Thank you for an amazing DC FanDome event!

Thinkwell was thrilled to be able to participate in the recent DC FanDome virtual event held by Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment on September 12th. Thinkwell thanks all of our partners and friends at Warner Bros and DC Entertainment that asked us to participate and produce this ground-breaking event.

The global fan-focused virtual event celebrated the brands and heroes of DC Entertainment in a two-day panel that was filled with panels, surprise previews, celebrity interviews, exclusive merchandise, and hours of engaging content for fans.  Thinkwell led the panel discussion on DC Comics in Theme Parks and Attractions, with a specific focus on key attraction development at Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi.

The group revealed stories and secrets relating to the immersive Metropolis and Gotham lands at Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi and talked about the creative development of the robotic arm dark ride Batman: Knight Flight, the 4D 360-degree Superman 360: Battle for Metropolis, the trackless 3D media-based dark ride Justice League: Warworld Attacks, and the flying theater attraction Green Lantern: Galactic Odyssey.

They also discussed story development for the world-class attractions, creating unique and diverse guest experiences around each of the DC Super Heroes and villains, talked about the original musical scores created for the park’s lands and attractions, and discussed hidden “fan service” within the park.

Additionally, Thinkwell Media produced the panel discussion for Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment.

Today is National Voter Registration Day, an effort that began in 2012 to engage more Americans in their civic right to vote. We’ve worked on a number of American history experiences over the years, giving us ample time and opportunity to reflect on our nation’s history as well as the opportunity and possibility that our democracy represents.

When our team worked on early concepts for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s Three West galleries, focused on American popular culture, we got to see up close and personal the objects that reveal the story of a constantly evolving nation, struggling with issues of identity and belonging – and civil rights. Whether it was ephemera from American Bandstand versus signs by angry white parents protesting the Black music played on the show, advertising art from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show contrasted with letters and photos from Indigenous people performing in the show, or iconic objects from athletes who broke race and gender barriers, the complexities of our nation’s past and present were impossible to ignore. As a board member on another project thoughtfully reflected, the story of our nation is one of constant struggle, and sometimes failure, to live up to the glorious promise of the Constitution.

Thinkwell heard loud and clear from our team members, a few election cycles ago, that it was important that we support our employees’ right to vote and make it easy for them to do so. And we are committed to that, even with the additional challenges that COVID and a dispersed workforce bring. We’re sharing registration resources at our all-staff meeting and on our internal chat system, and reminding our team about our paid time off for voting policy. 

While we instituted our voting-time-off policy because it felt like a good thing to do, we’ve come to understand that easing barriers to voting – like sharing information on how to register, voting options, and giving employees the flexibility to vote when and how they choose – is the right thing to do. We want equitable opportunities for everyone to help realize the “glorious promise” of the Constitution – and voting is key to that.

So happy National Voter Registration Day! We encourage you to check your registration status and register online (if allowed in your state) by visiting the National Voting Registration Day Website.

Have you ever thought about a trip to a museum as the equivalent of eating your leisure-time vegetables? It’s good for you, but it’s not always the most palatable option on your plate. It’s vital that museums offer something more than just education.  That they offer fun and excitement and inspiration and connection in order to avoid being relegated to brussels sprouts status. So when we start thinking about museum exhibit design and how to tell a story that appeals as it educates, it can be as simple as beginning where you would with any story: the who, the what, and the where.

Let’s start with the last of those: the where. Creating a sense of place isn’t just for theme parks, and museum exhibits don’t have to be displayed within formless or nonspecific gallery spaces. Giving guests a sense of location, an environment to explore, can transform their serving of educational goodness into a journey of discovery, even an adventure. Take, for example, our approach at NatureQuest, the children’s exhibit at Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta, Georgia. This indoor-for-outdoor space recreates the different environmental zones of Georgia, populated with species-accurate depictions of plants, animals, even the correct sounds of bird calls and other wildlife for that region. In this space, rather than being told about the estuary or swamp or mountain caves, kids and their parents get to become the discoverers, the scientists spotting species in their natural habitats and learning about them from their environments.

