A Semester at DisneyBy: Alex Terry

A Semester at DisneyA personal project by: Alex Terry

Foreward:Ever since my first trip to Disney World when I was 6, I have wanted to be an Imagineer. Now that I am in my last semester, I feel it is time to take Walt’s advice:

This project is inspired by the child in all of us.

Introduction:This project consists of both analytical thinking and creative problem solving. I’ve divided this booklet into two sections. The first is efficiency opportunities and the second is imagination and ideation.

Observation& Research

Observational Opportunities:During my first few visits to the parks, I strapped a helmet camera to my head and began to collect data on how I could make suggestions to improve the parks. This section outlines a few opportunities that I found for improvement.

First observational opportunity:Welcomed guests generally begin to arrive 30 min. to an hour before the park opens. However, the welcome show doesn’t start for a while and guests have to wait patiently for the train to arrive. This can be a stressful beginning to the day for parents with children who have short attention spans.

Solution:Bring out some supporting role characters before the show to interact with guests prior to the train arriving in the station.

Efficiency Opportunity: The red circles are Disney Characters and the red square on the right is construction. As you can see by the purple highlights there is typical congestion that surrounds the characters. However when there is construction and characters present in the main square area it shifts the flow of the crowd (blue highlights) to the weak side creating a bottleneck at the start of Main street and generally makes the space feel small.

Solution: During periods of construction, move the characters to a different area than normal, thus creating better traffic flow.

Square during normal traffic Explanation of troubled spots during normal traffic

Efficiency Opportunity: After interviewing parents that were using strollers, I found they either brought their most high end strollers from home only to end up being lost, stolen or broken, or they purchased an inexpensive stroller and left them at the park when they left to avoid paying the high rental fees for park rentals.

Solution: Make an optional beeper tag like the department stores use on expensive clothing to indicate when a stroller is leaving the park, to cut down the rate of stolen equipment. Create a program to donate the strollers left behind by cus-tomers to local charities. Also, lowering the price of rental strollers could aid the situation.

Stroller Parking Lots Prices of the Strollers

Rented

$10.00

$10.00$120.00

Efficiency Opportunity: After riding the Haunted Mansion ride, I noticed that the merchandise shop seemed to be lacking a bit. Yet, when I rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, I found a lot of merchandise there that would fit perfectly in the Haunted Mansion shop.

Haunted Mansion Merchandise Shop Pirates of the Caribbean Merchandise Shop

Solution: There is so much Intellectual Property inherent in the Haunted Mansion. We could spread Tim Burton merchandise into both locations if licensing allows. Additional locations with same merchandise would mean more opportunities for sales and branding.

Why is all of the cool Tim Burton stuff in the Priates ride?

Imagination& Ideation

Imaginative Suggestions:This section is comprised of rides, teaching tools, and restaurant ideas. During my research, I looked at what the parks seem to be lacking in, and then targeted Disney content that might appeal to a new audience.

Summary: This is a ski-lift ride in Epcot. During my own personal experiences, I’ve noticed there is a lot of walking in Epcot. If you have a child this place could be quite unruly. I believe this gives us an excellent opportunity to educate children and save their parents a bit of added grief. Amelia’s World Adventure would fly guests from country to country in a ski-lift fashion with the transport vehicles being airplanes and a quirky voice over by Amelia herself. “Cool it flyboy.”

Psychographic:This ride is built for the adventurer at heart. “Sally” loves a bird’s eye perspective on life and would love nothing more than to get around the world in a jiffy. Her parents are constantly lagging behind this passionate individual who is always out in front walking faster than the rest of her family.

A search and reward ride.

Summary: This is a “search and reward” ride that also simulates a mining experience for the whole family. Using team work a family or group of friends have to work together to collect a gem for each member of their party. The ride will be themed around the seven dwarfs and have two segregated areas of the ride. The first is the mining flats and the second will be the ride. Each gem color gives the riders a different ex-perience. One gem unlocks a Fastpass for the whole party to ride the ride a second time.

Psychographic:Any family that looks to use team work and cooperation to strengthen their family bond. This ride can put the spotlight on even the youngest member of the family. If any member of the family were to grab the special gem, it unlocks the family for an instant Fastpass that lets them ride the ride again immediately after the first ride. “James” is an 11 yr. old boy who is a huge fan of gaming and mastered the memory games at age 9. He is very susceptible to conditioning games and loves the Seven Dwarfs.

An interactive LED garden.

Summary: This is an interactive experience that occurs only at night time in Tomorrowland. Guests can enter the garden and marvel at the lights as flowers sprout up all around them. Families can partici-pate in helping the garden grow by lifting on the handles of watering cans around the garden that trigger the LED sequencer that enables the plant to illuminate.

Psychographic:This experience is ment to create a mesmorizing effect on the audience. It supports home gardening and teaches youths how to water a plant. “Timmy” is fascinated by color and energy, most of his friends and family believe he has extreme ADD. However, it is his curiousity and passion for life that makes him interested in interactive experiences like this one.

A pickle stand.

