CMU School of Drama


Friday, November 29, 2019

Top 5 Stories from IAAPA 2019

Theme Park University: One of the highlights of the year is visiting the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) in Orlando. A place where designers of theme parks, attractions, food… anything that relates to attractions is on display. There are literally hundreds of booths all vying for the attention of vendors and the press. They’ve all got their own stories to tell. Here are our top 5 favorites from IAAPA 2019.

2 comments:

Lauren Sousa said...

It was really entertaining watching some of the videos and exhibits from the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions mostly because I forget how much the things we’re doing and their doing correlate so heavily, it is certainly a different spectrum of the industry but many companies provide for companies that are in the amusement and entertainment industry. Something I thought about in examining the top five stories is how cool the design and fabrication of element for a magician or illusionist would be. I’m wondering if there are people who specialize in things like that and the process behind it. Is it in close collaboration with the artist? Is the technical designer in part responsible for the “magic” of the trick? Whatever the process that is something I would be really interested in talking to someone who has gone through that experience before because I have no doubt it is interesting. Also the technology for the lego world theme park is sort of blowing my mind the sheer number of individual customizations that would need to happen so quickly and on a daily basis is really astounding. That sort of integration is something I don’t know if I’ll ever be technologically inclined enough to handle.

Julien Sat-Vollhardt said...

I really enjoyed reading about the international association of amusement parks and attractions and I can't help but think how cool it would be to go see one of these conferences myself. A lot of the concepts and demonstrations exhibited in this article were very interesting and I would have liked to talk with the creators and designers personally about their process. One if the concepts that really intrigued me was ancient lore village, a concept for a interactive family resort that allows people to go on quests and interact with their environment using special objects. This idea seems like a fusion of video game storytelling elements and a jurassic-park like exotic resort and is a project that would be really cool to learn about. Most intriguing is their proposal to be able to track individual players and and families' progress through quests and such, making this concept uniquely interactive. I can't help but think, however, about the amount of work needed to constantly come up with new adventures and new quests to keep the theme park fresh for returning visitors. If it is completed, though, count me in as one of the first guests.