Entertainment has taken many different
forms it’s constantly adapting to the
current cultural trends of the time
before i get into the future of
technology and entertainment let’s first
take a brief look back at its history in
264 bc in roman times families would
travel for miles to witness great
spectacles at the Coliseum was it to see
a play a symphony perhaps no it was to
watch gladiators engage in epic battles
these gladiators would fight each other
and sometimes wild animals often to the
death in the name of entertainment the
audiences loved it in the rulers at the
time actually allowed the audience to
choose whether these gladiators would
live or die it was thumbs up or thumbs
down consider it the one of the earliest
forms of crowdsourcing fast-forward to
modern day times this type of brutal
spectacle has now transformed to more
casual sporting events like football
soccer and wrestling moving to the 1600s
in the Elizabethan era the spectacles
that they had during that time was in
the Globe Theatre which is one of the
most famous theaters of the world that
theater was an outdoor amphitheater that
had seen him for over three thousand
guests those people would be there and
often in stifling heat and sometimes
even rain now this theater was very poor
compared to what modern day times would
be the set had no scenery there were
very few props the entertainment was all
about the dialogue the story the drama
the comedy even at that time the
costumes really important to be able to
tell the social status of each of those
characters during those years women were
not even allowed to perform and young
boys were the ones who would take over
the female roles now in current times we
all know that
these types of spectacles are in a much
more civilized format they’re in a
theater much like this in air
conditioning they’ve got great set
pieces scenic amazing lighting and
special-effects in Broadway those
performances can cost up to 75 million
dollars to stage now the dialogue is
still important as part of that but it’s
only a part of the major spectacles that
they’re performing fast forward to the
1920s and they had a new form of
entertainment they had the radio
families would often gather around the
radio in the family room listening to
their daily specials even though these
guys don’t look too happy about it but
your family probably looks a little bit
more like this everybody engaged in
their cell phones texting tweeting
playing all those apps the stats are
pretty astounding regarding cell phones
and application technology it’s
completely revolutionized the video game
entertainment industry in 1998 the video
game industry was worth 2.6 billion
dollars the mobile gaming industry
didn’t exist fast forward to 2016 video
gaming industry balloon to 30 billion
dollar industry but what about the
mobile gaming industry that surpassed it
to 36 point nine billion dollars so that
cell phone and that technology is a
completely disruptive technological
advancement let’s talk a little bit
about theme park industry and how that’s
changed over the years see what in
particular has entertaining and engaging
guests for over 50 years we like to
blend up close animal encounters with
world-class thrill rides we also like to
inspire and educate our guests with
every trip they come to one of our parks
signature to that experience has been
our orca whales last year in March cero
announced that we would no longer be
breeding orca whales and instead we’d be
putting on new educational experiences
called Orca encounters where we
highlight the natural abilities of these
amazing career
now it was a very difficult decision to
make this switch but what we realize is
as we were looking at the culture and
the societal trends we determined that
killer whales in captivity we’re not
going to be part of it so we currently
live in a time when culture and
technology is currently evolving and
changing at a more rapid pace than ever
so the themed entertainment industry has
to constantly adapt and evolve to stay
relevant and interesting to all of our
audiences and new generations we have to
rewrite the story for new generations
part of my job is to develop those new
stories and new technologies so I’ve
developed and talked about three
different rules so to speak of how we
can accomplish those tasks one we’ve got
to ask ourselves what is the guest
experience too we have to get the ride
right and three we have to have fun
while we’re doing it so let’s first
tackle guest experience we have millions
of guests coming to our Park every year
they come to our parks as an escape from
the everyday world so we ask ourselves
what kind of emotions do we want our
guests to achieve while they’re coming
to our parks do we want them to laugh do
we want them to be scared do we want
them to be thrilled are we going to take
guests face to whiskers with one of our
cheetahs which by the way this is a real
photo and this tells you a little bit
about how we achieve theme park
attraction design we want to have these
up close encounters with these amazing
animals in the foreground but in the
background we’ve got these wild thrill
attractions it’s got this great layered
look to it but there’s a lot of science
and engineering and technology to make
sure that we can pull that off not only
from a safety perspective for the guests
for our ride right engineers as well as
the animals themselves what else do we
want to provide our guests could we
provide them their very first experience
on a roller coaster sure does anybody
remember their first experience in
roller coasters yeah it’s probably a lot
of fun right so we can provide those on
a daily basis to our guests
we’re looking at what the demographic is
well the people that are coming to our
parks we have to provide experiences for
everyone in the family whether you’re
three years old or 93 years old so one
of the most challenging demographics
that we’re trying to entertain is the
Millennial Generation so that’s about my
generation that generation they really
want to have very immersive meaningful
experiences when they come to their
parks and they also want to prolifically
share that experience on social media so
some stats about that every minute
there’s over 400 hours of video uploaded
to YouTube there’s over a hundred and
sixty-one million daily users of
snapchat so as I’m developing the theme
park attraction I have to think how am I
going to provide experiences that guests
are going to want to share on their
social networks we also have a stretch
goal to provide meaningful experiences
for our guests we would love to have our
guests come to our Park be inspired by
what they’ve seen and educated on take
that home turn that into action and
potentially do something to change the
world one meaningful encounter with one
of our dolphins could be the catalyst
for someone to devote their life’s work
to veterinary science we have a we have
a message at our parks that we like to