Summary: Pickles! Guests could hone their negotiating skills as they haggle and barter with the store clerk just like the old days of Fronteirland to purchase their mid-afternoon snack. The clerk would simply have set price points he would not be allowed to bargain under but it could be a fun opportunity to engage the shop owner in a way other restau-rants don’t get to do.

Psychographic:Guests would experience a new type of salesman. Your typical guests would be caught off guard but would engage back in a manner that makes them blush or stand out to their friends. It would all be in good fun of course!

“Sally” is on her high school debate team and came to the parks with her friends. She has been cracking jokes all day and is very quick-witted. She is on a search for a formidable opponent.

Restaurant gaming experience.

Summary: This restaurant blends the fine dining experience with the entertainment of a show. By utilizing Gastronomy, the alteration of food’s chemical make-up, we can trick the guests taste buds in an entertaining way that keeps them coming back time and time again.

Psychographic:This attraction could have a reach that would appeal to most anybody. General foodies or park food enthusiasts would enjoy the participatory games as well as never experienced tastes.

“Ashley” is a huge foodie that prides herself in having the best taste buds in the world. Ashley’s husband gets made fun of because of her pride from time to time at group outings, but today he plans to get the last laugh.

A fountain drink shop.

How to enter

How to leave

How to get your bill.

Summary: This is a drink shop located in Tomorrowland. It is generally themed around computers from the past towards & future. Each guest station would be equipped with digitized menus and large ar-row keys to make their menu selections.

Psychographic:The typical guest would typically be a younger boy who is more technologically savvy than his parents. He would take pride in showing off his knowledge, skills, and abilities to his family. The shop could educate him further in the history of computing, video games, and programming.

Environment education game.

Summary: This is an educational experience located in Ep-cot’s innovation labs. Its responsibility is to teach today’s youth about nature conservation and greenhouse gases. Utilizing simple science, we can create fun experiments. Harnessing the gross amount of foot traffic experienced in Epcot, we can have stations set up so guests can talk to a real growing tree to see its effects throughout the day as an example.

Psychographic:The typical guest would lean more toward small children but would be later reinforced by the parents. This teaching tool would stimulate and enable children to learn about the world around them.

“Johnny” won first place at his science fair this semester and wants to become a scientist. He is usually the first to know a fact about science amongst his friends and loves knowing about everything he can.

An ice cream and sorbet shop.

Summary: I found Frontierland to be one of the most sunlit areas in the parks. More water, drinks and ice cream, sorbet, sherbet products would be a hit in these areas as well as many small walk-through mist spots here and there along the traffic flow to keep every one cool. This is a shop located in Disney’s Magic Kingdom’s Frontierland. The play-on-words would go deeper into the aesthetic of the eatery.

Psychographic:“Janet” sunburned and thirsty loves going through Frontierland but has been avoiding it all day be-cause of the lack of shade. She finally heads over to Tom Sawyer’s island and is happy to find “Down by the Sorbet.”

A learning experience.

Summary: A water conservation learning environment told through our friends under the sea. This could be a great opportunity to further expand the Nemo campaign. The location would be located in the innovation labs in Epcot. It would educate the guests on the mechanics of the ocean like wave crests and tidal movements. The highlight of the experience would be focused on the trash col-lecting in the oceans with a strong call to action for the guests to be better consumers to protect Nemo and his friends.

Psychographic:A typical guest could be any age. However, this would be more scientific than one would presume at first glance.

“Frank” just finished watching documentaries on saving our environment. He is an avid fan of Nemo and wants to share this information with his new girlfriend that accompanied him to the park.

Other Noteworthy Ideas:

Oh Hoppy Day:Leap-frog ride based around “The Princess and the Frog” It would be narrated by the Cajun light-ing bug and would be based on a water ride. The plot would be 2 frogs trying to escape alligators jumping from lily pad to lily pad splashing the rid-ers occasionally. The cart would be a big frog and riders would ride in the hollowed out backs of the frogs.

Mingle & Move:Speed dating and dancing bar in Downtown Disney’s adult area, could be good for grad nights and happy hours.

Comida As You Are:Mexican restaurant in Epcot.

Not What You Expectrumed?A learning environment to learn about light and colors. One of the opening lines could be “How do you Hue?”

Jill and Jack-alope / Jack-Elopes with Jill: Girl and Guy narrators take you through the savannah in Animal Kingdom as if it’stheir honeymoon.

Walt’s Peeps:This would be a ride through of the history of Walt and his people from the early days including the “Nine Old Men of Animation.” It would basically depict the “Golden Years of Animation” but it would be told through they eyes of baby chickens recalling old stories their parents would tell them.

Render Me Speechless:A behind the scenes show or experience in Holly-wood Studios demonstrating how Pixar Animations are made.

Fantasia experience:Using motion capture devices, guests could finally conjure up water around them just like Mickey!

Outta This Swirled:Currently in Tomorrowland there is an Ice Cream shop named Auntie Gravity, However in passing I came up with another great idea. “Outta This Swirled” the whole shop could be decorated as chocolate vs. vanilla and could be integrated with mixing slides that kids could race down.

A Semester at DisneyAll content created by Alex Terry