Next, let’s think about the who. While the where can immerse guests in a time or location, ultimately people connect with people. It’s the personal stories that provide unique moments of identification and communication between guests and the educational content. In museum exhibit design, this can mean creating opportunities to get inside someone else’s head, building empathy and understanding. At the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, we wanted to give guests a chance to see and hear how Nixon thought — in his own words — while balancing it with outside perspectives and responses. We recreated the Lincoln Sitting Room, Nixon’s favorite room in the White House, and placed a statue of the president at work in his chair, scribbling away on a notepad. Projected words animate onto the wall (real quotes from his own handwritten notes) as guests hear Nixon’s voice, from later interviews, narrating what he thought about a particular issue. The windows of the room were filled with media of news reports, commentary, even protests, giving a glimpse of how the outside world responded to Nixon’s actions. 

Last of all, the what. In the context of museum exhibit design, the “what” that we’re specifically interested in are the artifacts — the real, authentic pieces of history (or geology or whatever field our museum is focused on) that tell a story with their physical presence. First, it’s important that you are choosing an artifact that has significance and a story to tell — you’re not just displaying it for the sake of having something in a case. At the CIA Museum[efn_note]Note: This project is used as an example only. Thinkwell Group did not work on this project[/efn_note] for example, the letter written to his son by a young American officer at the close of WWII might move guests in its own right, aided by the writer’s later role as Director of Central Intelligence. But the fact that the letter is written on a captured piece of Adolph Hitler’s personal stationery makes it unforgettable. Just as vital as what it is, though, is how the artifact is displayed: are you giving it the kind of context that makes it come to life? Can we see, through its environment or displays, how it was used or where it came from? Can guests touch or interact with it? It’s one thing to be able to see a rock that was brought back from the lunar surface, but to be able to touch one — as you can at Space Center Houston, among other locations — gives you a chance to physically connect with history, or even the universe. 

Who, what, and where. When you take it back to the basics of storytelling, it becomes clear that museum exhibit design can be both delicious and nutritious — the best of both worlds.[efn_note]Special Thank You to Kate McConnell for her contributions on this post[/efn_note]

The introduction of 3D media in the 1950s and motion platforms in the 1980s were transformative technologies that changed the approach to themed attraction design. Within the past five years, the emergence of virtual reality (VR) has suggested that a similarly radical transformation is about to take place, especially once the technology takes the next jump forward with the emergence of augmented reality (AR).

The unique advantage of VR and AR for immersive storytelling is their flexibility as a platform. It’s best not to think of these technologies as a separate category of attraction design by itself, but rather as tools that can be mixed and matched with other technologies to create entirely new types of guest experiences, be it VR/AR roller coasters, motion simulators, or walkthrough experiences.

Thinkwell led the design of Lionsgate Entertainment World in close partnership with film studio Lionsgate, developer Lai Sun of Hong Kong, and park operator Village Roadshow, which opened one year ago in Zhuhai, China, and recently reopened to guests under revised health and safety guidelines. While full AR integration is still a few years away, the park’s development period overlapped perfectly with the initial rise of virtual reality as a new tool for attraction design, allowing it to become the first theme park designed with VR integration in mind from the very first blue sky idea sessions. The park opened with three separate innovative VR attractions: the interactive motion platform-based Twilight Saga: Midnight Ride; the immersive walk-through experience Divergent: Fear Simulator; and the first purpose-built VR roller coaster in the world, Gods of Egypt: Battle For Eternity. Each provided a fresh opportunity to push VR technology in ground-breaking directions for attraction design, and upon the recent reopening, guests are as excited as ever to experience the VR offerings at the park.

One of the challenges with VR is cost relative to capacity. Large theme parks require large audience capacity (1,000+ per hour) in order to move the throngs of visitors through attractions and ride, a fact that makes most current VR systems an impractical solution. Meanwhile, smaller FECs (Family Entertainment Centers) can’t shoulder the development costs to create custom VR experiences, and often need to go with off-the-shelf solutions instead. 

