Tony Wayne Baxter is currently Senior Vice President, Creative Development, Walt Disney Imagineering, and is responsible for overall creative direction for the Disneyland Resort.
Growing up in Southern California, Baxter started his career at Disneyland at age 17, scooping ice cream on Main Street, U.S.A..[1] After several years of odd jobs at the park, he garnered attention through a portfolio of attraction concepts and was hired at WED Enterprises (now known as Walt Disney Imagineering), where he has remained since. His roles on his first projects were relatively minor, but he was eventually given extensive creative control of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which debuted at Disneyland in 1979, at Walt Disney World in 1980, and later at Disneyland Paris in 1992.[1] After this, he continued to be assigned high-level roles in Imagineering projects.
Other projects that Baxter was responsible for include:
Never-built projects that Tony personally supervised include a re-design for Disneyland's Tomorrowland called Tomorrowland 2055 and a new land for Disneyland called Discovery Bay. (However, this was a source of inspiration for Discoveryland in Disneyland Paris—that park's version of Tomorrowland.)