A good friend sent me an article from the venerable Mouse Planet the other day about how the Disney Parks handle the queues for various attractions. The author lists a variety of techniques that Disney employs at its parks to alleviate not only actual wait times for attractions, but the perception of waiting. He points to a few basic principles about waiting in line, chief of which is “unoccupied time feels longer than occupied time.” The idea is that by designing the cue area to be an integral part of an attraction’s storyline, patrons feel like they’re “part of the attraction rather than waiting for the attraction.”
One might think that Disney has always done this, but in fact the first attraction to have an integrated, themed queue area was Big Thunder Mountain, which opened at Anaheim's Disneyland in 1979. Since then, all major Disney attractions feature a storyline tightly woven throughout the queue, unifying the attraction with the accompanying wait into a seamless—and pleasant—experience. An excellent example of this unified queue design is Disneyland's Indiana Jones Adventure. Themed after George Lucas and Steven Speilberg's popular film character, this wild exploration of an ancient indian temple begins not as riders board, but at the moment they line up well outside the structure. The story of how Indiana Jones' expedition came to find the temple and the role guests play in "finding Indy" is told entirely through the line, so that once the actually physical ride gets underway, guests already have been briefed on an extensive backstory. The narrative is sometimes overt, yet sometimes very, very subtle; cryptic messages are carved along the way in a custom alphabet, and guests were given a 'decoder' card to read them when the attraction first opened.
If the Indiana Jones adventure cue represents the evolution of this type of thematic design, then Expedition Everest, at Disney's Animal Kingdom (Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida) may well be the state of the art. When I visited and first rode this thrilling, themed outdoor roller coaster in October of last year, I was astounded. Of course, lines are always longer at the latest and greatest attractions, and Expedition Everest is barely a couple of years old. Disney knows this, so they planned an extensive and lengthy queue area.
The backstory of Expedition Everest is that a old railroad line has been converted into a tour company to take explorers into the mountains of the himalayas. The recent disappearances of visitors suggests that the yeti (“abominable snowman”) may be responsible. This entire narrative is conveyed through the designed spaces that the queue weaves through—first Nepalese temples, then the tour company storerooms and finally a yeti museum. The resulting effect is spectacular. Once I boarded the train, I felt a number of things just from having gone through the queue. Firstly, the wait didn’t seem as long as I thought it was going to be. Secondly, I was completely immersed in the setting of the attraction—I was in Nepal. The heat and humidity of central Florida was but a distant memory. Thirdly, I also knew, with fair certainty, why I was in Nepal, and what was in store for me. Lastly, knowing all this, I was greatly anticipating my encounter with the yeti.
Expedition Everest clearly demonstrates that thematic design as it applies to amusement park queues is about four key things:
- Occupying and entertaining (thus lessening the perceived wait time)
- Acting as a transition zone that helps to immerse guests and suspend their disbeliefs
- Establishing a back story for the attraction
- Building anticipation and/or suspense