Jolly Holiday Update! The Horse Race.

Today here’s an image from the climax of the ride where you join the horse race and the jockeys ride alongside you accompanied by a rousing score. The scene takes place in a series of 3 speed tunnels laid out in the shape of a horse track. The backgrounds are project but the jockeys are animatronics that ride along side you, neck and neck. Eventually Mary Poppins sends the wind to help you along and you’re lifted above the riders to the finish line.

horse race in jolly holiday

For the full rundown of the Jolly Holiday attraction please check out the page. What do you think?

Jolly Holiday Storyboards!

I’ve started working on some story boards for Jolly Holiday. They’re kind of crap but it’s nice to have something. I’ve gotten up to the carousel scene. (You can see how the quality drops as I got tired and started to speed up lol). Let me know what you think!

For more information on this attraction check out this page.

Portfolio!

Pen and Marker
Just one of the many goodies you’ll find.

Quick update. I’ve now added some of my work to the site. So you can now view my Mary Poppins ride concept, Jolly Holiday, here and just some general art here.

In the future, when there’s new content to add I’ll either be making individual progress posts and updating the pages themselves. Not entirely sure how I’m gonna manage the organization of that, but that’s not your problem. 🙂

The Trend Towards (new) Immersion

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter undoubtably set in motion a new immersion standard.
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter undoubtably set in motion a new immersion standard.

Alrighty, a big topic to start off with lol. Just as a warning, this post doesn’t exactly have a thesis – there’s a lot of ground to cover, more it’s a bunch of half developed observations. Take it as fair warning that my biggest flaw as a writer is keeping myself focused.

Has anyone else noticed just how prevalent the terms “immersive” or “immersion” have become in the themed entertainment world? It seems I can’t even read a press release for a  new merry-go-round without coming across a sentence like,

“this ground-breaking new attraction featuring a brand new type of rotating mechanism immerses the rider into the world of wooden horses and carousels of old like never before.”

Hyperbole and the focus on ride system aside (topics for another day) there’s that damn word again: a concept encompassing perhaps the absolute pinnacle of themed design being reduced to a buzzword completely devoid of any of it’s original meaning. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is immersive. Radiator Springs is immersive. The Rivers of America is immersive (I can hear some shouts about that last one coming my way already – I’ll get to it). The Simpsons land at Universal Orlando is not immersive. Nor is the despicable me attraction. Nor is a lot of the theme park world. But that’s not a bad thing, especially when the focus on immersion in the modern era seems ever so more emphasized not on the concept of immersion itself, but on a particular subtype of it. Continue reading “The Trend Towards (new) Immersion”