say about touching the heart to teach
the mind another question that comes up
when we’re developing theme parks is
does the technology drive attraction
development or does the attraction drive
the technology development which
interesting question and really the
answer to that is yes both of those is
correct when we’re trying to develop a
new attraction called turtle Trek we
wanted to tell the story of a turtle and
their life through the turtles eyes so
to be able to do that we created a 360
degree 3d dome that we put the guests
and immerse them entire into that
environment for an upcoming project that
I’m working on crack and VR we’re
putting virtual reality on
that roller coaster to be able to take
guests two worlds they’ve never been
before we’re taking guests through a
time warp to a prehistoric undersea
world’s filled with legendary sea
creatures you know this technology is
helping us adapt these types of
experiences for new generations so the
second topic that we have is getting the
ride right you know question is what
what is what does that mean when we’re
trying to get the ride right as we’re
developing our roller coasters we know
that guests want to come there to be
thrilled we don’t want them to focus on
the restraints of the safety we want
them to focus on the fun but the key
there is that we have got to cohesively
tie the creative side and the technology
side together to create a one-of-a-kind
experience now I’ll tell you the one the
one caveat to this rule as far as safety
goes is has anybody been on Falcon Syria
before yeah a lot of you so that’s our
300 foot tall drop tower we take guests
up 300 feet then we’ll tilt your seat so
you’re looking straight down at the
ground and we know guests are going to
be questioning themselves when they’re
holding on to the restraints that’s the
only thing holding them up in the air so
they want to make sure that those
engineers those engineers are the ones
who got it right so as we’re developing
roller coasters we we like to talk about
what kind of choreography do we have to
achieve this type of experience and I
say choreography because that usually
that’s reserved for dance but
choreography is also very applicable to
the roller coaster designing world do we
want guests to feel like they’re diving
down like mako shark so those are make a
roller coaster at SeaWorld and dido why
this is a mako shark yeah so one way
that you can tell is that if you look at
the very leave car the gill slits that
we have there’s five slits which is very
unique to a mako shark or do we want our
guests to run and chase their prey like
a cheetah across the Serengeti plains so
this is our Cheetah Hunt roller coaster
there’s a lot of tools in our toolbox
that allow us to create these great
experiences on roller coasters we have
Ellison technology which allows us to
propel guests launch them
the case of Cheetah Hunt up to 60 miles
per hour there’s structural systems that
allow us to take our guests up in the
air 300 feet or more before diving them
back down into the ground there’s also
very complex software systems that allow
us to simulate a ride before we even
construct it so think about all those
physics equations you guys have learned
in school right so lots of that really a
roller coaster is just physics and
applicable terms so it’s a great way to
say you know this is what we’re going to
be developing as what you’ve learned in
school it’s very very important those
types of experiences the development of
a roller coaster is a very interesting
process because it takes many months if
not years to develop the final layout
for a roller coaster will you go over 50
different iterations on a ride just to
make sure that we get it just right and
the best part about a being that roller
coaster designer is the first day that
you get to ride the roller coaster
because after we’ve done all the testing
after our test dummies have ridden then
we get to do that for the first time and
we never know if we’re going to get the
experience just right until that first
initial ride which leads me to our last
rule we’ve got to have fun when we’re
doing our jobs if we’re not having fun
something’s wrong if I’m in a conference
room with some of my colleagues and
working on a new attraction design and
nobody’s got smiles on their faces we’ve
got to stop we gotta say all right what
what’s going on here we’ve got to change
we’re going to change the mold to be
able to make sure that this is going to
be a great experience for all of our
guests we also want to you know at the
end of the day we we work for a theme
park right so we want to make sure that
we’re going to be taking that experience
when we’re developing a theme park
attraction usually it starts with a
concept and a simple napkin sketch
that’s where it starts being able to see
the process from the very beginning and
seeing that come to life is one of the
best parts about our job you know an
example here is our Cheetah Hunt Tower
so this is a very iconic Tower that we
had we started from a very early concept
and we got our creative team together
with our engineers and said you know
most structures for a roller coaster if
you think of physics engineering
structures it’s very big at the bottom
narrow at the top but we wanted to flip
that around and make it like a tree very
narrow at the at the bottom and big at
the top so it almost seems like a series
of branches coming at the top and from
an engineering perspective that doesn’t
make a whole lot of sense right that
structure should fall over but after a
number of iterations and months and
working together but without retain our
creative group and our engineering group
we’re able to develop this kind of an
iconic element when we’re building a
roller coaster or any type of theme
attraction it usually takes about four
or more years so you guys think about
those you who are in high school or
getting ready to go to high school the
amount of time it’s going to take you to
get from being a freshman to a senior
and how excited you guys are going to be
on graduation day because that’s the way
I feel when I’m getting ready to open
one of these new attractions one last
question is what what inspires us to
develop these themed attractions in in
my world I love to travel I love to go
experience new things and I also love to
watch guests come off the rides and see
what their reactions are I love to see
everyone smile hoot holler clap having a
great time that inspires me so I
question what inspires you I want you to
go out and travel as much as possible I
want you to go to new restaurants I want
you to ride the wild rides go to
festivals eat the crazy foods all of
that type of experience is what I take
into my roller coaster and theme park
attraction design and that should be the
fuel for your creative design this
generation your generation I’m excited
to see what you guys will develop in the
years to come thank you [Applause]