amusement park – Thinkwell

Safety From All Angles, For Everyone

Jeremy Thompson & Eric Hoff

Safety is the top concern of the attractions industry. Not only is it the foremost legal, ethical, and moral responsibility to ensure that no guest is at risk of being harmed at an attraction, but the highest standard of safety facilitates every other aspect of the guest experience as well. Designers and operators strive to create not just physically safe, but emotionally safe environments for their guests.

When COVID-19 struck, the industry applied its decades of experience in safety design to quickly implement new health and sanitation procedures for theme parks and visitor attractions, in many cases completely re-imagining their operations within a matter of months, if not weeks. So far, the data has indicated that primarily outdoor amusements that responsibly enforce these new guidelines have kept transmissions to a minimum, with no major reported outbreaks traced back to a theme park for the several months they’ve been open (as of this writing).

Yet if the focus has been on creating a physically safe environment, many operators are also having to contend with what it truly means to create an emotionally safe space for their guests. While these attractions have always emphasized that their guests have a shared responsibility for their own safety and the safety of those around them, the majority of guests returning during this pandemic are for the first time now keenly aware that a theme park is no longer an inherently safe space for them. While there are plenty of ideas for how to rebuild that previous sense of emotional reassurance under these new conditions, many guests and professionals are finding the most reassurance in the idea that, hopefully, sooner than later, everything will be completely “back to normal.”

It’s an understandable sentiment given how short supply we’ve been for reassurances recently. In fact, mitigating that anxiety and getting back to a sense of emotional safety and trust is a key part of soothing jittery would-be visitors. Nevertheless, it’s important to question that instinct for normalcy, and ask ourselves if this transformational moment in history hasn’t revealed certain fault lines in the pre-pandemic perspective of “physical and emotional safety” that… maybe… shouldn’t fully go back to the ways of the “once-normal”?

This conversation is not just limited to entertainment. As people everywhere find their sense of security and safety rocked in a way they’ve never encountered, many of them are questioning what it means to be physically and emotionally safe in public spaces of all kinds… and realizing that for many of their peers, these places have never felt for themselves completely safe to begin with.

It’s no coincidence that, during the pandemic, thousands of Black Lives Matter protestors took to the streets demanding racial justice. There is a known direct correlation between the lack of public health safety for BIPOC people and the current COVID-19 pandemic. (Over 1,000 health professionals signed a letter in support of the protests, arguing that systemic racism was an equally urgent risk to public health.) These systemic injustices, too often overlooked by society, were laid bare by the pandemic and its societal response for the entire world to witness. Protestors were demonstrating to demand safety for BIPOC folks in their everyday lives, and to take action to ensure a safer, more just world, even after the pandemic is over.

The themed entertainment industry is not isolated from this. As professionals who are privileged to create these experiences for our guests, we also need to ask: what isn’t being reflected in the standard safety data, either because it’s a less quantifiable form of emotional safety, or because marginalized groups are selected out of the data pool to begin with?

To ensure that we are creating physically and emotionally safe experiences for everyone, we must expand the definition of safety such that it is anti-racist, anti-ablist, radically inclusive, and intersectionally focused. If an attraction notices that its visitor demographics are mismatched from its local community demographics, not only should it investigate potential systemic factors like pricing structures or transportation access that could limit certain groups’ participation, but it should also review softer aspects related to design and public messaging, which very often can unintentionally code a space as “intended for” or “centered around” a certain kind of audience. Or, if those previously marginalized groups are showing up to buy a ticket but the attraction is now struggling to safely accommodate an increase in disabled and neurodiverse guests, it may need to reevaluate some of its foundational design assumptions about ride vehicles, guest flow patterns, restrooms, and restaurants alongside reviewing operational procedures and employee training.

As designers who are often at the start of the process of figuring out how these attractions look and function, we must grapple with questions of safety from an intersectional approach, not only considering the checklists we’d apply to meet all physical safety requirements, but also to the emotional and psychological well-being of guests in experiences we create. We as experience designers have to think about the intersection of public health, physical safety, and the psycho-emotional wellbeing of all guests, whether at a theme park, museum, retail and dining district, or live event. COVID has reminded us that we’re all responsible for each other’s safety, and that means every single individual within our community.

Keep the Preshow; Ditch the Queue

Dave Cobb, Principal, Creative Development, Thinkwell Group

As theme parks start to reopen, post-COVID-19 operations efforts will have many new protocols like advanced reservations, limited attendance, required face masks, increased cleaning of ride vehicles & queue rails, and putting social-distancing ground markers in queues.

