WDW Magazine April 2016 - Disney's Hollywood Studios | Page 115

Joe - The Menehune are an interesting subtext. We want to make sure that our product is
welcoming an entire family. A lot of resort product, it doesn’t focus on family as a unit the way
we do. So, there are all kinds of things at Aulani that are specifically targeted–custom
targeted–at welcoming young people. Menehune are only one of those things, right. We took
the Menehune which is a local legend about a kind of people, mystical or mythological, who live
in the forest, who come out usually at night, who do work–helpful little things–and who hide.
And we created this whole, almost like Easter egg, program of hidden Menehune who are very
often placed in places only kids would look, where it would be hard for a parent to even see
them.
And then of course, they inform the interactive game that you play through the entire resort, and
you just see the peeking out on the bushes and they’re inside the elevators and they’re under
the furniture and they’re hidden in corners all through the resort. You could spend a day just
hunting for Menehune through the resort. It’s simple. Very simple. But it is tied to a real cultural
idea that is a Hawaiian idea. And there’s a lot of other stuff we did for young people as well.
And then the whole treatment of the Waikolohe Valley as if it was a real valley: weather, more
tropical; more forested; in the inland area, drier; and you know, more palms as you move out
towards the ocean. We took the design right to the sand, so there isn’t this kind of barrier wall
between the public beach and our private resort. All of that is very Hawaiian way of thinking
about the land.