Theme parks have long had a checkered reputation when it comes to dining.
And theme park designer Eddie Sotto once wanted to put an end to that reputation. “Why,” Sotto reflected to me in 2023, “are we not thinking more holistically about what we put inside the guest than what we put in front of the guest?”
“The old joke is that people don't expect food to be good in an immersive environment,” Sotto said. “I don't think so. I think everything should be good. You're paying a lot. The opportunity is for everything to be transformative.”
Sotto, whose outspoken passion for theme park design made him a favorite among Disney's large fan base, died Dec. 17 in Orange County after a long battle with several heart-related problems, said his wife of 48 years, Deena. He was 67 years old.
While Sotto's best-known masterpieces are found overseas, whether creating Main Street USA for Disneyland Paris or overseeing the development of the first trailless Pooh's Hunny Hunt attraction for Tokyo Disneyland, he had a reputation for fighting tirelessly to improve the theme park experience, driving improvements in everything, including the attraction vehicles and the food on guests' plates.
In the early '90s, while working for Walt Disney Imagineering, the company's secretive arm dedicated to theme park experiences, Sotto was tasked with putting on a chef-led symposium for Imagineers.
“They taught us Imagineers a lot about the ritual of dining and understanding what food does to you,” he said, describing how theme park dining should go beyond developing a burger with a cute name.
He was also one of the first designers of Disneyland's Indiana Jones Adventure, brought music to Space Mountain, and elevated a Los Angeles landmark: he led an interior renovation of the now-closed Encounter restaurant at LAX.
Born in Hollywood on March 14, 1958 and raised in La Mirada and Fullerton, Sotto grew up obsessed with Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland. He married Deena, his high school sweetheart, when he was 19 years old. Initially, Sotto followed in his late father's early footsteps and worked at Sears. His meteoric rise in theme park design would be unheard of today, as Sotto never attended college and was self-taught, designing theme park layouts in his spare time while selling appliances.
His hiring at Imagineering sparked some debate, says Tony Baxter, the Disney legend who oversaw the creation of attractions like Big Thunder Mountain, Indiana Jones Adventure, Star Tours and Splash Mountain. Outgoing and driven, Sotto began asking Baxter for advice in the late '70s, Baxter says. It would take nearly a decade for Baxter to persuade his superiors to take a chance on Sotto, who was eventually hired by Imagineering in 1986 after working at Knott's Berry Farm and Landmark Entertainment Group. It was at Landmark where he met one of his key mentors, Herb Ryman, a long-time Imagineering visual artist and conceptual designer.
Eddie Sotto's most famous work at Disney is the design of Main Street, USA, at Disneyland Paris.
(Michel Euler / Associated Press)
“People in management positions want to see a portfolio of something solid,” Baxter says. “But to me, it's what goes on in someone's mind. And Eddie's mind was very sharp.”
Baxter believed he was so smart that he was tasked with reinventing Main Street, USA, for a French audience at Disneyland Paris. Sotto's version of the turn-of-the-century introductory land is widely considered the best, with its grand Victorian-inspired designs diving deeper into real American history than its predecessors. Enclosed arches line each side of the street behind the shops. The archways serve as protection from the Parisian weather, but they also gave Sotto the opportunity to design installations that focus on the Statue of Liberty, American inventions, and the bond between the United States and France.
The goal, Baxter says, was “to create stores that compete with European architecture.” Tom Morris, a retired Imagineer who worked closely with Sotto, says Sotto's Main Street possesses “an extra layer of storytelling,” adding that Sotto gave the street “more opportunities for exploration.”
“It's excessive in the best possible way,” adds Christopher Merritt, an author and theme park designer who worked with Sotto on Pooh's Hunny Hunt.
Morris recalled meeting Sotto for the first time when they were teenagers in the 1970s. Morris jokes that both he and Sotto went to Disneyland “more than our parents thought was healthy, which was four or five times a year.” Their paths initially crossed at the Anaheim Public Library, where they went to examine its Disneyland collection.
“There were files and files of photographs and employee newsletters—all kinds of weird and interesting things,” Morris says. “I always thought I must be the only weirdo interested in all this, but one day there was another person there and that person was Ed Sotto. That's where we met, and it really surprised me that there was someone else afflicted by the same obsession with Disneyland.”
At Knott's, Sotto was tasked with reinventing a motorcycle chase. Sotto, as recalled in the book “Knott's Preserved” by Merritt and J. Eric Lynxwiler, took four buttons from a coat and created a mini soapbox car and rolled it around a conference table like a Matchbox toy. This would lead to the creation of Wacky Soap Box Racers, in which makeshift cars raced through painted facades of cartoon animals cheering on guests. The attraction emphasized silliness, taking riders to “Catnip Junction” and through rat-infested sewers.
