Zeitgeist Design & Production, the creator of UX-IRL: User eXperiences In Real Life, has shared insights on the immersive entertainment industry in 2024.
Ryan Harmon, president, and Joe Lanzisero, executive creative director, at Zeitgeist Design & Production are the cohosts and coproducers of Zeitgeist’s The Spirit of the Time live zoomcast. This is the only production of its kind in the industry and has been running for three years.
In this monthly series, Harmon and Lanzisero invite a highly regarded industry figure to board their time machine and revisit key moments in the guest’s career, as they try to solve the secret of what makes a visitor experience both relevant and timeless.
Tony Baxter, Joe Rohde, Bob Rogers, Phil Hettema, Garner Holt, Tim Kirk, Bob Ward, and 22 other themed entertainment icons have all travelled back in time with Harmon and Lanzisero to discuss their sources of inspiration and insights from their extensive experience, as well as to reveal secrets and untold tales from their best-known projects.
Looking into 2024
Harmon and Lanzisero have boarded the zoomcast’s time machine and have explored the trends and zeitgeist of the industry throughout 2024.
Looking into the new year, they foresee:
Location-based experiences will become increasingly popular, and sell-out events and extensive social media coverage for theme parks, attractions, and pop-up experiences will continue. This continued success is credited to a combination of a preference for collecting experiences over possessions, an eagerness to be with other people following the isolation of the pandemic, and screen fatigue.
However, according to Harmon and Lanzisero, the cost of having these experiences will keep increasing. Looking into 2024, Harmon, a frequent concertgoer, sees concert parking at LA’s So-Fi Stadium costing $125 a car, with concert tickets costing more than $1,500 at face value for a good seat.
Similarly, admission tickets to theme parks and attractions – particularly parking, food and beverage, and souvenirs – will keep on skyrocketing as visitors do not yet appear to be impacted by the rising cost of spending time with family and friends and creating new memories at world-class parks and attractions.
Harmon and Lanzisero expect that technology will continue to develop during 2024, as bigger, brighter, and more affordable LED screens and projectors will enable experiences like The Sphere in Las Vegas — and “the volume” now used to produce movies and TV programmes — to be brought to theme parks and other attractions, resulting in truly immersive media-based worlds that do not require special glasses.
In 2024, they see that drone shows will grow in popularity as safety concerns subside and drones and inflatables gain more features with lights, animation, and the capacity to carry props.
They predict that augmented reality will continue to evolve slowly during 2024, with only Universal’s Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge dark ride incorporating it into a ride experience.
With most VR coasters out of commission and the majority of VR locations put on hold by COVID, virtual reality will be limited to the home market (with Meta continuing to have trouble with its Quest headsets) until Apple’s Vision Pro becomes affordable and illustrates the importance of the technology.
Voice recognition software and Artificial Intelligence (AI) such as Siri and Alexa, ChatGPT and MidJourney, will soon start making their way into immersive experiences. This will allow conversations with virtual and historical media-based characters and animatronics and will offer the capacity to make rides and attractions even more customised and engaging.
Key projects opening in 2024
Excitement for all of the exciting new projects that are currently under construction and expected to open over the next few years will continue to grow throughout 2024, with a particular focus on Universal’s Epic Universe.
Audiences will also keep looking for hints about Disney’s plans for the next ten years in regard to their $60 billion investment, particularly considering Disneyland and the Walt Disney World Resort, where lines for the busiest attractions sometimes stretch over two hours.
Along with its forthcoming projects in Asia, Puy du Fou’s first American installation in the Smoky Mountains is another event that will generate excitement throughout the year.
Universal’s family-friendly theme park in Frisco, Texas, and its year-round Halloween Horror Nights experience at Area 15 in Las Vegas are also key projects to watch.
Miral revealed last year that the first non-Universal Harry Potter theme park experience on the planet would launch an expansion of their indoor Warner Bros. World theme park in Abu Dhabi.
Saudi Arabia will continue to evolve to become a top-tier family entertainment destination, with Six Flags Qiddiya and the Qiddiya Water Park, Neom, and SEVEN family entertainment centres among its offerings. Falcon’s Flight, an Intamin-designed roller coaster at Six Flags Qiddiya, will be the fastest, tallest, longest, and first roller coaster in the world to climb (and descend) more than 500 feet.
Storytelling in 2024
In 2024, it seems that the trend towards intellectual property investment will continue. Nevertheless, public opinion is starting to shift back to the recognition that aspirational human experiences can have just as much (if not more) influence and longevity than a TV, film, or video game property.
The significance of the story is championed by the experiential design industry. Looking into 2024, however, Harmon and Lanzisero reflect that you cannot tell a gripping and satisfying story with character arcs, a beginning, middle, and end, and the classic “hero’s journey” in just 3.5 or even 8 minutes.
When design firms and developers start considering the cost of intellectual property investment in 2024, Harmon and Lanzisero expect that they will discover that the most beloved attractions are those that are built around straightforward ideas that reflect our shared dreams. Examples of these kinds of attractions include Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Matterhorn Bobsleds, and It’s A Small World.
All of these examples are Disney attractions, but parks across the world, from Puy du Fou to Phantasialand, Europa Park to Efteling, Futuroscope to Tivoli Gardens, Ocean Park to Knott’s Berry Farm, and all of Chimelong’s parks in Guangzhou and Zhuhai, have had excellent results in creating experiences that fulfil human desires, inventing their own characters, and celebrating local myths and legends.
Even though Zeitgeist Design & Production has successfully completed over $12 billion worth of IP-based projects worldwide, Harmon and Lanzisero particularly enjoy the challenge of taking what Disney’s Marty Sklar called “the blank sheet of paper” and creating universally enjoyable experiences which can involve flying, shrinking, travelling to a place people will never visit, meeting aliens, experiencing magic, or—in the case of Harmon and Lanzisero—time travelling!
Reemergence of overnight experiences
Harmon and Lanzisero’s final insight from their look into 2024 is that overnight immersive experiences haven’t completely disappeared, unlike the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. The idea of travelling back in time and space, engaging in role-playing and cosplay, and spending several days and nights in truly immersive experiences with loved ones is going to be more popular than ever.
They suggest that we might be spending the night inside our favourite theme park land, or even transforming into pirates on a real Caribbean island, sooner rather than later.
Harmon says: “2024 is going to be an exciting year for our industry. 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!”
Lanzisero adds: “I’ve spent over four decades in this business, and I’ve never seen so much investment and innovation as I do in 2024. It’s a great time to be alive — and an amazing
time to work in the immersive entertainment industry!”
Zeitgeist Design & Production recently announced that it is once again working with Pennsylvania’s Hersheypark. The continued partnership follows the successful launch of the attraction’s world-class Halloween haunt event last year.