Ah, the dreaded queue. Most people cite queues as the least favorite part of visiting a theme park. This is why “virtual queues” like Disney’s FastPass have been so innovative, in lowering the perceived waiting time for attractions simply because you’re not in an actual line for part of that wait, free to enjoy the rest of the park’s offerings.

After Disney’s FastPass debuted in 1999, a major paradigm shift of theme park design in the last twenty years was creating overall circulation to accommodate more people in the pathways than usual — the logical effect of having less people in lines is that there are more people out and about in the park (which makes the merchandise and food & beverage people very happy — less time in lines means more spending money). In fact, the future of a “queueless park” has always been a bit of a theme park design holy grail — more theory than an actual possibility, as the truth of the matter, is that queues themselves are a very beneficial part of a good theme park experience.

First, they are extremely efficient; in the worst case of an unthemed rectangular switchback queue, you can still fit a ton of people in a small footprint. Even highly thematic, story-driven environments like the incredibly long and very detailed queue of Disney’s Flight of Passage at Animal Kingdom uses clever and efficient architectural and structural design to hold tens of thousands of people off the park’s main walking paths — because most of that queue is designed to sit on top of the neighboring Na’vi River Journey show building.

Second, there’s the biggest benefit: through carefully crafted preshows, queues are great at establishing tone, mood and story for an attraction far in advance of actually riding it. Attractions benefit from the captive audience a queue can create, allowing guests to settle into an attraction’s story and gradually learn more about their role in it.

At Thinkwell’s Animayhem attraction at Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi, the highly detailed queue was a rare opportunity to dig deep into the history of the ACME corporation — with much of that story created specifically for the park, and now considered Looney Tunes canon — to prepare riders for their role as delivery drivers.

Like many other immersive queues, that attraction leverages the actual linear progression of being in a queue to slowly, deliberately deliver story moments through media, scenery, effects and cast member interactions to set the stage for the ride. Just look at Disney’s incredible Rise of the Resistance attraction for proof that a queue isn’t just an unwanted speed-bump before the main attraction — it’s designed to be a key part of the attraction itself, a part that no one wants to miss.

So what happens in a post-COVID world, when theme park designers start eliminating (or at least wholly shortening) the use of densely-packed queue lines? While it’s unlikely that this will lead to a 100% “queueless” park anytime soon, perhaps we can start imagining a different kind of future — one that acknowledges that guests want a “less densely populated queue” to feel comfortable, while combining mobile technology and line-reservation systems into a new form of storytelling that fills the role of an attraction queue.

Two things come to mind:

First, Disney’s interactive game attractions already have guests circulating throughout a park — Sorcerer’s of the Magic Kingdom, Adventureland’s Trading Company and Pirate’s Adventure, Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge Datapad, etc. — all of these are, in essence, digital “crowd controllers” within the small throughput of their own game mechanics, moving groups around from story point to story point, with the back-end system managing crowd flow and dispersion.

Second, immersive theater techniques at shows like Sleep No More manage to keep hundreds of people moving through a large, non-linear physical space, along paths of invisible, self-guided linearity that allow guests to experience their own story. Knott’s Berry Farm has found huge success with these techniques as an attraction in and of itself, with their Ghost Town Alive activation.

What if you combined the best of both of these things — using the entire park as your “queue”, and nodes of experience & interaction as your timed pulse points? That way you still get a preshow to an attraction, but it’s not confined within a queue.

Guests could reserve an attraction time, but rather than show up at the entrance for the attraction, their mobile device would send them on a point-to-point story adventure throughout the park, each node engaging them in a story point through embedded media, effects, or even cast member interactions. This could be a 30-60 minute experience that, in essence, becomes an attraction queue, ending up at the attraction in a carefully managed flow of people with less need to queue up in droves.

The efficiencies of queues are hard to ignore, and the overall capacities of a large-scale roaming interactive experience like this probably wouldn’t compete with that efficiency — but in a post-COVID world, there will be plenty of opportunities to innovate the part of a theme park visit that people enjoy the least — waiting in line.

It looks like a dance chart for our post-COVID world. It’s called the SIX FOOT DANCE.

Brian Bird, Director, Graphic Design, Thinkwell Group

Public venues of all kinds are re-opening to a radically different reality, as people venture out into the public space. Old ways and patterns of doing things are now different, ranging from shopping at the grocery store, to going to a theme park. The world has changed. It matters where you put your feet. How are wayfinding and operational signage adapting to a post-COVID world of public venues?

