Going Global: The Growth Of Themed Entertainment, Part One

Filming Miranda Of The Balcony, 1924. Photo by Topical Press Agency, Getty Images.

Through blogs, emails, LinkedIn, IAPPA.com, Blueloop, TEA Connect, as well as my network of knowledgeable friends like Darius Baker, hardly a week goes by without news of some fabulous new theme park not only in China, but Hong Kong, England, Scotland, Hungary, Brazil, Russia, India, Malaysia, Korea, the Emirates, and more. The beat goes on!

As often as not, I’ve enjoyed working with many of the talented individuals and companies who are responsible for the crazy world of entertainment design. Like my company EDC, most are based in Southern California and have been swept up in the accelerated globalizing of our industry.

California Dreamin’

Filming Metropolis, 1926. Photo by Hulton Archive, Getty Images.

While conventional wisdom credits Walt Disney as the originator of themed entertainment in Los Angeles, the California theme park story started back at the turn of the century when Abbot Kinney, a legendary tobacco mogul, adventurer, conservationist, and real estate developer, won a strip of southern Santa Monica marsh land on the flip of a coin and created the first “themed entertainment zone” of the West, which he called “Venice of America.”

Kinney, a dyed-in-the-wool Easterner, suffered from asthma and was drawn to Los Angeles for the dry and sunny climate. Without the benefit of sophisticated feasibility studies that we now have, his original “blue sky” concept was to create “a great cultural mecca,” but when the demographics didn’t support his concept, Kinney, like other great entertainment entrepreneurs, was agile enough to pivot from his dream of a European cultural experience to a populist vision that would appeal to beach going natives and summer tourists. The Venetian Renaissance-themed resort that he created featured a system of canals festooned with gondolas and serenading gondoliers. A miniature steam railroad transported tourists around the periphery of the park that included a dance pavilion, a gaming/restaurant/hotel housed on a ship, a lavish indoor swimming pool, and the first roller coaster of the West, Race Thru The Clouds. I became aware of Kinney when my company rented offices in a building on Windward Circle in Venice, California, designed to recall the famous rollercoaster that stood at that site in 1911 and spanned the entire quarter mile down to the ocean.

It's The Weather, Stupid!

1964 New York World's Fair. Photo by Nat Norman, Getty Images.

In the early 1900s, the film business, our sister industry, began to emigrate from studios in the Bronx and Fort Lee, New Jersey, where it was difficult to shoot in the winter months, to Los Angeles where sets were put on circular outdoor stages that could revolve and track the sun all year-round. Kinney’s “Coney Island by the Sea,” as it came to be called, attracted silent movie pioneers like Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Chaplin, who used the location to shoot Kid Auto Races At Venice. At one point, there were so many movie companies shooting in Venice that local businessmen considered enacting an ordinance to restrict film crews from shooting there. During the ‘30s, hundreds of thousands fled the Dust Bowl and headed to California on Route 66, which ended in Santa Monica. Dubbed “The Main Street of America,” with its family-themed motels and colorful road-side attractions, Route 66 introduced an element of fantasy and adventure to these Dust Bowl refugees while delivering them to a flowering film industry that could satisfy their taste for something new and different.

By the ‘40s, Los Angeles had become a magnet for attracting talent from Broadway as well as the capitals of Europe, and by the early ‘50s, when Disney started musing about a “unique family fun park that would be like stepping into a three-dimensional movie,” he was able to draw on a select group of animators, writers, and designers that were already working at his animation studio, thus forming a legendary core group that became known as “Imagineers.”

Disneyland castle in 1955. Photo by Keystone, Getty Images.

A lot has been written about Disney’s journey from his pre-war classic cartoon, Steamboat Willie, to the opening of Disneyland in 1955 and the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Suffice it to say, upon Disney’s passing, a loyal team of his empowered creatives had the knowledge and experience to bring the Imagineering spirit to Disney World in Florida.

As a freelance designer, I was fortunate to know some of these Disney pioneers that have become legendary mentors to our industry. Herb Ryman was an inspiring artist who created many of the original designs for Disneyland. Bob Gurr was an engineer who designed most of Disney’s early ride vehicles. Buzz Price, an engineering graduate from Cal Tech, studied demographic trends, accessibility, and weather to help Disney choose the best location for his new project. Price went on to pioneer the economics of leisure-recreation feasibility, creating algorithms that provide the metrics for master planning and investment that are now an essential part of the development of entertainment venues worldwide. Marty Sklar was a tireless and inspiring manager of Imagineering talent and presided over the design and production of many Disney theme parks. 

What these four innovators had in common was a passion and generosity for passing on what they had learned to new generations of talent. In fact, they saw it as a responsibility, a way of expressing gratitude for the opportunities that Disney gave them. Bob Rodgers, another Imagineering alumnus, has said that Sklar influenced “the careers and creative philosophies of almost every designer and showman in our industry.”

Read Part Two here.

Turn the page to read about Marty Sklar's 10 Commandments.

Entertainment designer Jeremy Railton has made a career out of creating many of the “biggest” and “firsts” in themed entertainment, all in the pursuit of wow. His career spans design in theatre, dance, film, TV, concerts, spectacles of Olympian proportions, retail entertainment, and architectural projects. His company, Entertainment Design Corporation, can be found at www.entdesign.com.

For more, download the July issue of Live Design for free onto your iPad or iPhone from the Apple App Store, and onto your Android smartphone and tablet from Google Play. 

Marty's 10 Commandments*

Frontierland at Disneyland in 1955. Photo by Keystone, Getty Images.

1. Know your audience: Don’t bore people, talk down to them, or lose them by assuming that they know what you know.

2. Wear your guest’s shoes: Insist that designers, staff, and your board members experience your facility as visitors as often as possible.

3. Organize the flow of people and ideas: Use good storytelling techniques, tell good stories, not lectures, lay out your exhibit with a clear logic.

4. Create a weenie: Lead visitors from one area to another by creating visual magnets and giving visitors rewards for making the journey.

5. Communicate with visual literacy: Make good use of all the non-verbal ways of communication, color, shape, form, texture.

6. Avoid overload: Resist the temptation to tell too much, to have too many objects. Don’t force people to swallow more than they can digest. Try to stimulate and provide guidance to those who want more.

7. Tell one story at a time: If you have a lot of information, divide it into distinct, logical, organized stories. People can absorb and retain information more clearly if the path to the next concept is clear and logical.

8. Avoid contradiction: Clear institutional identity helps give you the competitive edge. The public needs to know who you are and what differentiates you from other institutions they may have seen.

9. For every ounce of treatment, provide a ton of fun: How do you woo people from all other temptations? Give people plenty of opportunity to enjoy themselves by emphasizing ways that let people participate in the experience and by making your environment rich and appealing to all senses.

10. Keep it up: Never underestimate the importance of cleanliness and routine maintenance. People expect to get a good show every time. People will comment more on broken and dirty stuff.

*Martin Sklar, Walt Disney Imagineering, Education vs. Entertainment: Competing for Audiences, AAM Annual meeting, 1987