gettingasenseofthetheme.docVIP

GETTING A SENSE OF THE THEME: IMMERSION VIA THE SENSES IN CONTEMPORARY THEME PARKS Marlee McGuire Loyola International College Concordia University Introduction What could be more sensation-full than a visit to a theme park? From the moment you arrive until the moment you leave, your senses are sparked, challenged, and jostled to and fro. As George Tilyou, founder of America’s first amusement park on Coney Island stated in 1909, “We Americans want either to be thrilled or amused, and we are ready to pay well for either sensation” (Tilyou quoted in Kasson 1978: 58). Since the utterance of this seminal statement almost a century ago, theme parks have adapted from their amusement park forebears and attracted enormous commercial and cultural power. From the time Disneyland opened its doors in the mid 1950’s, the contemporary theme park has become ingrained in our imagery of the fanciful and the fun. In this report, I will postulate that it is the creative, innovative, and increasingly aggressive use of the senses by the theme park industry that generates the commercial and cultural momentum of these spaces. However, despite self-conscious attempts to be so, theme parks are not seamless spaces, and the interplay between the theme park and the patrons reveal how sensory dynamics form our ideas of immersion, intimacy, and authenticity. By way of exploring statements and advertisements generated by the theme park industry, we will examine what theme park architects and marketers are trying to do. However, through exploring the travelers reviews generated by theme park visitors as well, we will see how a sensory ethnography of the theme park echoes David Howes’ statement that “consumption is an active (not a passive) process, where all sorts of meanings and uses for products are generated that the designers and marketers of those products never imagined” (Howes 2005: 294). Sensing the Theme Park Imagine yourself embarking upon a visit to a theme par