Ron Clements Makes DVC Member Cruise Debut with Panel Previewing Tales from Upcoming Memoir

“Forty-five years can go by real real fast," Disney Legend Ron Clements said while making his Disney Vacation Club Member Cruise debut aboard the Disney Dream. On a sea day celebrating the 80s and 90s, Ron Clements sat down with host Tim O’Day for an hour-long conversation about his life and career, offering DVC members aboard a first look at his memoir, coming next year.

Making Disney Magic . . . from a Mermaid to Moana will follow the three-act structure of a film, with Act 1 titled “When You Wish," taking its cue from the animated classic that sparked a 9-year0old Ron Clements to pursue a career in animation, Pinocchio. He showcased a few photos from his youth that will be included in the book, including the first character he created as a child, “Puny Pup." He briefly summed up his pre-Disney life, working as a graphic designer for a local Sioux City TV station while still in high school, making his own animated short (Shades of Sherlock Holmes), and leaving home to follow his dreams in New York City and Los Angeles, where he landed a job at Hanna-Barbera.

With a dream of working at Disney, Ron Clements set the tone for the time: Production had just wrapped on Robin Hood (1973), and Disney’s animation department had just finished a round of layoffs. He would routinely call the recruiting office to ask if there were any openings, and was always told no, even after a magazine article by John Canemaker announced that Disney was starting a new animation training program. But persistence paid off, with Ron Clements finally getting in the door as part of the Animation Talent Development Program, a four-week crash course to prove himself.

One of Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men, Disney Legend Frank Thomas, personally selected Ron Clements to be his mentee on The Rescuers (1977), which led to him being promoted to an Animation Supervisor on The Fox and the Hound (1981). With several years of animation experience under his belt, Ron Clements discovered that his real passion was not in animation, but in story. He joined the story team on The Black Cauldron (1985), where he met his future directing partner John Musker (who wrote the foreword to his book).

Ron Clements and John Musker made their directorial debut with Basil of Baker Street, retitled and released as The Great Mouse Detective (1986). During the panel, Ron shared an anecdote about his first time directing a voice actor, which happened to be the king of horror, Vincent Price, who voiced Professor Ratigan. He was nervous about it, and later learned that Disney Legend Burny Mattinson tipped off the actor. Whenever Ron gave Vincent Price feedback, he was overly gracious, responding with things like “That’s a wonderful direction," boosting the first-time director’s confidence.

With Ariel and Flounder on the marquee for the discussion, the majority of Ron Clements’ conversation was on The Little Mermaid (1989). Under the studio leadership of Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, Ron Clements was invited to pitch ideas at their next “Gong Show," a rapid-fire presentation where they would stop a presenter if they didn’t like an idea, inspired by the game show of the same name. With a two-week heads up, Ron Clements went to a local bookstore in search of inspiration and found himself drawn to Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Little Mermaid. Ron saw potential for the film as an animated feature so long as there were a few decidedly Disney twists, such as expanding the role of the sea witch, making the mermaid’s father anti-human, and giving the sad tale a happy ending. Ron barely got to pitch his idea before Jeffrey Katzenberg rang the gong, explaining that a sequel to Splash (1984) was in the works.

The fate of Disney Animation doesn’t just owe a debt to Ron Clements’ idea for The Little Mermaid, but also to the cancellation of Splash 2. When that project was shelved, Eisner and Katzenberg reapproached Clements to ask for the rest of his pitch for The Little Mermaid. With their greenlight, he was told that they wanted Howard Ashman on the project, an exciting thought as Ron had seen the L.A. production of the Ashman/Menken hit musical Little Shop of Horrors. Among Howard Ashman’s first changes was replacing a British crab character named Clarance with a calypso character so that the score could make use of that musical style, which became Sebastian. It was also Ashman who was responsible for the casting of Jodi Benson (another guest on board this DVC Member Cruise). As a special treat, Ron shared a behind-the-scenes video of the “Part of Your World" recording session, with Ashman helping make what could’ve been an oversung ballad into one of the most restrained expressions of longing in animation history.

