As theme park and attraction development enters a new, softer, and more reflective business cycle, those involved in the industry are revisiting business and design practices that have gotten them to where they are today.
At the Trends in Leisure Entertainment (TiLE) Conference in London in June, industry newcomers joined veterans to discuss the future of the themed entertainment industry.
Four veterans attending the conference joined AB Senior Editor Tim O'Brien for a discussion on theming and design. Taking part in the discussion was Tony Baxter, senior VP Creative Development, Walt Disney Imagineering; Ray Braun, senior VP, Economics Research Associates; Bob Rogers, president, BRC Imagination Arts; and Jack Rouse, CEO, Jack Rouse Associates. The following includes exerpts from the transcript of that gathering which helps shed some light on the current state of "WOW", or what we call "E-Ticket" attractions.
AB: "Wow" was once the buzzword to describe the distinguishing design feature of a project. It seems to have fallen out of style lately and is not used as much as in the past. Why?
Baxter: George Lucas once said to "never be afraid of the cliche because it's a cliche because it works." Unfortunately, as much as we don't like "wow," we almost need to (use it) because it describes things that people haven't seen or experienced yet. Once it has become a "wow," it's not a real "wow" anymore in a way because it's been done. It just becomes a replication of somebody else's "wow." So, you're constantly trying to find a way to create one of these things. I feel every product that succeeds in distinguishing itself has one. We're stuck with having to use the "wow" concept if we want to excel and distinguish our products from the rest.
AB: Is it really important to have one for every project?
Baxter: Heaven forbid if you spend a lot of money on something that doesn't have one, because without it there's nothing for the guests to really talk about when they go home.
Rouse: Before George Lucas talked about cliches, Richard Rogers said, "Even a cliche has the right to be true." I guess what I don't like about it is that often it becomes a cliche for the solution.
Braun: People who don't know what they're doing sort of just cavalierly say, "give me a wow," and think that makes everything all right. It's much more complex than that.
Rogers: "Wow" is an abstraction, and we call it that because it's a replacement for any kind of concrete ability to articulate what in the heck this thing is. Have any of us ever met a client who knows what a "wow" is or is prepared for what it's going to cost? Yeah, they all say they want a "wow," but few of them know it when they see it.
AB: Are clients still asking for "wows?"
Rogers: Most of our clients tend to be gravitating toward a "wow" or they wouldn't have chosen us to begin with. We just went through a deadly competition against Jack Rouse in which we were convinced Jack was the company to beat, and we think Jack was convinced we were the company to beat.
Rouse: Guess what? We both came in second. Damn, we went down well together.
Rogers: It was obvious to me from who they chose a very, very respectable but very, very conservative museum designer that they were not looking for a "wow." They were looking for someone that would color within the lines and not do anything to disturb the architect. We would have upset the architect.
AB: Storyline is another phrase often thrown around. Is the story the "wow?"
Rouse: Well, it's certainly the price of entry for the "wow." I think the point of the "wow" is that it's perceived as something you lay on top of something else rather than something that grows out of it. If the story leads to a straightforward conclusion, it doesn't mean you have to spend 40 zillion dollars on pyro at the end just to create a "wow."
Baxter: I think emphasis on story has gotten out of hand. I've read stories that are so convoluted and so explanatory that they get in the way of the fact that we have guests for three or four, maybe 10 minutes, and they've got to understand and feel the emotion during that limited time. I think it's up to us as storytellers to forget those big, long-winded, convoluted and hard to follow storylines.
AB: Can you give an example of a convoluted storyline at Disney?
Baxter: The worst for me was Pleasure Island at Walt Disney World (Lake Buena Vista, Fla.). We actually built this thing around (the story of) Merry Weather Pleasure. All the buildings had fallen into doom and each one had a theme based on the storyline. But you know the guests were there to party. They could care less (about the story).
AB: That facility is quite popular today, what did you do to save it?
Baxter: We had to come up with a simple story that would captivate them. Now, it's New Years Eve every night. That's our book now. Every night that you come, whether it's July or September, it will be New Years Eve. Everybody understands that. They know the role they're going to play leading up to midnight. They know what to expect at midnight. We deliver and they go home satisfied.
AB: Is the business of design and theming changing?
Rogers: The answer is that it's changing constantly and continually. We're going to see a shift of the fundamentals of business because things are going to be tight here for a little while, especially in theme parks, but there's a couple of constants I'm starting to see. The best people always work. If they're really on top of their game, and by that I don't mean the people who were the best 10 years ago, I mean the people who are really at the top of their game now, seem to always find the work. No. 2, the fundamentals of what we do haven't changed that much. The technologies have changed. Sometimes the technologies have changed the way the audience relates to our products, the way the audience expectations have changed, but certain fundamentals seem to always apply. The answer is we are constantly changing. We're all dancing on quicksand here.
