So today on the podcast, we continue one of our ongoing discussions, exploring what theme parks do and don't give us.

I will put this up front. It will take us two weeks to work through this topic, but there's a lot here to unpack.

In previous episodes of this series, we've explored how theme parks when well designed are arranged

to engage our emotions elevate our mood and generally place us into a unique

personal space today though we'll look at the question is immersion dead this is a

key concept of park design that goes all the way back to the time of Walt

Disney. So let me walk you down what immersion traditionally was supposed to do. A well-designed land

in years past would have visually separated us as guests from the real world outside the park.

Everything in the land would have encouraged us to believe that we were in a unique and believable location, such as the Old

West, the moon of Pandora, an exotic outpost in a jungle, the world of Hogwarts and Diagon

Alley, or the realm of Batu.

These worlds would have designed consistency and narrative coherence that is everything from the soundscape to the landscape,

from the food to the aromas, would reinforce the concept that we as guest were in a fully realized and

well-imagined location. This, in turn, at least for some guests, would lead them into a sense

of play or of role playing, and some of that inventive play would become the reason that guest

returned for subsequent experiences. If you need an example, just think of those would become the reason that guests returned for subsequent experiences.

If you need an example, just think of those people in the parks wearing Jedi robes in Galaxy's Edge

or wearing those dark school robes over in the Harry Potter sections of Universal.

That is, the design strategy of theme parks was arranged in part to remove people from the

stress of daily life and put them in movie-inspired realms where they could participate in a type of

ongoing play. Again, look for those people with the lightsabers or wands. And this impulse even goes back to the time of Walt himself. In the 1950s,

actors at Disneyland regularly staged gun battles in the middle of Frontierland with pistols

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