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ZEITGEIST TIME TRAVELERS VISIT 2024 TO FIND OUT!
Veteran immersion artists Ryan Harmon and Joe Lanzisero know a thing or two about time travel. For the past three years they’ve coproduced and cohosted the location-based entertainment industry’s only live “zoomcast” called “Zeitgeist’s The Spirit of the Time.” Each month, they invite one incredibly talented and influential colleague aboard their Pasadena, California-based time machine and set the controls for milestone moments in that person’s career, attempting to unravel the mystery of what makes a guest experience timely, yet timeless.
Past guests have included the likes of Tony Baxter, Joe Rohde, Bob Rogers, Phil Hettema, Garner Holt, Tim Kirk, Bob Ward, and 22 more industry icons — all traveling back in time with Ryan and Joe to discuss their inspirations, hard-earned wisdom, and of course, secrets and untold stories of their most popular projects.
Recently, Ryan and Joe embarked on a time travel journey of their own. They set the controls for one day each month throughout 2024. They visited a number of location-based entertainment experiences worldwide and reviewed industry publications to determine where things are going, where they’re not going, and to simply tap into the zeitgeist of the new year (which one does when their company is called Zeitgeist Design & Production!). Here’s what they discovered:
The good news is that location-based experiences will continue to increase in popularity. Between the pandemic lock-up and the desire to be back amongst humanity, today’s generation’s preference to collect experiences vs. material things, and screen fatigue from endlessly staring at smartphones and computer monitors, theme parks, attractions, and pop-up experiences will continue to sell-out and plaster social media pages.
The bad news, according to Ryan and Joe, is that the cost of enjoying these experiences will continue to rise. A big concert goer, Ryan witnessed that concert parking at LA’s So-Fi Stadium will be $125.00 per car in 2024! Good seats for concert tickets will exceed $1,500 face value. Likewise, entry tickets to theme parks and attractions – and especially parking, food & beverage, and souvenirs, will continue to scrape the sky, as audiences don’t seem to be affected (yet) by the increasing cost of spending time with family and friends and making new memories at world-class parks and attractions.
The recent merging of Six Flags with Cedar Fair will be great for theme park goers who live within reach of both company’s parks (like Los Angeles, which has both Six Flags Magic Mountain and Knott’s Berry Farm or the Bay Area, which has both Great America and Six Flags Discovery Kingdom), but could result in the Six Flags emphasis on extreme teen-oriented thrill rides replacing the more immersive, thematic, and family-oriented aspects of the Cedar Fair parks.
When it comes to technology, Ryan and Joe learned that today’s tech will continue to evolve throughout 2024. Larger, brighter, and less expensive LED screens and projectors will allow experiences like The Sphere in Las Vegas — and “the volume” now used to produce motion pictures and television shows — to come to theme parks and other attractions, creating truly immersive media-based worlds without the need for special glasses.
Drone shows, they witnessed, will continue to increase in popularity as safety becomes less of a concern and drones and inflatables assume greater capabilities with lights and animation — and the ability to carry props!
Augmented reality, they found, continues to evolve slowly throughout 2024 with Universal’s “Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge” dark ride remaining the only attraction to incorporate it into a ride experience.
With most VR coasters gone and the majority of VR locations sidelined by the pandemic, virtual reality will be relegated to the home market (where Meta continues to struggle with its Quest headsets) until Apple’s Vision Pro becomes affordable and demonstrates how and why this tech is necessary in our lives.
(Learn more now: The Road Best Travelled by Angela J. Kim)
Voice recognition software and Artificial Intelligence (AI) that we all know and love, from Siri and Alexa and the likes of ChatGPT and MidJourney, will also begin making its way into immersive experiences, permitting conversations with virtual and historical media-based characters and animatronics, as well as the ability to make rides and attractions even more personalized and interactive.
Throughout 2024, excitement will continue to build for all of the exciting new projects currently under construction and scheduled to open over the next few years. Universal’s Epic Universe is by far the most anticipated, which if you’ve seen the latest construction photos and videos, appears epic in every way!
Likewise, audiences will continue to seek clues as to what Disney plans to do with their $60-billion investment over the next decade and what that means specifically for Disneyland and the Walt Disney World Resort, where wait times can exceed 2 hours for the most popular attractions.
