The Immersive Theme Park
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THE IMMERSIVE THEME PARK Analyzing the Immersive World of the Magic Kingdom Theme Park JOOST TER BEEK (S4155491) MASTERTHESIS CREATIVE INDUSTRIES Radboud University Nijmegen Supervisor: C.C.J. van Eecke 22 July 2018 Summary The aim of this graduation thesis The Immersive Theme Park: Analyzing the Immersive World of the Magic Kingdom Theme Park is to try and understand how the Magic Kingdom theme park works in an immersive sense, using theories and concepts by Lukas (2013) on the immersive world and Ndalianis (2004) on neo-baroque aesthetics as its theoretical framework. While theme parks are a growing sector in the creative industries landscape (as attendance numbers seem to be growing and growing (TEA, 2016)), research on these parks seems to stay underdeveloped in contrast to the somewhat more accepted forms of art, and almost no attention was given to them during the writer’s Master’s courses, making it seem an interesting choice to delve deeper into this subject. Trying to reveal some of the core reasons of why the Disney theme parks are the most visited theme parks in the world, and especially, what makes them so immersive, a profound analysis of the structure, strategies, and design of the Magic Kingdom theme park using concepts associated with the neo-baroque, the immersive world and the theme park is presented through this thesis, written from the perspective of a creative master student who has visited these theme parks frequently over the past few years, using further literature, research, and critical thinking on the subject by others to underly his arguments. The Magic Kingdom theme park is analysed through four chapters, each chapter focusing on a different neo-baroque aesthetic that comes back in the theme park’s structures, strategies, and design that could be regarded as an immersive quality of the parks: the theme park’s labyrinthine structure, the illusion and the machine’s evoking these illusions present at the theme park, intertextuality in the souvenir, and the theme park as a series and as part of a series being the main foci of this analysis. Each of these different aesthetics seems to come back in many different forms in the theme park, both literally as metaphorically, depending on how these aesthetics are interpreted, revealing the complex ways in which the theme park could be interpreted as an immersive space. The author recommends further research towards the interpretation of the Magic Kingdom as an immersive space through qualitative and quantitative research towards the guests’ perception of the park, as this subject stays underdeveloped in this thesis; the park itself is the main case study of this research, how guests interpret it stays a subject that is further researchable. 1 Inhoudsopgave Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3 Method .................................................................................................................................................... 4 Theoretical framework ............................................................................................................................ 6 Immersion ........................................................................................................................................... 6 Immersive worlds ................................................................................................................................ 7 Linking neo-baroque aesthetics to the concept of the immersive world ........................................... 8 An introduction to the Magic Kingdom theme park ............................................................................. 11 Chapter 1: The structure of the Magic Kingdom park ........................................................................... 12 1.1 The labyrinth ............................................................................................................................... 12 1.2 The Magic Kingdom park as a multicursal labyrinth ................................................................... 14 1.2.1 The Magic Kingdom park as an immersive space ................................................................. 14 1.2.2 Labyrinthine paths ................................................................................................................ 28 1.3 The rides as unicursal labyrinths: the Haunted Mansion ride ..................................................... 29 1.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 33 Chapter 2: Illusions and the machine at the Magic Kingdom theme park ............................................ 35 2.1 The dark ride................................................................................................................................ 36 2.2 The rollercoaster ......................................................................................................................... 45 2.3 The movie-based ride: 3D-/4D-shows and simulator rides ......................................................... 48 2.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 49 Chapter 3: Immersive souvenirs of the Magic Kingdom theme park .................................................... 50 3.1 The souvenir as a magical thing .................................................................................................. 51 3.2 Intertextual souvenirs ................................................................................................................. 53 3.3 Immersive photographs .............................................................................................................. 61 3.4 Child’s play ................................................................................................................................... 64 3.5 Disney media and vlogs ............................................................................................................... 65 3.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 66 Chapter 4: Serial logic at the Magic Kingdom theme park .................................................................... 67 4.1 The Magic Kingdom park as a series in itself ............................................................................... 67 4.2 The Magic Kingdom park as part of a series ................................................................................ 70 4.2.1 The Magic Kingdom park as part of the Walt Disney World Resort ..................................... 71 4.2.2 The Magic Kingdom as part of a series of Disneyland-themed parks .................................. 72 4.3 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 76 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 77 Bibliography:.......................................................................................................................................... 78 Images bibliography: ............................................................................................................................. 86 2 Introduction Amusement and theme parks all around the world attract an immense amount of visitors these days. The results of a research into amusement parks, theme parks and museums attendance undertaken in 2016 by the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) show that the top 25 amusement and theme parks alone were visited by approximately 235.6 million visitors. For a relatively mature industry, it is remarkable to see that the worldwide attendance numbers for amusement and theme parks are still growing each year (attendance numbers of the top 25 amusement/theme parks around the world have risen with 26.3% between 2006 and 2015, and these attendance numbers have risen with 5.4% between 2014 and 2015 alone), while for instance the worldwide attendance numbers of museums are currently stagnating (attendance numbers of the top 20 museums worldwide have dropped with 0.7% between 2014 and 2015) (TEA, 2016). While this does not necessarily mean that one of the two sectors is more important than the other one, it does show that the theme park industry is a creative industry that is not subordinated to other creative industries, and should therefore be further analyzed and improved by scholarly attention on technical, economical, as well as cultural levels. With all four of the Walt Disney World resort theme parks in the top 10 of the list of the 25 most visited amusement and theme parks in the world of 2015 (and two of the Disney group’s other theme parks also featured in this top 10), the Disney theme parks seem to be the leaders of the theme park landscape worldwide (TEA, 2016). Disney theme parks themselves and the stories they tell through all sorts of different aspects of the parks have a lot to do with fantasy and the unreal, with both a nostalgic attitude towards the past as well as a longing for the future (or a nostalgic attitude to what ideas about the future used to be in the past), and with all sorts of different cultures from far-away and exotic countries.