Trend Report Deep Dive: Taming the Algorithm

Jeremy Thompson

The “Algorithm.”

As a colloquial term for the recommendation engines responsible for customizing many of our online search results and social media feeds, the ‘Algorithm’ has, perhaps surprisingly, emerged as one of the more controversial forms of artificial intelligence (A.I) technologies within public discourse.

Developed as a tool to help people find what they’re looking for faster and discover new things matched to their interests, the ‘Algorithm’ has also been criticized for the way it can lead to self-reinforcing consumption habits, particularly within social media, which could partially explain trends for political polarization and extremist ideologies. Despite these misgivings, most people still use (and even enjoy) at least some forms of the ‘Algorithm’ as part of their daily online experiences, and the technology is even becoming more integrated into many physical location-based experiences as well, a trend that is unlikely to reverse.

Thinkwell’s 6th Annual Guest Experience Trend Report was an opportunity to predict and envision new ways we expect to see A.I. technologies (such as recommendation algorithms) become incorporated into theme parks, museums, and resorts. Yet, more importantly, it was also a chance to reflect and listen to what our guests actually want from these technologies and experiences.

As part of the trend report survey of over 1,300 people, participants were given hypothetical concepts of A.I. technologies applied to theme parks, museums, and resorts, and were asked to rate their favorite and least favorite aspects of the experience. Among these concepts were several that incorporated recommendation algorithms as part of the guest experience:

A theme park could eliminate queues with virtual queuing and A.I. recommended scheduling.
A museum could create a personalized digital tour based on the visitor’s interests.
A resort during a busy holiday could automatically schedule reservations and activities that guests might like when they become available.

Participants rated all these concepts positively overall, each with its own particular reasons for why they liked it. Yet when asked about potential concerns with these concepts, one consistent trend emerged across all the data:

Guests want control over their experiences.

For all of these three concepts, the most disliked aspect was the technology’s proposed ability to structure the guest experience and make plans for them, which was perceived to reduce guests’ sense of personal agency and spontaneity. These concerns were shared by between 41% to 51% of participants in each category.

Interestingly, this concern was separate from the participant’s confidence in a recommendation algorithm’s ability to accurately make good recommendations. For the resort concept, 50% of respondents said they wanted more control over their plans, while only 33% reported that they didn’t trust the algorithm to make good recommendations. This may suggest there’s a subset of people who expect to enjoy what the system recommends but will still dislike the fact that they weren’t given the freedom to choose it for themselves. A further 37% of participants specifically called out the ability to discover new activities as a top reason in favor of the concept.

Indeed, when separated from the mandatory planning aspects, participants responded quite positively to the technology’s ability to suggest recommendations based on their interests. While 48% of respondents to the museum concept were concerned about their ability to freely wander (the most common concern), 53% of participants still selected “I’ll see unique exhibits more related to my interests” as a positive reaction. This feature gained the single highest positive response rate out of any of the multiple museum concepts in the survey. While visitor attractions always strive to offer guests as much choice as possible, with increasing demand for quality guest experiences, it has become necessary for capacity management systems such as virtual queues and pre-planned booking to limit guests’ options.

Online tickets for museums often mean committing to a specific date; popular resort activities require advanced reservations; and virtual queues for attractions often assign limited return windows. Recommendation algorithms can help these systems offer guests better choices when faced with limited options, but it can also turn guests against the recommendations entirely if they come to associate it with the technology that is limiting their ability to engage the way they want.

Recommendation technologies applied to location-based experiences should always be used to empower guests. For the near-future, it’s important to give guests a reason to trust the ‘Algorithm’ as a way to discover better experiences that are already available to them. If restrictions are necessary, do so in a transparent way that allows guests to retain as much control over their experience as possible, without asking any more from guests than what is absolutely needed.