Lionsgate Entertainment World fit neatly between these two extremes—larger and more immersive than an FEC, but with a smaller footprint than a traditional theme park—providing Thinkwell the opportunity to dream up big ideas for a more focused audience. The fact that the target audience would also be weighted toward technologically-connected young adults and families meant that this was the perfect opportunity to deliver some of the Lionsgate brand’s edgier story themes within an immersive virtual realm.

Combining virtual reality with simulator technology and game software is the highly popular Twilight Saga: Midnight Ride. Developed in close collaboration with the attraction engineers at  CAVU Designwerks and Dreamcraft Attractions and the computer animation specialists at Framestore, Midnight Ride gives guests agency with the ability to choose their own path as they’re sent on an interactive motorcycle adventure alongside fan-favorite Twilight character Jacob Black and the rest of the wolfpack, including the ability to see other riders in VR along the way.

Guests climb aboard individual motorbikes, each with its own multi-axis motion platform hidden below. Once settled on their bikes, the VR headsets drop from the ceiling and click into a lightweight wearable frame. The transition from the physical attraction environment to the virtual world is designed to be seamless; guests can see and even gesture to their friends (in simulated racing gear) on neighboring bikes. This awareness of other riders is important to the story, because each individual controls their speed and direction so later on when they’re racing through the moonlit woods, guests will see their friends split off from the trail, speed ahead or fall behind, or even get attacked by the vampire Newborns, heightening the sense of peril and adventure.

While Midnight Ride sets the precedent for an all-new attraction category, Divergent: Fear Simulator evolves the current landscape of walk-through VR experiences. Combining forces with Framestore and the VR specialists at Noitom, Thinkwell and the attraction team set out to reimagine the possibilities of “walk-through VR” as not just focused on shooting or puzzle game mechanics, but crafting an emotionally gripping experience that greatly expands VR’s physical and technical boundaries.

Inspired by the dream-like fear testing seen in the blockbuster Divergent films, guests are paired up, two at a time, and “neurally linked” to a simulation that challenges their fear of heights, darkness, and shifting realities. In order to reach a larger audience, Thinkwell designed a linear, multi-room experience, allowing operators to pulse guests through in multiple groups. While VR technology created the illusion of a much larger environment than the actual physical one, the design team went to great lengths to ensure that the physical and digital design were a perfect match. Pairing the digital world with a tactile environment creates an undeniably realistic experience wherein guests step across rickety, plywood boards between towering skyscrapers, navigate an abandoned bunker with surreal surprises, and work together to escape a mind-twisting nightmare, conquering one fear after another in Fear Simulator VR.

Finally, Gods of Egypt: Battle for Eternity opened as the world’s first fully bespoke VR roller coaster, with a layout custom-designed to exclusively support a VR experience. Constructing a thrilling and immersively themed roller coaster indoors is a challenge due to the added complexity of floor loads, columns, and other structural restrictions. Working with Mack Rides, Thinkwell quickly determined a powered coaster would provide the control and flexibility the team wanted, and combining it with custom VR headsets and integrated audio headphones opened an entirely new world of possibilities for the tight indoor space.

The powered coaster design also allowed for two discrete laps through the entire coaster circuit, one at slower speeds and then one at full speed – which the guest never realizes, since they’re immersed in the VR world as part of a battle between Egyptian gods. In this case, using virtual reality allowed for a roller coaster experience that is “twice as big, and twice the length” on half the footprint – a big coaster experience to match the enourous size and scope of the Gods of Egypt IP world, but on a much smaller footprint.

In each case, it was the storytelling that drove the attraction design, including the decision of when and how to use VR. While the technology is still evolving, and the introduction of AR in the near future promises even greater opportunities for attraction design, the varied uses of VR at Lionsgate Entertainment World indicates a multitude of possibilities for this tool when it finds the right application.