Disney Imagineers set the bar for immersive worldbuilding. Fans all over the world can walk directly into their favorite stories when they visit a Disney park or take a cruise. These spaces are envisioned and built by the Imagineers — technologists, architects, artists, scientists, model makers, and show producers who draw on Disney’s 100-year legacy of innovative storytelling to craft magical experiences.
Worldbuilding takes time. Moving from concept to finished experience can take years of creative thinking, engineering, and attention to hundreds of thousands of tiny details. But audiences are hungry for new connective experiences. So to shorten the runway between idea and delivery, Imagineers are doing what they do best: using innovative technology to make the impossible possible.
Through a new collaboration with Adobe, Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development aims to accelerate the design and pre-production visualization pipeline for Disney Parks and Experiences using Adobe Firefly Foundry. Firefly Foundry enables businesses to create tailored generative AI models that are unique to their brand, developed on Imagineering assets, and built on top of commercially available Adobe Firefly models. With these proprietary models, Imagineers can iterate with greater speed and consistency, finding new ways to connect consumers with their favorite characters, stories, and attractions.
“At Imagineering, we’ve always believed technology and human creativity can work together responsibly,” said Kyle Laughlin, SVP of R&D, Technology, and Engineering at Walt Disney Imagineering. “Our work with Adobe lets us bring Disney stories and characters to life in our parks faster, and with the emotional quality our guests expect.”
Turning imagination into immersive worlds.
For Imagineers, bringing an idea to life has always been an intensely iterative process. A hand-drawn sketch evolves into polished concept art, detailed 3D renderings, and ultimately construction-quality CAD models.
Developed on Imagineering’s own creative catalog, Firefly Foundry generates high-fidelity outputs that stay true to the visual language of the world’s most cherished franchises — such as Frozen, Cars, Moana, Lilo & Stitch, and Mickey & Friends — allowing Imagineers to speed up their concept and design phase for attractions.
Helping creativity move faster.
Imagineers still obsess over every creative decision, scrutinizing every color palette, environmental detail, and character interaction that shape the guest experience. Firefly Foundry smooths the path from imagination to execution, so teams have time to explore more great ideas.
Sketch-to-image workflows transform rough concepts into fully rendered 2D art, while 3D modeling turns designs into prototypes that guide planning, engineering, and material estimates before they break ground. Teams don’t have to trade creativity for speed, making it easy to uphold the company’s high creative standard across branded worlds.
As Disney expands across parks, hotels, cruises, and more, Firefly Foundry will help Imagineers meet increasing demand for faster design workflows — all while staying true to the characters and stories that resonate with audiences.
For decades, Adobe has stood at the heart of creativity in the media and entertainment industry, with technology innovations that have earned multiple Academy Awards for scientific and technical achievement. Through this collaboration, Imagineering is leading the way on custom, responsibly built AI that shortens the journey from idea to magic.
The Imagineers have always had more creative ideas than the time to build them. Firefly Foundry will give them the time and space to explore further, execute faster, and create previously unimaginable worlds for all of us.
Learn how Adobe Firefly Foundry helps enterprises create custom generative AI models tailored to their brand.
Hannah C. Elsakr is a business builder and general manager with a track record of launching, scaling, and governing new ventures at the intersection of AI, creativity, and enterprise growth. She brings together operating experience across zero-to-one builds, billion-dollar acquisitions, and global turnarounds — with deep fluency in the technology and strategy reshaping how companies compete.
As VP of GenAI New Business Ventures at Adobe, Hannah leads the creation and scaling of new commercial businesses at the frontier of generative AI. She launched Firefly for Enterprise — including Firefly Services, Custom Models, and Firefly Foundry — enabling enterprise brands to adopt commercially safe, rights-cleared generative AI at scale. She also led the integration of leading frontier models into Adobe's ecosystem, including Google, Luma, and Runway, expanding customer choice while maintaining governance and platform integrity.
Previously, Hannah led Adobe's Corporate Development organization and served as Chief of Staff to CEO Shantanu Narayen, working directly with the executive team and board on M&A, strategy, and governance. She has been a participant in and presenter to public company boards on strategy, acquisitions, and AI transformation.
Earlier in her career, she held P&L and leadership roles at eBay, McKinsey, Avon, Del Monte Foods, and J.P. Morgan across ecommerce, advisory, consumer products, and financial services. She serves as Board President of the Adobe Foundation and is the author of Leadership Mosaic, a newsletter on leadership, human judgment, and creativity in the age of AI.
