Deep Story: A Complete Guide to Creating Transformational Visitor Attractions
Bob Rogers
Peter E. Randall Publisher (September (2026)

How to design, create, and stage experiences with stakeholders on whom your organization’s success depends 

By way of an introduction to my brief commentary, here are Bob Rogers’s responses to the first two interview questions posed by Peter Weishar, Director of Themed Experience Graduate Programs, University of Central Florida, and co-founder of the Themed Experience & Attractions Academic Society (TEAAS):

Thank you for writing DEEP STORY. It is an exceptional book filled with useful strategies that feel like inside information. Who did you write DEEP STORY for and why?

DEEP STORY is for everyone, including business and creative leaders as well as people who are just starting their careers. When I was a beginner, established leaders like Marty Sklar, Buzz Price and Don Iwerks had faith in me even when there was absolutely no evidence that I deserved it. They patiently and generously shared their knowledge. The only way I can thank them is by paying it forward by sharing some of the things I’ve learned.

I have some favorite sections in DEEP STORY, including your Disneyland Magic Shop introduction and the Abe Lincoln experience. The book presents a new way of thinking about transformational visitor experiences. Can you recap the Deep Story strategy used at Lincoln?

Sure. Education, information, and entertainment are important means, but whether you are doing a museum, a brand visitor center, or any experience that seeks to make a real difference in what visitors later do, start by precisely defining that change – the transformation you want to create in your visitor. Exactly what do you want visitors to do differently after they leave? Thereafter, every design and story choice should be aimed at achieving that.

Bob Rogers is one of those invaluable human beings who always seem to ask the most important questions when formulating a “Deep Story’,” one that has high-impact for the given audiece (e.g. stakeholders). For example:

o Why do some stories emotionally engage and transform while others don’t?
o How to connect the heart of the subject or brand to the heart of the audience?
o What are the “keys” or essence of a Deep Story? [There are four.]
o How to create a purposefully choreographed emotional cascade of a narrative?
o To what extent can universal human experience (i.e., Joseph Conrad’s “The Hero’s Journey”) provide that narrative?

o What would be the most appropriate structure for the narrative?
o How to invest the narrative with the “magic of myth”?
o What specifically can be learned from classic fairy tales?
o Which human experiences seem to be most transformational? Why?
o How to maximize a sense of hospitality and appreciation for all who interact with your enterprise?

Throughout his long career, Bob Rogers has pursued with joyful tenacity and relentless focus the answers to these and other questions. His intellectual curiosity is insatiable…and contagious.

The only other single-volume sources I know of that offer comparable value are Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention and Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc. (The Expanded Edition): Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, written with Amy Wallace.

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Here are two suggestions while you are reading Deep Story: First, highlight key passages. Also,  perhaps in a lined notebook kept near-at-hand,  record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines). Pay special attention to Jie Pine’s ‘Foreword” and Don Iwerks’s “Introduction.” Also, Coming Soon: Volumes 2 and 3.

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.