Theme Park - Up And Down, Around And Around

In a world where you are expected to look but not touch, theme parks are one of the places where you can in fact touch things and be touched by them. Not only does tactile stimulation make you feel good, it draws you in to the narrative of the themes being displayed as well. Theme park architects are aware of how touch creates immersive environments, and also how much people enjoy tactile stimulation. Games situated throughout the park often involve throwing or hitting things, and petting zoo areas or sea life themed parks involve petting the goats and being kissed by the dolphins. Even the experience of the wind hitting your face as you are thrust through the air in a rollercoaster is a highly tactile experience.
In the theme park, the sensory tourist is able to leave the everyday world without actually leaving the country. In a world where travel to exotic locales is a heavily romanticized and attractive yet increasingly unaffordable activity, the locale themed park allows the middle class to enter into the simulation of travel for an affordable price. These spaces were appealing because they enabled the consumer to participate in a world charged with sensory experiences that were previously unavailable to them. Theme parks are spaces where visitors are able to form interpretations of their surroundings and engage in a ritual process of being betwixt and between an ordinary world and a fantasy land. Water parks have long been thought of as an opportunity for travel and escape from the hum-drum of diurnal life, However, this does not mean that water parks are the equivalent to a meditation session – instead, they break visitors out of the every day by offering them extraordinary sensory experiences that regular life cannot.
Hotels are becoming a hot topic for Canada’s theme parks as more operators contemplate, initiate or complete in-park hotels. Although the Canadian theme parks sector continues to grow, the marketplace is crowded and the going is getting tougher, with growth rates (revenue and admissions) slowing. Operators are searching for ways to gain a competitive edge, to generate new revenue streams and for ways of ‘sweating’ their existing assets even harder. Success increasingly depends on maximising revenues and managing operational leverage and capital expenditure. Much future growth in the sector will be driven by new supply coming on-line and existing parks need to attract new visitors, to persuade existing visitors to stay longer and spend more, and importantly to come back again.1 By adding hotels operators hope to create short break destination resorts rather than ‘just’ attractions.
Developing conference and meeting facilities means they can also tap into the corporate sector off-season. In 2003 alone over two thousand rooms in seven hotels were added by Canada’s top theme parks, current development trends and the future outlook for development, theming and corporate markets. Our research suggests parks are overwhelmingly positive about developing hotels, believing accommodation on site helps keep customers satisfied by providing an entire experience; that a hotel can stimulate new revenue streams, improve length of stay on-site and allow parks to tap into the short breaks and corporate market.

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