Traditional wayfinding helps people make choices for where to go and what to do. Signs are placed at key decision points, like at intersecting paths or entry points, and reduce stress by making it clear to visitors what decisions to make and where to go.

But for public spaces like parks, museums, food & beverage and retail locations to reopen, new sign types are required. Signage for social distancing markers on the ground, wearing masks in public, directing one-way traffic flow on narrow pedestrian paths, hand sanitizer stations and instructions for guests to wait in family groups are now becoming common mandates. Guess what? That means a lot more signs.

With public spaces already filled with signage and messages of all kinds, this poses a challenge. Theme parks, museums, live events, and public spaces now grapple with both directing visitors and need to change their behavior. Activities we take for granted are now obsolete or need to change. Waiting in lines for attractions could be things of the past. Teaching people to learn new patterns of behavior requires clear directions and signage.

One danger is that guests get information overload/graphics fatigue in spaces now filled with new yellow, black, and red emergency signage. Too much info, blaring in the same key and intensity, is likely to be tuned out as people become desensitized to the “new normal.” It is visually overwhelming.

This creates a real problem of key messages being missed.

Critical information can be ignored, because our brains are wired to tune things out over time, due to repeated exposure. This happens in physical and digital landscapes, whether we read online dialogue prompts, hear audio messages, or see actual signage. Anthony Vance, the director of the Center of Cyber Security at Fox School, says, “it often has to do with memory… we saw it last time, so we don’t have to scrutinize it so much this time. Sometimes we remember something more than we actually see it.”¹

Our human tendency is to group similar patterns, colors and typography into simple schemas, which helps the mind organize information. In graphics (and psychology) it is called gestalt theory. It is a way of sorting out and classifying the information that surrounds us. While this grouping technique simplifies our life, it can make us miss the visual informational cues that help us navigate. Information that should be differentiated gets lumped in with other directional information that seems similar.

So the challenge is to create wayfinding and operational safety signs that are “sticky” and stand out in visually disruptive environments.

Here are five tips to improving important safety graphics:

1. Fear Overkill

Avoid signs looking like strident warning signs similar to hospitals, chain-link fences on government facilities and institutions or atomic labs (unless required). People get visual fatigue with signs that blare fear in red and black. Worse yet, they tune them out.

2. “Please” vs “Don’t”

Say “Please” instead of saying “DON’T”. Give a positive incentive for the desired behavior by making it more human, instead of a command. People respond to respect.

3. Humor

Humor can attract attention and be sticky, but needs to be tempered with the seriousness of the message. A sign should leave the reader with a smile and still show a sense of care for the topic. Keep calm and carry on.

4. Don’t Cry Wolf

Warning signs can create bad choices when it overstates the risk. “A warning sign can increase danger when it overstates the danger – meaning we take less precautions if our experience and subjective perception is that the danger is usually less than stated on the sign.”^²

5. Branded vs. Off-The-Shelf

One-size-fits-all solutions from code required sign catalogs all look the same. If you need a signage solution in a branded customer facing space, design the sign for that space. Use your brand colors, fonts and imagery, (where possible) to show that this is a deliberate response, not an imposed reaction.

The right next steps:
Creating wayfinding signage as a tool to inform safety decisions is key. If you want to impact behaviors, you will need the right strategy. Assess how your clients, customers, and guests interact with the space, and see what works in similar venues. This will help you to develop a signage plan that will be visible, easy to understand, and differentiated from other competing messages.

If you need our consulting or signage design services, contact Thinkwell’s team of experienced wayfinding and location-based graphics professionals. We are skilled in developing signage solutions customized to your unique needs.

References

Megan Alt , Tuning out Security Warnings, Temple University Fox School of Business, January 28, 2020
Dr Robert Long – PhD, Why Do We Ignore Safety and Warning Signs – Sometimes With Tragic Results? safetyrisk.net

How Will Technologies Shape Our Interactions and Spaces in the Post-Confinement Era?

Hugues Sweeney, President, Thinkwell Studio Montréal

In a post-confinement world, human beings will seek the exact opposite of what will be prescribed to them: in the face of social distancing, we will want to get closer to each other again; at the prohibition of touch, we will want to smell and taste the things we had enjoyed; faced with rules and regulations about where we go and how we move through spaces, we will seek fluidity and freedom. We are, by our very nature, social creatures.

Over the past 20 years, Thinkwell Studio Montréal has evolved the nature of its interactive projects based on the concept of ambient intelligence. The idea is very simple: the interface is not a screen, the interface is the world we live in.

