Coaster Cow

• Offline
• United States

Thanks for the replies guys!

Liam I appreciate the feedback. The question of how wayfinding differs between theme parks and urban environments is certainly one I hope to attack. My initial thoughts is that it would take true empirical research within park environments, which is something I currently don't have the resources to initiate, but is definitely along the lines of where I think a true academia for the industry could go. So at the moment, I plan on trying to synthesize existing academic research with informal knowledge bases on theme parks, even with the inherent flaws that may arise from that sort of transferring of ideas. My focus is mainly at introducing questions and making connections more so than necessarily answering them at the moment, until I find a means of funding etc. I'd recommend reading my history pieces on the site, I think they're a little more concrete than some of the other essays that clearly could use some empirical tests to strengthen up.

As for the dark ride definition, my partner and I on that project recognized that we would not be able to come up with an authoritative definition of what constitutes a dark ride. Instead, we sought to create a lens through which to examine theme park history, in this case our shaky dark ride definition, to illuminate how trends in theme parks reflected trends happening in society broadly. Additionally, we were presenting to a university crowd with no background or knowledge on theme parks. With the disclaimer then of not being comprehensive or definitive, we wanted to counter some existing literature on dark ride history that ignores what we considered to be extremely important milestones, particularly on the earlier end. Hopefully if you get the chance to read the whole piece it may redeem itself that way.

I'd love to hear any ideas you guys have on where I could go further!

Thanks for the responses, guys!

Registration is now open at http://cornelltpeg.w...ompetition.html. Registration closes on Wednesday, March 16th, so don't delay! We recommend that if you are at all interested you sign a team up; that way you can see the prompt when it is released and evaluate if it is something you have the time for.