Looking further ahead, it’s possible that A.I. technology will become sufficiently advanced so these recommendations and restrictions can become effectively invisible to guests. Imagine, with detailed probabilistic forecasting, an A.I. system could figure out for each guest the most likely paths they’ll take and decisions they’ll make, and hold several ‘phantom’ reservations for their most likely desired options. These invisible digital reservations could be in a state of constant reassignment by the system as demand fluctuates and the algorithm updates its recommended forecast with new real-time data. A ‘phantom’ reservation would only become tangible and activated the moment the guest arrives at the restaurant, attraction, or special exhibit… just as if it had been the guest’s spontaneous choice all along.

Obviously, there are many logistical and technological challenges to overcome in order to make this vision a reality. But the development of A.I. technologies won’t be slowing down. As experience designers, it’s essential to do our own forecasting of future possibilities, and that includes understanding what our guests actually want. It’s clear that artificial intelligence can’t become a substitute for human decision-making. As humans, we all want to be treated with respect for the choices we make by our own free agency. Sometimes, that also means relying on a trusted recommendation.

Trend Report Deep Dive: A Look at The Bias In Artificial Intelligence

Jeremy Thompson

The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) has opened a window in time to discuss, debate, and dream of the many ways this technology could impact all aspects of our life. Being on the precipice of an era where machines can emulate human intelligence is also cause for reflection on questions and issues around what it means to be human.

The 6th Annual Thinkwell Trend Report isn’t just about the future possibilities of A.I. technologies within location-based experiences, but also about the realities and challenges that face the people that use A.I. The survey and report were created during a challenging year which laid bare many of the ways in which different human identities can lead to vastly divergent lived experiences. We saw evidence of deep divisions and conflicts along racial, social, socio-economic and gendered lines in recurrent marches and protests, in disturbing revelations of harassment and assault, in the way a worldwide pandemic proved disproportionately deadly based on age, ethnicity, and socio-economic status, and the continuing and widening gap between different economic groups.

For these reasons we felt it was important that this Guest Experience Trend Report on Artificial Intelligence include questions within its survey of over 1,300 people that could evaluate the ways that race, gender, and age can influence one’s general attitude towards (and direct experiences with) emerging A.I. technologies. The results from this set of survey questions were then summarized in two Data Analysis articles accompanying the main trend report.

Bias in A.I. – How have different people experienced bias in A.I. technologies, and how would they suggest addressing the issue?
Generation Gaps – To what degree does age determine attitudes towards A.I. technologies?

Among some of the key findings of these reports:

Racial identity of respondents contributed up to a 15% difference in reported first-hand experience of bias, as well as general concern about bias in A.I. technologies.
- Asians reported both the most concern and direct experience, while white respondents reported the least.
Men and women exhibited similar levels of concern about Artificial Intelligence bias. Men were more positive about reporting personal examples of bias they experienced than women, who were more uncertain about their experiences of potential bias.
Younger people were both more concerned about the challenges of A.I. (and supportive of regulating this technology), yet were also more optimistic about its future benefits than people from older generations.

The implications of this data should have a profound effect on the process of designing for social experiences that involves A.I. technology. For example, facial recognition technologies have been touted for their ability to provide more personalized, seamless, or interactive guest experiences, yet emerging evidence of their uneven performance across ranges of skin tone and race- or gender-linked facial characteristics may unfairly target or exclude certain guests. Additionally, the very presence of this technology may trigger or enhance existing concerns of guests. The data also suggests that younger audiences in particular may demand more transparency about how A.I. technologies are used as part of the guest experience.

Being anti-bias requires a proactive approach. We at Thinkwell believe that inclusive design must engage every member of the design and development team, and that the team must include people of diverse backgrounds, identities, and viewpoints at all levels of seniority within the company structure. To be proactive in this belief, Thinkwell has established its own Diversity & Inclusion Council. The Council is tasked with continuing to identify not just challenges, but possible solutions, and with the goal of continuing to empower diverse voices within our company and within our industry. A small but important aspect of that empowerment includes collecting the data necessary to better understand and work against racism, sexism, and ageism within the experience design industry, a task that the Trend Report helps to further illuminate.

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.

