Introduction & Background

Six years ago, I was a high school junior that was in the middle of rediscovering my passion for Minecraft, a game first available in 2009 that I had grown up playing. Naturally, being the massive theme park fan that I am, I began making small builds in the single player sandbox mode for fun. One of the buildings I created was Disneyland park’s Main Street Station, the first structure that guests entering the park see. I created it for fun, but little did I know that this small building-block train station would end up being the foundation for something huge. Just three months later, two close friends and I decided we wanted to start making Disneyland using Minecraft. We all agreed that it’d be a great hobby, and I realized I had a perfect starting point with my train station. I imported that into a multiplayer world, and soon enough we were at work on Main Street USA. Over the next two years, we used all of our spare time to create numerous attractions including Big Thunder Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Matterhorn, and Haunted Mansion. By 2020, we’d completed fifteen attractions across Disneyland Park, and soon after we opened the 15th we were all hit with lockdowns. With the surging anxiety of the world around us growing, we all found solace in this passion project of ours.

March 2020 would be a turning point for both the world and our own lives. That month, a guest joined our world looking for a way to experience Disneyland while the parks were closed. They were an annual passholder at the resort and were overjoyed to find so much of the theme park recreate virtually to visit. They asked for permission to make a video of it, and we happily obliged. That video would end up on Tik Tok and within twenty-four hours had surged past eight million views! Our Minecraft project exploded overnight, so much so that the creators of Minecraft at Microsoft reached out to us via email to ask if we were suffering from a DDOS network attack due to the amount of network traffic we were receiving! By the next month, we had hit a major milestone of over 100,000 unique guests having visited since the lockdowns began. In 2023, we crossed over half a million unique guests having entered the gates of our virtual theme park, with more taking virtual vacations there every day since.

The Omnibus drives past Sleeping Beauty Castle at the end of Main Street.

As my time at San Jose State University comes to an end, it’s given me a chance to reflect on all that I’ve accomplished on this virtual plane. I was the founder of the project and served as the “creative director” of sorts on 45 distinct attraction recreations. I was the head 3D modeler, builder, audio mixer, and trailer editor for every grand opening we held. I was the sole animator of attraction vehicles using Blender, an open sourced 3D software that allowed a vehicle’s movement data to be exported into Minecraft. I also animated many of the animatronic figures found in the parks. In total, I accomplished more than I could have imagined, met hundreds of incredible people that I still know to this day, and gained skills that have continued to support passion projects outside of the world of Minecraft.

Below, I’ve arranged an assortment of material documenting what we created and diving into the various elements that came together to create an individual attraction that could be accessed by thousands of people around the world.

Behind the Scenes – Building and Modeling

The base layer of everything you see in the virtual Disneyland project is made of of thousands of regular Minecraft blocks. From the landscapes to the buildings to the foliage, everything is intricately designed using blocks to shape familiar forms from the real resort. A great example of how we use blocks to shape landscapes is Cars Land, a land that itself is inspired by Radiator Springs from the Disney-Pixar film Cars (2006). The land features a giant mountain range backdrop taking a form reminiscent of several Cadillac car tail fins. While rockwork in itself takes a lot of math and measurements to recreate accurately, these tail fins are distinct as the focal point of the land. In order to recreate them, I used a protractor to measure the angles of every “line” involved in a 2D drawing of the fins. Using this information, I used tools in Minecraft to trace out the exact shape using blocks. I used a placeholder block that could easily be replaced later with a mix of blocks that would add the proper texture.

The form of the tail fin made out of “sponge block” prior to texturing.

The tail fin from before is now at the center of the image fully textured.

Thousands of blocks formed the completed rockwork, providing a backdrop to the town of Radiator Springs. Each block was placed by hand.

