Imagineering Theory: 10 Rules to Live By

Hey there, all you Armchair Imagineers! Tired of following current trends in theme park design? Does the current wisdom seem not-so-wise? Want your theme park ideas to pop?

The solution is here! Just follow these ten simple, obvious, incredibly important so why don't actual theme parks follow them much anymore I ask you rules, and watch the quality of your Armchair Imagineering soar to new heights!

1. Put the Guests at the Center of the Adventures.

No one wants to slap down $100 a head just to be a spectator alongside someone else's adventure. We can do that at home; it's called Hulu. People visit theme parks because it lets them do cool stuff, from exploring the jungle to flying through outer space to wandering through a miniature city made entirely out of LEGO bricks. Now, not every concept can allow for the guests to charge in guns blazing, and not every concept needs to. Sometimes, merely witnessing strange events can comprise an acceptable adventure on its own...but to be effective, there still needs to be a sense of presence for the guests, of being drawn into the world where the events are taking place. The rides that fall flattest are the ones where stuff happens, and the guests merely watch it without affecting or being affected by it.

2. Emphasize Settings and Impressions Over Specific Plots

The average theme park attraction has about three to fifteen minutes to convey its story to guests—it doesn't have the luxury of a lot of explicit detail. Combine that with the ideal outlined above, of making the guests the protagonists of said story, and you'll see that impressionism, not narration, is the way to go. Give guests atmosphere and instantly recognizable visuals and let them provide the details via their own reactions to these cues.

Many absolutely classic rides, from “it's a small world” to the Mark Twain Riverboat, have no “plot” at all—they just take you places and let you enjoy the view.

3. Show More Than You Tell...and Suggest More Than You Show

The above mainly applies to rides themselves; this rule is more about queues and other spaces not contained within an attraction footprint. In these spaces, guests usually have the leisure of time to scrutinize details, but all the same, less is very often more. No matter how cool you think the detailed backstory you have in mind for your themed area is, guests will become much more enthralled by something they piece together themselves from scattered clues, than something made explicit.

4. Theme From the Top Down, Not the Bottom Up.

This piece of advice is for Armchair Imagineers designing an entire land or park, not a single attraction. “Top-down theming” is my term for the practice of starting with the overall area theme and then planning attractions to fit that, rather than the practice, all too common nowadays, of dictating a certain attraction and then deciding where to put it/designing an area theme around it. The former approach gives us the likes of New Orleans Square; the latter produces Toy Story Midway Mania and leads to soulless monstrosities like the incipient Pixar Pier.

5. Encourage Exploration

Making a theme park easy to navigate is just good customer service...but it's not the only consideration. Include little side paths and hidden nooks that aren't explicitly labeled on the map. Hide some of the most interesting details in blind alleys or on the reverse side of one-way doorways. Reward guests who take some initiative to look around the corner or wander off the beaten path. Even if only one in a hundred guests does so, they'll love the place 200 times as much as the rest.

6. Vary the Intensity

This is another rule that comes up mostly in the context of designing an entire land or park. It's always exciting to apply our imaginations to the big elaborate rides and spectacular shows—the “E-tickets,” in the popular vernacular—but there is so much more to any decent theme park than its most major offerings. Simpler, lower-intensity rides, walkthrough exhibits, live entertainment, and the rest are vitally important to give a park texture and a means for people to pace themselves throughout the day. And they help to flesh out the worlds portrayed by the area themes. Just try to imagine Disneyland or any other A-list theme park stripped down to just its flashiest rides...pretty dismal, isn't it?

7. Maintain Kinetic Energy In Open Areas

By now it has been firmly established that an important goal of theme park design is creating worlds for the guests to visit. So do you want them to be living worlds, or are you content with dead ones? Presumably you prefer the former, in which case: keep things moving. Life implies motion, motion implies life. In a way, this ties in with Rule #6, since the grandest rides are usually shut up inside enclosed show buildings—the less elaborate attractions are needed not only for the other reasons, but to be visibly moving, out in the open.

Another important factor here is to keep the guests moving. Guests who aren't moving are clogging walkways, preventing other guests from moving, and in all likelihood none of them are having much fun. Kinetic elements are very often inviting—what is this, bobbing and spinning at the end of the walkway? Come over and see!

8. Consider All Five Senses

Most Armchair Imagineers go into considerable detail when laying out the visual aspects of their projects. About half of them address the auditory aspects in as much detail. Only rarely are the other three senses evoked...which is a shame, since we live in a world of all the senses and verisimilitude demands they be acknowledged.

Taste I'll admit is tricky—you can't really have people chewing on your rides—but it definitely comes into play when designing eateries for an area. On the whole, I suppose most theme park designers want to play it safe and focus on food that guests will find familiar, even if it doesn't quite suit the area theme. It might be an interesting exercise to consider just how far you could push the edge of that particular envelope in the name of realism and novelty.

Scents need to be used sparingly, since they are so hard to control once released. The most evocative scent in Disney theme parks is actually accidental—the distinctive mustiness of Pirates of the Caribbean. You can add some strategic scent releases to your restaurants, though; it won't seem odd when it lingers there.

Touch and its variations are where you can really have fun on the attractions themselves. Think about the vehicle movement, the temperature and airflow inside the attraction spaces, the textures of whatever surfaces guests will contact.

Just as a mental exercise, eliminate sight entirely—think about how you would convey the environment even in complete darkness. Don't put the visuals back until you're sure the other senses can carry the load.

9. DON'T Give the Guests What They Want

Give them more than that, or if you can't do that much, at least play with their expectations and give them something different. Surprise them, in other words. Some of the best theme park experiences out there are the ones we never asked for and never saw coming.

And finally...

10. Remember the Uniqueness of Your Medium

No other storytelling medium in existence is quite like a theme park attraction, which is part of why it's so hard to write about how they work...and why it's a huge mistake to try and create rides and attractions as if you were creating movies or books. Use that uniqueness. Use physical solidity and physical space. Use interactivity. Use the power of the guests' own free will and creativity. Use everything that differentiates this from more traditional media.

After all, you're creating worlds. That basically makes you a god. You want to be worthy of that power, don't you?