THEME PARK PROJECT MANAGEMENT

This is a wonderful, fun, yet focused book on project management for the theme park industry. Usle focused on the human side of PM, which is arguably the most important. No amount of Gantt charts, budgets, or shared documents can account for the importance of the "how" of interpersonal communications as a PM. I am transitioning to the themed entertainment industry after 20 years of being a show director and PM in opera. This book was wonderful in helping me to recalibrate to a new industry. The takeaways are applicable to just about any industry.

————————————-REVIEW UPDATE: I am adding an additional comment to address a recent ‘negative’ / one-star review of this book by another customer, which IMO was not a fair review. Any potential customer who purchases this needs to be aware that this is NOT another Disney Imagineering memoir. I’ve read (and thoroughly enjoyed) many of those memoirs myself, including “In Service to the Mouse, by Jack Lindquist”, “Dream It! Do It!, by Marty Sklar”, “Designing Disney, by John Hench”, and even Bob Iger’s recent memoir in 2019. While those are entertaining works which do include anecdotes that relate to leadership and project management, they are not an ‘apples to apples comparison to Val Usle’s book. Rather, Val’s book is a focused compilation of leadership & project management lessons. IMO, this is an excellent (and, arguably, required) read for anyone in the professional fields of architecture/engineering consultancy, professional project management, and especially students and young professionals. Simply put, this is a book on a much different mission than sharing Disney anecdotes for fans. As a consumer, you should be aware of that, but interested nonetheless. Well worth your time and money.————————————-If you work in project management, if you aspire to work in project management, or if you’re committed to bettering yourself as a project manager, you MUST read this.On a personal note, I want to specifically recommend this to any architecture or engineering student. If I had this resource available when I entered my first internship or my first job post-graduation, I would’ve been much better equipped and more aware of how things get done, and how it happens.This book was derived from Val’s 40+ years as an architect & project manager for Walt Disney Imagineering, but the principles apply to our profession as a whole. Some of the terms differ slightly (as they usually do from one company to another), but the key roles and role players are common to most project processes.The format is 60+ concise, 1-2 page best practices & scenarios for project managers and teams. Each is clear, concise, relatable, practical, relevant.I’ve been in so many meetings and project conversations over the years, and Val was able to capture the nuances of nearly every key meeting and circumstance I could think of. As I’ve been reading it, I can literally think of the names, faces, and conversations where I learned the principles in the book.I’ve learned that your career development is usually with a 70/20/10 split: 70% learn by doing, 20% learn by mentoring, 10% learn by training. In my opinion, Val’s book is the most ‘knowledge for your dollar’ that you’ll find for that 20% and 10%.I committed to the discipline of 1 book per month early in my career. Back then, I focused on leadership and teamwork, the oft-overlooked but most fundamental part of every project. Like you, I’ve had both good and bad teams, and both wise and ineffective leaders. I wanted to study good teamwork principles so I didn’t have to learn everything the hard way.True, there are many good Leadership & Teamwork books, resources, and even podcasts out there. But to my knowledge, this is one of the few specifically tailored to project management. And it doesn’t have a peer.With that in mind, I’ll sum up this review like this: in all of those years of reading, this is firmly in my All-Time Top-3.

The lessons and advice in this book are applicable to many situations in the project management field and will be helpful to reference all throughout one's career. I'll be keeping it by my desk for a long time.

The entire book is a masterpiece and has already relieved me of countless burdens of concern, and will serve as a wise safari guide for the mountain-sized endeavors ahead. Val Usle has distilled 40+ years of the very best of practices that only come from experience. He clearly recognizes the balance points needed to bring (very) smart people together to achieve what others might believe is impossible--while minimizing the unnecessary pitfalls that come with the territory.

While I do think there are nice points and thoughts in this book - for the price, I expected something more fleshed out. Almost half the pages are blank (most "chapters" are a single page with the backside being empty) and it really reads like someone started the outline to a book...and decided to sell that instead of a book.

In being straightforward, it doesn’t bog down instruction on long tangents that over-exemplify and hide the core meaning. But, as it’s preparatory and an early warning system before you’re in the emergency situation, it suffers from “You really have to be there first to fully understand most of what’s being said”. For being a book on excelling in an industry based around visual language, there is very little of the visual language solidifying points that are sometimes difficult to grasp from a few given key points alone. The book would not suffer from some example images every few pages if a rerelease were ever considered. While thoroughly understanding limits of budget, it would come down to aiding the educative values versus leaving the reader feeling underprepared for the purpose they purchased the book in the first place.That is not to say the information in the book is without context or that it’s useless. The truth is far from that shallow perception. But consider how valuable the book is to you if most of the insight given is a text-form of what you already know, all summed up in key points. Without contextual guides, it becomes a book of reminders and not as much a handbook to avoiding pratfalls as it aims to be. You can’t be reading this book in real-time as you’re leading — only before and after, and too often it feels like it’s helping you in the after than the before it happens.

This book is an incredible resource for turning big, crazy ideas into reality, written by someone who has done it time and again. It is written in the style of a best practices guide being passed from a mentor to his beloved protege. Its bullet point format shows a respect for the valuable time of the reader, and makes it easy for the reader to return later for timely guidance. This isn't a collection of Disney anecdotes. Readers looking for that will be disappointed. The subject matter is the creation of theme park attractions, but its contents will be valuable to anyone tasked with taking a brilliant visionary's grand plans and giving birth to them in the real world.

This book is an excellent introduction to project management and leadership skills in the themed entertainment industry. It is well laid out and gives many useful tips. Overall a great read!