Nobody tells you that everyone and their mothers reach out to you when you move to Florida. Moving to Orlando to work in the theme park industry is like bringing Krispy Kreme donuts to school in middle school or getting a puppy after you graduate: everyone suddenly wants to hang out and be your friend.
During my stint in the theme park capital of the world, I got plenty of congratulatory texts about moving forward with my dream career, slightly upset messages about how much better the weather is in Orlando vs. Pittsburgh and Chicago, and sad Instagram DM responses to my numerous stories from Universal Studios, Disney World, and more.
More than anything else, though, I got so many questions. It seems like I had a few new questions to answer each time I opened any social media platform or my email. As friends of the blog know, I have no problem answering questions (usually in more words than required), especially about things that I am passionate about. I have noticed, though, that the surplus of questions is due to the surplus of people, not necessarily the surplus of question types. While I don’t mind reciting the same spiel to friends and family as they ask me questions about my life or theme parks, I feel like sometimes I do a better job answering them than others. Whether it’s because I’m tired or because I put 8 balls into the desert when I played golf that morning or for whatever reason, not all of my responses are created equal…
I believe I can change that.
Given all of my newfound free time of not going to theme parks (or anywhere really) (PLEASE WEAR A MASK), a semester of insider knowledge and research, and graduating with a masters degree that really only qualifies me to determine how and why things are fun, I now feel willing and able to adequately answer the three questions asked of me most frequently. Now you will not be able to put any of these ideas or pieces of advice into practice today due to the current health climate (PLEASE WEAR A MASK), but revisit this post when you no longer have to distance yourself 6 feet away from another person… or a churro stand.
1 - Hey! I’m going to be coming down to Florida for a vacation and I’ll be in Orlando for a day or two… what should I do??
First of all, as location is to real estate, logistics are everything to theme parks. If you’re coming down to the Sunshine State, great! If you want my help, even better! Just give me as many specifics as you can so I can actually help you get the most out of your trip. Is it one day or two? Are you a single rider or will you be walking around with people in bootlegged family reunion t-shirts? Do you mind getting up at 5am to be at the park when it opens or do you just want to drink the world around EPCOT?
Sorry, that may seem like more information than necessary. But trust me, the more of that you know before you text me, the more fruitful our conversation will be. Anyway, all other things being equal, here is my fool-proof way to get to the park that will best suit your needs:
2 - So what’s your favorite ride?
Can open. Worms everywhere.
It’s like asking Bubba Blu what his favorite kind of shrimp is. Or Steven A. Smith what his favorite adjective is. You’ll probably get a different answer every time with a long-winded explanation about the nuance of said answer.
Theme park rides, or attractions if you want to sound intelligent and/or pretentious around your friends and fellow park-goers, are extremely different in nature and should be judged as such.
E-Tickets
Back in the days of yore, simple theme park admission did not give you access to every ride or experience in the park. Upon entry, you would be given a book of individual tickets of different values that would give you access to different tiers of rides or experiences based on the tickets you had. An E-ticket was the top tier in this system and rides like Matterhorn Bobsleds and Pirates of the Caribbean were the most popular within that tier. I’m telling you this because these rides are judged at a different standard usually because they are more innovative, more thrilling, more expensive to build, or more of something in some way than other attractions. For my own purposes, I’m going to exclude dark rides from this breakdown and you’ll see why as I continue to over-analyze this simple question people keep texting me.
I’m going to focus on rides that have an emphasis on thrill because I’ve realized that a lot of people don’t really want to know what my favorite ride is, they just want to know what the best roller coaster or thrill ride is so they can go on it. I could hype up a new dark ride or other experience as much as I want, but most people will just remember which one I said was fastest. Which is fair, I get it. I also know, though, that speed and thrill comes with a cost of comfort… and that’s usually a warning people want ahead of time… so here it is.
Interactive Attractions
Anyone that has been to a theme park with me has likely been regaled with my love for Toy Story Midway Mania, an interactive 4D shooting ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It’s perfect in every sense of the word which often causes people to wonder if there are other rides like it. Short answer, no, not really. It is interactive theme park development’s apex mountain and other attractions and in-park experiences have done pretty darn well to come close, but they often fall short in one of the two aspects that make interactive attractions unique and fun.
Games are typically judged on story and mechanics, mechanics being the main method of progressing through a game. War games use shooting, car games use driving, etc etc. Unique mechanics that are integral in telling the story of the attraction can help distinguish the experience from its shoot-em-up compatriots. Feedback, on the other hand, is often less discussed (unless you walk around with me enough). In my terms, feedback is the reaction to how you implement the mechanics of the attraction that either encourage you to continue doing the same thing or encourage you to change your behavior for more success.
Dark Rides, Line Queues
Okay, so, dark rides. Great for nostalgia, great for getting out of the heat, and great for story-telling. These are the rides that you remember going on as a little kid, like ET’s Adventure or Peter Pan’s Flight, and feeling like you were in the movie. Over the last twenty years, these rides have vastly improved in terms of new technologies used and level of world-building achieved. These advancements, though, don’t start when you get on the ride vehicle… they start as soon as you enter the line queue. Line queues are both a great and challenging place for theme park designers. They are great because you have a captive audience for upwards of 2 hours in some cases and usually lots of physical space to design within. On the downside, your captive audience is usually playing Heads Up, eating their lunch, or climbing on the props you built to tell the story of the ride.
Anyway, this is my attempt to explain that the total experience of a dark ride, a concept that Disney’s Rise of the Resistance has really tried to drive home, including all of the pomp and circumstance that lead up to getting in the ride vehicle, is worthy of excitement that rivals a traditional roller coaster.
See, there are lots of things that go into answering that original question. It almost goes back to my point to question #1 that it relies a lot on specifics and logistics of what the guest really wants out of their experience. Favorite theme park rides are not one-size fits all and even the most experienced of us have trouble truly narrowing it down.
(But if you can only do one ride, go on Flight of Passage.)
3 - It sounds like you were living the dream down there and the job sounded super cool. Can you say what you worked on?
No.