Building was always the first step of the process, providing a foundation for props, effects, and the full ride vehicle animation. Whether it be a sweeping natural landscape, an intricately crafted building, or a highly themed dark ride show set, building with these blocks is truly what made the attractions and lands what they were. Once an area or show set was completed, I could move on to the modeling phase. I created my 3D models using a voxel program called Cubik Studio. 3D models had a plethora of uses in Minecraft, but simply put they provided a prop, set piece, collectible, or attraction vehicle that would otherwise not be able to be made with blocks. A great example of this would be the car animatronics featured inside of Radiator Springs Racers. Each car was 3D modeled by myself and placed into the ride with added motion. Another example of 3D models would be integrated into an outdoor landscape, such as the miniature castles and houses on the Storybookland Canal Boats. I’ve inserted images of some storybook miniatures below, just a handful of the over 4,000 3D models that I created by hand for the project.

Casey Jr. passes by Agrabah, one of the many castles that were 3D modeled along the canals.

Arendelle sits below some icy slopes, the towering Matterhorn in the distance.

The 3D modeling part of the process is the most time consuming. Each model takes between 1 hour and 8 hours to create, painstakingly refining the proportions to fit the landscape and surroundings properly. The largest 3D models to create were typically the attraction vehicles due to the amount of detail that went into them inside and out. Unlike a prop that is only viewed from the outside, the inside of attraction vehicles were expected to always be in view by guests. Therefore, they tended to have detailed interiors, down to the safety plaque on each one.

This Disneyland Railroad train took over 20 hours of 3D modeling. The consist of cars was so large that each coach was split into 3 sections.

The Radiator Springs Racers vehicles were unique in that they had transparent windshields that had to be accounted for.

Attraction Animation Sequence

Every single moving attraction on earth has one thing in common- a show sequence. Each of these has a set of directions that tell not only the ride vehicle but the things around them to move and interact in certain ways. The first half of virtual ride sequencing is creating the actual movement animation. To create the ride animation for our attractions, I used Blender. Each attraction I made was created from scratch due to the complexities involved with each one. Some just required basic motion such as Pinocchio’s Daring Journey, a dark ride navigating narrow show sets in Fantasyland. Others, such as the Mad Tea Party, required more complex movements as there were 3 different spinning platforms on top of one giant rotating platform.

Easily the most complicated of these that I ever had the chance to create was Indiana Jones: Temple of the Forbidden Eye. The real attraction is made up of a motion simulator on the top half with a moving 4-wheeled chassis underneath as the base. The chassis is able to stop and start frequently, changing speed erratically. The motion simulator on top provides a layer of bumpiness, able to simulate falling down large stairs and banking around corners. The way my Blender recreation works is identical- a motion simulator on top of a base. With this setup, I was able to create a side by side comparison with real attraction footage and time the speed of the ride through the various twists and turns. The total time to do so was over 12 hours for the entire attraction from beginning to end! Below is a glimpse at how the attraction appeared in Blender prior to being imported onto the Minecraft world as well as the final product with lighting and effects in play. I’m really proud of how this one turned out! I have also attached a video below that describes the process with more detail and visual aids.

After the animation is done, a custom exporter was used, created specifically for the project by one of our talented developers named Mats. Once placed into Minecraft we’re able to turn to JavaScript, a coding language that isn’t typically used in conjunction with Minecraft. Thanks to some custom infrastructure by a good friend, Connor, this has never been a restraint on our project. Using JavaScript, we can create the ride cycle that dictates to the Minecraft server when to create a jeep, where to start the attraction, and how frequently the jeeps can cycle through. From this point on, I mix the audio for the attraction using a combination of sources including ride throughs and raw audio from online sources. After audio has been successfully synchronized, we begin adding effects and linking pre-made ones to the ride sequence. Indiana Jones contains a multitude of effects ranging from animatronics to giant flames to a giant boulder that chases you! These were all created using coded supplements from our JavaScript infrastructure, and I rode through the attraction countless times to make sure it all synced properly with the audio track. Finally, this brings us to the final step- ride testing and opening!

Attraction Openings, Merchandise, & Events

After an attraction is nearly completed, many think this is the end of the pipeline. For us, though, there was still one major step- the opening! We enjoyed making events out of each attraction opening, with hundreds of guests joining to experience them. We start the events with an announcement video of some kind. I’m a big fan of movies, so I enjoyed creating cinematic trailers for every attraction we were opening. A great example of the typical trailer can be found below, from when we opened Mickey’s Toontown.

