Dark Rides

The rest of this lesson is going to focus on the design and development of a specific style of attraction that we call a dark ride. A dark ride moves an audience through a sequence of scenes where we control elements like lighting and sound, to bring a story to life. And will focus on three in particular. The first is Navi River journey from Disney's Animal Kingdom, where you experienc e the bioluminescent rainforests of Pandora and meet the shaman of songs. The second is Radiator Springs Racers in Disney California Adventure, where you travel through the town of Radiator Springs and participate in a climactic race with your friends. And the third is Pirates of the Caribbean Battle for the Sunken Treasure from Shanghai Disneyland, where you encounter underwater monsters and treasure and take part in a battle between resurrected pirate ships. When people hear the word dark ride they think different things. Often you think of just a ride that's in the dark. Well that's sort of true and original dark rides started that way, but now it's a whole genre of rides. Basically a dark ride means it's a place that you want to be able to have light control, and they're typically done in the dark and then wherever I want light, I add light. So if you're in the Navi River journey at Animal Kingdom, you're on a boat ride - all indoors - but it looks like you're outdoors because we have the ability to control the light that way. If you're on Radiator Springs Racers at Disney's California Adventure, then you have parts that are outdoors and parts that are indoors, but it's still a dark ride. And And whether it's Pirates of the Caribbean at Shanghai Disneyland, again big boat ride and scenes that look like they're huge. But again we have complete light control, so that's what makes it by definition a dark ride. Dark rides for us are a unique opportunity because they allow us to put the guests in a whole variety of roles. Sometimes you're just going through the environment watching the action unfold. Sometimes you're an active participant, like in Midway Mania when you're actually playing the game and and affecting the story. But we put tend to put guests and all different variety of roles depending on the story we're trying to tell and what we want you to play in it. All of our dark rides tell very different stories and result in very different experiences for our guests. But, the process of creating them always begins the same way. The very first step in the design of these attractions is to create what we call a high concept idea. It's a simple statement that captures the essence of an experience and gets people excited about the idea. Well as you can imagine when you are designing a ride there are many layers and it can be very complicated. Also there are many opportunities and a lot of different directions that you can go, so it's very important that from day one you are able to clearly articulate exactly what your ride experience is going to be. Often we call it the elevator pitch. Can you explain in 15 seconds your idea? If you can then that's great, because it's simple it's clean and straight forward. You didn't have to explain all the details but just enough to get the person sort of hooked like, oh that sounds cool tell me more. To give you an example, I'm working on a current attraction called Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway. And our opening overall arching statement is, you get to ride in a cartoon. You know, what if I could go into a haunted house and interact with the ghosts, boop Haunted Mansion. What if I could go back in time and be in the world of Pirates, Pirates of the Caribbean. What if I want to you know be flying through space in the dark, Space Mountain. Again they're simple single sentences that sort of describe what the experience is. There really does need to be that hook. Like what is really the interesting part of this this experience and the story that we're going to tell? It's helpful for the guests, because within a couple seconds they can understand what the ride is gonna be. Is it something for them? The high concept is also helpful for us as we're designing because it is your roadmap. It's your two sentence road sentence roadmap that tells you what you want the ride to be, how you want it to be themed and everything that you do can point back to that high concept As you can see, it's important to start with a high concept idea that guides the design process as the concept of the attraction evovles. Now it's time to figure out what the high concept should be for your dark ride. Use the next exercise to brainstorm a few possibilities.