Four NC State students won third place in the Walt Disney Imagineering 25th Imaginations design competition at Walt Disney Imagineering headquarters on Jan. 29 in Glendale, California. Third place was awarded to Simon Park, Kevin Lee, Chandler Williams and Emily Wise for “Ostium: An Adventure Behind Every Door.”

“It actually just kind of fell into our hands,” said Emily Wise, a senior studying industrial design. “Myself and Kevin were asked to join a team with two other students, not Chandler and Simon … but both of them were studying abroad this semester, and they didn’t want to join the competition.”

The challenge this year was to design a traveling experience that could tour small towns across the United States for families who do not have the opportunity to travel to a Disney park. 

“This temporary venue would only operate in each community for two to three days, should take no more than a day to set up and break down, and embodies the kind of family entertainment that Walt Disney envisioned when he first built Disneyland,” according to the Disney Imaginations press release. 

The attraction was an expandable, portable experience using interactive media and real-world character greeting experiences to allow guests to step into their favorite worlds, inspired by the magical Disney and Pixar stories of “The Lion King,” “Frozen,” “Toy Story,” “Monsters, Inc.” and “Finding Nemo.”  

“All of us grew up with Disney movies with the Disney channel television shows … so it was so exciting to have the opportunity to participate in the competition,” said Chandler Williams, a senior studying art and design.  

Each of the four students took on designing the different realms. Wise was assigned to “The Lion King,” Park to “Toy Story,” Williams to “Frozen” and Lee to “Finding Nemo.” Together, they created a story using Disney’s intellectual properties from each film and “Monsters Inc.” to create an attraction that was “diverse enough to appeal to younger people, older people, teenagers and toddlers,” Wise said. 

“Ostium” is the traveling world that comes to your hometown because Mike and Sully from “Monsters Inc.” need the guests’ help. The monsters have been exploring other realms, and they have been having so much fun and now they can’t find their way back. 

The attraction, given the name “Ostium,” which is Latin for “door,” would be made of inflatable architecture to create their attraction. As a design, the inflatable structure was feasible even though the teams were told they had an unlimited budget.

“We have interactive floor tiles that pop-up with the monsters so while the kids are playing they can retrieve the monster and show them the way back to the door,” Williams said. 

The team cited their greatest strength as the ability to critique one another and play off of each other’s different skill sets.

“We’re all very logistically minded, particularly Emily and Kevin, who are in industrial design,” Williams said. 

 In contrast, their greatest weakness was that they entered the competition fairly late. 

“We overnighted our USB to make sure it got there on time,” Williams said. 

Twenty students from eight universities were finalists, decided by Walt Disney Engineers. Each finalist team got to spend five days in Glendale, California, at Disneyland where they went behind the scenes of the offices and design studios of Walt Disney Imagineers. 

“There were so many aspects of everyone’s projects that were completely out of the box,” Williams said. 

Kevin Lee, a senior studying industrial design and a member of the team, said his favorite attraction came from the second place winners from the University of Texas at Austin for “Hueroic,” an attraction that would explore the beauty of art and imagination. Williams also noted that “Hueroic” team did not use any of Disney’s intellectual properties. 

“Their illustrations were very incredible,” Lee said. 

Given the opportunity, Lee, Williams and Wise said they would all love to work for Disney. 

“It was an incredible experience,” Williams said.