During the blooloop Festival of Innovation 2025, professionals in the attractions industry discussed what makes rides and attractions in theme parks and FECs truly immersive, highlighting attention to detail and the use of quality products.
Leading the Innovation in Immersive Attractions session was Ernest Bakenie, senior director of entertainment at Christie, the global visual and audio technology company. He spoke about trends in the attractions business and stressed the importance of creating quality experiences.
He was joined by Ernest Yale, co-founder and CEO of Triotech, an award-winning creator of media-based attractions. Yale talked about innovation, theming and interactivity in rides and experiences, in addition to return on investment when developing attractions.
They were joined by Efteling’s Kees Rijnen. He talked about the park’s new attraction Danse Macabre, as well as Efteling’s meticulous attention to detail across the destination.
Innovation in immersive attractions: meet the panel
Ernest Bakenie
Bakenie is senior director of entertainment at Christie. His current position focuses on driving growth and developing market-leading solutions for Christie’s themed entertainment business. His love for the industry, technical knowledge of audio-visual technology, and sales ability make him an invaluable member of the Christie team.
Bakenie says: “There is no better industry to work with than themed entertainment. It’s incredibly rewarding to help clients create the thrills and excitement that audiences love.”
Ernest Yale
Yale started creating his own video games aged just 12. He went on to co-found Triotech in 1999 and is now the company’s CEO and majority owner. Under his leadership, Triotech has grown from an arcade video game business to a renowned creator and producer of media-based digital interactive attractions.
Yale continues to drive the company’s vision and strategy. He is involved in product design, sales and marketing, as well as the creation of new technologies. He has played a significant role in all of the company’s major projects and products, such as the award-winning interactive dark coaster Primordial.
Kees Rijnen
Rijnen focuses on shaping Efteling’s long-term vision and develops strategic plans for sustainability, accessibility, diversity and inclusion.
He is also tasked with enhancing immersion at Efteling to provide a magical experience. Rijnen and his team’s work includes the guest journey, and technology and innovation.
Danse Macabre at Efteling
The Festival of Innovation’s immersive attractions session commenced with a look at Danse Macabre, Efteling’s new eerie dark ride. Described as a ghostly spectacle featuring dark twists, Danse Macabre is set to the symphonic poem of the same name by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. It features a unique ride system by Intamin, a creator of record-breaking amusement rides.
Rijnen said: “It’s a spectacular ride. It’s never been built anywhere in the world before, and it’s a combination of a so-called thrill ride and immersive show technology. It allows visitors to dance to the music of Danse Macabre.
“The thrill ride contains a turntable of 18 metres wide, with six smaller turntables on top with choir stools that together make this beautiful, spooky dance within a completely immersive, technology-driven show. The large turntable, it will tilt, fall, rise and spin.
“It’s a complete and spectacular new way for an immersive experience. We opened it last October on Halloween, and it’s been a guest and fan-favourite ever since.”
Bakenie added: “The music is outstanding to begin with, and to combine that with the ride system, special effects, theming of the queue line, and theming throughout; just outstanding.
“The attention to detail that Efteling does with everything, every attraction in the park, is just outstanding.”
Danse Macabre replaced Efteling’s iconic Spookslot haunted house. Rijnen said: “The task we got from the board of directors was to do something that was still compatible with the haunted castle that we had before, but in a more Efteling way.
“So what is scary in an Efteling way?”
Triotech’s new projects: Six Flags and Transformers
At the Festival of Innovation’s immersive attractions session, Yale went on to speak about Triotech’s new projects, which include its largest dark ride ever for Six Flags Qiddiya, Into the Deep. The company is also creating Transformers dark rides with Saudi Entertainment Ventures (Seven) for its entertainment destinations across Saudi Arabia.
“This brings a dark ride to a smaller location with an FEC for the local market,” Yale said.
Triotech’s Primordial is an interactive dark coaster created in collaboration with Lagoon Amusement Park in Utah. Its innovative plot with multiple endings is combined with dynamic ride mechanics and state-of-the-art interactive technology. Primordial was honoured with the 2024 IAAPA Brass Ring Award for Best New Product in the Major Ride/Attraction category.
ART Engineering, an amusement ride manufacturer that develops roller coasters, dark rides, carousels, water rides and more, also collaborated with Lagoon on Primordial.
“We’re very proud,” said Yale.
“It’s our first collaboration for a dark coaster. It’s an indoor/outdoor dark coaster with interactive shooting and characters, and there are six different endings, two different physical endings, a slide and a drop at the end, and three different storylines. So there are six combinations. We were very proud to win the IAAPA Brass Ring Award.”
When it comes to designing and building dark rides, Christie can provide solutions including projection mapping, LED tiles, LCD displays, immersive audio, and powerful video processors, media servers and show control systems, Bakenie said.
Christie’s solutions to creating dark rides
Innovations in the company include dimmable LEDs for dark rides, 3D technology for immersive attractions, and more compact projectors.
“We want to offer companies more creative options with the technology. Throughout the industry, the more tools that creative people have, the easier it is to create immersive environments,” he said.
Yale said theme parks “want proven technology,” but “that’s the tricky part: we want to be innovative”.
Interactivity in rides and attractions
“We want to bring new ideas. We want to bring new experiences. “[An attraction] has to be engaging. When you try new things, you have to be careful because the guests… don’t have a reference point. You have to have a certain percentage of being innovative, [but guests] have to be engaged in the attraction.
“This is tricky when you bring interactivity. We’ve experimented a lot with interactivity in smaller attractions and larger attractions. I think the attraction needs to be relatable, and the interaction is key, if it fits in the story and the gameplay. People have told us that some of our earlier rides were just shooting zombies, so we’re trying to move away from that.”
