Fern Gully

The CoCo Key indoor waterpark chain recently announced that they will add a location in the Orlando area.

http://www.cocokeywaterresort.com/Locations/danvers/videos/index.aspx

This speaks for itself.

Themed Entertainment is dying a slow and painful death because people have failed to see its massive potential in education and entertainment alike. CoCo Key is a dismaying example, as are many of the more recent offerings at the major players. Universal recently opened The Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit, and Disney continues to institute some very strange new offerings.

Certainly, the renaissance is coming. The Wizarding World, New Fantasyland and Star Tours 2.0 will all bring us back to the forefront of a field filled with honest and original ideas.

Lets just get one thing straight: Syngery, Branding, Money Talks - these are the buzzwords of the vice presidents, of the businessmen. This is not the language of the creative storytellers who invented the art form. For an example of just how distant Orlando is from Hollywood, I would strongly recommend a viewing of The Princess & The Frog.

Just like Fern Gully, a field that once seemed so bright with promise is dying a tragic death at the hands of men obsessed with greed.

Are You Experienced?

The next generation of theme park attraction has arrived, in more forms than one, and the playing field is broadening every single day.

Islands of Adventure's Wizarding World of Harry Potter - and particularly Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey - will be experiential to a level we have never seen. This isn't your stock interactive entertainment, built for giddy Generation Y playstation pumping teens. This is the next step of the master art form.

Down the road, Mickey tries not to get crushed. The new Fantasyland stands a valid chance of affirming its bragging rights in the new world of themed entertainment. These aren't just attractions - though with Ariel's Adventure (possibly renamed from DCA's version, "Ariel's Undersea Adventure") we will certainly have our fill of classic Disney experience with cutting edge technology, partnered with all the emotional gusto that came whirring out of those busy little trailers in Glendale twenty years ago.



The most interesting part about this concept painting, though, is how it separates the areas of Fantasyland into actual thematic pieces - a sort of master form of this concept that we've never seen before, expanding even further on the Disneyland idea and ranging closer and closer to the original Fantasyland concept:



Particularly the storybook village concept will be rooted in classic Disney - not just in the sense of the casting, but in the sense of the true experience of a place.

The next generation is supposed to be about bringing the fantastic worlds of our favorite characters to life in new, vibrant and relevant ways.

When the clock strikes midnight, we can only wait, watch and see who turns into the pumpkin. Time will tell.

The Double Edged Sword

THE VAULT

More than anything, Disneyland is simply a unique mode of experiential design.

Walt Disney was the chief purveyor of a concept still around today, known as Edutainment. Walt wanted to educate audiences without them knowing he was doing it: Disneyland was his story-based answer to many of the challenges he faced as his brands grew out of his own control and became internationally recognized social symbols (Mickey Mouse), popular media-related characters (Zorro, Peter Pan), and even his television writers' creations of concepts that were taking audiences places they may never go in reality (Tomorrowland).

With all these brands burgeoning out of Walt's control and into the control of society and his audiences, as well as media critics, he needed to create a place where all these ideas could "live", and where he could have chief control over how they were being used.

With Disneyland, Walt aimed to create a place where all these brands, concepts and names could live. No matter that sweetly innocent story about Daddy's Days at the Griffith Park Carrousel. It is undeniable that Walt loved his family, and that these events did occur - but just like everything else in the Disney Tradition, many times the realities make far less enticing stories than the myths the storytellers who experienced the realities created in their place.

Disneyland would be a place to hold the brands - and for Walt to control their usage in any way he saw fit. As much as it was a place for him and his Imagineers to dream and do, it was also a place to keep safe his decades of trying, difficult work in bringing first the medium of animation, then the medium of television, to startling life.

If Disneyland is a unique experiment in experiential design, its because Walt wanted a double-edged sword: not only would the park serve as his personal vault, a place to protect his creations in forms he alone could determine (largely because while film and television spawned many jealous copycats and thieves, if not simply interested parties for these brands, the idea of creating a place was brand new and prohibitively expensive - unless you were Walt Disney).


THE GUESTS

The other edge of the sword was that this place could be open to the people Walt loved the most: his audience. Not only could it be his protective place, it was a way to remove his brands, ideas and stories from the reach of the Mintz's of the world, yet still make them available to his audience -- and the last thing he wanted to do was make those people bored.

And so Disneyland, which could have easily become a San Simeon under less creative, innovative direction, became a dramatic departure from anything that had been done before in America. Walt's greatest challenge was movement - both in the physical sense of moving people through an experience and in the sense of the story. If we were going to place all these ideas in one space, a space they would have to share the way a family shares a house, it meant there had to be some kind of story structure - a system, a way for the guests to experience the story on the same level that Wonderful World of Color provided pieces of Edutainment.