The Museum Exhibit Design: Education Should Be Fun

Thinkwell Group

Have you ever thought about a trip to a museum as the equivalent of eating your leisure-time vegetables? It’s good for you, but it’s not always the most palatable option on your plate. It’s vital that museums offer something more than just education. That they offer fun and excitement and inspiration and connection in order to avoid being relegated to brussels sprouts status. So when we start thinking about museum exhibit design and how to tell a story that appeals as it educates, it can be as simple as beginning where you would with any story: the who, the what, and the where.

Let’s start with the last of those: the where. Creating a sense of place isn’t just for theme parks, and museum exhibits don’t have to be displayed within formless or nonspecific gallery spaces. Giving guests a sense of location, an environment to explore, can transform their serving of educational goodness into a journey of discovery, even an adventure. Take, for example, our approach at NatureQuest, the children’s exhibit at Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta, Georgia. This indoor-for-outdoor space recreates the different environmental zones of Georgia, populated with species-accurate depictions of plants, animals, even the correct sounds of bird calls and other wildlife for that region. In this space, rather than being told about the estuary or swamp or mountain caves, kids and their parents get to become the discoverers, the scientists spotting species in their natural habitats and learning about them from their environments.

Next, let’s think about the who. While the where can immerse guests in a time or location, ultimately people connect with people. It’s the personal stories that provide unique moments of identification and communication between guests and the educational content. In museum exhibit design, this can mean creating opportunities to get inside someone else’s head, building empathy and understanding. At the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, we wanted to give guests a chance to see and hear how Nixon thought — in his own words — while balancing it with outside perspectives and responses. We recreated the Lincoln Sitting Room, Nixon’s favorite room in the White House, and placed a statue of the president at work in his chair, scribbling away on a notepad. Projected words animate onto the wall (real quotes from his own handwritten notes) as guests hear Nixon’s voice, from later interviews, narrating what he thought about a particular issue. The windows of the room were filled with media of news reports, commentary, even protests, giving a glimpse of how the outside world responded to Nixon’s actions.

Last of all, the what. In the context of museum exhibit design, the “what” that we’re specifically interested in are the artifacts — the real, authentic pieces of history (or geology or whatever field our museum is focused on) that tell a story with their physical presence. First, it’s important that you are choosing an artifact that has significance and a story to tell — you’re not just displaying it for the sake of having something in a case. At the CIA Museum¹ for example, the letter written to his son by a young American officer at the close of WWII might move guests in its own right, aided by the writer’s later role as Director of Central Intelligence. But the fact that the letter is written on a captured piece of Adolph Hitler’s personal stationery makes it unforgettable. Just as vital as what it is, though, is how the artifact is displayed: are you giving it the kind of context that makes it come to life? Can we see, through its environment or displays, how it was used or where it came from? Can guests touch or interact with it? It’s one thing to be able to see a rock that was brought back from the lunar surface, but to be able to touch one — as you can at Space Center Houston, among other locations — gives you a chance to physically connect with history, or even the universe.

Who, what, and where. When you take it back to the basics of storytelling, it becomes clear that museum exhibit design can be both delicious and nutritious — the best of both worlds.²

A Preview of Theme Parks Tomorrow, Today

Jason McManus

How Orlando’s reopening attractions can give us a view into designing guest experiences for the future.

As most of us in the attractions industry have discovered, it is very difficult to predict how the effects of COVID-19 will affect attractions in the future. What will guests both expect and feel comfortable with as we navigate the years ahead, and how will attractions respond to the evolving needs of their audience? These are valid questions that will have profound results within many different experiential and guest-focused attractions.

As the Orlando attractions market begins to carefully reopen amid a vast array of both uncertainty and cautious optimism, I had the opportunity to visit some of these attractions to see these responses first-hand. In many ways the experience met or exceeded my expectations of what could be done by operators in terms of safety and assurance.

