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Disney World Receives 10...
Disney World receives 10m+ visitors a year. And to make a memorable experience, the park's design expertly uses visual, color, sound and smell psychology. Here are 10 examples🧵
Note: - ideas on crafting a wonderful street expereince for xenter xity except you do show how the sausage is made, and other elements are inverted
The job of building the park falls on Disney's Imagineers. There are about 1.5k of them and they use this design pyramid which focusses on visual communication, wayfinding and "making things memorable" by engaging all the senses.
The power of smell Memory and smell go hand-in-hand. A Disney Imagineer literally invented a machine (Smellitizers) to emit scents that match surrounding. ◻️ Main Street (cookies baking) ◻️ Pirates of the Caribbean (salty sea air) ◻️ Pooh's Adventure (honey)
The grass really is greener Disney World's sidewalks have a reddish hue. This helps makes the color of grass "pop". How? Red and green are complementary colors (AKA opposite ends of the color wheel). The contrast makes both the sidewalk and grass appear brighter.
Never show how the sausage is made Disney employees move around the park in secret underground tunnels. Known as the "Utilidor", it's 392k square feet of corridors for changing, storage, cafeterias and garbage collection.
Worlds kept separate Each part of the park has its own theme and the design prevents you from seeing/hearing other parts of the park. Example: when the Tower of Terror was built, they made sure it wouldn't standout as viewed from Epcot (it blends it in w/ Morocco pavilion).
Wayfinding Disney uses large structures (Epcot, Tower, Cinderella Palace) to draw guest attention and builds roads along these lines of vision to move guests around the park. These structures -- called Weenies -- have to be both large (to see) and interesting (to attract).
Forced Perspective Disney World uses "forced perspective" to make notable building look bigger and taller than they really are. For example: this effect is created in Cinderella's Castle by having bricks at the top smaller than the bricks at the bottom.
Forced perspective in reverse The same concept is used to make something look smaller, too. Colonial era-buildings are 2-3 storeys tall. But Disney built this one 5 storeys tall to fit in a theater. Imagineers scaled windows high to make the building look smaller.
"Go Away Green" There are 20k colors used in Disney World. One color -- AKA "Go Away Green" (a green/grey combo) -- is a nondescript look that doesn't attract attention. It's used for areas under construction and places Disney doesn't want you to venture.
Using sound to heighten the experience ◻️ Horses wear special horseshoes with a polyurethane coating (make them clop louder when they walk down Main Street) ◻️ The "splash" at the bottom of Splash Mountain is a loud splash machine to make it sound...splashier
Mosquito control Disney World's water system was crafted by a former Governor of the Panama Canal Zone. The park keeps mosquitos out by making sure the water always flows (no still water = no eggs). The park also blasts liquid garlic which humans can't smell but moquitos hate.
Small details The Cinderella statue looks normal from an adult's perspective (L). From a child's lower perspective (R), Cinderella is wearing a crown.
If you enjoyed that, check out my Saturday email on business and tech. Previous bangers include: • Why is Linkedin so cringe? • The psychology of Apple packging • Amazon's best acquisitions ever https://t.co/jGZs8bakTR (View Tweet)
FYI: To help my research process, I built Bearly AI (an AI-powered app for reading and writing). In this case, I used the app to instantly summarize every Disney World article or video I saw and later reviewed notes. Try it for free: https://t.co/5TAEY6T3aK https://t.co/Oj4uZs1R1H (View Tweet)
Sources Insider: https://t.co/oeGnU664Ge Disney Parks: https://t.co/gNlarTjOgd And this really good book on the Disney Imagineering process: https://t.co/5nDBOi8oUt
Also, don’t get too touchy feely with Gaston at Disney World…it ain’t gonna fly. 🔗 https://t.co/Lgl3YbUo90 https://t.co/xt1GyQhv85 (View Tweet)
Really good YouTube video explaining the science behind “forced perspective” at Disney Parks: https://t.co/f9k5s50xID https://t.co/KoqIr8UpcU (View Tweet)