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The Society of Explorers and Adventurers (S.E.A.) is a trans-spatial narrative found in the Walt Disney Company theme parks that extends the storytelling of these parks with a connected narrative across global locations. Elements of S.E.A. appear in Disney’s parks in California, Florida, Tokyo, Paris, Shanghai, and Hong Kong and tie together these far-flung places and their different cultures and languages together with a story one cannot find in Disney’s film and television offerings. By performing a close reading of S.E.A. themed attractions, we can understand how the fictional organization’s four tenets (Adventure, Romance, Discovery, and Innovation) are representative of the theme park as an experiential medium. Ultimately, S.E.A. is an autobiography of Imagineering’s creative milieu and its role in developing the theme park as a cultural practice and medium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pentridge Prison was established in 1851 in the Melbourne outer suburb of Coburg in the state of Victoria, Australia. Decommissioned in 1999, the site is marked by 150 years of white colonial violence, trauma, incarceration and death. Twenty-four years on, it has been repurposed to include a mix of residential and commercial developments. More recently, Art Processors have been contracted by the developers to curate new Pentridge tours and visitor experiences. This article will observe how the institutional histories of Pentridge have been curated and represented through the on-site redevelopments and tours. Autoethnographic methods are deployed to document representations of social memory at the site. The framework of hauntology assists to elucidate the affective consequences of erasing landscapes marked by trauma and state-sanctioned violence. The result is a site defined by a deep sense of dissonance, where attempts to memorialise traumatic events, violence and death, are undermined by proximity to what can only be characterised as a prison tourism theme park. Ultimately, Pentridge Prison highlights the highly political process of repurposing penal sites and memorialising difficult histories carry profound implications for addressing contemporary injustices associated with imprisonment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Themed spaces and theme parks constitute of significant human-based desires and linguistic discourses that stabilises/destabilises their social identities and materialities. This paper draws on a relational materialist perspective to examine Singapore's longstanding themed space, Haw Par Villa, to offer insights into its social and material stability and instabilities. Relational materialism facilitates observations and analysis of interactions of humans and their material worlds on the same ontological plane where human's agencies are de-centred. Social and material objects are seen to operate in mutually constitutive fashions. The development of a site/theme park and its larger country context are conceptualised here as 'assemblages' using DeLanda's brand of assemblage theory to reveal the operations of human-based 'desires' alongside material agencies. Specifically, the desires of the founder and the key discourses related to the founder's name helped constitute and stabilise the social identity and materiality of the Haw Par Villa through its eventful history of physical destruction, reconstruction, rebranding and reimagining. Despite his eventual non-involvement with Haw Par Villa's management due to his passing, the founder's desires and discourses linger on in various forms, resulting in subsequent attempts to rework the identity and materiality of this themed space failing if the attempts are not congruent on some level with the founder's desires and discourses. This resulted in the failure of first, the state and, subsequently, private endeavours in re-constituting the themed space. In doing so, this paper contributes to a socio-material understanding of the resilience and sustainability of themed spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on our interest in properties of human movement, we investigated Japanese GPS data, and arrived at the following three observations: (1) there is a strong correlation between the area of polygons created by human movement trajectories and their perimeters; (2) short-distance movement trajectories less than 5 km tend to enclose a large area like a circle; and (3) long-distance movement trajectories over 5 km tend to be straight. We also clarified the following four observations on individual attributes and external factors related to long-distance movements: (1) women tend to travel more linearly than men; (2) linearity is stronger on weekends and national holidays in areas with a large theme park; (3) linearity is weaker on weekends and holidays in areas with many historical tourist attractions; and (4) these variations are created by people visiting such areas. These properties should be incorporated when modeling the movement trajectories of humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shanghai Disneyland is a successful theme park that combines Disney magic with Chinese culture. Effective marketing strategies are crucial to influencing customer behavior and cognition. The 7P framework is widely used in marketing campaigns, and customer lifestyles significantly shape preferences and decisions. This study explores the impact of Shanghai Disneyland’s marketing strategy and customer lifestyle on customer loyalty, using data collected from an online questionnaire and analyzed with SPSS. The results show that marketing strategies and lifestyles influence customer loyalty, providing valuable insights into the