What surprised me, however, was just how much I would learn concerning the evolutions of guest interaction, and how a global pandemic might be the catalyst for challenging ideas we have long seen as principles and standards of both attraction design and operation. The experience, as a whole, left me encouraged by the level of guest participation in an evolving environment, while inspiring some ideas as to how we can rise to the challenge of delivering new and engaging experiences built for a post-COVID world.

First, the expected: It is a given, considering the reality of the situation, that many levels of sanitary practices and sanitization would be adopted. At all three major attractions, Disney, Universal, and SeaWorld, both guest-facing elements like hand-sanitizer and hand-washing stations, and backstage elements such as ride vehicle sanitization, were standard and obvious. While all of these were currently temporary additions within the theme park, one can expect that thematically appropriate versions of each of these will soon become a permanent fixture in any key spaces in parks and attractions where contact is unavoidable.

There were some more subtle changes as well. At the Disney parks, for instance, each of the trash cans had their lids secured open with zip ties, a move to protect guests from touching a potentially contaminated surface. I wonder if this will be a temporary change, or if we will eventually see a change to the decades-old and ubiquitous “theme park-style” trash can.

Where I expected some friction was with social distancing. “Surely, this is going to be the sticking point,” I thought. I was floored to find that not only were guests fully participating in the social distancing six feet of separation or more rules posted, but guests were turning it into a game. I saw countless guests who were entertaining themselves by standing on each distance indicator as if it were a position on an oversized board game. Even where there were not clearly identified markers, guests self-determined the need for distance between groups in both pre-shows and queues. Throughout my experience, I had many conversations with other guests who felt that the social spacing, and NOT the overall level of crowds, was the main contributing factor to what they considered a pleasant experience. It is a fair hypothesis, however it is hard to tell if this would still be true on the busiest of operating days.

A change in cast member distribution was also evident throughout every type of experience. From food & beverage through load stations and queues, cast member positioning was adapted to assist guests with separation and sanitation. Though, as an unintended benefit, the changed positioning actually seemed to help guide guest movement better and felt closer to the regular cadence of helpful personnel one might expect to encounter in a hotel or hospitality setting. It may not have been the most operationally efficient, but the impact on guest experience was exponential.

Another interesting development was the level to which guests were adopting mobile services as their main interface for payment, ticketing, and more. There seemed to be little to no friction with digital park maps, and the recent shift to mobile-only ordering for food & beverage at the Disney and Universal parks did much in the ways of reducing the need for queue lines or large waiting areas in front of locations. In several instances, I saw guests utilizing mobile features in queue lines as a game to pass the time and enhance their experience. Queue lines in general just seemed to function better and were more engaging once guests understood that they wouldn’t stand in one spot for more than a minute or so. At the Disney parks, no attractions were currently offering FastPass+ (Disney’s virtual queue reservation system) and I didn’t hear a single complaint. Not one.

What I saw on my recent visit was just a snapshot in time of an evolving situation. Certainly there are some extraordinary elements that need to be considered. However, what I did see was an evolving image of guest preferences and behaviors in relation to an adapting theme park environment, and the results were not just promising in terms of participation, but revealing in how we can design spaces within attractions that actually give guests the things that matter to them. Should we rethink the amount of space we give groups for pre-shows and theaters? Break single queues up into multiple pathways that encourage constant flow and movement? Design newly integrated elements for rest, hygiene, and hospitality? All of these are interesting considerations we can take as we design both safe and satisfying experiences for tomorrow’s attractions.

All Your Favorite Attractions Are Problematic

Cynthia Sharpe

First, it was the rework of the Redhead in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Now, Disney has announced that they will be replacing Disneyland’s Splash Mountain with a Princess and the Frog themed attraction, which picks up after the end of the movie and weaves a new story (akin to the Frozen ride reskin of Maelstrom at EPCOT, versus the movie recap experience of Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure).

Obviously, no matter what warm, fuzzy memories we have of Splash Mountain, no matter how much Disney tried to round the edges of the overt racism, the reality is, it’s based on such a stupendously racist and white supremacist storyline that Disney refuses to air Song of the South and so boy howdy was it beyond time for it to go. One of the chief problems we encounter as creatives in location-based entertainment is this clash of memory, “that’s just how it was back then,” “it will cost so much/upset the fans to change it” versus the knowledge that it’s harmful and needs to change.

