Boring Environments

I’ve recently had some design work that has thrown up a big question in my mind…

I believe that there are some narratives that would be powerful and interesting journeys to take guests on, but their associated visuals are just dull. Is that my personal taste, or is there some objective fact in this?

Instinctively, I want to tell you that theme parks, unlike film, are in danger of their stylistic qualities being misunderstood. I’ve discussed this phenomenon quite often on this blog when I talk about realism. Functional objects used as theming will be read not for their implied stylistic connotations but as functional objects, because theme parks, zoos, restaurants, museums and the like are, above all else, functional spaces.

General Public Opinion Survey Discussion

I wanted to discuss some of the findings from the General Public Opinion Survey that I posted the results of back in March…

Admittedly, I really did not spend long coming up with the questions, finding the best platform to host the survey or finding suitable candidates to answer it. But the results are still interesting. I recommend having the results open as a separate window or tab to reference whilst you read this post!

There’s this rhetoric that gets flung around fan communities when speculating new rides, aiming to find a gap in the experiences delivered by their current selection. This logic rarely bares resemblance to reality. Canada’s Wonderland best illustrates this, recently adding Leviathan – a taller version of Behemoth, ride they had only put in a few years prior. So I wanted to find out if ride types matter to average guests. Do the seemingly obvious comparisons between certain attractions occur to them?

The 230ft Behemoth (top) and the 306th Leviathan (bottom) at Canada's Wonderland are both the same type of roller coaster, built by the same manufacturer only 4 years apart.

Photos by Canada's Wonderland

Observations from Lakemont and DelGrosso’s

My rough plan for this year hasn’t exactly panned out, so instead I thought I’d offer a short review of two rarely visited or talked about parks.

I was in Pittsburg with a friend the other day. With Pensylvania so full of amusement parks, we obviously had to stop by somewhere…

We’d already been to Kennywood a couple of years ago and we were not fans, so decided to try out Lakemont. A tiny park, but it boasts the world’s oldest roller coaster still in operation and North America’s last surviving side friction – Leap the Dips. It’s also home to a Chance Toboggan (a ride type I’d yet to try) and another wooden coaster named Skyliner.

I was expecting the park to be nice enough. Pulling up to the place, the park itself is overshadowed by a contemporary business park that we had assumed was more like an outlet village similar to the one found at Lightwater Valley in the UK. It’s a real shame that it is not, it would perhaps draw much-needed visitors to the amusement park.

The ticket price for entry and a wristband for all rides and the waterpark, with the exception of Leap the Dips, was only $5 on a Friday. That seemed insane. Most ticket-based parks will charge that per large ride. The modest ticket price soon becomes apparent though, there’s nothing at this park. Literally. Well, there is a waterpark, and arguably $5 for any waterpark however awful is pretty damn good, and I suspect that’s what most local people come here for. But this park was completely dead. For a Friday afternoon sandwiched between 4^th July and the weekend, this was crazy quiet. I cannot fathom how the park makes enough money to even cover staff pay.

Zufari at Chessington World of Adventures - Review

Chessington Zoo was transformed by The Tussauds Group in the late 80’s from a failing wildlife park into the UK’s first true theme park. When Alton Towers was still little more than a collection of amusement rides plonked in a picturesque, yet unthemed, landscape, Chessington World of Adventures were building Disney-like dark rides and highly themed immersive worlds.

It’s thee park I get nostalgic about and the park I know best. I first visited in ‘94, and with a few exceptions in the early 2000s, I’ve visited every season since. Not a whole lot has changed from the Chessington of my childhood. Today the theming may be a little dirty, and the trees have grown… But the core elements are pretty much the same. And yet, it’s a very different place in terms of quality of experience from the 90’s park. The park went through years of stagnation with little to no investment.

The Swarm at Thorpe Park... One Year On

One year ago, I posted my review of Swarm. Despite being 4500 words or so, there was a lot I didn’t cover and, more importantly, an awful lot has changed in a year….

Photo by author.

…Which is a point worth noting in itself. A lot has changed. Literally, in a physical sense. Throughout 2012, theming elements were added to Swarm. Effort was made to improve the already better-than-average presentation, some of which are solutions to previous criticism. The open plaza is now home to an ambulance perched precariously on its rear and telephone box turned on its head, pummeled into the ground. Together, those elements help to combat the open blandness of that area, but they also added audio to Swarm’s already impressively chaotic soundtrack.

General Public Opinion Survey Results

I've been wondering what the general public thinks about parks and their rides for years, they have such different tastes and opinions to enthusiasts. And with my increased interest in attractions from a theoretical design and marketing standpoint, understanding the public has become not just interesting, but important to me.

For obvious reasons, attractions keep their research a closely guarded secret, and so my understanding of their audiences has come from observing them on site by overhearing queue-line chatter and talking to friends not particularly interested in the industry. What little information the parks do release ranges from confusing to unbelievable, such as that whole "the British public sees wooden roller coasters as unsafe" idea that Merlin Entertainments have concluded from their research. It was my belief that they must be pre-empting that with loaded questions and such… How wrong I turned out to be.

So, I decided to conduct a little survey. My audience was primarily contacts on Facebook, I have to admit. Though I was careful to only select people I felt were ignorant of the subject matter and who's relationship with roller coasters was normal. Some friends got their friends and family to fill it out, my mother filled it out and I managed to gain some strangers feedback from the helpful folks over at r/samplesize. The majority of respondents are in their early 20s, but all ages completed the survey. More than half of the respondents were in the UK, with the US coming second. 

It's by no stretch of the imagination flawless. There are fundamental problems with any survey, but the results are none the less interesting and I hope you enjoy reading them.