Meet the Penn State Professor Who Helped Bring ‘Disney: The Tale of Moana’ To Life
Since the launch of the Disney Treasure last December, passengers have raved about the ship’s exclusive musical production, Disney: The Tale of Moana.
The Broadway style-retellling of Moana brings the young Wayfinder story to life in a new and exciting way, featuring the characters and songs that fans have come to know and love.
Photo: Matt Stroshane/Disney
To help design the staging for the new show, Disney turned to Milagros Ponce de León, head of the theatre design and technology program at the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture.
Ponce de León’s Disney Story
Ponce de León has worked at Penn State for almost 15 years and has designed sets for all kinds of premiere stage shows during that time. Disney: The Tale of Moana, however, was her first collaboration with Disney Live Entertainment and the Disney Crusie Line.
“This has been an incredible and very rewarding process,” Ponce de León told Penn State. “Collaborating to create this show with Connor Gallagher (director) and an amazing team of designers, with the support of Disney’s outstanding technical team, has been a remarkable experience.”
Photo: Penn State
Ponce de León’s work on Disney: The Tale of Moana began in 2022 when she was hired by Disney. She started her process by researching Polynesian culture, getting input from Disney cultural consultants.
Eventually, the designer began making sketches, which were turned into technical drawings and 3D models. From there, they were shipped to Hamburg, Germany, where they served as the template for the set’s construction.
Construction in Germany
While the Treasure was being constructed at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, the Disney: Tale of Moana set was under construction just 150 miles away.
“This was a very different process than anything else I have worked on,” Ponce de Léon said. “Working with so many resources and having so much support throughout a long pre-production and production process with state-of-the-art technology, and people from all over the world, made this experience very special.”
Over the next year, Ponce de Léon said, and her frequent collaborator Ryan Douglas traveled to Hamburg to inspect and approve the completed sets.
Photo: Matt Stroshane/Disney
“Watching the scenic renderings come to life was amazing,” Ponce de León said. “The support from the entire team was crucial because things needed to be engineered with great care and precision in preparation for the show opening.”
The Next Challenge
With her work on Disney: The Tale of Moana complete, Ponce de León can turn her attention to her next project, a musical production of Hercules, which will debut aboard the Disney Destiny later this year.
Photo: Disney
“The first showing of ‘Disney: The Tale of Moana’ concluded a years-long process, which was both overwhelming at times and also so very exciting,” Ponce De Léon said, “now, we get to do it all over again.”
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