The idea was to give people an instant visualization of what was below. A giant mechanical fish, mouth wide open spanned the staircase. Under the tail was a small gift shop and ticket sales. I also handed him more sketches of how we would tie the mechanical theme throughout the aquarium space below. The mall folks loved the ideas and it was all soon under construction. In a few short weeks guests were flocking down the stairs to see this ‘new’ and exciting attraction.
