So today on the podcast, we finish off our exploration of what is the contemporary role of immersion,

or immersion in theme parks when the type of immersion that early designers once talked about,

that is, being removed from the world outside the park is really no longer fully possible.

We now take the outside world into the parks and our pockets, purses, and backpacks

via our phones and tablets.

Now that immersion is no longer a fully effective tool to create a themed bubble that

intellectually and behaviorally removes us from the

problems of daily life, immersion is now sometimes treated like a goal in itself. But in a modern

technology-assisted society, what then does immersion give us in a theme park?

Designers can make an absolutely beautiful recreation of, let's say, the desert in Africa or a beach in Australia,

and I can admire the artistry of that achievement, much in the same way that I might admire the skill required to make

certain types of art exhibits and galleries and museums or a beautifully created

dimensional land themed after a movie or video game can remind me of seeing the

movie or playing that game but is that enough in terms of theme park design for what guests want?

Last week we started with the question, are the traditional goals of immersion now impossible to

achieve through themed lands largely due to phone use in the parks? But really what we were

talking about was this.

In a world of pervasive technological connections, what does or what can theming give

us in terms of our experience inside of a well-designed park?

That is, have the end goals of theming changed in terms of our own experience,

and how has smartphone culture contributed to this change? And that's right where we're going to

jump back into our conversation today.

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