It’s not often one gets to stand amidst towering shelves full of artifacts representing over 60 years of theme park craft, but that’s exactly the opportunity that was presented to members of the Themed Entertainment Association on October 19th when the world’s largest manufacturer of animatronic figures, Garner Holt Productions, opened the doors of its Redlands, CA production facility for a Halloween-themed behind-the-scenes event.

From ghost dogs to 45-foot tall dragons, Garner Holt Productions (GHP) has lent its unique talents to bringing countless characters to life around the world. If eyes are the windows to the soul, the thousands if not tens of thousands of eyeballs that GHP has placed in its figures over its 40+ year history means it has also been at least partially responsible for imbuing soul to so many of our most beloved theme park attractions.

Corey Albert of WET and Ian Klein of Vizir Productions with GHP lead figure finished Ben Shwenck in his demon costume. Photo: Themed Entertainment Association

On this rare occasion, GHP welcomed over 170 TEA members into dimly lit halls filled with figures from projects past offering a plethora of fantastic photo opportunities. Live characters played by GHP staff also roamed the floors. The head of the CG department was a screaming banshee. Hannibal Lecter was from Plastics. Ben Schwenk from figure finishing dressed in a seamless, terrifying demon costume he made and posed as an animatronic before lunging at unassuming passersby—an act that invoked much cursing.

After dining on typical Halloween fare of “witches’ fingers” and “raw flesh” on toast, attendees took their seats to hear from the man himself, Garner Holt. While he joked that he was dressed up “as a cranky old guy who chases kids off the lawn” there is a strong sense that Holt is still very much a kid at heart. Indeed, as he’s shared previously, GHP is his playground.

Holt’s opening slide, “Wrecking the Halls: Inside Stories of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion Holiday,” promised a peek behind the curtains of a now-classic holiday overlay, but gave the audience so much more with stories from a lifetime of magic-making. Holt’s fascination with theme parks began with his mother’s gift of the Haunted Mansion souvenir record, which he played again and again even before he ever had the opportunity to actually visit the attraction. A trip down those haunted halls was all it took to convince him that one day he’d create fantastic experiences of his own.

Newspaper clipping introducing readers to Garner Holt’s backyard haunted house from the Monday, October 28, 1974 edition of The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, CA.

That day was not far off. In October of 1974, Holt built a haunted house—little more than a shack in the backyard—that on Halloween night attracted 400 people.

The next year, when he was just 15, Holt was hired to build a haunted attraction for Central City Mall in San Bernardino. The experience was housed in an old trailer. Holt noted that a skeleton he created that spun around and lunged at guests “had kids piling on the floor” in fear.

The success of “Garner Holt’s Haunted House of Mystery” paved the way toward several other opportunities to create haunts at other malls across Southern California. In between the paid gigs, Holt made and sold fake severed hands to fund his passion projects. They were an immense success. The public’s appetite for gory Halloween accessories had yet to be sated. “No one had chopped hands back then,” Holt said.

It wasn’t long before his work attracted the attention of WED Enterprises, now Walt Disney Imagineering. Imagineers Wathel Rogers and Wayne Jackson paid the Holt family residence a visit to see the Uncle Sam animatronic Holt had crafted for the 1976 Bicentennial. It was an impressive technological achievement that was made in part from sawed off metal from his father’s fence posts.

Holt’s career and now incorporated company grew exponentially over the next couple of decades with projects for the likes of Knott’s Berry Farm and MGM Resorts. In 1998, GHP started building the titular animatronic figures for Chuck E. Cheese. They’ve since built 500. Walt Disney said, “it was all started with a mouse.” With Holt, a mouse may not have started it all, but it surely helped keep the doors open.

Haunted Mansion Holiday at Disneyland Resort. Photo: Ben Lei on Unsplash — *Haunted Mansion Holiday* at Disneyland Resort. Photo: Ben Lei on Unsplash

It was also a mouse—Mickey this time—that opened the doors to GHP’s future even wider. In 2001 for the first time ever, Disney entrusted an entity outside of Imagineering to put an animatronic in one of their attractions. Prior to the debut of Haunted Mansion Holiday, Disney had created only two holiday overlays: one for It’s a Small World and another for Country Bear Jamboree. For Haunted Mansion Holiday, Holt and his team pulled out all the stops. He shared he would have gladly done the job at a loss saying “I wanted to do a really good job because I figured that was my future.”

