Anaheim, CA – Most people riding the new Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage attraction at Disneyland Resort probably don’t realize the extent to which Bill Willcox and other Disney Imagineers have gone to make this ride enjoyable. Beyond the many measures taken to ensure riders’ safety during the submarine voyages, there are also significant accomplishments made to this ride that make the environment safer too, long after the riders leave the park.

Environmental protection is definitely not a new concept at Disney. Walt Disney Company is built upon a rich heritage of conservation that Walt Disney himself first initiated more than 60 years ago. But “environmentality” and technology advances are continually changing the way attractions are designed, more so now as many technologies advance and are sometimes transferred among divergent industries as was the case here.

Imagineers working on the new Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage utilized a combination of new and tested technologies in making an environmentally progressive attraction, which has been up and running since April of 2007. For example, the submarine vehicles have undergone extensive upgrades, replacing their diesel engines with a cleaner alternative that uses a familiar technology called Inductive Power Transfer (IPT). 

This technology uses two magnetically coupled pairs of coils that transfer power to one another without touching, creating zero-emission vehicles and saving costs related to fuel consumption and fuel delivery.

“It’s similar to what’s used in the automotive industry for vehicle chassis assembly,” says Willcox. “They use buried wires for powering robots and we used underwater wire for powering the Finding Nemo submarines.” He adds that a team of electricians, machine designers, and controls specialists brainstormed the technology’s final application to the Finding Nemo ride.

A team of Imagineers considered using natural gas for propulsion of the submarines instead of the diesel engines, but they determined the subs couldn’t carry enough fuel for an entire day using the natural gas option. “There were also issues to consider with regard to air quality management, so when we looked at all the

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