Engineers Telling Stories: How Engineering Advancements are Being Used to Create More Immersive Theme Park Attractions

The theme park industry is rapidly growing, as massive companies spend billions of dollars to create increasingly advanced attractions and lands for guests. This paper defines immersion and presence and explores how theme parks are designed. It will then explore the newest ride systems, exploring how technology is used in combination with a themed environment and story to meet and exceed guests’ expectations of an attraction. Attractions also use a variety of displays to convey important information and story elements along with audio. These principles are used to propose an advancement of an element that can be added to previously existing attractions to make guests feel more immersed and part of the story.