Are movies taking over theme parks?
It might seem that way, with Disneyland and Universal Studios promoting so many big movie franchises with each new attraction they open. From “Frozen” to “Harry Potter” in the past year to “The Secret Life of Pets” and “Star Wars” to come, top local parks are relying on familiar movie characters and settings to give fans a new reason to visit.
But this really isn’t anything new. Movie and television tie-ins have been part of the theme park industry since the day Disneyland opened. Heck, Disney developed a TV series with the same name to promote the park before it even opened.
The park’s icon, Sleeping Beauty Castle, helped promote the animated movie the Disney Studios were working on at the time. Fantasyland was a mash-up of several of Disney’s animated films: “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Dumbo,” “The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad,” (Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride), “Alice in Wonderland” (Mad Tea Party at first, then later, the dark ride) and “Peter Pan.” Meanwhile, Adventureland was the first theme park land devoted to a single movie franchise – Disney’s “True-Life Adventures” series.
Universal’s The Wizarding World of Harry Potter has amazed fans with its immersive theme and wonderful detail. But the concept behind it – bringing a movie to life in a three-dimensional space – isn’t anything different than what Disneyland has been doing since 1955.
Let’s not dismiss Potter, though. That level of detail – that richness of its experience – all that is important. Universal’s Harry Potter lands are helping millions of fans fall in love with visiting theme parks and that’s great news, not just for the entire industry, but for communities including Orange County here and in Florida where theme parks fuel so much of the local economy.
But let’s consider this. It’s not just those eight Harry Potter films that come to life for fans when they enter the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It’s the seven books that inspired them, too.
If you wanted to build a truly immersive theme park land – one so filled with familiar detail that fans would be willing to spend hundreds, even thousands, of dollars on a family vacation to come see it – allow me to suggest that looking at books – instead of movies – might provide a richer source for inspiration.
People tend to spend more time reading a book than they do watching a movie. It’s not just a greater investment in time that makes books such a natural fit for theme parks. It’s the way books can fuel readers’ imaginations by inspiring them to create a mental picture instead of just passively watching a filmmaker’s vision.
Of course, to do that right, you have to start with the the right books.
“Before Potter was an eight-film franchise,” Mark Woodbury, president of Universal’s theme park design division, said at the opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando in 2010. “We knew it had the makings of a great theme park experience because of the characters, because of the action, because of the magical places that Rowling created.”
Potter might do this best, but, again, it wasn’t the first of its kind. Mark Twain’s stories about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn evoked wonderful settings that Disney brought to life with Tom Sawyer Island.
Yes, theme parks build a lot of rides based on movies. But that’s not the only place designers find inspiration. Sometimes, the best theme park experiences are those found first in the pages of a really good book.
Robert Niles is the founder and editor of ThemeParkInsider.com. Follow him on Twitter @ThemePark.
