The Most Magical Experiential Ecosystem with Integrated Experience Operating System... On Earth.

I am a big fan of amusement parks, theme parks, whatever you want to call them. But I don’t think I experience them in the same way many guests do. I think it has a lot to do with my relationship with theme parks over the years.

It happened pretty young.

I grew up in the Dallas and Fort Worth area where we had Six Flags Over Texas. It was a regional theme park and something we did as a family a few times a year. It had a few coasters, an observation deck, a handful of dark and flat rides, multiple theaters with live shows, games, an arcade, food, and all the normal theme park stuff.

It was a fun place to go with the family.

Then, when I was about ten years old, we went to Disney World. I had the classic experience. I got to see Mickey, ride Peter Pan, and go through the World Showcase. At the time, it felt like a much larger and more detailed version of Six Flags.

Then, when I got to my teenage years, something happened. I got a season pass to Six Flags and started going with friends over the summer.

And I don’t mean I went a few times, or even once a week.

I was at Six Flags with my friends four to seven days a week, then that started bleeding into the weekends during the school year. We were often there from noon to ten at night. I did this for about three years.

Six Flags became my stomping grounds.

My group of friends and I were unusually comfortable existing there. We were pretty good at not being a nuisance, staying out of the way, and being somewhat helpful, at least as far as a group of teenagers was concerned.

But during that time, I started to learn things about the park.

We found small hidden alcoves that kept us out of the center of foot traffic. We found closed rides with abandoned queues or exit areas. We started learning how traffic flowed through the park.

We learned about queueing and theming. I learned about the importance of shade and water and access to food, drinks, and restrooms.

I started having conversations that were less about whether I liked a ride and more about the variety of rides, how close different ride types were placed to each other, how much throughput they had, and how the park was designed to move people from queue to queue while still giving each area something for different riders and different levels of intensity.

I eventually went from being nearly a citizen of the park to working there after I turned sixteen.

At that point, my education in theme park balance kept expanding. I started learning more about flow between themed lands and how parks create an experience while also maintaining reasonable backstage areas with real maintenance needs and operational requirements.

Then we went back to Disney World.

The experience was massively different.

Sure, it was still fun to ride rides and meet characters. I especially enjoyed the dark rides since there were very few at Six Flags.

But my mind no longer allowed me to just live in the fantasy.

I now saw the machine.

I could see when flow issues started to creep in. I could see the design of the park and how things like path width played a major role in bottlenecks. I noticed how, in so many places, I almost always had a sightline to food from somewhere inside the park.

I noticed shaded seating areas near higher intensity rides where older members of the family could wait with the youngest while the thrill seekers checked off their intensity bingo cards.

But most of all, I noticed the invisible reset that happened overnight.

I remember standing at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard, looking up at the Tower of Terror.

There was no gum on the sidewalk. No chips in the paint.

I noticed the availability of restrooms, places to stand out of the way, nearby shops, and little details everywhere.

Most of all, everything was perfect.

The shrubbery was manicured. The outfits were perfectly themed. Even the smell of the place was far removed from Six Flags’ normal mildew and fry grease, which I had personally become very fond of.

And in that moment, I was amazed.

My dad asked if I was impressed.

I nodded.

He said, “Like being in a movie, right?”

I thought for a second.

“No. I’m realizing how much effort this place took to create and takes to maintain. And I’m wondering if there has ever been an achievement of human ingenuity as great as this. It’s amazing. I want to work here one day.”

That moment has stuck with me.

Now, I don’t work at Disney, so this isn’t some amazing story that ended with me becoming an Imagineer.

It is a story about the origin of a lifelong interest in immersive art.

That interest has grown past Disney. I still think Disney World is an unbelievable achievement of human ingenuity. But now I love all theme parks, art installations, live theater, and other immersive experiences.

I love experiencing them. I love thinking about them. I love breaking down their components.

Today, when I go to a theme park, I don’t need to ride twelve rides, see two shows, get sick on sugar, and stay until the fireworks.

I am happy just existing in the world it creates, sitting on a bench and wondering why a specific area has three of the same ride types, non-immersive queues, and a lack of dwell space.

Even now, when it is hard for me to see the fantasy the same way others do, it hasn’t made me love theme parks less.

It has become the part I love most about them.