Garner Holt is the founder and president of Garner Holt Productions, Inc. (GHP) Located in San Bernardino, CA, GHP is the world’s largest designer and fabricator of animatronics, show action systems, special effects, and other creations for theme parks, museums, retail and dining experiences, and other attractions. Inspired by a childhood trip to Disneyland and a lifelong love of Disney theme parks, Garner founded his company when he was only 16 years old. Since 1977, GHP has created nearly 3,000 individual animatronics and hundreds of other items for clients like the Disney Theme Parks, Universal Studios, Chuck E. Cheese Restaurants, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, NASA, Lockheed-Martin, and hundreds of other clients. One of his client was Michael Jackson!
Here is Garner’s recollection of working for Michael for the Neverland Vally Railroad:
“I think the first railroad we worked on at GHP was Michael Jackson’s Neverland Valley Railroad at his Neverland Ranch in Central California. He wanted to replicate some of the sights of the Disneyland Railroad, so he asked us to create a series of Native American figures to populate some scenes along his train line.
In fact, it was another railroad that got me the work: the guy that Michael hired to operate his steam engines had a day job as an engineer on the Ghost Town and Calico Railway at Knott’s Berry Farm. As we’d done some work for the old Kingdom of the Dinosaurs ride there, he recommended me to Michael for work on his train layout. I remember something funny about one of the figures: when we were finished I sent some pictures of what we’d created to Michael and his team so he could make comments before they shipped.
For the tribal chief character, Michael’s lead guy on site called me one day to say that Michael didn’t want to see pictures of the real natives who inspired our work, but of the actual animatronics! Needless to say, having our work mistaken for actual people is pretty neat and the ultimate compliment for our line of work.”