Walt wanted his guests to experience the story, without them knowing they were experiencing it. John Hench said it best in his landmark article "Disneyland is Good for You", and the reason is because it places you in a three dimensional story environment and refuses time and again to beat you over the head with its own ideals.



Much is the problem with other destination-based entertainments. Six Flags is the most nefarious example. When you visit a six flags park, you are reminded time and again, often in very crass and avoidable marketing cliches, that you are IN a six flags park.

Walt trusted the guests. The early Imagineers all trusted the guests. They knew they were at Disneyland. They expected experiences here unlike anything they could find elsewhere in the world. It was another double-edged sword, though, because the Disney name was gold. Anything that said "Disney" came with the assumption that it would excel to the level of excellent entertainment (a statute Walt himself set in Animation, Television and Feature Films).

The Imagineers knew that giving guests an experience was their top priority. That experience needed (and needs today) to fit within the story being told. When it doesn't, in the same way as when it does, guests cannot put their finger on the issue, but they know deep down that something is wrong.

In the same way Disneyland can be good for you, it can also be bad for you if the story environment, the progression of experiences, the way each show fits into the next show and how they all relate to the space surrounding them - if these things are not considered (regardless of the reason being marketing, revenue, ego or "business need") the show is affected, the guest experience is affected, and ultimately down the line the revenue is affected.




THE ART OF CHARACTER

In the much maligned argument about adding too much "character" to the Disney experience, we must remember a few crucial cornerstones:

1. Disneyland of 1955 was heavily influenced and often based on entertainment properties.

Indeed, Zorro served as a mascot of Frontierland because Walt wanted the cross-population (note: not necessarily cross-promotion or syngery) of the guest experience. It was one thing to take the guests to the "Old West", but Walt had seen experiences in museums and recreations like this across the country, and even as far away as Europe and had come up with the same feeling as many others - there was nothing in that experience to relate to beyond the history. Walt was an educator, but above all he was a true showman, and an entertainer. By adding "character" to his park, he gave the guests a crucial stepping stone that allowed them to relate to the experiences based on properties, ideas and characters that they already recognized.



2. John Hench himself championed the art of character - after all, if Disneyland is a story place, one of the reasons we create stories is so that our characters have a place to live. Disneyland takes this concept and makes it immediate and real: This is, quite literally, the place where these characters live. Hench, in his book (bible) Designing Disney, writes:

"The art of character at the Disney theme parks lies in maintaining the identity of the forms and colors that express the essential personality traits of these beloved characters."

3. Should everything relate to Disney Characters?

The answer is no, but the problem is that the definition of a "Disney Character" is so often misconstrued. Indiana Jones is not considered a character at Disneyland, but is defined as one because he is an integral personality that plays a part in the guest experience. There is a lot to be said for listening to the guests...but there is also a lot to be said for a designer because that person understands the play space on a conscious level far greater than your typical day guest, for whom the experience is subconscious. Much the same, a film director understands his film on a level deeper than any member of his audience.

So, if we are too narrowly defining Disney "Characters", the solution to this conundrum perhaps lies in no more than very careful, detailed decision making:

1. Pick and Choose who lives where.



Characters do not often determine story. Story determines characters. The long shot paints the close up. There is danger in contradicting elements within any story, or any story place, and the same goes for contradictory characters. Stitch should not appear simultaneously in a Tomorrowland attraction and a stage show fifty feet away, and Frozone should not be parading down Main Street. These are contradictions because Frozone's environment (re: story) and Main Street's environment are inherently different.

That is not a bad thing. In fact, thats a very valuable thing.

The story has to be designed and created before it can be populated with character. Either that, or the characters must bring us the story. If a character has a story to tell, as designers we must make a conscious effort to fit that story within an environment that will be thematically correct from long shot to close up within the context of the overall storyspace (The Park).

It makes sense for Mickey and friends to live at the Magic Kingdom or in Disneyland. It also makes sense for Mickey and friends to appear and occupy space at California Adventure - but you cannot make the cost-cutting choice of making these one and the same. Mickey's appearance at DCA must make sense with the environment in which he has been placed. He must become a part of the story.

If we think of the character appearances in the parks, be it in attractions or as walk arounds, as being a part of the story, there is no reason that these characters cannot fit into those stories. Now, there is a clever piece of manipulation going on here from the marketing executives and the guest survey teams: The guests say "We want to see Mickey". The marketing teams take this and turn it into "We want to see THE SAME Mickey everywhere, THE SAME attractions everywhere, THE SAME 'Disney'. One Disney."

