Nassal and interior-design company team up for at-home themed concepts
An interior-design company and an Orlando-based scenic fabricator are working together in the creation of immersive experiences for private homes.
Dream Vision Interiors, based in Windermere, and the Companies of Nassal announced the partnership Wednesday morning.
“This partnership is an amazing opportunity for our clients, as it will allow them to have the same fabrication team who helped create some of the most iconic experiences in theme parks around the world to now create themed environments for their own home,” said Jim Duffy, Dream Vision’s vice president and senior designer. He and wife, Kris, own the company.
They are thinking bigger than a remodeled kitchen or living room.
“That’s not us,” Duffy said. “We specialize strictly in the entertainment area. And what we do best is very immersive environments that tie together multiple entertainment rooms into one cohesive story.”
A previous themed project, for instance, included a home theater, music room, arcade and soda shop that were connected by a street scene, he said.
“That’s where Nassal really comes in, because they’re excellent fabricators,” he said. “When it comes to theming and environment for a customer’s home, they’re now going to be getting the quality of a theme park literally in their home.”
The partnership represents a diversification for Nassal. Its website shows work done for SeaWorld Orlando, Universal theme parks around the world and other well-known attractions.
“In our case, the pandemic really just escalated this . ... What else can we be doing to create that story-driven environment at a very high level?” said Melissa Ruminot, vice president of marketing and client development with Nassal. “When we looked at residential, it really was about doing the right types of projects for our skill set.”
But don’t look for replicas of theme-park scenes.
“We’re very cognizant of that and very cognizant of the types of nondisclosures and IP [intellectual property]-related restrictions that Nassal has as we come to the table,” she said.
An early project for Nassal and Dream Vision Interiors, now in the design stage, is a two-story, 8,000-square-foot entertainment center that will act as the Dream
Vision showroom behind the Duffys’ house.
“So much of the immersive factor of these types of spaces that we create is a unique kind of experience that you can’t really see in pictures,” Duffy said.
The showroom would have an overall theme of “defunct Disney,” he said, drawing inspiration from past attractions at Disney World and Disneyland. That means a movie theater inspired by the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea attraction and a bar/game room that has the feel of the Adventurers Club, a nightclub that operated at Pleasure Island.
“We’re actually going to rebuild it in our place,” Duffy said. “We’re going to have the mask room just like they did with animatronic masks talking to each other while you’re sitting and playing poker in there.”
Clients will fill out a questionnaire that uncovers a family’s interests to guide the planning.
“They might say, ‘Hey, you know, we really like this particular land at Disneyland or Disney World. Is there something you can do similar to that?’ ” Duffy said. “We use that as a cue, as a jumping-off point to create their own version of a land or something like that.”