We get it. It’s an investment. A huge one. Just like any of a number of other resorts, rides, shows, and exhibitions around the U.S., not to mention the world. To give them their due, Disney also has amply demonstrated they know how to concede curatorial authority, as it were. Their intentionality around Expedition Everest as well as core elements of the original Animal Kingdom demonstrates it can be done. Joe Rohde, in his talk at the 2012 THEA awards by the Themed Entertainment Association spoke at length about the Aulani design process, how authenticity and respect were placed ahead of ease and preconceived notions, and actually how easy design decisions can be when they are strongly rooted in authentic, clear direction informed by the actual people and place and not one’s own hot take on the source material.

Don’t get us wrong: we are, no matter how fond our memories are of Splash Mountain, heartened to see Disney take this step. Reworking Splash Mountain is also an absolute rabbit hole (pun not really intended) because once your eyes are opened to the ways – both subtle and categorically unsubtle – that racism pervades narrative tropes and beloved experiences, it’s overwhelming. The soft-focus memories of Dumbo crash up against the knowledge that the lead crow is quite literally named Jim Crow. As you eyeroll at the corny humor of your Jungle Cruise skipper, your boat bobs around a corner and to a horrifyingly racist vignette. It goes on and on: Peter Pan’s original source material was dizzyingly racist about Indigenous people and the ride does not shy away from it; the Enchanted Tiki Room falls into the trap of so much white-washed, culturally-appropriative Polynesia theming; the European children on It’s a Small World are white as can be (and there are Middle Eastern kids on flying carpets); the Africa outpost in Epcot reduces a vibrant swath of an entire continent to a beverage stop, trinket market, and a few drums. These experiences have always been harmful, and it’s an insidious outcome of white privilege to be blissfully unaware of it. Once you realize it, that bell can’t be ‘unrung’. You’re aware. And it’s now incumbent on you to not slip back into now willful complacency.

This isn’t just a Disney problem. This is an everywhere problem. Racism is everywhere. The normalization of racist tropes is everywhere, from what we collect and how we display it in museums to countless “Wild West” zones in amusement parks to big iconic experiences like Splash Mountain, and thousands of moments in between. We are guilty of it in our body of work, too – there are projects we’ve worked on that, in hindsight, we should have done a little differently. When it comes to what stories are told in our parks and our museums, a large part of that is who’s had a place at the table, for the majority of our industry’s history, to make creative decisions, to greenlight and fund projects, to decide what has value or make a team pause and take stock of what they’re really saying with the stories they’re telling and how they’re telling them. It’s affected by processes and policies, too. At Thinkwell, we’re keenly aware that no matter how good our intentions in the past, we have fallen short at times, and it’s on us to examine what we do and how we do it to ensure we don’t perpetuate racism in our work.

The harmful experiences in location-based entertainment of the past 20-30 years that we cannot unsee weren’t done out of a ‘let’s be racist, it’ll be great!’ mentality. We’re not condemning the creative minds behind these places or experiences. It’s unlikely that the team behind Port Orleans Riverside, as they designed cast member costumes in time for its 1992 opening, thought through the ramifications of their choices in a resort designed to evoke the grand “big houses” of plantations in the Louisiana Bayou (in fact, the resort was initially named Dixie Landings). But the reality is, their ‘mousekeeping’ staff is largely BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), and they’re wearing outfits evocative of enslaved people who were assigned to “the big house”’ on a plantation. If you want a real wake-up call moment, stand on one of the lovely, immaculately landscaped paths in the beautiful antebellum south themed resort at shift change, and watch the staff emerge from the stately, pillared houses.

