A MAGICAL PLACE
Theme parks use clever techniques to make your visit memorable – and all without forcing you to download an app or check in online
Theme parks? I’m a sucker for them. In a month or so, the UK’s finest will throw their gates open for the new season to thrill us with their engineered delights. As usual, I will be the first person inside, forced to sit through pre-shows, until I plunge like a lemming into wilful surrender. Yes, I may be a digital evangelist, but to me there is nothing as compelling or as intoxicating as the full-on experience of spending a day in someone else’s imagination.
Dr Carissa Baker, assistant professor in theme parks and storytelling at the University of Central Florida, argued in 2018 that theme parks are gatherers and tellers of stories. Their distinct narratives start before you enter the park, are played out in what you experience there, and continue after you’ve left. They enrobe us in myth, folklore or film – depending on where in the world you’re visiting – and uniquely extend that world by putting us right in the middle of it. How do they do it? Some believe it’s down to creative direction and narrative system design. But I call it like I see it: they use all the psychological tricks in my social psychology textbooks to get us to feel and act in the way that the people behind the scenes foretell. And then some.
Everything in theme parks is manipulated. Everything is accounted for. Whereas in the digital world,
“The next killer app isn’t on your device. It’s in the places that compel us to keep our phones in our pockets”
designers infer what we feel, these theme parks incept these emotions. A famous example is Disneyland’s Main Street USA, which you walk down on first entering the park: the sets have been designed with forced perspective so the buildings appear taller and grander than they are. Techniques like this abounded in the squares of Renaissance Italy and Georgian England to make the buildings seem bigger than they were. The mythical Main Street is made to feel larger and more impressive than it really is, which gets visitors excited when they enter the park – we are the hero of Disneyland’s narrative. Now that’s a powerful trick.
The digital world is nowhere near as magical as these places are. Yes, digital designers can create something out of nothing with mathematics and electricity, but their best attempts are only shortcuts in two-dimensional space. All they have in their toolboxes are sight and sound. Mystifyingly, they’ve still magicked us into thinking they’ve been able to recreate human emotions while harvesting our humanity.
But in theme parks, digital is out of place. Yes, behind the scenes there are data machines that are trying to track us to make our experiences better and more personal. Except for one or two notable examples, digital tech isn’t being used to enhance our time at the park in any practical way. It just gets in the way. And perhaps that is why I love theme parks. Because when I’m there, I want to be propelled by someone else’s vision, and give over to the feeling.
The next killer app isn’t on your device. It’s in the places that thrill us and compel us to keep our phones in our pockets so we can truly experience them.