Take, for example, our Renaissance Hotel Experience in New York where the body of each guest becomes the communication device between the hotel and its district. Through a partnership with Time Out Magazine, a digital concierge interacts with each visitor to offer them culinary or cultural activities depending on the weather, their desires, and the amount of time they want to spend walking. Using a 3D camera detection system, we were able to detect multi-user signals (body posture and movement, group behavior, eye tracking, and emotion recognition) and transform the experience of the lobby. Let’s imagine that this experience could be adapted for hospital or university spaces. On a university campus, for instance, a digital concierge would become a mobile engagement platform where every student becomes the heart of her or his own journey; a generative digital assistant in real-time that adapts the student successfully navigate not only the demands of their classes and deadlines but also the social, cultural, and sporting life of the community.

The Illumination of the Jacques Cartier Bridge in Montreal to mark the city’s 375th anniversary was our next step in developing technology and data collection to communicate the emotions and detect the pulse of a city. How can the data of an environment generate an experience without the audience needing to do or touch anything when it’s the audience itself that is at the heart of the show? When the bridge comes to life, what you actually see is the city pulsating in real-time. Thinkwell’s contribution to this celebration has been to use data collection and AI to capture and aggregate all of the relevant data generated by the city’s citizens – traffic conditions, weather, the mood on social media, bike-sharing activity, etc. With physical sensors (radars, weather stations, counting people, etc.) any type of API integration and normalization algorithms, we have the ability to use almost any type of data to modify and influence an experience. This digital platform we have developed for this bridge could be suitablefor the transport or theme park industries, for example. All the data generated by people and systems during a single day in a theme park tells a story: the atmosphere and energy of the crowd, the impact of the weather on people’s experience, the reactions to this or that character in our journey, which guests go where and how they linger (or don’t), what and where they eat and buy, how their pace changes during the day, and more How can this data improve the operationalization and the emotions experienced?

Finally, I would like to share with you a project that is currently in production, and that perfectly illustrates a solution that could be adopted into museums, theme parks, and any other location-based experiences that will be managing crowds for the months and years to come. It’s a collaboration with Parks Canada where visitors will be able to relive the experience of working in Canada’s first steel company which has been closed for 150 years. This application is an interactive, multi-sensory alcove where each visitor becomes one of the workers through the various stages of iron production. The guests are experiencing a “day in the life” of these steelworkers so that they have a “hands-on” impression of the working conditions of the time. This direct experience allows learning through empathy and leads the way for an impactful emotional souvenir. This innovation makes it possible to select and view high-resolution augmented reality content simply by detecting guest gestures. With no devices such as goggles, headsets, telephones, or tablets, our interactive alcove promotes a collective experience. It is the AI we have developed that generates all the content of the experience from the gestures of each visitor. This innovation can be adapted for any museum, healthcare, or airport experience.

Crowd flow management, body language detection, eye tracking, emotional feedback, voice recognition, telepresence, data interpretation, accessibility; for us, interactive technologies are a tool to empower each user to become the storyteller.

As the frontiers between the digital and the physical worlds are melting, we see every guest experience as becoming the actual canvas. We believe the future of spaces is personalized, participative, and generative. Each member of the audience is at the heart of everything we do; physical spaces take the shape of their visitors.

Location-based Entertainment in a Post-COVID-19 World

Craig Hanna

As people consider what the future of location-based entertainment in a post-coronavirus world looks like, owners and operators of theme parks, entertainment venues, and family entertainment centers consider how they will run their businesses in whatever version of the “new normal” we will have.

This white paper was written in collaboration with Cynthia Sharpe, Principal Cultural Attractions, and Dave Cobb, Principal Creative Development.

Please note: This list is not exhaustive. It doesn’t take into consideration what is needed from an employee/cast member/staff standpoint (such as ensuring employees are virus-free before entering the workplace). It does not consider an obvious primary option for operators in a post-COVID-19 world, what we call, “pass to play.” In this (very short) version of this white paper, all visitors would be required to show they had been vaccinated for COVID-19. How this verification would be done so it would be clearly legitimate, easy to view for the park employee, and easy to provide for the guest remains to be seen. (In China, residents there use an app with a QR code that is scanned at the door to verify identity and travel of the individual at most shops, restaurants, and office buildings.)

Here are seven areas for owners/operators to consider when reopening their parks and projects. This is what it’ll take to get open again–for now, not forever–and it’ll require more staff with fewer guests, a proposition that may be hard to swallow.

1. Ticketing, Entry, Security & Park Capacity

Park capacity will be a huge concern in a post-coronavirus world. Crowds on a scale typically seen in the mega parks on both coasts and internationally will need to be adjusted to allow for social distancing. While many theme parks and some larger museums have had success at shifting guests to ticketing in advance via an app or website, many smaller institutions have online ticketing rates at under 10% of all tickets sold.

