Storyland Studios Taps Walt Disney Animation Studios Leader as First-Ever VP of Story

Storyland Studios brings veteran storyteller Adam Moore into the experience design industry to expand the role of story across its global creative practice

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — For more than 25 years, Storyland Studios has built its approach to experience design around a simple idea: story comes first. Now, for the first time in the company’s history, the global experience design firm is putting an executive title behind that philosophy.

Storyland Studios has named Adam Moore as its first Vice President of Story, bringing a veteran storyteller and creative leader from Walt Disney Animation Studios into the themed entertainment and experience design industry.

The move is a deliberate one. Rather than recruiting exclusively from within the traditional themed entertainment world, Storyland sought a leader whose career has explored storytelling from multiple perspectives, including film, television, animation, interactive entertainment and higher education. Moore will bring those experiences to a medium in which audiences do not simply watch stories, but physically enter and participate in them.

“Story isn’t a new initiative for us. It’s the foundation of who Storyland is,” said Mel McGowan, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Storyland Studios. “For more than two decades, we’ve built teams of architects, designers, artists, strategists and technologists around the belief that the strongest experiences begin with a great story. Bringing Adam onto the team gives us someone whose entire career has been devoted to understanding how stories work, why they move people and how creative teams bring them to life.”

As Vice President of Story, Moore will work across Storyland’s multidisciplinary practice to help define the narrative and emotional foundations of projects, develop original concepts, and ensure that story connects strategy, design and guest experience from the earliest stages of development.

Moore joins Storyland from Walt Disney Animation Studios, where he served in a leadership role supporting creative and technical teams within the feature-animation production environment. Before Disney, he served as Chair of the Department of Cinematic Arts at California State University, Long Beach, leading a large multidisciplinary film program and reinventing the screenwriting program. His career also includes work as a professional writer and producer across film, television and interactive entertainment, including co-creating and executive producing the internationally distributed television series The Pinkertons. He holds an MFA in Screenwriting from the AFI Conservatory.

“What excites me about Storyland is that story is embedded in the company’s DNA,” Moore said. “Story isn’t something layered onto an experience after the fact. It’s where the experience begins. It helps us understand why a place should exist, what journey we want to take people on, what we want them to feel and what we hope stays with them long after they leave. That philosophy has guided Storyland for 25 years, and I’m incredibly excited to help carry it into the company’s next quarter century.”

“For me, this is also deeply personal,” Moore continued. “I was the kid who covered huge sheets of paper with my own theme park designs and built attractions out of LEGO bricks. Then, when I visited EPCOT for the first time at ten years old, something clicked. I suddenly understood that stories didn’t have to live only on a screen or a page. They could be places. They could surround you. You could walk through them, discover them and share them with other people. I knew I wanted to tell stories on a canvas that big someday.”

“I’ve spent the years since telling stories in film, television, interactive media, animation and the classroom. To now bring everything I’ve learned across those worlds into experiential storytelling feels like coming full circle. Joining a company that puts story at the center of everything it creates is quite literally a childhood dream come true.”

For Storyland, creating the VP of Story role represents both a continuation of its history and an investment in where the company is going next.

“Adam isn’t coming here to introduce story to Storyland,” McGowan said. “He’s coming here because story has always been central to what we do. We believe his perspective can help us push that commitment even further.”

About Storyland Studios

Storyland Studios is a global destination and experience design firm dedicated to creating places that inspire, educate, and entertain. By putting story at the center of every project, from theme parks and cultural landmarks to educational institutions and conservation centers, the company transforms visions into compelling realities. Their multidisciplinary team specializes in architecture, experiential design, interactive media, and strategy, ensuring every project delivers a powerful and unforgettable narrative journey. The firm is also the presenting partner of the TEA Global Experience Index™ – the themed entertainment industry’s definitive annual benchmark – helping produce and publish the report that operators, developers, and investors worldwide rely on to understand the global experience economy.

Media Contact

Nathan Smith
Sr. Marketing Manager
Storyland Studios
nathan@storylandstudios.com