The Historical Development of Themed Space: The History of the Dark Ride

Author's note: This project was completed as a team assignment for DEA2510: History of Design Futures, a class taught by Chad Randl for the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. My partner, the talented and theme park-savvy Justin Horst, and I were given the prompt of tracing the full history of a design trend. We chose to examine the theme park dark ride, not just in its modern conception but through its most basic and fundamental characteristics. Our final piece features a video narrative of this history and an accompanying writeup. The Sketchup model includes both original work and material taken from the Google Warehouse, used here under fair use guidelines.

The Dark Ride: a Contemporary Definition

A dark ride possesses three core characteristics:

-       - A narrative arc

-       - Physical movement through a space

-       - Sense of reality or immersion

This definition excludes some experiences that are recognizably not dark rides. Examples that are NOT dark rides:

-      - Film experiences alone, including motion simulators (no physical movement)

-      -  Museum exhibits (no sense of reality or immersion)

-      -  Roller coasters (no narrative arc)

Random Musings and a Case Study: Michael Naimark and the Development of Spatial Augmented Reality

Author's note: This article was written as an assignment for DEA2510: History of Design Futures, a class taught by Chad Randl for the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. This makes it a little more constrained to the deliverables of a prompt as opposed to natural paths of inquiry. It seeks to reflect on an innovation of a predictive nature presented between 1985 and 2005 and trace the development following that prediction to the present, in this case tracing Michael Naimark's 1984 “Spatial Correspondence in Motion Picture Display”. The subject of spatial augmented reality is a hot topic within contemporary themed entertainment, and as such I felt it is worth including on this site. I do not claim for this history to be comprehensive, rather I find that its value is in its focus on the trajectory of Naimark's ideas, specifically.

Spatial augmented reality, more commonly known by its commercial name “projection mapping”, is the practice of integrating synthetic information onto the real environment, generally through film or video projection onto complex surfaces (Bimber and Raskar, 2005). The technology is the product of an intersection of the larger histories of film projection and virtual reality but has split to become a separate technology in its own right (Jones, n.d.). This paper will examine the earliest theorized example of spatial augmented reality, Michael Naimark’s “Spatial Correspondence in Motion Picture Display”, as well as the trajectory of the technology’s development compared to Naimark’s predictions for its future.

Random Musings and a Case Study: Susan Sontag's Camp

In 1964, Susan Sontag published “Notes on ‘Camp’”, considered the first attempt to discuss Camp in writing. Sontag labels Camp as a sensibility, “distinct from an idea” (para. 2), she notes, in that “any sensibility which can be crammed into the mold of a system, or handled with the rough tools of proof, is no longer a sensibility at all. It has hardened into an idea” (para. 4). As such, she remains skeptical in applying concrete conclusions and definitions to Camp, choosing to forgo a formal essay in favor of a series of notes. In these notes, Sontag describes Camp as above all else the “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration” (para. 2), then proceeding to elaborate on the ways in which Camp manifests, operates, and differs from similar concepts.

“Notes on ‘Camp’” remains influential for Sontag’s adept understanding of how Camp compiles itself from cultural objects as a “logic of taste” (para. 4). In this article, I want to begin to examine Sontag’s notes and try to present Camp’s usefulness in the context of themed entertainment. To do so, I will be looking specifically at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, where the broad themed focus on the movie industry is construed through a lens of abstraction that, I argue, is Campy in accordance with Sontag’s theory. From this case study, I hope to illuminate ways in which the harnessing of Camp serves as a powerful attracting force for the general public.

The Historical Development of Themed Space: Susan Ingram on Industrial Europe and the Commodification of Leisure

Authors note: this is the first in a series of articles that weigh how different eras of themed entertainment have been influenced by their historical context. In Theme Park, Lukas (2008) asks a question of central importance to the study of the history of the modern theme park: how does the creation of the artificial reflect the society that creates it? Lukas posits that “we must understand the trajectory of the theme park in the form of historical whispers, thematic shouts in the night and rhizomatic influences of direction and misdirection” (23). In agreement with Lukas’s thesis, these articles will attempt to piece apart different examples of how themed entertainment has illustrated greater societal trends, aspirations, and concerns.

The nineteenth-century saw pervasive societal change in Western and Central Europe as a massive wave of industrialization transformed the continent’s urban centers and power structures. The dominance of Smithian economics at the turn of the century contributed to a new industrial order defined by laissez-faire policies, the division of labor, and mass production. These forces combined with many others to form commodity culture, defined by Marxist political theory as the widespread assignment of economic value to objects previous void of economic meaning. This commodification had effects on the quality of life for the citizens of urban Europe but also on the structures that defined their life, including recreation. This is the topic that Susan Ingram focuses on throughout her three contributions to the collection Placing History: Themed Environments, Urban Consumption and the Public Entertainment Sphere.

Wayfinding in Themed Design: The “Weenie”

Author’s note: this is the first in a series of articles about how designers use the concept of wayfinding in theme park design. Miller (1992) defines wayfinding as “a goal-directed process of determining routes through an unfamiliar environment” (p. 1), and that is the definition I will use from here on out. It is worth noting, as Lynch (1960) describes, that “it…seems unlikely that there is any mystic ‘instinct’ of wayfinding. Rather there is a consistent use and organization of definite sensory cues from the external environment” (p. 3). As such, the design of the built environment has enormous potential in facilitating this process. Design-assisted spatial orientation has the ability to decrease congestion, direct crowd flow, and promote guest satisfaction within parks, as I will describe further in these articles.

What is a “Weenie”?

The “weenie” is an architectural concept named such by Disney Imagineering in describing “visual magnets” that draw guests from one area to another (Sklar, 2013). In Disney parks, these are seen everywhere and on every scale. From the turnstiles of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, guests are led throughout the park by the draw of weenies: first drawn into the center hub by Cinderella’s Castle; then from the hub to each of the “lands” by gateways that indicate the theme of the land that follows; then within each land to the major attractions by yet another weenie, like Space Mountain’s cone and spires in Tomorrowland or the distant peaks of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in Frontierland (see Fig. 1). Through these “magnets”, Disney is able to draw guests to the far reaches of its parks and create avenues of predictable foot traffic.