This is not the case. Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald and Pluto (among others) are universally adaptable personalities. Thats the beauty in their design. Their rich forms and colors (as mentioned by Hench) can be adapted to any situation. Stronger characters are inevitably more successful than week ones, so why not make the characters and stories in each space strong and relatable and part of a cohesive whole? This is what Hench meant when he said that Disneyland was good for us. It is good for us because its a living, breathing story, provided to us as the ultimate play space.

Former Imagineer Eddie Sotto (among others) has some excellent views on using the characters to deliver the content.

2. Don't Overplay the Angle

If the parks become nothing but character-based experiences, the guests will no longer be receiving the one real promise Disney makes to them: A unique experience. The answer is, use the characters to illustrate your story points. The oversight is that Mickey will still be there. The magic of "Disney" is that the audience - the guests - are going to take whatever we give them. That sounds like a very negative connotation, and it isn't meant to be, but its simply the truth. The Disney brand is a seal of excellence all by itself. Its that way because the company has been striving to provide excellence to its audiences since 1923. Once you've made the sale, stop selling. Switch to gently reminding instead.

3. The Choice

Now, that said, it leaves the choice in the hands of the design team. Its a personal journey as much as it is a shared one, because like any art form, we are creating something from nothing. If thats the case, it means we can either give them more of the same (and it won't affect the ratings/revenue/business) or we can give them an excellent, over the top, completely unique and unforgettable experience (which likely won't affect the ratings/revenue/business).

The point is, if we do it the second way, we are accomplishing the goals. If we do it the first way, the old way, the comfortable way, we are simply plodding along not accomplishing anything. We aren't being innovative and original, because we have taken the previous idea that the audience will take whatever we give them and put a negative spin on it to the effect that we no longer have to try.

*Please note that the phrase "We" in this article is hypothetical. This blog is in no way associated with The Walt Disney Company, and all views expressed belong solely to the individuals providing them.

Its an honest mistake: the idea can be interpreted one of two ways.



Here is the first way:

"I was doing a film title that required an eagle to fly into a lighted foreground and land on a rock while folding his wings. I was provided with an eagle that was too old to do the stunt, and stumbled on the rocks. We watched the dailies in a dark sweatbox. When the lights came on, I saw that one of the Studio executives was in the booth watching with us. I said "I'll do this over again. We'll get the eagle to land right, so that it looks like a conqueror." The executive said "No! We will use it. That's okay, the bastards won't know any different." That was his attitude toward the people for whom he was supposed to furnish entertainment. He didn't like them. He didn't care."

Here is the second way:

"Liking the guests is the key to everything we do."

"We have discovered that even our restrooms can fit into the themed environment....Just as guests taught us about good queue design, they also taught us about the elements needed for preshows."

If the guests are truly the ones who taught the art of the show to the original Imagineers, we owe it to them now to listen to what they are saying. Guests want to see Mickey. This is a fact. How they see Mickey can either be a good, enjoyable experience that cannot be placed within the confines of words, or it can be generic, one-for-all entertainment. Disney, as a brand, is unique. There is no rhyme or reason to the way the stories are created. They come because they come.



This notion makes anyone accustomed to formulas, spreadsheets, algorithms and survey results uncomfortable. One experience does not equate to the next. They cannot be rated. Disneyland cannot be compared to Magic Kingdom Park because they are teling different stories.

Liking the guests truly is the key to everything we do - but the decision on what we provide them, and whether what we provide them is unique and original, is entirely up to us as designers. Whether or not the so-called results of some so-called guest surveys that amount only to numbers on a paper or in an email reflect it or not, the fact is that guests love Disney. They do not, however, define what Disney is. That is a job left to the people creating the entertainment.

I hope the following words will change your life in the same way that they have changed mine: "If you settle for less than excellence, that's exactly what you will get." - Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser.

A New Era

Two recent developments have shown Foundations of Magic that there are still people within the organization that care, and that understand the original intention, far beyond the "One Disney" problem, and the false justification that the guests want "One Disney" wherever they go in the world.

What makes Disney themed entertainment so special? See below, and lets hope these men and their understanding can carry us through a difficult time of forced adaptation.




"And here is the view down Hollywood Boulevard towards the Chinese Theatre, which we think is a great icon. I liked this view a lot more when you could actually see it. With your support, we will bring it back!" - Bob Weis, original creative director, Disney-MGM Studio Tour (Walt Disney Imagineering).



"The easy part of Epcot is that you can do almost anything — and the hard part about Epcot is that you can do almost anything. I think it has to be more and more interactive. Guests want to be involved, they want to touch it, smell it and hear it. They want to do it together." - Dan Cockerell, recently given the Vice President title for Epcot.