The re-envisioning of Splash Mountain isn’t reactionary: it is another step in a major, beloved, respected company’s commitment to do better, even at the expense of angered fans and significant capital expenditure. In the current economic climate, spending money to redo existing things probably doesn’t sound like the best plan. But we are the makers of dreams. We are the creators of heroes and villains, we breathe life into whole new worlds and reinvigorate beloved places. Why shouldn’t we spend the time, effort, and yes money, making the places we already have welcoming and inclusive? Why shouldn’t we say ‘this is racist, and it’s wrong of us to keep putting it out there for the public as entertainment or something to aspire to, so we’re fixing it’?

Congratulations to Disney for acknowledging it’s time to change. We look forward to seeing what they – and the rest of the industry, ourselves included – tackle next.

1. Except in Japan, as that park is not owned by Disney and thus they do not have direct control over its content to make a change such as this.

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.

Outdoor Events in the Post-COVID-19 World

Cory Watson, Vice President & Executive Producer, Thinkwell Media

As the world begins to re-emerge from COVID-19 quarantine, we see a resurgence in demand for shared, in-person experiences that follow strict health and safety protocols. Both the Pop-up and Touring Outdoor Event sectors offer opportunities for innovation to meet the needs of the “new normal” era.

The way forward begins with accepting and leaning into that new reality. As the world reopens, maintaining health and safety for all guests will be top priority. But that won’t diminish the need to serve people what they crave: time with others, whether that’s the guests they go out with, or the performers they come to see. In-person experiences can provide a regenerative break from lockdown-induced “screen-burnout” and physical isolation.

Outdoor events in particular are poised for a strong comeback–given the CDC’s latest guidelines indicating that outdoor air circulation mitigates virus transmission–and are thus particularly ripe for reinvention.

There are many possibilities, but let’s look at just one example. Imagine a fresh, traveling take on the (mostly extinct) drive-in movie experience.

Is there consumer appetite for a drive-in revival in a fixed, year round location? That’s uncertain. But the appeal of a traveling show that comes to town during certain times of year is hard to question, with the accompanying aura it brings of a special, communal, limited time offering. Call it the Drive-In Spectacular.

Imagine harnessing the safety of people gathering together in their cars, with the retro nostalgia of drive-ins of old. Take it further and add a dedicated app for ordering gourmet food-truck meals delivered to your spot by drone or P.P.E.-wearing car hops. Pipe state-of-the-art sound via mobile devices directly into car sound systems. Most importantly, expand the canvas beyond just movies to encompass music concerts, theatrical productions, dance performances, and more. Create “safe space” assigned parking spots, where each group of guests or family could put out beach chairs or stand and tailgate around their car, while maintaining a safe distance from their fellow guests in adjacent, marked off berths.

Leverage the live element and liberate actors and performers to circulate in between the cars at a safe distance, adding more levels of immersive interaction beyond the traditional (and static) stage/audience relationship. Populate the area with multiple massive screens to ensure optimal sight lines for the movie or show taking place. Brand the festival and create an exclusive fan-event atmosphere.

Live shows during the day, movies at night, make it an experiential festival that refreshes and renews, but this time all from the safety of a mobile protective pod you already own: your car.

That’s just one of countless ideas for the outdoor event space. Here’s another: how about utilizing the latest lidar scanning and auto-calibrating projector technology to bring mapping shows to your favorite local landmarks–or even into your neighborhood? Ticketed admission to an experience that would display breathtaking visual and audio content–always mapped around a different location–making every performance unique and highly shareable.

Specially designed media could allow local artists to contribute, or even kids in the audience who submit work in advance, adding to the memorable custom feel of the show. Come away with your own digitally unlocked video recording of the experience as keepsake, or an accompanying AR app that lets you take a portion of the show you saw and overlay it into your own home environment.

Shifting our lens from the outdoor to the indoor pop-up realm, we can see another unique set of opportunities in the post-quarantine era. Locking people up in confined spaces doesn’t sound that appealing or safe right now. Why not evolve the traditional escape room into an ‘escape adventure’ or ‘escape quest’?

