People visit theme parks for the experience. Whether they’re seeing a show, going on a ride, or taking in the amazing scenery that makes up the theme park world, they want more than just fun. They want to be admired.
In today’s theme parks, technology plays a central role in creating an atmosphere of wonder. It is used in a variety of ways to enhance the audience’s experience, adding one or more layers of enchantment to the physical spaces visitors pass through and the human performers who greet them there.
However, the artists who design and develop theme park attractions know that technology cannot stand alone, especially in a world where home theaters and robotic toys are a common component of everyday life. They learned that technology works best when it supports a broader audience experience, integrating technology-based enhancements to take classic entertainment to new heights.
Adding layers to animatronic characters with projection technology
Projection technology has long been used in the entertainment space. Moving pictures have been drawing audiences to theaters for over 100 years. Theme parks have been using projection to enhance attractions for more than 50 years, with Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion being one of the first to use the technology in 1969.
Today’s digital projectors allow theme park designers to work without a screen, projecting moving or still images onto virtually any surface. through digital projection mapimages can appear on irregular surfaces, including statues, buildings, and landscapes. The technology renders the projection as part of the object, such as a cartoon appearing on a sculpted head.
In fact, Universal Studios was the first theme park company to use this projection technology on an animatronic/mechanical face. The technology debuted in May 2025 at Universal Studios Orlando’s newest theme park, Epic Universe.
Projection can also be combined with motion and sound to provide an immersive experience. Projections combined with carefully orchestrated movements and sounds to give visitors the feeling that they are flying, falling, or trapped by some external force are common in today’s parks. Projection technology is critical to the experience these attractions provide.
While theme parks will likely never tire of creating new projection-based attractions, they are also learning that the technology and the attractions that use it can be overdone or over-relied. For example, a park that has invested in using projections to show characters’ faces turns to animatronics for this purpose, realizing that a malfunctioning projector can suddenly make the attraction unattractive.
Designers have also learned that projection is best when it carries some (but not all) of the weight of the experience. The best attractions combine different technologies, techniques and tricks to draw people in and out of the experience.
Adding diversity with footprintless technology
Each ride strives to take riders on a journey. With the usual attractions, this journey follows a predetermined course. Wherever the tracks lead, the cars go there every time.
With modern technology, designers can make slides seamless, enhancing the experience by introducing variety and flexibility. Rather than being driven on a track, the trackless cars are programmed to go through the attraction, allowing them to reverse, spin and cross paths they’ve already taken. These rides contribute to the feeling of immersion, allow for physical sensations not possible in rides confined to tracks, and offer the potential for movement that can be tailored to the needs of specific riders.
Traceless technology is also known for dark rides that bring together various technological gadgets to enhance the viewer’s experience. Dark rides use special lighting, music and other sounds as well as animatronics to create engaging scenes. Trackless technology introduces more possibilities to the dark ride design process, giving creators the potential to randomize movements while transporting riders through immersive environments.
Add believability with animatronic technology
Engineering plausibility into technology-based entertainment is critical to theme parks stay competitive in today’s market. Settings, situations, and characters driven by technology aren’t always realistic—after all, many take place in a fantasyland or involve cartoon characters—but they must be believable. If the look and feel is compromised, the immersive nature of the experience can quickly be lost.
Today’s leading animatronics designers have made believability a key component of the design process. For example, their development pipeline carefully considers the character they are animating, designing the technology that supports their movements to mirror the movements created by their animators. After an accurate animation performance, animatronics can provide a more fluid experience that enhances overall believability.
Next-level animatronics uses modern robotics to create characters that are not tied to a specific location, meaning they can move freely, breaking down the barriers that traditionally exist between the show and the audience, enhancing the experience. For example, fan videos Epic Universe in Orlando, Florida recently showed off some of the free-roaming robot baby dragons used in the “How to Train Your Dragon” experience.
For artists creating today’s entertainment experiences, modern technology opens up a world of possibilities. It provides the power to create immersive environments with greater variety and believability that enhance experiences and delight the viewer again and again.
