Changes

According to Show Writer and Producer Randy Bright:

{{Quotation|“One of the toughest things we had to do was take 350 years and compress it down to 20 minutes. In fact, we failed. It is a 28-minute show. We went through six abject failures before we got to an American Adventure we all felt comfortable with, which ultimately became what we have today <ref name= "mouseplanet"/>}}

With a goal of creating a venue that would be “alive and moving” <ref name="vid1"> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT8dbXhN1G8</ref>, Imagineers eventually came up with the idea of creating a “Magic Theater” <ref name= "mouseplanet"> https://www.mouseplanet.com/9905/Will_Rogers_and_the_American_Adventure </ref>. The theater was designed so that it would be able to combine: Audio Animatronics, video, audio, and moving sets to tell the story of America <ref name= "mouseplanet"/>.

With the infrastructure and form of the attraction now settled on, Randy Bright and his team set about writing the shows script. Early on, Bright proposed the idea of focusing on “dreamers and doers”, an ethos that would guide the show's development <ref name="vid2"> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8WTTQzuDZge</ref>. Bright and professor of history at UCLA D. Allen Yarnell would meet late at night at Imagineering to work on the show. One of the theme that they hoped to portray was the overcoming of adversity, while also not wanting to whitewashing the country's history <ref name="vid2"/>. Bright further noted that the show focused on a series of individuals using their own words.