At the opening event we would bring out costumed characters themed to the attraction. For Toontown, we paraded around Mickey and his friends. For Indiana Jones, we brought out the titular character as well as his accomplices such as Sallah. The guests get a kick out of these experiences. We were eventually able to add autograph books as a collectible item, which characters were able to add their signatures to alongside a randomly chosen quote from the franchise they came from. Speaking of merchandise, the project contained plenty of it. From Mickey ear hats to lightsabers, guests are able to collect and interact with countless items, both inspired by the real theme park and originally created by our team! Guests absolutely loved the ability to customize their player avatars, and this also gave guests a reason to return to play more frequently. Every few weeks, new items would be available to collect. Below are some pictures of items that I created.

Myself and some guests sport the legendary Figment popcorn buckets as well as a Goofy hat. Line not required.

Frozen lemonade is a great treat on a hot day.

My player avatar stands next to Scratch the Ghost, a character from the hit Disney Channel series The Ghost and Molly McGee (2020).

Conclusion & Additional Media

In closing, the Virtual Disneyland Minecraft project is easily my favorite project I’ve ever worked on. Thousands upon thousands of hours were put into the project, by myself and plenty of others. After 45 attractions, I finally retired from the project in August of 2023 in order to continue sharpening my skills in areas outside of the digital Minecraft world, but I’ll always love and appreciate the software. It allowed us to create a sprawling landscape containing millions upon millions of blocks. We founded an incredible community of kind-hearted guests that enjoy what we make, and that’s more than I could ever ask for. I’d be remised if I didn’t thank the team of incredible volunteers that helped make this possible. Though there were 3 of us that started this project, many more came and went throughout the years. In particular, I’d like to thank my friends Sean, Nick, and Enzo who helped make the core of the project what it was. They all declined to be directly a part of this submission as a team but their contributions cannot be understated. There were numerous others who helped make this a reality, and I thank all of those who contributed even a small bit from the bottom of my heart. We made something incredible!

This write-up doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what we created. There were 45 different attractions after all, and I only covered a select few! This doesn’t even dig into the nighttime spectaculars such as Firework shows, the atmospheric entertainment such as the Dapper Dans, and the events we held on a seasonal basis that took advantage of the esplanade between the parks as a venue for fully original build-outs. Below this section will reside two walkthrough videos of the entire resort, and below them will be a large photo gallery that gives further glimpses at attractions and entertainment from across the resort. At the very bottom of the page, I’ve hand-picked some of my favorite attractions that we recreated and linked 4K videos that I produced of them. I hope you give them a watch and enjoy what we were able to make!

Wondrous Journeys, a nighttime spectacular.

If you would like to join the Virtual Disneyland project on your own, it is available for anyone who has Minecraft: Java Edition! Simply open Minecraft, enter the multiplayer tab, and add a server to your list with the IP: mc.imaginefun.net to join and explore the resort on your own.

Virtual Disneyland Walkthrough Videos

Below, I’ve created a full walkthrough of both Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Park recreated in our virtual space. If you go to the YouTube page for these videos, you can see the different chapters for each land I walk through if you have an area of interest that you’d like to skip straight to.

Virtual Disneyland Photo Gallery

Virtual Disneyland Attraction Recreations

When most people think of a virtual Disneyland project, their mind jumps straight to one area- the attractions. “What rides have you made? Can I go on Pirates of the Caribbean? Do I have to buy Genie+ to skip any lines?” Naturally, we’ve recreated dozens of attractions in our virtual theme park! The Disneyland Resort contains a wide variety of ride types ranging from dark rides to flat rides, coasters to log flumes, and even a motion simulator or two! All in all, I helped bring 45 attractions to life during my time on the project, the vast majority of attractions that existed across the two parks. Below, I’ve picked out a handful of videos featuring my absolute favorite attractions that I helped bring to life in virtual form. If you want a glimpse into high-tech special effects and advanced motion techniques, look no further than Indiana Jones: Temple of the Forbidden Eye! For an animatronic-filled wonderland with beautiful show sets, I suggest Pirates of the Caribbean. To see one of the most thrilling coasters in the entire park, look at the Incredicoaster! I’ve also linked a full list of attraction videos that can direct you to every single ride that I had a hand in creating.