About Larry Hitchcock

 

Larry Hitchcock is a master planner, experience designer and creative consultant whose career has spanned live entertainment, themed attractions, destination development and some of the world's most complex entertainment environments.

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His career began in the world of large-scale live entertainment, where creative ideas had to function in the real world—before enormous audiences, on demanding schedules and within complex technical and production environments. That experience shaped an approach Larry has carried throughout his career: a successful environment must do more than look extraordinary. It has to work.

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At FM Productions, Larry worked across senior marketing, sales and creative responsibilities during an era when the concert touring industry was redefining the scale of live entertainment. His work connected him with major touring artists and large-scale productions, giving him firsthand experience in the relationship between audience, movement, spectacle, production and physical space.

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That experience eventually extended beyond the concert stage. Larry was involved in bringing live-entertainment production thinking to the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, where FM Productions participated in the monumental opening and closing ceremonies.

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From Live Entertainment to Themed Entertainment

Larry's career subsequently expanded into themed entertainment and destination development.

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At Walt Disney Imagineering, he served in creative leadership and worked on major entertainment and destination projects. His Disney experience included Pleasure Island at Walt Disney World, Festival Disney at Disneyland Paris and Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show at Disneyland Paris, as well as work as a Creative Adviser to Disney Development Company.

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He later brought that experience to work with Universal Studios, applying the same combination of creative thinking, spatial understanding and real-world production experience to themed attractions and entertainment environments. His career has also included collaboration with Lucasfilm on large-scale themed environments.

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Designing the Whole Experience

 

What connects these seemingly different worlds—concert stages, Olympic ceremonies, theme parks, attractions and entertainment destinations—is Larry's understanding of how people experience place.

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He looks beyond the individual attraction, building or show to understand the larger environment: how people arrive, where they go, what draws their attention, how they move through a space, where they gather, and how one experience leads naturally into the next.

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That perspective has made master planning a natural extension of his creative work.

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For Larry, master planning isn't simply about arranging buildings and attractions on a site. It's about creating the framework within which the entire experience can function—balancing storytelling and emotional impact with circulation, capacity, operations, infrastructure and the practical requirements of development.

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Experience at Every Scale

 

Few creative careers move comfortably between the intimacy of a performance environment and the complexity of an entertainment destination serving thousands of people.

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Larry's has.

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His experience includes master planning and site strategy, theme park and attraction design, guest flow and wayfinding, show and stage design, creative direction, and translating concepts into workable direction for developers and multidisciplinary design teams.

That breadth allows him to move between the big picture and the smallest details without losing sight of either.

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How Larry Works Today

 

Today, Larry works with owners, developers and creative teams who need experienced thinking at the beginning of a project, at an important point in its development, or when a complex project needs a fresh set of eyes.

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He brings decades of experience to the table without bringing unnecessary complexity with it.

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The objective is straightforward: understand what the project is trying to become, identify what will make the experience work, and help the team find the clearest path from an ambitious idea to a place people will remember.