It seemed like an ordinary room. Well, not completely ordinary. I sat in a warehouse-like building in California’s San Fernando Valley, dining with a handful of other journalists in a mock-up of Animator’s Palate, one of the dining rooms being created for Disney Cruise Line’s Disney Dream, scheduled to debut in January 2011.

But the room, decorated to resemble an old-fashioned animator’s studio, appeared to be simply the working model of a real-world dining space. Then the lights dimmed, images of bubbles materialized on the walls around us, and before we knew it, we were staring at giant LCD screens depicting coral formations in shades of pink, green, and yellow. It was as though we’d suddenly dived beneath the ocean’s surface.

“Hey, human dudes,” said a voice with the patois of a veteran surfer. And there on the screen in front of us was Crush, the sea turtle from the 2003 Disney/Pixar movie Finding Nemo. “Hey, dude, can you say ‘totally sweet?’” Crush said to one of the journalists.

“Totally sweet,” the writer answered.

“You totally rock,” said Crush, spinning in the make-believe water and instructing us all to respond with “Dude,” every time he said that. And this group of about a dozen pretty sophisticated, seen-it-all journalists voiced a resounding “Dude!”

Animator’s Palate was the final stop on a roving press conference Friday at Walt Disney Imagineering offices in Glendale and Tujunga, California. During the half-day tour, senior show producer-director Bob Zalk and his team presented a Dream preview. The tour began in Glendale, where Zalk led us to a large interior space filled with models of things planned for the ship. “We use these models to test the technologies,” he explained. “We bring real families in here and have the kids—and adults—try things out. Depending on their reactions, we make adjustments.”

Zalk first showed us the mock-up of a Virtual Porthole, explaining that the Dream’s inside cabins will have circular screens like this that show images from high definition cameras situated around the ship. (If your cabin is on the port side, the screen will show the real-time view from the ship’s port side.) As he spoke, film of the ocean appeared on the mock-up screen. Pretty impressive. But that wasn’t all.

Suddenly, the house with hundreds of balloons from the movie Up floated by on the screen. Then Peach, the starfish from Finding Nemo appeared, as though flung by a wave against the outside of the window. I left the display thinking that a lot of families might book the ship’s inside cabins just for that changing porthole show.

Next, associate interactive show producer Estefania Pickens showed us how the ship’s Enchanted Art program will work. She stood in front of a painting depicting Minnie Mouse as the Mona Lisa. “As most ships do, the Disney Dream will have works of art throughout the ship,” said Pickens. “The difference is, some of our works of art will come to life.” With that, Minnie blinked her eyes, and a flock of birds flew by in the painting’s background. The Dream will have 22 such pieces of Enchanted Art. Pretty impressive. But that wasn’t all.

Pickens demonstrated the Detective Adventure Game—a free interactive game incorporating several of the ship’s Enchanted Art works. Kids and adults can use a ship’s map and a special card to solve a mystery. To illustrate, when Pickens held a card in front of a large photograph, the photo changed into the image of a door, and Pickens used the card to virtually turn the key in the lock. The door opened to reveal a clue. Once you find all the clues, you learn who the villain is and solve the mystery.

After the detective game demonstration, associate concept designer Daniel Klainbaum turned our attention to the approximately 15-square-foot raised space, resembling a video dance floor, in the center of the room. “This is our interactive Play-floor,” he said, explaining that on the ship, the Oceaneer Club (for kids 3-7) and the Oceaneer Lab (for older kids) will each have a floor like this. “Put down your notebooks, and participate.”

As Klainbaum instructed, we each stood on one of the sensor spaces around the floor’s perimeter—there are four on each side. He flipped a switch, the floor became a game screen, and we all tried to send a kind of virtual puck to the other side of the floor. Klainbaum flipped another switch, and suddenly we were all jumping over laser beams that circled the space. By the end of the demonstration, we were all laughing. “Where’s the one for adults?” I asked. Currently, the Play-floors are planned only for the children’s areas.

After catching our breaths, we all piled in to the van that took us to the Tujunga facility. Which is where we met Crush. Oh, and some humans, like director of show writing Steven Spiegel. “We asked ourselves, ‘If you’re on a cruise ship, where do you want to go?’” he told us. “Why not under the sea?” So they created the virtual underwater experience for Animator’s Palate, one of three main restaurants passengers will dine in on the ship. Spiegel explained that Crush will swim around to different screens throughout the dining room and have conversations with passengers in each area. When Crush is not onscreen in one area, other deep-sea denizens will appear, such as Little Blue from Finding Nemo, and a school of moonfish who will play a kind of underwater charades with the passengers—forming shapes like a seahorse or a ship.

But Crush will clearly be the star, if he chats with passengers the way he did with us. “I may be 150 years old,” he said, paddling around in his virtual undersea environment. “But I still have washboard abs.”

“Crush, you totally rock,” I said.
“Dude!” he cried, before spinning in a final circle and swimming away.