Former WDI lead Bruce Vaughn returns to Walt Disney Imagineering as Chief Creative Officer

Mar 07, 2023 in "The Walt Disney Company"

Posted: Tuesday March 7, 2023 3:27pm ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

Former Imagineer Bruce Vaughn is making a surprise return to Walt Disney Imagineering as co-lead of Disney's theme park creative team.

Disney Parks head Josh D'Amaro made the announcement in a memo to Cast Members today. Bruce will take up the role effective March 20, and will co-lead the organization with WDI President Barbara Bouza, with both leaders reporting directly to D'Amaro.

In a post on Instagram, Vaughn said, "I've remained an Imagineer at heart, so I'm thrilled to join Barbara and reunite with this phenomenal global team of creators and innovators during this pivotal time."

Bruce Vaughn at the ground breaking of Pandora - The World of Avatar at Disney's Animal Kingdom

Vaughn joined Walt Disney Imagineering in 1993 as a senior technical specialist and moved up to Chief Creative Executive where he led WDI with Bob Weis.

Here is the full memo from Josh D'Amaro.

As Bob Iger often says, creativity is the heart and soul of who we are and what we do at Disney. In fact, as we look at our company’s 100-year history of bringing captivating and memorable storytelling to life, the consistent thread that binds us together as a company across all segments is our ability to drive innovation through creative projects.

In Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, we continue to invest in new endeavors that deliver the most compelling experiences, immersing our guests around the world in the stories they love most. In the past few years, we have found ourselves at the crossroads of a wave of new technology and a seemingly unlimited amount of new stories and franchises, allowing us to develop groundbreaking new experiences. Of
course, none of this comes to life without a strong commitment to creativity and innovation by the amazing team at Walt Disney Imagineering.

With this in mind, I’m pleased to share that effective March 20, Bruce Vaughn is returning to Walt Disney Imagineering as the Chief Creative Officer. Bruce will co-lead the organization with WDI President Barbara Bouza, with both leaders reporting directly to me.

Together, Bruce and Barbara will partner closely to connect visionary creative thinking with project opportunities and flawless execution and delivery. With significant developments under way and more on the horizon, this dedicated focus toward creativity and innovation will help us deliver next-level experiences well into the future. To best accomplish this, they will be working together to swiftly identify the most effective way to structure Imagineering.

Many of you have had the opportunity to work with Bruce previously. He has a deep history with Imagineering, serving for more than two decades in leadership roles including with WDI R&D, as well as co-leading the entire WDI organization as Chief Creative Executive for nine years. Bruce left Disney in 2016 to become CEO and CCO of Dreamscape Immersive where he worked with teams to advance virtual reality technologies for mainstream location-based entertainment, and most recently was with
Airbnb where he developed and led the Experiential Creative Product team.

Please join me in welcoming Bruce back to Disney.

Discuss on the Forums

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SirwalterraleighAug 06, 2025

I don’t…guess I’m just not in the mood for call outs today? I’m losing money on that “great” DIS quarterly report 🤪

DrStarlanderAug 06, 2025

Totally. He changed jobs??? Clearly an irredeemable a-hole. Rumor is he doesn't even call his mom every Sunday. If you have something to say, go ahead. An anecdote? A comment he made at a panel discussion? Some commentary about one of his projects...?

SirwalterraleighAug 06, 2025

Nobody here…ever…knows anyone with significant strategic importance. Because they wouldn’t be here with that on their resume. So guess we can’t talk anyone then? 😎

SirwalterraleighAug 06, 2025

Huh? X2

CompedAug 06, 2025

It's interesting he'd leave Creative (and start teaching at UCF), a few months after Epic opened... Haven't heard much about him personally though. May explain a bit if what you say is correct...

FerretAfrosAug 06, 2025

Behind the Attraction is a lot of fun and tells a lot of stories about the development of the parks. Some of those stories are even true! But almost all of them are intentionally misleading or factually incorrect, twisting history to fit the current corporate narrative. They can be a good introduction to behind-the-scenes stuff for how the parks were created for general audiences, but really should not be relied upon for the actual history or reasoning behind development for any meaningful conversations. Although framed as a documentary, they’re about as accurate as Saving Mr. Banks, which even as a dramatization of the story misses the mark of understanding the relationship between its two main characters.

JD80Aug 06, 2025

It's all still Disney IP - the only difference is what division created it.

JD80Aug 06, 2025

Yes, plenty of ride systems were considered along with different stories etc. However a drop ride experience was chosen prior to it having the Twilight Zone IP assigned to it. But sure, keep putting "ride system" in quotes if it helps you get through your day.

TrainsOfDisneyAug 06, 2025

I’m sure imagineers have always been asked to create attractions based on IP - but there were obviously attractions being developed without IP in mind as well. Now…. It’s all IP. That’s the difference.

DrStarlanderAug 06, 2025

This seems hurtful and if it's just something you "heard" maybe it's not worth posting.

GuseyAug 06, 2025

So, just to clarify as the pendantry of what counts as a ride system seemed to have derailed the original conversation of if there were instances before Iger of Imagineers being given an IP to make an attraction based on, vs creating a new ride system, then creating the (for lack of better terms) "attraction theme". In the development of ToT, was it the IP or the ride system that came first? Was it decided that the next WDI project at MGM Studios was a drop tower, a Twilight Zone attraction or something else? A more clearer example from that decade was Dick Tracy's Crime Stoppers, when Imagineers were given the budget to create a state-of-the-art Dick Tracy attraction, and they designed the EMVS after being given the IP.

HMFAug 06, 2025

He writes good books but I have heard he is not that great as a person.

lazyboy97oAug 06, 2025

It’s a message board where many of the discussions are about rides in a thread about an organization most famous for building rides. “Ride system” is not some unusual, esoteric term. But even if we go with your broad definition, the “ride system” still did not come first. There was story development and exploration of other ride types before they settled on the drop ride. Even other IP was tossed around as the collaboration with Mel Brooks started from the suggestion of a Young Frankenstein attraction.

Disgruntled WaltAug 06, 2025

I know him mostly as the guy who wrote the books on Haunted Mansion and POTC - From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies, and the Disney Mountains book. He was a show writer for WDI previously, then left to go to Universal Creative for the last decade or so. Not entirely sure what his Imagineering credits are, but he was there when a lot of good Imagineers still worked there (and researched his books by talking to the old guard like Sklar and Baxter), so this is a positive development.