Exploit disused mall or other retail space to create a multi-room, pulsed experience where self-selected groups move through multiple spaces. They’ll solve contact-free riddles, games, and puzzles and try to spot “I Spy”-style clues in the designed spaces around them. Audio-visual prompts texture the guest journey and keep them on their toes. Remove the crammed together, let’s-touch-everything aspect and open the experience up to become more of an on-the-move challenge. Play to the need for masks indoors and weave it into the narrative — perhaps guests are moving through an archeological site where nothing can be disturbed, or part of a medical survey team investigating a biological weapons facility leak.

When we look at all these opportunities for re-envisioning what we do, one thing is clear. Continuous innovation is going to be required if we want to survive and thrive on the uncertain but hopeful road ahead.

Virtual Reality & The New Compromise

Matt Parker, Creative Director, Thinkwell Group

A Vision, Compromised

For years, the promise of digital immersion and alternate realities permeated its way into the zeitgeist of popular futurism. Yet it wasn’t until American entrepreneur Palmer Luckey revived the VR industry with the release of the Oculus Rift in 2012, paving the way for a new standard in enterprise, education, and entertainment. Virtual reality promised a bold experience, an inclusive platform, and a seamless bridge connecting our world to the virtual one. Companies from around the world sprung up overnight, chasing trends and financial forecasts, hoping to take home a piece of the prize. Fast-forward to 2020, and while virtual reality continues to spark interest in enthusiasts and hard-core gamers, it remains stifled by a range of detractors such as cost, comfort, locomotion, and hygiene.

If ever there was a concern about the hygienic nature of virtual reality, COVID-19 has shattered consumer confidence and left owners and operators reticent in the face of future development. However, virtual reality will not end with COVID, but instead will find new opportunities in a post-pandemic world, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the technology as it evolves into its next chapter.

Lessons Learned

In 2019, Thinkwell Group opened the first of its kind, indoor, vertical theme park, Lionsgate Entertainment World, in Zhuhai, China. With three, purpose-built, virtual reality attractions, we learned a great deal from our in-field observations and guest reviews about the benefits and challenges of virtual reality.

Immersion is king. Yet, transportive environments are only a piece of the puzzle. True immersion stems from guest embodiment and real-world physics. Whether wielding a flashlight, steering a motorbike, or solving puzzles, every interaction must carry the burden of the real world or risk breaking the illusion. In addition, real-time media proved far more engaging than pre-rendered content, allowing guests the opportunity to take agency of their world and create a personalized and repeatable experience.

Conversely, we learned about some of the limitations and challenges from our creative partners and guests. Accessibility remains a constant goal for designers, ensuring that all guests can experience safe and comfortable moments together. However, due to the size, weight and form factor of many early generation headsets, guests with limited visual acuity or physical mobility found it challenging to maintain an optimal posture or retain a clear, focused, and immersive visual environment throughout the experience. Thankfully, there continues to be a wave of emerging technology that caters to guest accessibility. While many are still in their infancy, we know that these challenges are not insurmountable, but rather, they are stepping stones along the path to an optimal guest experience.

Looking Ahead

As we look ahead to a post-COVID world, there will undoubtedly be a shift in education, enterprise and entertainment. From visualization in the form of remote collaboration, to annotation in the form of real-time, remote instructions, to storytelling, and a new wave of haptic immersion; students, educators, and professionals are at the precipice of a new era in experiential engagement thanks to advances in emerging technologies.

When it’s time to untether and venture outside, additional emerging technologies can transform public spaces without the use or necessity of limiting hardware. Technologies such as mapped projection, mixed reality glasses, and digital characters or environments can enhance our physical surroundings without the use of single-serving, cumbersome devices. However, there remain three key takeaways for any activation or attraction to remain successful: friendly competition, inclusivity and immersion.

In the days, months and years to follow, social etiquette will shift, industries will evolve and technology will advance. We will remove our masks, we will interact, and together, we will smile. People are inherently social creatures and we at Thinkwell will continue to explore safe, effective, and memorable experiences to bring people together, wherever in the world life takes us.