Not only must physical ticketing, including changing protocols and equipment to support the health and safety of front-line staff, be addressed, but venues will also need to evaluate and potentially redesign their online ticketing experience and platforms to reduce friction and encourage uptake.

In addition to the typical “mag and bag” security (running personal items through a scanner and people through another), security might also need instant forehead temperature scanners to ensure guests are healthy. Guests may need to also wear face masks throughout their visit. Parkwide and abundant hand sanitizer stations–similar to those seen on cruise ships but even more plentiful and obvious–will be necessary.

2. Queues

Near-continuous and visually obvious cleaning of queue railings will be necessary regardless of what methodology is used for attraction queues. With pulsed queues, guests would be given a specific time to return, whether that’s via an app, staggered entry paper ticket, or text message.

When the guest arrives at the attraction they are let in and then they make their way to the load area (either bypassing the queue theming and show areas altogether or allowing for guests to “explore” show-heavy queues).

3. Rides & Attractions

Social distancing will need to happen in rides as well. Ride vehicles may need to be loaded with empty vehicles between guests, while coaster trains will need to consider empty rows and seats between riders, and all vehicles will need extra time to have seats and touchable surfaces sanitized before boarding. These factors alone will greatly reduce the THRC of rides and attractions, which will have a ripple effect up to the original consideration of the overall park capacity.

4. Interactives

In a post-COVID-19 world, a heavy reliance on touch-based interactive screens is a thing of the past. There simply aren’t enough staffers to constantly be wiping down touchscreens between uses, so these interactives will need to be removed, covered, or modified. (Thinkwell Studio Montréal is developing two initiatives to deal with this issue. The first is a gesture-based retrofit that allows guests to interact with touchscreen-based digital displays, eliminating the need for touching a surface at all. The second initiative is called interactive mirroring. It puts the interactive on a guests’ mobile device, allowing them to touch their own device to input to the interactive. Both of these solutions are retrofits to many interactive stations in museums, theme parks, and other applications.)

Beyond touch screens, this is a real opportunity to consider more holistic, universal-design based approaches to interactivity, from how they can more meaningfully leverage machine learning, gesture-based inputs, and voice commands to the material choices themselves. Interactivity isn’t done for, but we’ll see the next big push forward in its design and use.

5. VR Goggles & 3D Glasses

Will people want a device, like a virtual reality goggle set and headgear at all so close to their eyes, noses, and mouths after the world goes back to some form of normal? Even with obvious cleaning, that puts the technology and the multi-use headgear and goggles uncomfortably close to the guests’ faces. What will happen with VR in public spaces?

The same holds true for 3D glasses. With as many attractions installed around the world that rely on 3D, operators need to consider single-use wrapped 3D glasses as expendables. If more than one 3D attraction exists at a park or complex, selling or giving guests a single pair of reusable glasses at the front gate that visitors keep with them would be ideal.

6. Parades, Spectaculars, & Shows

As some parks consider canceling parades, shows, and fireworks spectaculars due to the density of guests for such presentations, there might be ways to allow these things to continue. First, the peak daily in-park capacity comes into consideration again. Group sizes for these entertainments will be different than they used to be, so that will be one element to reduce some concern. Still, what is to keep people apart?

Just look to Japan for one possible solution. When visitors to theme parks in Japan want to see a parade and hold their place in line they put down a towel or blanket they brought with them, then run off to go on a ride or grab a bite to eat (more on eating in the next category). These spots are respected by all guests. Imagine if park staff taped off areas for groups—each appropriately distanced—to create spaces for guests to view parades or nighttime spectaculars. It would require guests to respect those partitions, but it would allow for the parade or spectacular to continue.

For live shows where seating is provided, social distancing is easier by simply putting a cover over seats, closing entire rows, and asking guests to put 2-4 seats between them and the next group. Loading times will need to be extended in order to ensure proper compliance with the plan. Using shows as a way to manage crowds and provide a “pressure valve” remains important.

7. Dining & Shopping

The capacity of shops and restaurants will need to be regulated to ensure social distancing. Marking tables as “out of service” will be required, or simply removing tables and chairs to open up space between diners could be considered as well. Self-service dining (buffets, salad bars, and “fixin’s” stations) will need to be shut for now. Order in advance systems, like those already found in some Disney parks, would help both with reducing time in lines as well as allowing spacing between guests.