Eddie Sotto in 2015. In his more than 13 years at Imagineering, the designer touched multiple Disneyland attractions.
(Courtesy of Deena Sotto)
“He told me everyone walked away from the project because he was the new guy,” Merritt says. “It literally had no budget. There was a final scene in a fireworks factory and they were making bombs out of rubber beach balls that they spray painted black. They did it by hand. And it's a huge success.”
Sotto in his more than 13 years at Imagineering had an influence on Disneyland. As conceptual designer for Indiana Jones Adventure, Sotto, Baxter says, conceived the idea of making the ride's vehicles appear as if they were passing through one of three different doors, an illusion achieved by a revolving wall. Regular visitors would feel as if the car was moving on an alternate track. Nowadays, the walls no longer move and the effect is attempted using projection technology. “I felt my ball rolling [at the ride’s end] and Eddie's room choice were the two things that really made the trip unique in terms of, 'Wow, how did they do that?'” says Baxter.
Sotto rose quickly while at Imagineering, rising to the position of senior vice president of conceptual design.
“Eddie kept drawing and drawing,” Morris says. “He was inspired by Herb Ryman and that was Herb's motto: 'Keep drawing'. I just think that when you have a lot of quick drawing acumen, the word gets out. People know that. He's someone you want on your team, especially in the early stages, to help conceptualize, present and present an idea.”
In the mid-90s, Sotto realized the dream of many imagineers, particularly Morris, of bringing audio on board a roller coaster, specifically Disneyland's Space Mountain. Nowadays, it's common for roller coasters to have synchronized music or sound effects, but Morris says there were technical hurdles that needed to be resolved, especially those related to engineering the speaker sets in the individual cars.
Sotto pulled it off, but not without some personal touches. Sotto, an avid rock 'n' roll fan, turned to surf rock guitar legend Dick Dale for a portion of the composition, which was largely inspired by Camille Saint-Saëns' “Aquarium” section of “The Carnival of the Animals.” The result was otherworldly, but also rooted in a sound associated with surfing the waves of Southern California. Dale's riffs, Sotto wrote on his website, “were meant to kick in to complement every twist, turn and drop of your 'rocket'.”
“He loved Orange County guitar and surf music,” Merritt says. “So he hires Dick Dale for this intergalactic Space Mountain soundtrack. They did a promotional thing where they had Dick Dale standing on Space Mountain playing his guitar. That's just Eddie's audacity.”
In fact, Sotto wrote on his site, it was the promise of playing at the top of Space Mountain that sold Dale on the gig. Sotto would leave Imagineering in 1999 to soon establish his own SottoStudios based in Laguna Beach, but not before having the opportunity with Imagineering to remodel Encounter at LAX. Sotto's vision was a space-age bachelor pad, a place, he said in 2023, “where George Jetson and Barbarella could meet for drinks,” with pillars inspired by lava lamps and soda fountains modeled in the shape of old sci-fi ray guns, complete with sound effects.
A remodel of the interior of LAX's Encounter restaurant was one of the highlights of Eddie Sotto's career.
(David McNew/Getty Images)
Sotto long spoke of the restaurant, which closed in 2013, as one of his favorite projects.
“The topic has to be deep,” Sotto said. “It's been something relevant and exciting for people. I spent weeks putting together 11 hours of music for Encounter. What you were listening to could be a B-side to William Shatner's space album. The track has to reward your close inspection at a high level. That's why people come back.”
Over the years, SottoStudios was heavily involved in the automobile industry, as Sotto led the design of many automobile showrooms. Sotto also had a passion for restaurants and worked at numerous Los Angeles establishments, including John Sedlar's closed but acclaimed Rivera's. Sotto's career would also take him to the offices of Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, for which he designed a Jules Verne-inspired rocket fireplace that doubles as a lobby meeting space.
And his passion for theme parks never wavered, Baxter says, even as his heart problems worsened. At their monthly lunches, Baxter notes that he and Sotto would continue to think about new Disney attractions or alternative directions to what the company was advertising. Sotto, Baxter says, spent his final days at UCI Medical Center in Orange, but was given a room with a view of the Disneyland fireworks, which he looked forward to seeing every night. Baxter recalled a photo of the two of them eating chili cheese dogs at Disneyland.
“He sent it to me and said, 'I'm dreaming of the day we can do this again,'” Baxter says. “That was just two weeks ago.”
In addition to his wife, Deena, Sotto is survived by his son Brian, his daughter Venice, and her husband, Rocky.
