Life on a Roller Coaster

Paula Dinkel’s education and experience in theatre set and lighting design led to a long career in lighting theme parks. She is a graduate of California State University Fullerton with BA, MA, and MFA degrees. Her career at Walt Disney Imagineering spanned over 25 years. She led the Show Lighting team in the design and installation of Disney Studios Paris including her favorite attraction, Rock’n Roller Coaster avec Aerosmith. Her other projects include DisneyQuest and Club Disney location based entertainment projects, and ten years at Disneyland designing the lighting for enhancement projects including Big Thunder Ranch, The Emporium, Bengal Barbeque, Main Street Jewelry Shop, and Disneyana. Paula says she failed retirement and returned to WDI for an encore of another few years at WDI to work in China on Shanghai Disneyland. Returning home, she was enticed to join the installation and focus team at the Motiongate Theme Park in Dubai for the last six months prior to opening.

In her semi-retirement, Paula works with ETC and industry professionals on a student mentoring program as well as consulting on selected projects. She is also a contributing author on the Disney Editions published book, Women of Imagineering. She divides her time between her lake house in Wisconsin and Arizona.