Evan Klein

Creative technologist and software engineer, leading teams architecting the next generation of interactive experiences at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Orlando, FL · B.S. Computer Engineering, Lehigh University, 2018

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Projects

2026

Magic Kingdom

Unreal Engine

Embedded real-time

Distributed systems

2026 · Magic Kingdom

Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin

A ground-up modernization of a classic interactive dark ride that keeps the original story and layout but rebuilds how it plays. Blasters lift free of the vehicle, targets react to every hit, and scoring changes throughout the ride.

Two Unreal Engine instances on every ride vehicle, one per guest, rendering scores and rank progression in real time
Targets that light up, change color and carry dynamic point values, with haptic and audio feedback in each blaster
More than 200 networked machines keeping vehicles, targets and scoring in sync
Prototyped with Pixar in a virtual pre-visualization of the full attraction, reviewed in VR

Unreal Engine

Embedded real-time

Distributed systems

TechRadar interview

2026

Disneyland & Disney's Hollywood Studios

Fortnite

Epic Games

Park-to-game integration

2026 · Disneyland & Disney's Hollywood Studios

Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run x Fortnite

Connects a flight-simulator attraction to Fortnite, so a ride in the park carries over into the game at home.

Guests accept a mission in the Disney app, then fly the Falcon to complete it
In-ride scores become credits on the Smugglers Gambit island in Fortnite
Rewards, including an exclusive outfit, delivered through linked MyDisney and Epic Games accounts

Fortnite

Epic Games

Park-to-game integration

TechRadar coverage

2026

Disney's Hollywood Studios

Animatronics

Control systems

2026 · Disney's Hollywood Studios

Olaf Draws!

A drawing class at The Magic of Disney Animation, hosted by an Olaf animatronic alongside Disney animators.

Helped build the programming and control systems behind the Olaf figure
Olaf hosts from his own desk on stage, with new dialogue recorded by Josh Gad
Guests sketch characters from Mickey to Moana at animator-style workstations

Animatronics

Control systems

TechRadar coverage Attraction page

2022

Walt Disney World

Interactive systems

Simulation

Observability

2022 · Walt Disney World

Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser

Lead technical architect on the Guest Experience System behind the two-night immersive Star Wars adventure.

Built the simulation, testing and automation tooling used to deliver the interactive system
Added observability, monitoring, LiveOps tools, and resiliency to harden it for operation
Led the team that sustained it and shipped new interactive features after launch

Interactive systems

Simulation

Observability

2020

shopDisney

AWS Lambda

DynamoDB

Akamai

Angular

2020 · shopDisney

shopDisney MerchPass

A drawing-based system for releasing high-demand, limited-edition merchandise on shopDisney. Instead of racing traffic spikes and bots at drop time, guests enter a drawing per item, and those selected get early access with the item already waiting in their bag.

Worked with shopDisney teams to architect, develop and deploy the guest-facing system, and led its development
Serverless on AWS (Lambda, DynamoDB, S3) behind Akamai, with an Angular and Node.js front end
Launched in July 2020 with the Arendelle Castle release, then used for collections like Minnie Mouse: The Main Attraction

AWS Lambda

DynamoDB

Akamai

Angular

Launch coverage