Immersive theming across Efteling is one way the park keeps captivating guests.
Yale said: “This is why I like Efteling’s theming, which is magical. It’s not just a screen, a projection, or a video game. You can play video games at home. When you go to an amusement park, it has to be more than just a video game.
“We’re learning [with] every ride. The more rides we do, the more we learn, and hopefully the next rides are going to be even better.”
Bakenie added: “I totally agree with you. People get caught up in the trends, whether it’s interactive, 3D or passive [rather than] trying to figure out what really works for that environment.
“Interactive shooting also has its place. It just depends on the environment you’re putting it in, how to make it immersive, and how it fits with the guests that are coming to the park.”
Technologies and trends
With the discussion on trends at the Innovation in Immersive Attractions session, Rijnen said Efteling is seeing a demand for “the integration of technology and innovation within our attractions to make a more seamless and personal experience”.
He said: “Guests want some influence in how the story will go, or [want to] have something to add or experience each time they return. That’s a really huge trend that we’re exploring; how it fits with Efteling.
“We’re built on tradition. If you visit our Fairytale Forest, you want to have the feeling that it’s been there for over 1,000 years. How do you integrate technology within a more traditional environment?”
Bakenie said: “One of the trends years ago was virtual reality. Everyone was talking about VR, and I’m sure it still has its place in some places. One of the issues that I had with it was that it [could] exclude you from the people around you, and part of the joy of the experience is seeing how the people around you are reacting.”
Yale said: “I think AR might be an answer, because you go to a park to be in a group environment… I think one of the [key] trends is group dynamics, so social gaming in family entertainment centres is becoming very big. You can drink, you’re with your friends, but there’s a game happening. The trend has been very strong in London, for instance.”
Getting guests off their phones
Yale would also like to get guests off their phones, he told guests at the Innovation in Immersive Attractions meeting. “People sometimes don’t even look at the screens and the theming, so we need to get them more engaged in queue lines, and part of it might be technology,” he said.
Bakenie added: “It’s hard to get people not looking at their phones; if they are looking at their phones, somehow [they] have to interact with the immersive environment so it becomes part of it. I don’t know the answer. It’s a difficult one.”
Rijnen said: “That’s a huge debate within Efteling as well. People come here to share our environment, our attractions, and to make beautiful memories.”
Using quality products and services is a key way to achieve immersive attractions that engage visitors, Bakenie said during the Festival of Innovation session.
“There’s no skimping [on quality at Efteling]. From the attractions, to the design, to the food itself. I remember feeding the garbage cans. You don’t want to miss that experience. If you’ve taken the time to go there – one of the most beautiful parks in the world today – you don’t want to be stuck with your face in your cellphone.
“But getting people to feel engaged in everything without that phone is a challenge for the future.”
Quality attractions to engage visitors
He added, I’ve seen many attractions all over the world, and you know the quality attractions. You know when the effort has gone into it and you’re looking at a quality product.
“I’m not just saying spend a lot of money on it. That always works. I’m saying using quality ingredients throughout and paying attention to all the details, the more immersive the experience and the better the guest satisfaction.”
Triotech’s Typhoon is a media-based motion simulator that consistently provides a top ROI for FEC and arcade operators.
Return on investment for FECs
“Initially, people said [Typhoon] was much too expensive; ROI (return on investment) is not going to be there. But today, this is 15-plus years [on], I go to an arcade and there are always guests on the Typhoon.
“I think quality is very important but it also needs to make sense in terms of the ROI. This is where Triotech came in. Obviously Disney and Universal do attractions nowadays for $100 million, $200m, $300m, but a local park can only spend 5 to 10 percent of that budget.”
With companies like Triotech, he said, “it is possible for parks to have an experience, which 20 years ago would only have been possible at Disney or maybe Universal”.
Bakenie said: “The Typhoon, I believe to this day, is one of the highest-grossing pieces of equipment in the arcades, so quality does make a difference.
“You can’t just throw a bunch of money [at] it. What are the ingredients, and what is the quality of those ingredients? Everything from the designers [to] the manufacturers, you have to look at those quality components to put together a really immersive, high-quality attraction the guests want to keep experiencing over and over.”
Quality does make a difference
Rijnen said at the Innovation in Immersive Attractions session: “We still live up to the design principle set by the famous Dutch illustrator Anton Pieck, who was the first head of design here at Efteling, and he was all about the ingredients. If they’re not right, then the guest won’t experience what we, as a standard, have here within Efteling. We build for eternity. We build with real materials. The devil is in the details.”
On the future of immersive attractions, Yale said:
“I think rides 100 percent have to evolve with time. So, for instance, Primordial has six different endings. We are already talking about doing the next episode of the same IP and guests expect that because they are used to the video game world and their mobile, where it’s always changing. There’s always a new chapter. So I think the ride has to evolve over time.
“When we launch a ride, everyone says we should evolve and change the content, but then ROI comes in, because the cost of doing that is very expensive.”
AI and the future of immersive attractions
Using artificial intelligence could be a potential solution in the future, he said:
“With AI, the idea is that the guests would have a different experience based on whatever they like, or the experience would evolve over time… at a reasonable cost. I think that’s one of the trends that’s happening right now in Hollywood for cinema, in video games, and is coming to our industry, in family entertainment centres and amusement parks.
“It has to be transparent to the guests. The guests are not coming to see an AI-based video game. They’re coming to live a real-world experience. It’s going to take some time before we’re able to really integrate it in a straightforward fashion, where it’s transparent to the guests.”
Looking ahead, Yale said: “I think 2025 is going to be a turning point for our industry. We had the post-Covid years. Last year it was a bit difficult for some operators, but now is a turning point.
“Everybody is very positive. At Triotech, we’re super positive about the future. I’m very enthusiastic about the industry.”
