Nassal is the creative genius behind what he calls “immersive environments.” If you’ve been to a theme park, a museum, an aquarium or a resort in the last 25 years, chances are you’ve seen some of Nassal’s handiwork. His Orlando-based company, The Nassal Company  — who is celebrating their 25th anniversary this year — constructed the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Washington D.C., the Spiderman theme park ride, Atlantis in Paradise Island in the Bahamas, Discovery Cove and the Coca Cola Museum in Atlanta, to name but a few of the countless projects he’s put together. While a designer may come up with the plans for what he or she wants a project to eventually look like, it’s Nassal’s job to make that idea come to life. His company’s specialty is fabricating and installing the pieces that make you feel like you’re a part of that environment. A project starts out looking like a basic piece of construction, but he adds the “magic” to it — this is what he calls  “theming.”

“The general contractor typically builds a ‘vanilla box,’ a building,” Nassal explains, “then we come and we make the vanilla box look like a dinosaur or a castle or whatever, both interior and exterior.”

The first vanilla box he transformed was The Psycho House at Universal Studios in Orlando. And the projects have only gotten bigger and more involved since. In the past, the main competition in the industry was companies in California. Now, Nassal’s company is the biggest in the country, completing over $250 million in projects in the United States and abroad.

Recently, Nassal put his creative talent to work on his biggest project to date: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Theme Park, which opened at Universal Orlando Resort this past June. The 20-acre theme park is complete with Hogwarts Castle, the village of Hogsmeade and the famous Hogwarts Express complete with Platform 9 ¾. Nassal says that when Universal approached him with the project three years ago, their main concern was making sure that every detail of this park extravaganza looked exactly the way it did in the movie. Nassal didn’t disappoint. He and his team of over 100 fabrication specialists got to work making the world of Harry Potter come to life. Nassal says out of all the projects he’s worked on, the Harry Potter project took the longest and was the most challenging.


Harry Potter's world comes alive thanks to Bill Nassal's talented team who also created other popular attractions including Legoland, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, and the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

“Universal wanted the whole project to be exactly what it was in the movie. You know the wavy glass they had in the 1800’s… we had five different patterns of wavy glass that we had to reproduce. And rather than going out and trying to find glass from the 1800’s, we got regular plate glass and we experimented with different types of acrylics that you could pour on the glass and get different patterns. And rather then actually buying lead, we came up with this lead tape that looks exactly like lead that we could put on there. So we took a piece of plate glass, put the waves on it, put the lead on it, and it looks just like something that was made hundreds of years ago. And then you age it down to look old.”

Nassal says each project he works on has its own set of challenges. The first phase of a typical job might take two months to plot it out, about eight months in the second phase to fabricate it, and the third phase, installation about three months. But when he was given the task of fabricating a huge pirate ship for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the challenge was more than just building the ship — time became a factor as well, especially since he got the call just before the start of the football season.

“They had to have the ship done in two months, sitting in the stadium,” he says, “So we worked with their designers, and we went out to the stadium and built the ship in 57 days. We worked 24 hours a day, ‘round the clock, and that thing was ready for opening day… and that was challenging.”


The creative process never stops for Nassal and his team. Technological advances keep moving his company forward to bigger and better projects here in the states and all over the world, but he and his family have lived here for nine years. His wife, Cindy, runs the operation of their working horse farm. Bill even finds time to give back, serving as treasurer on the board of the Ocala Symphony for the last four years. He continues to travel the globe and do jobs for companies like Ferrari, Coca Cola, Disney and Universal to name a few.

It also claimed the title of the fastest project he put together. One of the most expensive was the Springs Preserve in Las Vegas — to the tune of $26 million dollars. One of the furthest away? That would be the Lego Theme Park in Guttsberg, Germany. And yes, that’s Lego… those cute snap-together toys your children play with — imagine an entire theme park with larger than life Lego creations. Nassal made it happen.

His company can handle all different types of creative work since it is broken down into three main groups. There’s the theming group which handles projects like Harry Potter, Spiderman, Lego Theme Park and the Psycho House. Then there are 25 sculptors who comprise the rock work specialty group. They go from one zoo and aquarium to another all over the country, on the road 52 weeks a year. And the third group is Nassal Metalworks, which handles high-end metal work.

Nassal says he enjoys the detail work that goes into his immersive environment philosophy.

“We did the Lincoln Presidential Museum. They had the footstool that Lincoln had in his cabin. The old way of displaying that footstool would be to have a white pedestal with the footstool on it and a Plexiglas case over it. Immersive Environment is when you display it by building his cabin, putting a footstool in front of the chair and then people walk right by it.”

When it came time to construct the balcony where Lincoln was shot, Nassal was a stickler for detail down to the type of design on a piece of the architecture that was present.

“We got some photographs of the booth where he was shot, and our sculptors sculpted off that photograph. So that’s an exact duplicate of the one that was in there where he was shot.”

The handle on Lincoln’s casket is exactly the same as the original as well. They managed to find the forging company that made the original, got the mold for it, and made copies of it.

Nassal says the creative process never stops for him and his team, and technological advances keep moving his company forward to bigger and better projects here in the states and all over the world. 

So after traveling the globe and doing jobs for companies like Ferrari, Coca Cola, Disney, and Universal to name a few, what’s his favorite project of all time? He says it’s whatever the last project is he worked on, and whatever is the next project on the drawing board. For Bill Nassal, getting to work his magic everyday to bring projects to life for people to enjoy is “Awesome!”

Even Harry Potter would approve of that kind of magic.