<p>Hi I was just wondering if anyone knows what it's like to be involved in the design of roller coasters. I had a few questions like what type of engineering degree would be preferred? What is the average salary? Would it be a temporary job or would you always have different rides that need to be designed? Do you have to travel a lot? Thanks to anyone that can give any info. Right now I'm working towards an aerospace engineering degree and was curious about roller coaster design as a career. I'm not likely to change my major or anything... just curious.</p>
<p>I’m having a hard time thinking of a type of engineering that wouldn’t be required for a roller coaster. Even aerospace would probably be important for things like aerodynamics of the car and stuff. Mechanical has some pretty obvious connections, civil probably, computer/electrical absolutely. Thing is, I’m not sure how many coasters are really being built, and it sounds like it’d be an especially hard field to break into. I’m not really sure though. Have you looked up rollercoaster manufacturers and gotten on their websites to see if/who they’re hiring?</p>
<p>It’s a very difficult field to break into. Most of the roller coaster work is being done by S&S Power out of Utah, and they sub designs out to various smaller firms in the nation. The engineers that typically work on these sorts of things are structural engineers for the frames, and they work in conjunction with electrical engineers (control systems) and mechanical engineers (rail and car systems).</p>
<p>Have you considered doing the Imagineer Disney World internship? Provided you’re in any engineering major, they’ll usually accept you, and then you’ll be able to see what’s involved in attraction design–and, should you do well, hopefully sneak a foot in the door to getting hired later on.</p>
<p>This is something I’m (hoping) to do next summer, but considering I did their last “internship” and quit, even though that was over four years ago – I don’t expect to get very far unless I use my middle name in the application.</p>
<p>Not that you shouldn’t try, but it’s more difficult to become a Disney Imagineer than it is to become an astronaut. You have to be a real insider-- know an Imagineer and have worked extensively with them-- in order to have a chance. It’s just a really tough gig to land, and the internship almost certainly won’t help you. (Particularly if you’re at Disney World for the summer… The real Imagineering offices are in Glendale, CA.)</p>
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Maybe structural. I know that one of my structural professors did a consulting gig on one of the Calif Adventure (Anaheim Disney) rides.
How did she get the gig, I have no idea…</p>
<p>All of the Imagineers I know (granted I only know four) started out in DCP and continued doing it for as long as they could tolerate it: so doing that might help - then work your way up to intern and network like your life depends on it.</p>
<p>That makes the assumption you’re interested, of course.</p>
<p>They’re all in design of the “look” of the Imagineering products, though, not the engineering of it, right? I think you have to take a different route to be an ‘engineering’ Imagineer…</p>
<p>Assuming you’re referring to me, I don’t know where you got the type of work they’re in based on what I wrote. They’re engineers who work for Disney; no, they do not “design the look of Imagineering products.”</p>
<p>DCP stands for “Disney Consumer Products” and they make t-shirts and whatnot… Did you mean “Department of City Planning”…? “Disaster Control Protocols”? “Department of Child Protection”? Something different…?</p>
<p>Oh, acronyms.</p>
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<p>I know a half-dozen students from the same class that became Imagineers immediately after graduation. As far I know, none of them had inside information - they just had high GPAs, good internships experience (not all at Disney), went to a top school, and interviewed well.</p>
<p>edit: then again, there were 2 astronauts from around that time…</p>
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<p>Nuclear Engineering… at least for now.</p>
<p>Fair enough. I suppose biomedical wouldn’t be too useful either. Still, with something as complex as a roller coaster there are going to be a lot of engineers at a lot of companies doing a lot of different jobs.</p>
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<p>What difference does it make? Someone who claims to know so much about Disney’s method of hiring should certainly know what DCP stands for. Google clearly led you astray.
Now you’re grabbing at straws. The matter at hand is that it’s not as difficult to get hired by Disney as an Imagineer as you’re claiming it is.</p>
<p>I think DCP is Disney College Program.</p>
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<p>Not being a Disney employee, I don’t know Disney’s method of hiring, and didn’t claim to. I only know what I’ve been told, and in every “how to become an Imagineer” book, website, and flier I’ve run across, it’s said that it’s ridiculously difficult to become an Imagineer, and that typically the best way to get your foot in the door is to work with someone in Imagineering. If I remember correctly (and I might not), didn’t Randy Pausch even mention how tough it was to weasel one’s way into Imagineering in his Last Lecture?</p>
<p>I know people who went through the internship program at Disney, and they said that it didn’t really gain them the connections that they were hoping to gain. Maybe it worked for some people. If I remember correctly, and this was about five years ago that I looked into joining the program, I was told that you were made a cast member at about lowered pay and that it was kind of a happiest-sweatshop-on-earth kind of thing, so I forgot about it. I also forgot about its acronym. My apologies for offending your sensibilities.</p>
<p>I know more about the roller coaster side of things because I’ve interviewed with one of S&S’s aforementioned subcontractors. All I know about Imagineering is what I’ve been told by some friends who work for Disney, and what I found out while researching Imagineering as a career option.</p>
<p>I once dreamed of becoming a roller coaster engineer, but that kind of faded away. </p>
<p>“Not that you shouldn’t try, but it’s more difficult to become a Disney Imagineer than it is to become an astronaut.”</p>
<p>Oh cmon, are you serious?</p>
<p>All I said is that they people I know were once DCPs. I didn’t say that DCP equals becoming an Imagineer, which seems to be what you took from it.</p>
<p>Which is the equivalent of saying working at a McDonald’s drive-thru window will lead to working at McDonald’s corporate. </p>
<p>Secondly, DCP =/= internship. Hence why I wrote it in quotation marks initially. What I specifically said is they worked at DCP, later on some of them worked as Imagineer interns and, even more later, were hired as engineers.</p>
<p>DCP >> Imagineer internship >> imagineer, with some outside work experience in between.</p>
<p>My initial point being, excluding networking, having worked with Disney for a number of years might set an internship applicant apart. Significantly, maybe not. </p>
<p>I don’t know how much more clear I can make this.</p>
<p>If you admit to knowing nothing about their hiring process, then why make the claim that’s it’s harder to get a job at Disney than being an astronaut and needing to know an Imagineer to get hired? Those are pretty big claims for someone whose main source of information is…pamphlets.</p>
<p>I’m willing to wager there are probably more Imagineers milling around than astronauts. </p>
<p>You’re the one who started touting off facts as if you knew they were certain - which evidently is not the case.</p>
<p>Why not electromechanial engineering? The only school that offers a BS program (5 years) in this is Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, MA. In matter of fact one of the tour guides I had, actually had a internship at a roler coaster design firm and he majored in this. I am still decideding whether or not I should go to WIT (I’ll be a electromechanial engineering major too) or Union college (NY), but WIT is a great school!!!</p>
<p>what I need to know about roller coater design for my science project</p>
<p>^ Ah, at last a pertinent and well-articulated question to make this thread worthwhile.</p>