Jaymes Kine, writing for Massivit 3D, said due to the central importance of visual cues in creating a world apart, throughout the decades no effort has been spared to achieve bigger, brighter and more engaging visual design elements, allowing more and more theme park visitors to feel truly transported.
For well over a century, people around the globe have flocked to a sweeping array of amusement parks, theme parks and other attractions that seek to transport patrons to a different reality, if only for a few hours. For juggernauts such as Disney, Universal Studios, and Six Flags, who operate parks in multiple countries, the primary challenge is creating immersive experiences. With breakthroughs in 3D printing, theme park designers now have a powerful new way to meet this challenge.
What Walt Disney did was to organise Disneyland into thematic ‘Lands’. This lent greater importance to props that enhance the rides and amusements by creating immersive, themed environments that tell, or continue, a story.
The 21st century introduced a heightened societal desire for ‘reality’ in entertainment. The significance of this subsector of scenic fabrication has taken on an even larger and more critical role that allows guests to shed their real-world concerns and explore a carefree, wholly uplifting environment design-built for this express purpose.
For decades, visual props were painstakingly hand-crafted through a laborious process of design, planning and modelling with traditional materials such as clay, wood and foam. Needless to say, the finished products were incredibly expensive and time-consuming to create, limiting the ability of industry visionaries to expand their repertoire and achieve a more fully immersive experience for guests.
Imagine a world where creating these immersive theme park experiences is a lot easier. Where a theme park designer can digitally design what they have in mind, even if it is something huge or complex, and print a prop or set piece within hours. Breakthrough 3D printing technologies have made this possible. What we’re witnessing now is a fundamental change in how theme parks can be created, and further customised on-the-fly.
Take for example what MÉTROPOLE, a France-based specialist in event management, digital printing, and large format 3D printing, accomplished for the International Cartoon Festival of Angoulême. Using a 3D large format printer, they were able to produce five life-sized characters, to the delight of commuters and festival goers. Although these characters were produced for a festival, the executives behind the event were accustomed to the laborious prop production processes used by theme parks.
Already we’ve seen the impact of 3D printers in theme parks, sometimes in more subtle ways. Just last year Disney Imagineers in Glendale, California unveiled Project Exo – announcing that they were evaluating 3D printing methods to create muscles that can mimic authentic humanoid movements. The team is developing a very elaborate full-body exoskeleton system piece by piece that could one day be used to bring Disney characters, like the Hulk, to life at the theme parks and interact with guests.
Other innovative uses for the technology can be found underneath our feet. Epcot’s upcoming 3D printed floor design reinforces the 50-year history of one of the most visited theme parks in the world. It makes sure the origin story of Epcot continues to unfold, even as the park changes and transforms.
Companies all around the world involved in amusement parks, theme parks, resorts, and other attractions are already using 3D printing to create visual props. Large format 3D printing empowers them to create giant, stunning props, selfie points, and scenic displays in a fraction of the time of every other creative construction technology.
By dramatically speeding up core model production for stage building, theatre sets and theme park props, inventive minds can focus more time and energy on ultra-creative finishes, paint work, texture, or animatronics.
All of this adds up to an entirely new way of doing things in the theme park industry. The size and accuracy afforded by large-scale 3D printing allows the public a way to become physically intimate with the characters they love from movies, television, and gaming. This is a huge boost for the creative minds that bring us these fantastic immersive worlds, and to the millions of theme park fans around the world who can’t wait to see what’s next.
MASSIVIT
https://massivit3d.com
