Sure, you probably go on a lot of rides, and see some shows. But that's mostly just sitting around while stuff happens in front of or around you. What do you actually do in the park, actively? You eat. You walk around. You shuffle through slow-moving queues. But most theme park attractions remain passive experiences, moments where you are literally just along for the ride.
They don't have to be that way. Many top theme parks are developing more active attractions for their visitors — experiences that allow visitors to become participants instead of mere spectators. These new interactive experiences allow visitors to engage their imaginations in ways that more passive rides and shows too rarely do. And they are redefining the entertainment potential for theme parks.
I wrote about some of these new experiences in my Orange County Register column this week. These interactive opportunities offer the potential to change theme parks from well-decorated collections of rides and shows into platforms for customized entertainment experiences — a sort of living, real-world video game in which guests actively participate in their own adventures.
For theme park fans in Southern California, we're just discovering the fun of playing with interactive wands in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Hollywood, where we are encouraged to dress up like a witch or wizard, cast spells at the windows and imagine that we went to Hogwarts just like Harry and Hermoine did. In May, we will get an expanded opportunity to play like Old West settlers in Knott's Berry Farm's Ghost Town Alive!, where characters will engage with us throughout the land, advancing storylines that change every day.
Disneyland recently tried something similar with its Legends of Frontierland experience, and Disney will fill its upcoming Pandora: The World of Avatar at the Walt Disney World Resort with abundant interactive opportunities as well.
And, of course, parks are making more of their traditional attractions interactive, as well. Sometimes they are competitive, as in so many video-game-inspired shoot-'em-up rides... but they don't have to be, as well-illustrated by experiences such as Disney's Animation Academy, where visitors learn to draw Disney characters that they can take home with them, at no extra charge.
Ultimately, interactive experiences help parks to expand their capacity by making the entire park into an attraction, distracting fans' focus from a limited collection of rides and shows and redirecting it instead toward the limitless possibilities of a day in a place where your imagination can run free.
What is your favorite interactive experience in a theme park?
Keep reading:
Tweet
To have a truly interactive experience in a theme park, they need to have customizable experiences. You can pick your characters and destinations. Make your choices. See different things. This won't happen soon, but the technology is almost here. It was fun to build your own custom car on Test Track. The only problem is you don't actually ride it. Why not get your own journey for Star Tours? The problem with randomness is it's pretty much not random when you ride it. Better to specify the scenes that you haven't seen.
Personally, I think the future of theme parks rests in role-playing, but on a much larger scale than the one that the parks are toying around with right now. They are on to something much larger than they realize, and each of these individual experiences (interactive wands, Legends of Frontierland, Ghost Town Alive!, etc.) is just the tip of the iceberg of what could be the next big thing in theme parks.
Imagine this: While the main focus of any park will always be the rides, what if each park becomes its own "role-playing game," where each individual attraction not only told its own story, but also supported an entire, park-wide narrative that guests could then navigate through at their own pace. Think of it as like Ghost Town Live!, with its day-long story arc, but also incorporating the park's attractions, allowing guests to become characters in the events surrounding them, and bringing interactive elements (like the interactive wands) into play. That would bring the park's immersion to a whole new level.
This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
