Having worked as a plasterer in my youth, I’ve always been confident with mud work. I studied every type and technique of faux rock work I could. I took online courses, consulted with those in the trade and dedicated visits to Disneyland to study the work of the masters.

I purchased this boat in 2011 and lived aboard for three years before hauling her out for a complete restoration. I reglassed all three hulls after replacing several panels, ribs and stringers. I finished by tenting the entire vessel and spraying the entire boat with two part epoxy paint. The experience I gained over the eight years of work that went into her is in line with the skillset you are seeking for this position.

This ride launched riders from a mobile barge into the river. Its operational concept was based on the launching mechanisms of aircraft carriers. A pneumatic valve was engaged to release the pressure from a 100 gallon tank, forcing a plug that was connected to the launch platform to eject the rider at forces exceeding 3Gs.

I based this experience on the Peter Pan ride. I suspended the basket of my hot air balloon to a wench on a gantry crane as the conveyance. The theme of the event was “The end of the world” so I enlisted the help of a dozen children to sing an an apocalyptic version of “It’s a Small World” as the hot air balloon escaped a burning diorama city.

My most recent experience. This was the final iteration of my Peter Pan inspired ride. For this, I was granted use of the convention center at Bally’s Hotel Casino in Lake Tahoe. This was for a three day event. Having learned a hard lesson about rider throughput from this ride’s previous version, this one had three double rider chairs and a theoretical throughput of 62 riders per hour although constant maintenance of the rides automated systems reduced this to about half of that.

While working on “Chuck”, the human catapult, the scope of the project kept increasing due to its complexity and size. The entire concept worked well in my head but without the ability test it until completion, the crew had doubts. We were running out of time and the crew was getting less productive. The dragster was our “Hail Mary” morale booster. We diverted our focus from building the catapult to building a dragster. We used the pneumatic components for the catapult to propel the dragster and premiered it at Burningman in 2021. Everyone loved it and the crew had a chance to experience the pneumatic propulsion systems created for “Chuck”. Afterwards, we made up for the lost time and the extra project in the middle of our schedule to get “Chuck” finished in time.

This was the very first “Zendarium”. Built inside a standard room at Bally’s Hotel Casino in Lake Tahoe. It is a concept that has meant a great deal to me for many years and I put everything I could imagine into it. Zendariums are the most immersive experiences I have ever created. They utilize eight channel soundscapes, dynamic day and night lighting cycles, active rain, lightning, haptic thunder effects, wind effects, triggered scent effects, humidity and temperature effects, fog and mist, automated fireflies… all within a massive terrarium setting of live tropical plants surrounding participants. I have since built these at the Exploratorium in San Fransisco, MAPS in Denver, VERGE in San Jose and a few smaller spaces.