Rouse: I don't think the essence of what we do has changed. I mean the execution changes, and if you move to different countries or different cultures you've got to change the way you write a little. We're all not just working in the continuous 48 states anymore, which is sort of where we were all working when most of us started.
Rogers: Consider this every single 12-year-old out there right now that comes to our projects has never known a day in which either Bill Clinton or a George Bush wasn't president. Most of them have parents who never knew a world without MTV. All of that is just really scary. I can't stand to watch television with my 13-year-old because he doesn't watch one show. He watches three shows at once, and the fact he misses the conclusion of some shows doesn't bother him. It annoys me to sit in the same room with him while he's digesting information. It's a real slap in the head that causes me to come back to the fundamentals and say well, you know, maybe a hell of a lot has changed in the last 10 years.
AB: Did that change sneak up on us?
Rogers: It's like the boiled frog. You put the frog in the pan of hot water and the frog goes "Oh, my God," and jumps out. But put the frog in cold water and slowly bring the water to a boil the frog will sit there and boil to death because he'll never feel the change. Maybe all of us have been actually adapting to this change slowly, and it's only when you stop suddenly and look back 10 years that you realize just how much change we've been through.
AB: Is there a trend in design?
Braun: To me, the important trend is that we're seeing a dissemination of a lot of the things that were developed in the theme park world going into lots of different places museums, retail destinations, and those kinds of things. We're seeing all kinds of tricks of the trade, all kinds of design approaches. We're using all kinds of entertainment and bringing entertainment to the people in a lot of different ways, inside retail stores and inside restaurants, and so the experience of going out to all these places is in fact becoming more competitive by becoming more entertaining. I think that's a very strong trend.
Rogers: We're now tending to start our projects as designers by immediately dragging in an economic consultant, an operations consultant, and marketing help. No longer do we go off into a vacuum and invent things. It's not the client pushing these things onto us. It's us.
AB: Give me an example?
Rogers: We start to think almost immediately, even before the preliminary design is completed, that it's not about the themed attraction, it's about the adjacencies. It's about what it does. You know, are we going to drive some hotels that we own? Are we going to be able to drive some restaurants and retail that we own? We start to talk to clients about per capitas and after-hours events. What are the other things that we can do to make money?
Braun: I just have to drop in and say Hallelujah for your comments about that trend. We hope we see it. We've given a lot of those lectures ourselves about how it is a business and it can't be designed in a vacuum and it does involve marketing the product, and it does involve designing well, and managing investment, which is a big issue, in measures of success.
At the Trends in Leisure Entertainment (TiLE) Conference in London in June, industry newcomers joined veterans to discuss the future of the themed entertainment industry.
Four veterans attending the conference joined AB Senior Editor Tim O'Brien for a discussion on theming and design. Taking part in the discussion was Tony Baxter, senior VP Creative Development, Walt Disney Imagineering; Ray Braun, senior VP, Economics Research Associates; Bob Rogers, president, BRC Imagination Arts; and Jack Rouse, CEO, Jack Rouse Associates. The following includes exerpts from the transcript of that gathering which helps shed some light on the current state of "WOW", or what we call "E-Ticket" attractions.
AB: "Wow" was once the buzzword to describe the distinguishing design feature of a project. It seems to have fallen out of style lately and is not used as much as in the past. Why?
Baxter: George Lucas once said to "never be afraid of the cliche because it's a cliche because it works." Unfortunately, as much as we don't like "wow," we almost need to (use it) because it describes things that people haven't seen or experienced yet. Once it has become a "wow," it's not a real "wow" anymore in a way because it's been done. It just becomes a replication of somebody else's "wow." So, you're constantly trying to find a way to create one of these things. I feel every product that succeeds in distinguishing itself has one. We're stuck with having to use the "wow" concept if we want to excel and distinguish our products from the rest.
AB: Is it really important to have one for every project?
Baxter: Heaven forbid if you spend a lot of money on something that doesn't have one, because without it there's nothing for the guests to really talk about when they go home.
Rouse: Before George Lucas talked about cliches, Richard Rogers said, "Even a cliche has the right to be true." I guess what I don't like about it is that often it becomes a cliche for the solution.
Braun: People who don't know what they're doing sort of just cavalierly say, "give me a wow," and think that makes everything all right. It's much more complex than that.
Rogers: "Wow" is an abstraction, and we call it that because it's a replacement for any kind of concrete ability to articulate what in the heck this thing is. Have any of us ever met a client who knows what a "wow" is or is prepared for what it's going to cost? Yeah, they all say they want a "wow," but few of them know it when they see it.
AB: Are clients still asking for "wows?"
Rogers: Most of our clients tend to be gravitating toward a "wow" or they wouldn't have chosen us to begin with. We just went through a deadly competition against Jack Rouse in which we were convinced Jack was the company to beat, and we think Jack was convinced we were the company to beat.
