Happy New Year guys!
For the new year, I wanted to share a project that I just posted that I have been working on for a while and I hope you will enjoy!
Here's the introduction, straight from Imagineerland. Full text at the blog.
"This post will detail an original attraction that I have designed for the UK Pavilion in EPCOT. If you have seen my EPCOT expansion plan before, you will have already gotten a quick description of this attraction.
As part of my mission for my expanded EPCOT, I wanted to have an attraction in each and every pavilion, so the UK needed something. Luckily there was a pretty good sized plot on the south side of the back square that was always meant for an attraction. So location was not an issue with this project.
But more importantly, I wanted the elements of each pavilion to better focus on the culture and historical contributions of each region to the world. I am a big proponent for no Disney characters in World Showcase. I'm actually pretty ok with them in most other situations within reason, but not in World Showcase, because of its intended cultural diversity, mature tone, and focus on representing the reality of the world outside the parks. It isn't just another backlot to fill with animated characters and IPs, it has a more noble purpose of education and globalization. So, I set these standards to myself when approaching this attraction.
The best way to describe how I thought about what stories should be told in the attractions of World Showcase is that I aimed to demonstrate the significance of the contribution each pavilion has made to global culture. Easier in some cases than others, but for the UK, I had some great options.
Among some other possible topics, I came to realize that British Literature is a huge topic that has obvious impact (even if just by defining a high school literature class). This was a theme I saw alot of potential in, most notably because I could draw on literally centuries of defined characters and settings to have immediate emotional connections. And since they are literary characters, not visual, there is no real required look or style, so the characters could be manipulated to align into a common visual language. Plus many of the stories are in the public domain, so it would be completely reasonable for them to be used in an attraction. Its almost like the perfect way around my previous no characters statement: gets the benefit of previous knowledge and emotional connection with a character and represents the true identity of the country without being out of place or a misplaced animated property.
So I had a general theme and a few ideas about how to formulate a collection of British Lit highlights into a dark ride. I also took a bit of inspiration from some other well regarded Disney attractions when it came to the overarching plot that contains the scenes."
And then comes the text of the walkthrough, which is posted in full here at Imagineerland!
But I'll share the drawings with you now anyway: an exterior elevation, and the attraction plan.
Plus, I did something new for this project that I think is pretty cool: I made a walkthrough video of the ride. Link is in the blog post, but if you can, read the description first! Hope you guys like the attraction as much as I enjoyed designing it.
I also wanted to give you the first preview of what I have planned for this next year at Imagineerland and how I want to get more involved with fellow designers. So in addition to one design post each month, I am planning for one text post each month. These monthly posts would mostly be commentaries or essays about the architectural and planning theory of theme park design. Other times they might be detailed reviews of attractions or books, or maybe top lists, or other random thoughts. But in each case, I plan to present them as the start of a discussion that I hope you guys will participate in. I would love to use the design projects and essays to start meaningful talk about the design of what we all love so much!
I'll be talking more about this on the blog soon and I'll be back here to let you know once it gets started!
Thanks for reading everyone and have a happy new year!
For the new year, I wanted to share a project that I just posted that I have been working on for a while and I hope you will enjoy!
Here's the introduction, straight from Imagineerland. Full text at the blog.
"This post will detail an original attraction that I have designed for the UK Pavilion in EPCOT. If you have seen my EPCOT expansion plan before, you will have already gotten a quick description of this attraction.
As part of my mission for my expanded EPCOT, I wanted to have an attraction in each and every pavilion, so the UK needed something. Luckily there was a pretty good sized plot on the south side of the back square that was always meant for an attraction. So location was not an issue with this project.
But more importantly, I wanted the elements of each pavilion to better focus on the culture and historical contributions of each region to the world. I am a big proponent for no Disney characters in World Showcase. I'm actually pretty ok with them in most other situations within reason, but not in World Showcase, because of its intended cultural diversity, mature tone, and focus on representing the reality of the world outside the parks. It isn't just another backlot to fill with animated characters and IPs, it has a more noble purpose of education and globalization. So, I set these standards to myself when approaching this attraction.
The best way to describe how I thought about what stories should be told in the attractions of World Showcase is that I aimed to demonstrate the significance of the contribution each pavilion has made to global culture. Easier in some cases than others, but for the UK, I had some great options.
Among some other possible topics, I came to realize that British Literature is a huge topic that has obvious impact (even if just by defining a high school literature class). This was a theme I saw alot of potential in, most notably because I could draw on literally centuries of defined characters and settings to have immediate emotional connections. And since they are literary characters, not visual, there is no real required look or style, so the characters could be manipulated to align into a common visual language. Plus many of the stories are in the public domain, so it would be completely reasonable for them to be used in an attraction. Its almost like the perfect way around my previous no characters statement: gets the benefit of previous knowledge and emotional connection with a character and represents the true identity of the country without being out of place or a misplaced animated property.
So I had a general theme and a few ideas about how to formulate a collection of British Lit highlights into a dark ride. I also took a bit of inspiration from some other well regarded Disney attractions when it came to the overarching plot that contains the scenes."
And then comes the text of the walkthrough, which is posted in full here at Imagineerland!
But I'll share the drawings with you now anyway: an exterior elevation, and the attraction plan.
I also wanted to give you the first preview of what I have planned for this next year at Imagineerland and how I want to get more involved with fellow designers. So in addition to one design post each month, I am planning for one text post each month. These monthly posts would mostly be commentaries or essays about the architectural and planning theory of theme park design. Other times they might be detailed reviews of attractions or books, or maybe top lists, or other random thoughts. But in each case, I plan to present them as the start of a discussion that I hope you guys will participate in. I would love to use the design projects and essays to start meaningful talk about the design of what we all love so much!
I'll be talking more about this on the blog soon and I'll be back here to let you know once it gets started!
Thanks for reading everyone and have a happy new year!
