Park People
parkworld-online.com
DisneyQuest was one of Joe Garlington’s earlier
interactive projects
predicted by science fiction is about to come to pass, including chips in the brain.” I’m with him on that. Themed entertainment and education is going to go through some massive upheavals. I am jealous as heck of young people today who are going to get to work in those worlds.
As guests use technology more and more in their daily lives (notably smartphones and other devices) should theme parks embrace this as part of the attraction experience or offer an escape?
games, puzzle-mysteries to be solved using “living paintings” scattered around the ships. All were precedent-setting in the cruising world, and all have been very well received by their audiences.
Have you had any involvement in the development of MyMagic+? How does this transform the Disney park experience?
I was involved with the project early on. Kevin Rice, who I worked for at the time, led that effort creatively and he pulled me in. But later our joint teams had too much work to do so we did a “divide and conquer” with him focusing exclusively on that project while I took the other interactive work. So my knowledge is more theoretical than practical. What I always liked about its promise is its ability to personalise entertainment to you. As human populations grow each of us feels more and more to be just a cog in the machine. We want and need to be made to feel special. The word “interactive” is often code for “personalisation,” and the more we can know about you and your tastes the better able we will be to provide experiences that really get to the heart of your desires. My own belief is that these technologies are really infrastructure and that what is best about them is yet to come.
What emerging technologies do you believe have potential for the attractions industry and why/how? The conundrum theme park attraction designers seem to get presented with most often is how to create something “completely new and different” with 30 years of proven reliability. The answer to that conundrum has often been to pull tools from other industries into ours, using them in novel ways so the entertainment is new while gaining the reliability from the proven use elsewhere. For example, years ago Bill Novey, my old business partner and head of special effects at WED Enterprises (Walt Disney Imagineering in the EPCOT days), was asked to make real looking lava for the Energy pavilion. He did so by using a pug mill normally used to make dog food. The mill mixed and pumped out glop that when lit from below looked like lava, but the machinery had long been proven reliable in factory settings. So almost any technology can get pressed into service in a theme park, it depends on the story you’re trying to tell. The obvious candidates are robotics, developments in that area are so rapid it’s only a matter of time before the next revolution in mechanised actors crosses into our world. 3D printers are something I’ve been following for almost 20 years. They are about to disrupt life everywhere; theme parks and museums will find new and intriguing ways to use them, too.
Mark Bolas, a professor at USC [University of Southern California] recently said to me, “I’ve come to believe that pretty much everything
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Toy Story Mania – a hit combination of game, dark ride and IP – now features at several Disney parks worldwide
NOVEMBER 2014
All of the above. Theme parks today are the last of the broadcast media, but that is changing. More and more the niche marketing that has come to the core of so much of life is coming to us and we need to be able to embrace it. Some guests will want places to go where the pressures of the modern world seem to disappear. Others will want places where the bleeding edge can be experienced in ways they can’t yet afford on a daily basis. The industry should provide entertainment on both axis.
How important are organisations like the TEA in encouraging new talent to join the industry? I came into the industry knowing almost nothing about it, drawn in by a friend when I was out of work in the film industry due to an actor’s strike. Anything has to be better than that. If I look at what is happening in education, colleges are beginning to teach courses in theme park design. All efforts that introduce new people into the industry are great. All efforts that organise the work so that it is more easily learned and so that we come out with higher quality products are great. TEA is helping greatly with both.
The TEA was formed by several ex-Disney Imagineers, looking for new opportunities after the opening of EPCOT and Tokyo Disneyland. How have you seen the creative supplier base develop outside of Disney over the years? When I first arrived at WED/Imagineering there was still ride track in the parking lot. Now it’s years since we manufactured our own ride machinery (though we still participate heavily in the design). As the industry grows it allows more and more specialisation and that is only good for all of us. It makes us all more competitive since we have to challenge each other more to find points of differentiation. But it also means that elements are built more professionally and to higher standards. Who wouldn’t want that?
Joe Garlington was one of the headline speakers at the SATE ’14 conference staged by the TEA (Themed Entertainment Association) last month in Sarasota, Florida.
teaconnect.org
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