park’s marketing strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid growth of amusement parks in Indonesia has elevated them to significant tourist hubs, prompting a detailed examination of visitor satisfaction within these settings. This study aims to analyze the satisfaction trends among tourists visiting the top 11 amusement parks in Indonesia and assess whether their ratings accurately reflect their satisfaction. Moreover, it investigates the factors influencing satisfaction levels, employing an adjusted rating method to dissect tourists' ratings and compare them with sentiment analysis results derived from provided reviews. While acknowledging the fluctuating performance of these destinations, with most showing signs of improvement, the study highlights that only 5 destinations within the sample exhibit comovement between adjusted ratings and sentiment analysis results. Furthermore, a closer inspection reveals that some destinations have successfully minimized the prevalence of negative sentiments expressed in reviews. However, there is still 1 destination that is of concern because it has decreased customer satisfaction as indicated by a decrease in score and the addition of negative sentiment.

Since Disney Imagineering introduced the theme park in 1955, themeatics has ruled public space, becoming a mixed reality of virtual and nonvirtual, media and built design, as hyperreality. This “unified field theory” of the arts consolidates many styles and disciplines as mixed media, conferring meaning and engaging attention in immersive experiences that readily embody innovation. Through hyperreality, themeatics works as the dominant aesthetic now merging imagination with the experienced world. The fit between art‐informed places like theme parks and the brain expands the life of the mind in culture through the scope of lived and virtual experience alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism is an emotional sphere, and researchers focus on emotions to optimize tourism experiences. Tourism studies on emotions mostly ignore differences in emotions across demographic tourist groups by gender and age, thus limiting the understanding of emotions to the explicit characteristics of tourists' emotions. On the basis of geotagged facial expressions on social media platforms, this study aims to visualize the emotions of groups in scenic spots and then reveal the variations between groups' emotions within theme parks. By employing a facial recognition algorithm, an emotion distribution graph was proposed to represent groups' emotions in detail. Some analytical methods were combined to characterize of the emotion distribution of each group. Through a comprehensive comparison, the results suggest that there are unique characteristics of emotion distribution for each group and considerable variations between them. This study helps researchers achieve a deeper understanding of tourists' emotional differences and enhances the theorization of emotions. This research also highlights the advantages and significant practical implications of our method framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recreational facilities are widely regarded as one of the largest sources of and contributors to the tourism of countries worldwide. Given this, this study aimed to examine adults' general behavioral intentions and actual visitation to amusement and recreational facilities. A total of 1367 adult and young-adult Filipinos voluntarily answered a self-administered survey consisting of measure items drawing on the extended theory of planned behavior framework. Structural equation modeling was employed for the simultaneous analysis of all latent variables and their causal relationships, and the marketing mix greatly affected the hedonic motivation and perceived behavioral control, leading to an indirect effect on behavioral intentions and actual visitation. Subjective norms and attitudes also had a significant direct effect on behavioral intentions and indirect effects on actual visitation. Interestingly, the marketing mix prompted a higher significant effect than behavioral intentions on actual visitation. It was implied that consumers are going to recreational facilities and amusement parks when they can visit an area, access a location, participate in different activities, and have enough resources. Businesses may capitalize on this finding in promoting their amusement parks and recreational facilities. In addition, they may highlight their location and space because they are among the highly significant measured items that the participants noted. The results of this study provides insights into the strategies, individual behavior, and motivation aspects. Implications and managerial insights are provided for the study's adoption and extension worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Data-enabled design (DED) is a design approach where research data is integrated with design praxis in an iterative and hands-on fashion, and it has been successfully applied to design for people in the healthcare domain. However, how to utilise DED as a more broadly applicable approach that facilitates design for larger populations in semi-public spaces remains an open question. Understanding the advantages and challenges of applying DED in various contexts is crucial to guide design researchers further and prevent methodological mismatch. Methods: In this article, we report on applying DED in an open, semi-public context with a large population of visitors. Here, DED was applied in projects with student design researchers who had limited control over the data gathered from people in the context. Results: We share the results of a two-week design workshop that involved