Internship turns into thrilling ride for engineering student on Disney World roller coaster design team

When Hayley Yukihiro first began studying electrical engineering at Liberty University School of Engineering, she had no idea that she would be on a design team for a roller coaster at one of the country’s top theme parks before she even graduated with a college degree.

But during her junior year, between December 2019 and March 2020, Yukihiro accepted an internship with Disney Imagineering as a control systems hardware engineer on the TRON Lightcycle Power Run roller coaster attraction in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando. She said her team helped design the ride control systems that control the coaster’s movement, braking, operations, and safety systems. The ride, which places passengers in motorcycle-like vehicles from the TRON movie series, is scheduled to open in 2021. The first TRON roller coaster opened at Shanghai Disney in 2016.

“I was part of a really great team that helped foster learning,” Yukihiro said. “At many internships they like to train you for the position, but at Imagineering they put me right into the engineering work saying, ‘Here is your team. They are going to help you along the way, but you’ve got to contribute.’ It was a fast-paced environment and surreal that I was there working on the coaster.”

The experience was very different from other engineering companies that she’d worked with in the past, she said, because at Disney the projects are all approached from a creative viewpoint, requiring designers to understand not just the technical aspects but also the story behind the project or attraction.

“The project I worked on was something I thought I might work on in the future if I got a job there after graduation, but not as an intern,” she said. “The whole thing was really fascinating, and it was amazing being able to work on it at Imagineering. My team made the internship pretty great for an engineering student who didn’t have much experience.”

Yukihiro said getting an internship at Disney — especially at Imagineering — is very competitive. Most interns are chosen through a competition called “Imaginations,” where candidates’ projects are judged by a group of engineers with the winners receiving an internship. She went a different route and applied for the internship through Disney’s online portal.

Yukihiro said the electrical engineering program prepared her for the internship at Disney Imagineering.

“I was applying for a lot of Disney internships, most of them over the summer, then the spring internship at Imagineering in Florida popped up. I was thinking, ‘I don’t know if I have a good chance with that. I’ll just throw my name in the bucket,’” Yukihiro recalled. “I applied and I didn’t hear back for about two months, then in mid-November I had an interview.”

Yukihiro said the interview questions were mostly about control systems engineering, a topic she was studying at the time. One hour after her interview, she got the offer.

“It was a difficult time trying to decide whether to take the offer or not because I always wanted work at Disney Imagineering but I wasn’t sure I wanted to take a spring internship and miss classes. I was going back and forth trying to decide — there was a lot of prayer, a lot of talking with the family to make the decision,” she said.

However, like many other students, Yukihiro’s internship was cut short when the COVID-19 pandemic forced Walt Disney World to close in early March, but she was able to work virtually from Kissimmee, Fl., until late April. Yukihiro said that because the experience ended early, she is definitely planning on returning as an intern and then maybe pursuing a full-time position after graduation.

Because she was an intern for most of the semester, Yukihiro was not able to take her required capstone course for junior engineering students and will have to wait until next spring to pick up on her degree path. In the meantime, she started a second degree program in computer engineering to help her capitalize on the knowledge gained from her internship. She plans to stay in California as an online student and return to campus in Spring 2021, graduating with dual degrees in Spring 2022.

“The number one reason I came to Liberty University is because I wanted to grow in my skills but I also wanted to grow in my walk with the Lord,” said Yukihiro. “In engineering there is a technical side but there is also a moral side. I want to engineer things to further the technology in the world but also to create things that help protect people and keep people safe. It is great to have the Lord in that process and it’s important to be able to look to the Lord for advice and guidance and to have that foundation as an engineer and as a Christian.”

“We are very proud of Hayley as she represents the excellence that we are trying to teach our students,” said Dean Mark Horstemeyer. “Since our inception the School of Engineering has focused on garnering summer internships for its students in order to better position them for long-term employment and we have enjoyed 100% job placement as a result. Also, the training of our Creationeering paradigm (where science and engineering combine into tangible God-focused outcomes that benefit society) integrated into our classes fits well with Hayley’s Imagineering work at Disney.”