Throughout parks, from the main gate to shops and restaurants, a touchless payment solution—like Apple/Google Pay, contactless chips in credit cards that are the standard in many countries outside of the U.S.—will need to be installed and adapted to avoid keypads, card-swiping/insertion, or signing receipts.

With all the considerations to employee and guest safety needed to make a park or entertainment complex safe (both physically and in the minds of the paying public), a lot will need to be done to prepare for reopening in a post-coronavirus world.

Of course, all of these suggestions require the guest to be an active participant in the plans and to willingly comply with these modified operational expectations. Even with all of these challenges and hurdles, we know that location-based social entertainment is going to be more important than ever for our own wellbeing and to help heal our communities. It’s become clear in the past several weeks how beloved these places are and how much we crave social experience.

If you would like to contact Thinkwell to help in your post COVID-19 plans, please contact us.

Diving deep into the detail of Warner Bros. World

Robert Niles, Theme Park Insider

Not since Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter has a theme park provided such detailed fan service as Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi delivers through its six themed lands. The creative team that designed this park, led by Thinkwell’s Craig Hanna & Dave Cobb, has crafted immersive environments that effectively sell the illusion that you are standing in iconic locations such as Superman’s Metropolis and the Roadrunner’s American West… leaving you to forget that you’re actually walking around inside a giant box in the Abu Dhabi desert.

Warner Bros. World is able to sustain this illusion because Thinkwell’s design team has filled the park with detail that reflects and reinforces each land’s IP. While casual visitors will enjoy the beautiful views and impressive facades throughout park, dedicated fans of each franchise will geek out discovering all the thoughtful details and Easter eggs on display.

The press event to which I was invited allowed me less than six hours walking around inside Warner Bros. World — not enough time for a geek like me to appreciate the full extent of detail within park, which might take multiple full-day visits. Fortunately, I spent about 90 minutes of those six hours walking around the park with Dave, who pointed out many of the details that I missed on my first lap.

Let’s start with three examples of what I will call “ley lines” in the park’s lands. Next the entrance of the Acme Co. factory in Cartoon Junction, you will see an Acme rocket, crashed into a window.

But if you look in a straight line the opposite direction, you will see the path that the rocket took through neighboring buildings, leading back to a bundle of Acme rockets, minus the one now sitting in the factory window.

Good designers uses this technique to help remind visitors subconsciously that they are standing within a space bound by the laws of physics. Therefore, even thought it appears fantastic, it is real. (There’s another great example in the exit gift shop of Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean, which depicts the destructive flight of a cannonball.)

You’ll find another exampled in Warner Bros’ World’s Gotham, up in the second-floor windows of the abandoned subway station building that’s now the Hall of Doom. It’s the charred damage of an explosive blast that carries across the land. But my favorite detail from this scene is the decapitated gargoyle next to the charred window.

Want to know what happened to that gargoyle’s head? It’s “for sale” in the Pawn Shop gift store across the street.

And, oh yeah, the batarang that knocked it off is on display in the shop, too. The entire store is filled with the detritus of superhero battles, depicted in DC Comics and the land. The pawn shop’s owner is making his bank by collecting the remains and selling them to fans. (The store IRL is selling T-shirts and other Batman-themed souvenirs. Again, not enough time to fully document!)

You don’t always need to look up to see these design lines. In The Flintstones’ Bedrock, you might notice a set of Mammoth tracks leading from the Warner Bros. Plaza entrance toward the Bedrock River Adventure flume ride. In the middle of the path, the tracks cross a planter. So what’s posted next to those tracks inside the planter?

My favorite attraction in the park was the Animayhem shooter ride, which is set within the Acme Co. building in the factory town of Cartoon Junction. Above the street, you can see the factory gate, emblazoned with the Acme motto, “Caveat Emptor.”

Which is Latin for… “Buyer Beware.”

The queue for Animayhem is a tour of “Mad Men”-inspired, mid-century-styled Acme design studio, where you find fan service gems such as the motivational slogan, “Quality is our #1 Dream!”

And look what form the company has run out of on its paperwork table.

Deep in the extended queue of the ride you will find the Acme Co.’s awards cabinet.

Um… not much there except cobwebs, right? Well, there is this:

It’s the “Caveat Emptor Award” for “Achievements in Legalese”… and it is adorned with an asterisk. Brilliant.

Dave explained the unpublished history of Cartoon Junction. It’s an old railway town, which made it an attractive site for the Acme factory, which would ship its defective products all over the country from here. The mansion at the end of the town was owned by the railway baron, who filled it with collectibles from around the world. He’s long passed, and now the abandoned mansion is haunted museum, making it the perfect location for Scooby-Doo! The Museum of Mysteries.

