Full Sail Stories

When Katrina Mena Rick was growing up in Hialeah, Florida, she spent a lot of time singing songs from The Little Mermaid.

“Ariel is my favorite Disney character ever,” she says. “I would sing her songs in the bathtub as a little girl. I was inspired by her tenacity, and I was inspired by her grit and her fearlessness of wanting to enter a world that was bigger than hers.”

Today, Katrina has used her own tenacity – and her love for Disney – to work her way up to the role of Senior Creative Producer for Disney Live Entertainment. She leads creative and production teams to help make immersive visual content for live shows and spectaculars at Disney Parks, showing audiences a world that’s bigger than their own every night.

Katrina was exposed to show business early in life: Her grandfather owned a shortwave radio station, and her father worked for Telemundo and Univision. She started taking singing lessons and joined the Miami Children’s Choir at the age of eight, eventually participating in their shows with the Florida Grand Opera. As she graduated from high school and started pursuing singing professionally, she gave voice lessons to make ends meet. She also pursued an Entertainment Business degree at Full Sail to learn more about the industry.

Shortly after she graduated, Katrina landed a seasonal job as a casting director for the American Idol Experience at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Park guests would “audition” by singing in front of a live audience, who then voted for their favorite singers. Katrina’s experience as a vocal coach was a huge help in her role, but soon she identified an opportunity.

“Since I was fluent in languages other than English, [the attraction] started sending me a flow of guests who spoke Spanish and Portuguese,” she recalls. “Those singers would ask me ‘Why don’t you have songs in Spanish?’ Because they would have such beautiful voices, but they didn't know any of the songs on our list, or they would have a hard time pronouncing the lyrics of the songs that we did have, because we didn’t have the Spanish versions… I started thinking, ‘Wow, there really is a demand for this.’”

Over the next few months, Katrina used the communication and presentation skills she learned at Full Sail to create a pitch deck featuring Spanish-language songs to add to the attraction. She showed it to her boss, who sent it to higher-ups at the organization. Six months later, Katrina was in the recording studio singing and producing songs in Spanish to add them to the American Idol Experience.

“Throughout my time at Disney, not only has diversity and inclusion been my North Star, it has been my purpose. I always ask myself, ‘How can we make this experience wonderful for everyone?’” she says.

Katrina carried that mentality with her as she spent the next decade working her way up from her seasonal casting director role to her current job as the Senior Creative Producer at Disney Live Entertainment. She serves as a bridge between the creative and production teams for the visual media elements of Disney’s live shows, special events, and spectaculars.

“My team consists of editors, animators, and illustrators,” she explains. “I take our video content and partner with our laser designers, our lighting designers, our pyrotechnicians, camera operators, and audio engineers to get it implemented into the show… [My role is about] understanding the big picture and also being that bridge between everyone else around me.”

Katrina’s worked on many Disney attractions over the years, including Happily Ever After, ¡Celebración Encanto!, and Finding Nemo: The Big Blue... and Beyond! However, one of her favorite projects was Fantasmic!, an outdoor nighttime show with high-tech features like water projections and pyrotechnics.

“I got a chance to be a stage manager for Fantasmic!, and I loved it. That's really, truly where I learned how to call shows, where I learned how to lead teams,” Katrina says. “A few years ago, we had a chance to update the show. It was my first project officially as a creative producer, and I got to drive the creative [side] of making this show more relevant for the next generation, for my kids, for all kids.

“But I also really had to balance the technical and the production and logistical aspects of it, because a show like Fantasmic!, that’s the nighttime spectacular. It’s a legacy show,” she continues. “It takes a small army to put together 50 performers, 30 technicians, costumers, all these things. So I had to balance making sure every little detail was thought about for the story and making sure that the lighting and the lasers and the music were fully integrated with the content.”

From the first notes she sang as Ariel to the final fireworks at the end of each Fantasmic! show, Katrina’s journey to success has given her plenty of moments to shine. Being inducted into Full Sail’s Hall of Fame is a celebration of where Katrina started and where she’s going.

“[Being inducted] means a lot to me because it's a validation of the years that I spent never giving up, the lack of sleep, the hoping, the dreaming, the praying. It feels like it was worth it… Getting this recognition has allowed me to zoom out and see who I am from a different perspective, and to connect with my inner child where I'm like, ‘Wow, I grew up to be better than what I expected to be.’ And hopefully I'm making the world a better place, and hopefully I'm inspiring others to fulfill their dreams and to understand that the struggle is real, but the dream is also real – if you believe in it.”