This book is a follow up to Sklar's original book Dream It! Do It! My Half-Century Creating Disney's Magic Kingdoms. After his sudden passing earlier this year I wanted to revisit both his books and learn about the man and his time with the Disney Company. Dream It! Do It! is a fantastic book that is a must read for any fan of the Disney parks. The stories Sklar tells give a really interesting behind the scenes view of the making of the magic. Unfortunately, I do think that One Little Spark reac

This book is a follow up to Sklar's original book Dream It! Do It! My Half-Century Creating Disney's Magic Kingdoms. After his sudden passing earlier this year I wanted to revisit both his books and learn about the man and his time with the Disney Company. Dream It! Do It! is a fantastic book that is a must read for any fan of the Disney parks. The stories Sklar tells give a really interesting behind the scenes view of the making of the magic. Unfortunately, I do think that One Little Spark reaches those lofty heights.



This book is broken down into two main parts: the first third focusing on Mickey's Ten Commandments, while the rest focuses on input from current and past Imagineers and their experience in making Disney parks and attractions. The first part is largely an extension from a small chapter in his first book. Sklar himself invented Mickey's Ten Commandments from his many years of experience working for Walt Disney Imagineering. they are essentially the ten principals that he believes should be followed to create truly magical lands, attractions and shows for guests to visit at Disney parks. The best part of this section is that Sklar lists an example of a failure and a success for each Commandment. For example, under the Commandment of "Know your Audience" Sklar calls Cars Land at Disney California Adventure a success while the Meet the World attraction from Tokyo Disneyland a failure. He explains his logic behind each of his choices and most are fairly straight forward. This section is the highlight of the book for me and I would have liked to see it expanded to include more examples and highlight why certain things in the parks either succeed or fail.



The second part of the book should be better but unfortunately comes up a little flat. It was written with the audience of those that want to pursue Imagineering or theme park design as a career. What results is a lot of text that is encouraging people to find their passion and work towards it. There is plenty of good advice in this section from clearly very talented people, but I found it to be very repetitive and not all that enlightening. It is almost too much information for any person to really take in and have a good sense of what to do with their future careers. I think this section could have been better balanced with a few more stories and personal anecdotes from the Imagineers. As there is no right way to enter Imagineering this book struggles because it can never give a definite path to take. While to some that can be inspirational it made for a frustrating read at times.



Overall, the book is decent companion to Sklar's original work. As he focuses more on the concept of Imagineering rather than telling stories Sklar doesn't quite reach the levels he previously did. Most Disney parks fans will likely enjoy it but your mileage may vary depending on your interest in Imagineering.