The backstory for the Scooby Doo building reminded me of the story of Harrison Hightower and Tokyo DisneySea’s Tower of Terror, BTW. But the Scooby-Doo ride is filled wit fan service, as it tracks the story beats and conventions of Scooby-Doo episodes, including a chase across a hallway, Shaggy looking for food, and finally pulling the mask of the perp while he complains about “you meddling kids.” If you’ve never seen an episode of Scooby-Doo, you can appreciate the amusing dark ride. But if you are a fan, you can appreciate that the ride’s designers have shown that they are fans who get what this franchise is all about, too.

One more detail in Cartoon Junction. Here’s a billboard for another Acme product posted next to the portal into Gotham.

Here are three of many moments of fan service within Batman’s hometown. A wanted poster for Joe Chill, who killed Batman’s parents:

Graffiti from the Court of Owls, who are “always watching.”

And the take a look at the domed roof on the abandoned subway station building that is now the Hall of Doom, the Legion of Doom’s headquarters. If you watched the Super Friends animated TV series in the 1970s, you might recognize the homage to the Hall of Doom from that show.

Next door in Metropolis, the inside of the Hall of Justice will leave you feeling like you are standing within the Pantheon of gods.

The queue of the Justice League ride lies on the far side of the Superman statue. Within it you will find boards that explain who all these superheroes are, for visitors not familiar with the IP. But longtime fans might recognize what is revealed later in the queue, that the “villain” the superheroes are fighting in this trackless dark ride is Black Mercy, which first appeared in the Superman comics in 1985.

Outside the Hall of Justice, note the paper for sale inside the news box on the street. It apparently references a moment within the ride (which I did not get to experience).

And the directory for the office building (facade) next to the Hall of Justice includes names pulled from DC Comics, including Emil Hamilton, Starrware Industries, and Cale-Anderson Pharmaceuticals.

I didn’t get a photo, but I also wanted to note Dave’s backstory for why the Marvin the Martian and The Jetsons rides are located within the Roadrunner’s Dynamite Gulch. The IRL reason is that these are carryovers from a sci-fi themed land that didn’t make the cut in the design process, but that the developers nevertheless wanted to save. So how to explain their presence in the American West. Well, that part of the land is its “Area 51 1/2,” the secret government facility to house the aliens and time travelers who crash landed here.

Nice. Even that loose end has been pulled tight.

In all, I couldn’t find anything haphazard in Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi. There was no surface unfinished (though two rides did remain incomplete in that they were not sufficiently tested to be open for the preview event.) Warner Bros. World offers a thematic consistency in its placemaking that I have not seen on a park-wide level since Tokyo DisneySea.

Right now, based on what I saw in my brief visit, I would place Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi among the top five theme parks in the world for consistently convincing placemaking in its lands, joining Tokyo DisneySea, Disneyland in California, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and Universal’s Islands of Adventure.

This article was originally published here.

The times they are a changin’

Cynthia Sharpe & Dave Cobb

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen cultural touchstones undergo earthshaking change. From the announcement—quickly followed by the unveiling at Disneyland Paris — that the Pirates of the Caribbean ride would no longer feature the “Bride Auction” scene to the undeniable diversity in the A Wrinkle in Time trailer to the announcement of Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Dr Who, we’ve seen all manner of assumptions get toppled. And as is de rigueur these days for announcements of this type, we’ve seen an onslaught of reaction, both positive and negative, online. Much of the negative reaction, in all three cases, goes back to remarkably similar foundations: that it’s not how a given creative work was originally envisioned and that this is yet another example of political correctness taken too far.

At Thinkwell, we say: bring it on. We’re delighted to see more mindful and better representation in creative works. Storytelling, in our minds, is better when it’s not exclusionary or needlessly hurtful. Culture changes. Mindsets evolve. This isn’t a matter of being politically correct; it’s a matter of us, as a society, being more mindful, inclusive, and welcoming than we were when an intellectual property was initially developed decades prior. And thus, the things we have grown to love with the warm fuzzy halo of nostalgia may not look as fantastic in the clear light of day when we actually take a step back and think deeply about what these creative works tell people about our values and what’s acceptable.