sixteen student design researchers and was organised in collaboration with Särkänniemi, one of Finland's largest theme parks. Using design proposals and reflections from five teams, we investigate the use of DED in this context, reporting on perceived challenges, barriers, successes and future directions for taking the DED approach into similar (semi-)public contexts. Discussions: We conclude with reflections from the workshop organisers' point of view and share the feedback from our industry collaborator, highlighting challenges and opportunities in translating the DED approach to a new domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Chlorination is often used to disinfect recreational water in large amusement parks; however, the health hazards of chlorination disinfection by-products (DBPs) to occupational populations are unknown. This study aimed to assess the exposure status of chlorinated DBPs in recreational water and the health risks to employees of large amusement parks. Methods Exposure parameters of employees of three large amusement parks in Shanghai were investigated using a questionnaire. Seven typical chlorinated DBPs in recreational water and spray samples were quantified by gas chromatography, and the health risks to amusement park employees exposed to chlorinated DBPs were evaluated according to the WHO's risk assessment framework. Results Trichloroacetic acid, dibromochloromethane, bromodichloromethane, and dichloroacetic acid were detected predominantly in recreational water. The carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risks of the five DBPs did not exceed the risk thresholds. In addition, the carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risks of mixed exposure to DBPs were within the acceptable risk limits. Conclusion Typical DBPs were widely detected in recreational water collected from three large amusement parks in Shanghai; however, the health risks of DBPs and their mixtures were within acceptable limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the structural relationships between recruitment information, employment satisfaction, and retention of part-time seasonal employees in an amusement park. The study further examines the differences between external and internal recruiting. 216 valid questionnaires were collected from Six Flags Great Escape amusement park. Partial Least Square was used to analyze the measurement and structural models. The study adopts multi-group analysis to compare external and internal recruiting. The study reveals that employment satisfaction fully mediates the effect of recruitment information on employees' willingness to remain on the job. The study proves external and internal recruiting are significantly different among amusement park workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of extensive smart developments in amusement parks, this study aimed to understand how different smart tourism technologies could be transferred into tourists' expectations of smart tourism experiences. Drawing on the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology, this study established a House of Quality (HoQ) for smart developments by analyzing data from 20 interviews (10 tourists and 10 service providers) and 300 survey responses (250 tourists and 50 service providers). The results identified 14 smart tourism technologies in amusement parks, and revealed that they correlated in different ways with the four smart tourism experience attributes (accessibility, informativeness, interactivity, and personalization), thus laying a theoretical foundation for more comprehensive discussions of smart tourism design, and providing practical implications for staging the smart tourism experience in a better way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The House of David, a Christian Israelite commune founded in Benton Harbor, Michigan, in 1903, attracted believers who surrendered all assets and lived as celibate vegetarians in exchange for community, economic security, and the promise of immortality. The colony grew famous for its popular baseball teams, orchestras, and amusement park. It also became notorious after a series of lawsuits charged leader Benjamin Purnell (1861-1927) of being a fraud who had swindled believers out of their life savings and perpetrated "gross immoralities" upon young women. This article analyzes why the colony was dogged by controversy and asks what that reveals about why critics have sought to delegitimize new religious movements. It argues that the House of David attracted scrutiny not only because of its distinctive lifestyle and theology, but also because it did not fit prevailing definitions of what a religion should look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on highly technologised museums and theme parks as major actors of the cultural and creative industry (CCI), this study investigates and critically discusses how front-line employees' self-governance dynamics unfold. It underlines the crucial role of employees' relationship to technology in establishing how, beyond institutional requirements, employees act proactively to foster good governance. Our analysis of museums and theme parks front-line employee narratives (n = 25), across eight organisations in Singapore, reveals that employees engage in self-governance dynamics by articulating three main technological frames, namely acting, internalisation, and reinvention. Self-governance dynamics are found to nurture adaptive behaviours that reduce the disruptive impacts of technologisation at the workplace while favouring a constructive alignment of interests between employees, visitors, and CCI organisations' goals. The findings reveal how, when being engaged in self-governance, employees