Theme Park Design Program Fundamentals - An Interview With Norm Doerges

Your financial analysis provides fantastic projects. Their creative vision, each buzzing. But within weeks of opening your new park you'll notice that the guests in gridlocked hour long queue lines. Hiking trails are in a field in another empty. Diners can not find an open table in the food court, while the buyers drift aimlessly through retail venues, which is too large and too impersonal. The general mood is a disappointment, which means that your guests do not come back. What have I done wrong?

The first question to yourself - did you design your program? In the complex and costly business of theme park development, some things are crucial for the success of your project, than to design a solid program. Sometimes overlooked and often misinterpreted, accurate and detailed program can be the difference between a park that is successful and those not. ? Nobody understands that better than the standard Doerge.

In the early 1970s, standards and a handful of engineers pioneering the field of industrial design programming for the Walt Disney Company. During his 30-year career, Norm built that included an extraordinary re-operations management, design, engineering, construction, development and attractiveness. Best known for his crucial role in the planning and development of the hugely successful EPCOT, Norm led an employee of over 6000 people, operating in full operational responsibility for the US-$ 1.3 billion issue in Florida. Prior to his Vice Presidency in Epcot, Norm served as Vice President of Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI), where he was responsible for creative and design support for the Walt Disney World. As the Executive Vice President of Disneyland, he led the development and implementation of the marketing program for the Indiana Jones Adventure and the 40th Anniversary of Disneyland. Under the leadership standard, this program is a new forty years annual attendance record of more than 15 million visitors. ? As a pioneer in the theme park industry and co-founder of Apogee Attractions, standard together with us his insights on the study your markets, you hear your guests, and why your program design is crucial for a successful park?

Q: ? Most of the subject experts within the industry recognize the importance of market and feasibility studies. But a real understanding of how the design program fits into the development scheme often seems a bit heavy. How do you explain the design program?

Doerge: The short answer is that the design program is the quantification of everything to do with a theme park. One answer is that it is a living, dynamic tool that the observed data, derived from actual experience and mathematically it is against the different levels of visitor numbers from market research.

Q: ? So take us back to the beginning. How did you first come to the design concept? ? "There has been a better way to do this?

Doerge: ? When Disneyland California was originally in the 1950s, it was by a group of designers from Walt Disney Studios. These were very talented people, designers, responsible for the success of Walt's classic feature animation. But she had never been to a theme park before. Of course, a real theme park did not exist at this time, so that these guys were both invent and learn as they went on. The first configuration of the Park was brilliant in many ways, but there was a lot of things that simply do not work. When Disneyland opened to the public in 1955, there were numerous problems that required a lot of retrofitting. Sidewalks were not wide enough, long distances to attractions, the more capacity is needed. Certain places were terribly overcrowded, and the guests were frustrated. In other cases, there was too much capacity - sights, shops and retail venues were utilized and therefore not a good profit as a standalone operation. ? Ten years later, when it's time for the construction of the first park at Walt Disney World, the administration decided to try a new approach by them together, what is considered "development" team. The goal of this group was to provide an operator the data for the designer, and in a lot of ways, they were very successful.

Q: ? So they had learned from their mistakes.

Doerge: ? In terms of the teaching, experience in the development of the Magic Kingdom in Florida was certainly better than the first few years with Disneyland. However, when we opened the park in Florida, we found ourselves very much in the same situation as before - and it cost millions of dollars per year in terms of retrofitting. In fact, some of the problems could not be corrected because they are simply too expensive. This led to a real break between the design and organization of the operator. Finally, the executives said, "You know what, it has resulted in a better way to do this." So they pulled me out of the Magic Kingdom, where I was, as General Manager and myself, together with a colleague by the name of Bruce Laval, as Head of Industrial Engineering. He has the best of its industrial engineers and told them: "We are a lot of theme parks in the world. We have to figure out a better way to do this." This was in the early seventies, and for the next few years, our small group gathered large amounts of data. From this we have the development of methods, a system that will allow us to park and get everything the right size.

Q: ? So that the design program was really born from the need to experience that the needs of the guests?

Doerge: ? All the right size is the key to the success of theme parks. This principle applies at many levels. If the size is right that the guest feels at home - they feel comfortable in spaces that are meant to be intimate, they feel a sense of grandeur on the premises who are entitled to awe-inspiring. Size is essential for a successful guest experience, and the host should always be your first concern. But size is also an important part of the economic equation. The investment in a real theme park is so large that it is to operate properly for their profit potential. So for a park as a whole, you want to capture high returns in each sector - each attraction, each in the restaurant and in every shop. The last thing you need is to learn that he too much money in one place and not in another, an attraction to big, others too small. If this happens, you have to retrofit and to raise additional capital in the things to fix. This is money wasted. After the park is, you want your extra capital to marketing and new attractions, in order to participate - not to fix that things do not work because they were wrong in the first place. ? What is important to understand is that these two aspects - the assessment of experience and efficiency - are inextricably linked. Simply put, if they are to the needs of your guests, your business is profitable.

(c) copyright 2009 Apogee Attractions, Inc.

 

Nancy Pulk is the manager of marketing for Apogee Attractions (http://www.ApogeeAttractions.com), a premier company for the design, development and construction of successful theme parks and other visitor attractions. Apogee's team is comprised of some of the most experienced and exciting theme park producers, designers, and operators in the industry today, people who have worked on some of the biggest visitor attractions worldwide who have the knowledge and talent to make any venture a success. Pleased to have the opportunity to work with such titans in the themed entertainment business, Nancy is also delighted to have the chance to share some of the insights learned since becoming part of the Apogee team.

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