Huffington Post — Theme entertainment professionals “Go Go” to Orlando for IAAPA’s Attractions Expo

Jim Hill

11 years ago

So how exactly do theme park attractions get created?

Well, if you're talking about the rides & shows found at
the Disney Parks, those are mostly the work of Walt's fabled Imagineers. Or if
you're talking about The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (which — even as you
read this — is expanding beyond Islands of Adventure's borders over into
Universal Studios Florida), that impressive project was shepherded by the
small-but-mighty team at Universal Creative.

But what about all of the other impressive rides, shows and
attractions that people are experiencing at non-Disney & Universal theme
parks around the world? Those are the work of a group of dedicated themed
entertainment professionals who — once a year — gather in Orlando,
FL to make deals & trade secrets at the
International Association of Amusement Parks & Attractions' annual trade
show, the Attractions Expo.

For a week every November, the parking lot of the Orange
County Convention Center
is transformed into this mammoth amusement park that the general public can't
get access to. Tourists zooming along the Bee Line Expressway gape at all of
the huge steel rides that have seemingly been erected overnight. They also
wonder aloud: "What's the deal with all of the guys in those three-piece
suits who are grimly riding each of these attractions?"

"Those would be our prospective clients," explained Zane Jensch, an award-winning writer & creative
director who has worked for design firms around the world. "They're the
owners & the operators of amusement parks from all around the globe who
come to the Attractions Expo each year with the hope they'll find some new ride
or show that will help turn their park into a must-see attraction. Or maybe as
they wander the aisles of the Orange County
Convention Center, these owners
& operators will then find a way to turn a pre-existing structure at their
parks into something truly special."

This was the challenge that Lotte World (which is one of South
Korea's most popular theme parks) handed to
the Hettema Group, one of the established leaders in themed entertainment, back
in 2011 at that year's edition of the Attractions Expo. This park had a kitchen
and two birthday rooms — a relatively tiny space — that Lotte World wanted to
then turn into a full-blown attraction.

"And it wasn't just an unusually small space that we were dealing with
here. It was also an aggressive schedule and production budget," Zane
continued. "But Lotte World came to us with an additional challenge — this
new ride had to be interactive and incorporate animated media. But since
industry legend Phil Hettema and the team pride themselves on being
solution-based designers, we just hit the ground running."

Over the course of an afternoon at this IAAPA conference, Jensch
and the creative team at Hettema quickly came up with several different story
scenarios that could possibly work for Lotte World's unusual show space.

"Over the next few months, those concepts were fleshed
out. The beginnings of the technical design and ride system were developed,
each scenario with unique approaches to gameplay and guest experience. We
quickly settled on a trackless ride system that would give us the most dynamic
and surprising movement with the smallest footprint," Jensch said.
"But we were already on critical path and it was time to choose one of the
concepts."

"The Lotte World execs responded mostly strongly to a
concept set in a storybook Medieval kingdom. You see, in the same way we have
wildfire season and hurricane season, the kingdom of Seldombern has a Dragon
Season. Dragons have overrun the castle. All the inhabitants have left the
kingdom. It is up to the kingdom's jester — and the guests — to drive the dragons
out of the castle and save the day," Zane explained. "On approach,
the guests think that the Dragons are ferocious monsters. But upon entering the
castle, riders discover that the Dragons are simply party animals. They're just
really bad houseguests. They've eaten all of the food, guzzled up all of the
ale and their drunken partying has set the castle ablaze. It's 'Animal House
'
… with dragons."

Which sounds like a pretty tall order. Especially since —
right after Lotte World officially greenlit production of "Dragons Go Go Wild"
— they then announced that they wanted this attraction to be open to the
public by July of 2013. But Zane is an old pro when it comes to these sorts of
not-enough-time / not-nearly-enough-money projects. Which is the Hettema Group
immediately reached out to a team of the
industry's most accomplished vendors, including Garner Holt Productions and
Lexington Design & Fabrication.

"These companies are the absolute kings when it comes
to delivering top quality products on a tight schedule and an even tighter
budget. Garner Holt is the top animatronic firm in the business today. Many of
the figures that you see today in the Disney
Parks or Knott's Berry Farm come
straight from Garner's San Bernadino studio," Jensch continued. "And
Lexington Design & Farbrication … There is honestly nobody better when it
comes to taking highly stylized designs and transforming them into dimensional."

Garner Holt creative design director Bill Butler
checks out one of the animatronic pieces for
"Dragons Go Go Wild" before it hits off to the
paint shop for finishing. Photo by Jim Hill

But — in the end — that was one of the elements that made "Dragons Go Go
Wild" such a challenging project for the folks at the Hettema Group. They
had to find a way to take this tiny, cramped birthday pavilion and then
transform it into a space where an entertaining theme park attraction with 11
super scenes could be built. Which is why the Hettema team turned to designer
extraordinaire Scott Sinclair.

"From the moment we started work on this attraction, we knew that the
incredibly tight show space meant that we were going to have to create an
incredibly stylized world," Jensch explained. "Ultimately, the style
we arrived at was inspired by mid-century children's book art. It was the
challenge of the spatial constraints that let us to this wildly engaged
style."

Mind you, in order for every piece of this attraction to look like it was part
of the same universe, it meant that all of the visuals had to line up. Which
meant that the dozens of animatronic dragons that Garner was building also had
to have that mid-century storybook look. Likewise the hundreds of distinct CG
dragons who made up most of the gaming portion of this attraction.

Members of the "Dragons Go Go Wild" installation team (top to bottom)
Creative Director Zane Jensch, Producer Seth Cover and
Production Manager Diana Cimadamore

And once "Dragons Go Go Wild" 's sets were all
fabricated and those animatronic dragons were all built, it was then time to
load all of these items onto that proverbial slow boat to China.
So everything would then arrive in South Korea
just in time for its on-site installation at Lotte World.

"And we did all of this — from design to fabrication to programming and
installation — in less than a year. What's more, the Hettema Group actually delivered
this entire attraction to Lotte World for something in the range of one third
of what it cost the Imagineers to build the Ursula animatronic figure for
Disney's 'The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Undersea Adventure' dark ride,"
Jensch claimed.

So what was the best part working on a project like this? To hear Zane talk, it
was getting the chance to see all of the Lotte World employees — who are a
pretty jaded bunch when it comes to theme park attractions — happily
sacrificing their lunch hours & break times so that they could then repeatedly
ride 'Dragons Go Go Wild' during this attraction's employees-only preview
period.

"And then when this ride officially opened to the
public back in July, guests were instantly clamoring for merch of the little
dragons," Jensch smiled.

And now — what with "Dragons Go Go Wild" in the rear mirror now that
the Lotte World challenge has been met — what's next for Zane Jensch and the
Hettema Group? Well, this week, they're all back at the Orange County
Convention attending Attractions Expo 2013 and meeting with the next round of would-be
clients. Wondering what corner of the world they'll be headed to next as the
industry tries to help meet the ever-increasing global demand for that most
American of entertainments: theme park attractions.