It’s not how it was created to be, it’s not what Walt made. We get it. We love what we love, we cling to the good ol’ days, the touchstones of our youth. Some of us are still bitter about the removal of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride from the Magic Kingdom in Florida, for instance. Pirates, however, is a great example of needing to change. It’s not a historical treatise on piracy in the Caribbean (if it were, it’s doing a really poor, whitewashed job of it), so the complaints that it’s somehow historically “accurate” to have a bride auction fall flat. It’s meant as escapism, as a created world, not a historical diorama. With the heightened unreality and stylization of the feature films—which prominently have female pirates in them—it’s a created world that Disney is inviting guests to be a part of. We see this beyond the ride and movies, too, from “Pirates in the Caribbean” on the cruise ships to the Pirates League makeover experience at Magic Kingdom to the Jake and the Never Land Pirates TV series. Disney wants guests to envision themselves as part of this world.

By that logic, of course the bride auction is overdue for reinvention. It’s emblematic of violence against women, a moment that many a parent has cringed at and distracted their children away from as, societally, we become more aware of just what this scene is telegraphing. There’s fat shaming, loss of agency, abuse, enslavement, all things that, again, we didn’t think twice about a couple of decades ago. Those things don’t belong in a creative world Disney is inviting everyone to be a part of. We know better now. And so, our experiences need to also be better.
We already see this push to “be better” in action in a variety of ways in other attractions and events at both Disney and Universal.

Disney has increased diversity and representation in its IP, from the casting choices in A Wrinkle in Time to the mixed ethnicity in Miles From Tomorrowland, Doc McStuffins embracing of a middle class African American family to the Latina Elena of Avalor. While the Harry Potter movies featured a white lead trio, the “world” of Harry Potter itself is diverse by design; Universal upholds this sense of being welcoming to all, “you can be a part of this world” strategy in its Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Both park empires have become more forward thinking in their marketing and events, too: Universal particularly excels at appealing to the large Latinx market in southern California (even incorporating a maze based on the La Llorona legend into its Hollywood Horror Nights) and Disney has gone from appeasing offended heterosexual men who happened to be in the park on the unofficial “Gay Days” and distancing themselves from the event to embracing it entirely (down to rainbow-themed merch in the stores, of course). These are all great things, which continually expand the worlds of Universal and Disney to let more and more people be right there in the heart of the story, not just on the fringes. And we’re eager to see how this continues to play out, from Universal’s Nintendoland to the potential for full-on immersion in the Star Wars universe at various Disney Parks (especially given the increasing prominence of women and people of color in the IP).

So we see the upgrades—and let us be clear, we see these as upgrades, not changes—to Pirates of the Caribbean as the next step in this march toward being better and doing better. In a world where Disney is encouraging little girls to dream of being a princess, like Elena, or a pediatrician, like Doc McStuffins, or even dress up as a pirate themselves at the Pirates League experience, it only stands to reason that they’d elevate the representation of women from victim to victor, from princess to general. Long live the Redheaded Pirate, long may she reign.
Image courtesy of HarshLight on Flickr

Coney Island Astroland

Andrea Yoo

If Stillwell Avenue is the heart of Coney Island, then Astroland is the adrenaline, filling the body of visitors with thrills, excitement, and long-term memories. Astroland is first and foremost, fun. It is a collection of unique amusements, selected and designed exclusively for this place. Like Stillwell, this won’t be a recreation of the old Astroland, Luna Park or Dreamland. This is a new park with an old soul. Everything will be new, shiny, and safe, but also slightly familiar like a good friend’s child who bears a striking resemblance to the old man, but burns with youthful energy and just can’t seem to keep still.

The collection of rides will appeal to a broad audience, from the thrills of a coaster, to the huddle-up chills of a dark ride, to the safe, make-believe flat rides for the little ones. Some of these rides will be totally unique to Coney Island, designed exclusively for this location. Others will be the next generation of Coney Classics, using state-of-the-art technologies and safety features. What makes this Astroland special, is the sum of its parts and the rich environment in which they are set. The rides will be integrated into a single design vision. This won’t be a gaudy, rag-tag state fair midway comprised of generic, off-the-shelf rides. These rides will belong here and only here.

Chris Parypa Photography / Shutterstock.com

There are other aspirations to consider for Astroland. There are greenery and water features throughout the location (this is after all, a park). There will be a retractable cover over most of it to extend its operation throughout the year. The cover is in place during the winter and in inclement weather, but Astroland yearns to be outside, so the roof slides away whenever possible. A permanent circus just next door on Surf Avenue exudes its escapist personality throughout the park and provides a visual anchor on the north. The Boardwalk and the beckoning beach are accessible from the opposite side, where Astroland’s rocket shines anew. Hotels, retail, and residential spaces are a necessity that may intersect the area, but this is the amusement center first and foremost, but more importantly, it’s Coney Island’s amusement center, and it takes its responsibility seriously.