act upon technological presence to enhance visitors' interactive experiences, thus allowing museums and theme parks to remain socially and societally relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article considers how the prolonged immersive storytelling experiences that theme parks provide have developed over time, with a particular focus on the role the individual guest can choose to take. Using examples from the Star Wars Intellectual Property developed for Disney Parks, and specifically Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser (an extended three-day/two-night immersive experience), I consider how the role and agency of the individual participant/guest has changed over time and opened up from rather passive, to much more engaged. I argue that recent developments in theme park land, attraction and experience design (including extensions made possible by digital media) have opened up different structures in the narrative, allowing guests the option to become protagonists in a story they have agency over. This significantly extends the notion of the templated 'hero' Joseph Campbell introduced as part of his hero's journey framework and makes way for the guest as immersive protagonist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of Campbell's hero's journey in cinema commonly adopts a director-centric approach in which the director decides how the viewer will see the narrative. A parallel interactive narrative in virtual reality titled Table for Two adopts screen production enquiry to investigate the divergence from the hero's journey from a director-centric approach towards a navigator-centric approach. Here, the conventional cinema viewer is proposed as a navigator due to the immersive, interactive, and intellectual role they perform in terms of 360-degree viewing, teleportation, and meaning creation. While hero's journey has been examined across various narrative platforms such as literature, theatre, cinema, gaming, theme parks, education, and more; there are limited discussions on the hero's journey and its relevance to virtual reality experiences. Table for Two is a one-shot 360-degree audio-visual experience captured simultaneously by three 360-degree cameras. The navigator is encouraged to teleport from one narrative to another as the remaining narratives unfold irrespective of their choices. Each navigator is empowered to untie the knotted pieces and construct a narrative puzzle. Table for Two diverges from the hero's journey through its multi-linear structure, simultaneous parallel narrative approach, and 360-degree spatial storytelling that offers freedom to navigate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies social meanings and practices emerging from two abandoned themed spaces in China: disused theme parks and mega‐event sites. Theme parks first appeared in the late 1980s–early 1990s, in the emerging leisure economy and society. In the 1990s–early 2000s, mega‐event urbanism became a driver of China's urban development and a strategy of national and international legitimacy. Since their abandonment and disuse by official owners, themed spaces have become ruinscapes where workers and visitors produce agency through rubble and ruination. These spaces constitute sites of vernacular occupation through farming, urban exploration, or wedding photography. Abandoned mega‐event sites create alternative spectacles of dereliction forming a critique of the original spectacle. Based on urban exploration as an ethnographic method and on fieldwork in Chinese abandoned themed spaces between 2015 and 2019, this article analyses the spatial and social dimensions of abandoned themed spaces in their afterlives as ruins and rubble. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Jean Baudrillard's theorizing of the theme park, this study recognizes the TV show Westworld (2016-2022) as a simulation of contemporary America with intriguing questions about rape culture and justice in a post-#MeToo moment? In seasons 1 and 2, android characters like Dolores (Evan Rachael Wood), Maeve (Thandiwe Newton), and Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon) are violated but rebel against sexist and racist programing, and the "Man in Black" represents the violating nature of the stereotypical, Western hero. The principles of the Old West, like benevolent violence, are reflected in a TV industry where the actors of Westworld document their own violation in #MeToo artifacts, such Wood's documenting of abuse in Phoenix Rising (2022), and interviews with Newton. In thinking about justice, Westworld falters, because it frames redress only in terms of further violence and revenge. Wood and Newton, however, represent the prevention of future violence, offering a possibility of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for status has been recognized as a significant consumer motive. Although the literature discusses the main antecedents of guests' attitudes and behavioral intentions, the phenomenon of status-seeking in the theme park context has not received enough empirical attention. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic altered guests' attitudes, and safety-related procedures became the most important antecedents of attitudes and behavioral intentions. This study aims to explore the effects of the perceived status of the visit and safety measures undertaken by theme parks on guests' attitudes and visit intentions by using experimental design. The results indicate that the perceived status of the visit positively influences guests' attitudes and visit intentions, while safety measures undertaken by theme parks have significant effects on guests' perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]