Haunted Mansion Holiday was more than a marker of future success for GHP; it set the stage for a legacy now fully intertwined with that of Disney. Since the first install of Haunted Mansion Holiday, which has versions in Anaheim, Orlando, and Tokyo, GHP has created over 450 figures for Disney from under the sea to infinity and beyond.

Garner Holt Productions moved from San Bernardino, CA to a new production facility in Redlands, CA in 2018.

Thanks to their expertise and reliability of their products, GHP has touched every era of Disney history including updating and replacing figures on Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room, the world-famous Jungle Cruise, and It’s a Small World. More recent attractions populated by GHP creations include no less than four Buzz Lightyear dark ride shooters, Monsters, Inc.: Mike and Sulley to the Rescue!, The Little Mermaid ~ Ariel's Undersea Adventure, and Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage for which GHP developed more than 80 figures.

Despite the high volume of work GHP does for the corporation, Disney is just one of over a hundred clients of varying sizes although a few of the 120 animatronic figures GHP currently has in production are for other significant players in the global theme park space. During the tours conducted during the Halloween event, these figures of all shapes and sizes were quite literally shrouded in mystery, covered in black sheets. Holt teased, “You’ll see them soon…somewhere.”

Production time for GHP’s animatronic figures depends on the complexity, size, and level of customization, though Holt offered these rough benchmarks. According to director of creative design, Bill Butler, all figures are designed for a 20-year serv… — Production time for GHP’s animatronic figures depends on the complexity, size, and level of customization, though Holt offered these rough benchmarks. According to director of creative design, Bill Butler, all figures are designed for a 20-year service life.

Still, there was more than plenty to see on the tour of the 120,000-square-foot building which GHP relocated to in 2018, a move that nearly tripled the company’s previous space in neighboring San Bernardino. In addition to the space required for manufacturing, the building also has room to store much of the company’s archives and a sizable collection of many non-animatronic treasures from across theme park history including many theme park ride vehicles such as “Bertha Mae,” one of the Mike Fink Keel Boats that once looped around Disneyland’s Tom Sawyer Island.

TEA members gathered in one of the flex spaces at Garner Holt Productions during the Halloween-themed behind-the-scenes event. Photo: Themed Entertainment Association

Flex spaces can accommodate large-scale events like the one organized with TEA and programs like “Garner Holt Education through Imagination” which offers field trips and activity-based initiatives to encourage kids toward S.T.E.A.M disciplines. During these workshops, as many as 150 kids visit for as long as five hours in one day during general operations.

At the heart of the new production facility, hidden behind royal blue curtain walls is also a full-fledged animatronic show, Reflections of the Face of Lincoln, which features one of GHP’s most advanced creations to date: a hyperrealistic bust of President Abraham Lincoln which uses its “expressive head technology” and proprietary motor control system.

Garner Holt makes a cameo appearance in Westworld. Photo: HBO — Garner Holt makes a cameo appearance in *Westworld*. Photo: HBO

Walking the sprawling floors of Garner Holt Productions surrounded by decaying relics from attractions past and intricate, metallic visions of the future is an awe-inspiring and, at times, unsettling glimpse into the possibilities of lifelike invention. Fittingly, Garner Holt and GHP director of creative design Bill Butler appeared as background technicians in Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s exploration of this very subject on the HBO series, Westworld.

Early in the show’s first season, the co-creator of the Westworld park, Dr. Robert Ford played by Anthony Hopkins, tells a young host, “Everything in this world is magic, except to the magician.” In his own playground, Garner Holt has combined ingenuity and imagination to create illusions that help attraction-goers suspend disbelief and embrace the reality of the world before them.

“Everything we build is usually a unique piece of machinery,” Holt says, “Even if you think you’ve done something similar, it’s never the same.” It is this drive to innovate that keeps GHP at the top of the industry and us, the wide-eyed guests, awash in the magic.