As an aside, Ron Clements shared that he was unaware that Disney had attempted to adapt The Little Mermaid previously. The presentation included one of Kay Nielsen’s pieces of visual development artwork for the scrapped project, and Ron Clements set the record straight - it wasn’t meant to be a feature. Disney’s earlier attempt at an animated version of The Little Mermaid was part of plans for a continuation of the Fantasia concept and would’ve been set to classical music.

Ron also shared a funny anecdote from the press tour for The Little Mermaid. Disney decided to host the film’s European premiere in Copenhagen, the city where Hans Christian Andersen spent most of his life and where Denmark’s stature of the title character resides. After the screening, the press hounded Ron and John about the changed ending, and they feared they had ruined a national treasure. At one point, he came face to face with Denmark’s queen, Margrethe II, apologizing for ruining Andersen’s classic fairytale. “Oh, he never knew how to end his stories anyway," she responded.

Act 2 of Making Disney Magic . . . from a Mermaid to Moana takes its title from Cinderella (1950), “If You Keep On Believing." This section largely focuses on the Disney Animated features Ron Clements and John Musker made following the breakout success of The Little Mermaid. Jeffrey Katzenberg approached the duo with three options for their next film - “King of the Jungle" (later retitled as The Lion King), an adaptation of Swan Lake (Disney’s plans were axed in 1994 with the release of The Swan Princess), and the tale of Aladdin from One Thousand and One Nights (aka The Arabian Nights).

Sharing an anecdote from Aladdin (1992), Ron Clements talked about how he and John Musker approached the character of Genie with Robin Williams in mind from the start. They thought the comedian’s quick impressions would make for a fun shape-shifting character, and they were right.

In order of release, Hercules (1997) was their next film. With Susan Egan also on board this member cruise, Ron shared how she was the first actress to audition for the voice of Megara in New York. The character was inspired by Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve (1941), and Egan was at that time portraying Belle in Disney’s Broadway adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. They initially passed on her as a result, but in the end, there was only one person right for the part, and Susan Egan got the role.

Released in 2002, Treasure Planet was another idea Ron Clements pitched at the Eisner/Katzenberg gong show, out of which The Little Mermaid was born. The idea for “Treasure Island in space" got a gong then, but after production wrapped on Aladdin, Disney Animation Vice President Charlie Fink put out a call for ideas that were in the sci-fi genre or involved pirates. As luck would have it, Ron Clements had an idea that fit both requests.

Treasure Planet ultimately got delayed, with Ron and John shelving the project temporarily to work on Hercules. But the wait was worth it, as some of the film’s goals would require a lot of CG animation, and Disney’s ability to pull that off was much greater by the end of the decade. Treasure Planet broke ground by having characters that demonstrated a seamless blending of hand-drawn animation and computer animation, namely Long John Silver and his cyborg arm. The film even includes scenes where the entire environment is computer-generated.

Ron and John returned to the fairytale musical adaptation with 2009’s The Princess and the Frog. With time running short, Ron briefly touched on the fun of the project's three research trips to New Orleans. One of his favorite memories was getting to meet a voodoo woman.

The title for Act 3 feels poignant, drawing inspiration from lyrics from one of Ron Clements’ films - “Going the Distance." With the book’s title promising to take readers from mermaids to Moana, this section is largely about the 2016 computer-animated feature. The book will feature lots of stories from the Pacific Islands. For the presentation, though, Ron focused on casting the voices. Dwayne “The Rock" Johnson was already in mind for Maui, but for the title character, the casting net was spread far and wide, and nobody felt right for the part. Auli’i Cravalho was just 14 years old at the time they received her video audition. As a treat for DVC members, Ron showed a video of the moment Auli’i found out she got the life-changing part.

Winding down the panel, Tales of a Disney Animation Director ended on a poignant note. Earlier this summer at Annecy Festival, it was announced that Ron Clements was returning to the studio in a mentorship role. On board, he revealed that his first official day back was this past Monday, July 28th. It’s as if his career has come full circle, now inhabiting a role similar to that of his mentor, Frank Thomas. “Working for Disney was kind of like riding a roller coaster," he summed up, adding that his book will give fans a feeling for what the ride was like.

Stay tuned for more news about Ron Clements’ upcoming book, Making Disney Magic . . . from a Mermaid to Moana, coming in 2026!