Anticipation also continues to build throughout the year for Puy du Fou’s first American installation in the Smoky Mountains, as well as their upcoming Asian projects. And everyone is chomping at the bit to learn more about Universal’s family theme park in Frisco, Texas, and their year-round Halloween Horror Nights experience at Area 15 in Las Vegas.
In Abu Dhabi, Miral announced last year that the world’s first non-Universal Harry Potter theme park experience will kick-off an expansion of their indoor Warner Bros. World theme park.
And then there’s Saudi Arabia. From Six Flags Qiddiya and the Qiddiya Water Park, to Neom, to the SEVEN family entertainment centers, the Kingdom will continue to move towards becoming a world-class family entertainment destination, the likes of which the world has never seen! One example is Falcon’s Flight. Designed by Intamin, this Six Flags Qiddiya coaster will be the world’s fastest, tallest, and longest, as well as the first roller coaster to ascend (and descend) over 500 feet! (Yes, Joe and Ryan noted a windshield to keep the sand out of your eyes!)
In terms of the IP vs. no IP pendulum, 2024 appears to show that the swing towards investment in intellectual properties continues, however, sentiment is beginning to return to the acknowledgement that aspirational human experiences can be equally or more powerful (and enduring) than a movie, TV, or video game property.
Every experiential design firm’s website mentions the importance of story. Some new companies even add the word to their name as if they are instant experts on one of the earliest forms of human communication. And while everyone loves a great story – in a novel, in a movie, a theatrical production, a radio show, or just sitting around a campfire like our ancestors did for eons, the truth is that you cannot tell a compelling and satisfying story with a beginning, middle and end, character arcs, or the proverbial “hero’s journey” on a 3.5-minute ride — or even an 8-minute ride.
In 2024, design firms and developers alike begin to ponder the cost of IP investment, and note that the most popular attractions of all time are based on simple premises that fulfill our collective dreams, like racing through outer space (Space Mountain), exploring a haunted house (Haunted Mansion), traveling back to the days of Spanish pirates (Pirates of the Caribbean), getting caught on a runaway mine train (Big Thunder Mountain Railroad), speeding down the slopes of the Switzerland’s most iconic snowcapped peak (Matterhorn Boblseds) or even celebrating the children of the world (It’s A Small World).
While all these examples are Disney attractions, parks from Puy du Fou to Phantasialand, Europa Park to Efteling, Futuroscope to Tivoli Gardens, Ocean Park to Knott’s Berry Farm, to all of Chimelong’s parks in Guangzhou and Zhuhai, have found tremendous success in inventing their own characters, celebrating local myths and legends, and/or creating experiences that fulfill a specific human aspiration.
Joe and Ryan find this slowing of the pendulum exciting and gratifying. For as much as they love to transform movies, TV shows and video games into groundbreaking parks and attractions (their team has built over $12 billion in successful mostly IP-based projects around the world!), they especially love the challenge of what Disney’s Marty Sklar referred to as “the blank sheet of paper” and creating immersive experiences that everybody wants to have (not just fans of a specific film or show), be it flying, shrinking, traveling somewhere they will never visit, meeting aliens, encountering magic, or, maybe, in Ryan and Joe’s specific case, time traveling!
The last thing Ryan and Joe discovered in 2024 (that they’re willing to share) is that the concept of overnight immersive experiences has absolutely not gone the way of the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. The notion of immersing ourselves in another time and place, cosplay/role playing, and enjoying a truly immersive experience with family and friends across multiple days and nights is going to come back stronger than ever. Ryan and Joe wouldn’t say whether “Westworld” is going to become a reality in the foreseeable future, or if the Starcruiser will return better than ever, but they did hint that we could be spending the night inside our favorite theme park land, or even becoming a pirate on a real Caribbean island sooner than we think!
“Twenty twenty-four is going to be an exciting year for our industry,” Ryan summerized. “The big guys are going to continue to blow our minds with new tech and massive scale while the little guys are going to continue to take risks and establish new paradigms. Both strategies push our world forward and create even more compelling experiences for us all to enjoy!”
“I’ve spent over four decades in this business, and I’ve never seen so much investment and innovation as I do in 2024,” concluded Joe. “It’s a great time to be alive — and an amazing time to work in the immersive entertainment industry!”
For more information on Zeitgeist Design & Production and their Spirit of the Time Zoomcast, visit zeitgeist-usa (dot) com or call +1.626.469.0010.
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