Rouse: Guess what? We both came in second. Damn, we went down well together.
Rogers: It was obvious to me from who they chose a very, very respectable but very, very conservative museum designer that they were not looking for a "wow." They were looking for someone that would color within the lines and not do anything to disturb the architect. We would have upset the architect.
AB: Storyline is another phrase often thrown around. Is the story the "wow?"
Rouse: Well, it's certainly the price of entry for the "wow." I think the point of the "wow" is that it's perceived as something you lay on top of something else rather than something that grows out of it. If the story leads to a straightforward conclusion, it doesn't mean you have to spend 40 zillion dollars on pyro at the end just to create a "wow."
Baxter: I think emphasis on story has gotten out of hand. I've read stories that are so convoluted and so explanatory that they get in the way of the fact that we have guests for three or four, maybe 10 minutes, and they've got to understand and feel the emotion during that limited time. I think it's up to us as storytellers to forget those big, long-winded, convoluted and hard to follow storylines.
AB: Can you give an example of a convoluted storyline at Disney?
Baxter: The worst for me was Pleasure Island at Walt Disney World (Lake Buena Vista, Fla.). We actually built this thing around (the story of) Merry Weather Pleasure. All the buildings had fallen into doom and each one had a theme based on the storyline. But you know the guests were there to party. They could care less (about the story).
AB: That facility is quite popular today, what did you do to save it?
Baxter: We had to come up with a simple story that would captivate them. Now, it's New Years Eve every night. That's our book now. Every night that you come, whether it's July or September, it will be New Years Eve. Everybody understands that. They know the role they're going to play leading up to midnight. They know what to expect at midnight. We deliver and they go home satisfied.
AB: Is the business of design and theming changing?
Rogers: The answer is that it's changing constantly and continually. We're going to see a shift of the fundamentals of business because things are going to be tight here for a little while, especially in theme parks, but there's a couple of constants I'm starting to see. The best people always work. If they're really on top of their game, and by that I don't mean the people who were the best 10 years ago, I mean the people who are really at the top of their game now, seem to always find the work. No. 2, the fundamentals of what we do haven't changed that much. The technologies have changed. Sometimes the technologies have changed the way the audience relates to our products, the way the audience expectations have changed, but certain fundamentals seem to always apply. The answer is we are constantly changing. We're all dancing on quicksand here.
Rouse: I don't think the essence of what we do has changed. I mean the execution changes, and if you move to different countries or different cultures you've got to change the way you write a little. We're all not just working in the continuous 48 states anymore, which is sort of where we were all working when most of us started.
Rogers: Consider this every single 12-year-old out there right now that comes to our projects has never known a day in which either Bill Clinton or a George Bush wasn't president. Most of them have parents who never knew a world without MTV. All of that is just really scary. I can't stand to watch television with my 13-year-old because he doesn't watch one show. He watches three shows at once, and the fact he misses the conclusion of some shows doesn't bother him. It annoys me to sit in the same room with him while he's digesting information. It's a real slap in the head that causes me to come back to the fundamentals and say well, you know, maybe a hell of a lot has changed in the last 10 years.
AB: Did that change sneak up on us?
Rogers: It's like the boiled frog. You put the frog in the pan of hot water and the frog goes "Oh, my God," and jumps out. But put the frog in cold water and slowly bring the water to a boil the frog will sit there and boil to death because he'll never feel the change. Maybe all of us have been actually adapting to this change slowly, and it's only when you stop suddenly and look back 10 years that you realize just how much change we've been through.
AB: Is there a trend in design?
Braun: To me, the important trend is that we're seeing a dissemination of a lot of the things that were developed in the theme park world going into lots of different places museums, retail destinations, and those kinds of things. We're seeing all kinds of tricks of the trade, all kinds of design approaches. We're using all kinds of entertainment and bringing entertainment to the people in a lot of different ways, inside retail stores and inside restaurants, and so the experience of going out to all these places is in fact becoming more competitive by becoming more entertaining. I think that's a very strong trend.
Rogers: We're now tending to start our projects as designers by immediately dragging in an economic consultant, an operations consultant, and marketing help. No longer do we go off into a vacuum and invent things. It's not the client pushing these things onto us. It's us.
AB: Give me an example?
Rogers: We start to think almost immediately, even before the preliminary design is completed, that it's not about the themed attraction, it's about the adjacencies. It's about what it does. You know, are we going to drive some hotels that we own? Are we going to be able to drive some restaurants and retail that we own? We start to talk to clients about per capitas and after-hours events. What are the other things that we can do to make money?
Braun: I just have to drop in and say Hallelujah for your comments about that trend. We hope we see it. We've given a lot of those lectures ourselves about how it is a business and it can't be designed in a vacuum and it does involve marketing the product, and it does involve designing well, and managing investment, which is a big issue, in measures of success.
