I’d like to divert our discussion today to talk about an aspect of themed design that we can’t use in Silver Antlers but is still an exciting and fascinating concept. A walk-through (or a dark ride) is meant to be experienced in exactly one way—even if there isn’t a plot in the sense we expect from a narrative work, there’s still a beginning, middle, and end to these things. But take a step back to the design of a collection of attractions and we’re building a land.

Compare “it’s a small world” to Fantasyland: the former is a single line (however much it may twist and turn) while the latter is a varied space, with many destinations that can be experienced or avoided at will. (I hope you never choose to avoid “small world.”) A land is built for wandering, and while it may also tell a story, it’s the kind of story that is definitely more felt than read: “Small world” suggests an idea but Fantasyland suggests a mood. It creates expectations in its audience so as to enhance whatever experience its individual attractions aim to share.

Lands can also be fractal: Fantasyland is part of the Magic Kingdom, which is part of Walt Disney World, and similar concepts are applied at different scales in each. We can think about the city of Lake Buena Vista as a land, too: it’s not as coherent as the others, because many more disconnected parties were involved in its design, but land design is not unlike urban planning.

The Magic Kingdom is designed as a hub. There’s a large single entrance point: through the turnstiles, under the railroad station, and onto Main Street USA. But as we walk down Main Street toward Cinderella’s Castle¹, the path branches off in many directions, toward Adventureland on the left, Tomorrowland on the right, and over the drawbridge to the other lands. Adjacent lands connect to each other as well, but they all stretch outward from the castle—spokes from the hub. The design was revolutionary when it was used to build Disneyland, and almost all of the Disney parks have used it since then. It’s a pattern that gently guides an audience from one destination to the next while helping them to maintain their sense of place. It also lends itself to subtle transitions, as the different lands tend toward equal proportions and repetition. I’ll refer you again to FoxxFur’s study of all of the lights in the Magic Kingdom for examples of how elegantly these lands can interact.

Speaking of Ms. Fur, let’s contrast the hub-and-spoke to the simple wheel design of World Showcase, the travelogue upper half of EPCOT at Walt Disney World. In Taking Apart World Showcase, she explains how the EPCOT planners made a very different decision in land design to great effect:

But the most exciting innovation is that all of these pavilions must be passed in order to get all the way around the lagoon: the hub concept for Disneyland, there a revolutionary gesture of convenience, here becomes a solid lake where once there was only a circular moat and links all of the civilizations to the original water from which they emerged from. The hub of Disneyland which offered both inclusion and exclusion (a spectator could visit Disneyland and never once enter Tomorrowland, for example) now is a wheel uniting all cultures in location in the geometric pattern of the globe they all share, a globe which is also the master layout of the sister area Future World and the icon of the collective entity known as EPCOT which they embody.

The important idea here is considering a land not just as a collection of attractions, but as an experience in itself. And land design can take cues from attraction design, as well: a land is experienced subliminally, but also slowly, and so there are plenty of opportunities to introduce elements of a story. Here’s FoxxFur in that same article explaining “false portals” (I told you we’d be referencing her research a lot):

A false portal can be a window, door, or any opening placed in any such way to suggest that any given themed space continues beyond where in reality it will stop [immediately] out of sight. Throughout Disney parks there are false doors, false windows, false caves, false skylights, false rivers, false balconies, and practically anything which can be reasonably built to suggest that regular human activity is going on in the theme park, one of the least accommodating areas for regular human activity ever devised. The spectator isn’t trained to look at the theme environment as being built for the express purpose of selling an idea to them; they look at it as they would any real life environment where things are where they are because that’s where they were built, and as a result the aim of Stratification is achieved subliminally.

(“Stratification” used in the context of themed design essentially means the act of creating a believably natural environment. Read more about Stratification versus Presentationalism in Elements of Theme Design, an article whose author should be obvious by now.)

So a land is, at least in its most popular form, a collection of attractions arranged deliberately to complement each other, as well as the spaces used to move between them, all of which attempt to imply a consistent universe. And I use the term “attraction” very loosely.

CityCenter is a huge complex that opened in Las Vegas a few years ago. It’s one of the most ambitious projects on the Strip. A hotel and casino, another hotel or two, some condominium towers, and Crystals, a shopping mall. Maybe my favorite shopping mall ever. Its layout is nothing like Disneyland—the map looks pretty similar to any mall’s map—but the level of detail is astounding. Each storefront was carefully and specifically designed to complement and coordinate with the retailer it represents, from the materials and lights used in its façade right down to the style of its doors. The stores tend to jar and there’s no sense that Crystals is, say, a town square inhabited by local residents², but the contrast is very pleasing and there’s a sense of consistency despite its lack of sameness. If you’re looking for an application of themed design outside of experimental theater, you’ve got it here.

I want to use all of these ideas but they’re just too big for Silver Antlers. I plan to add some false portals and little tricks like forced perspective³ into the castle scene, but I’m thinking about ways to incorporate these strategies into our next project in a bigger way. Do you happen to know someone who’s building a mall?

The scene I showed you yesterday, as of last night, has changed.

I started telling the Antlers story to a friend. I was describing the first scene when we were interrupted by something—a waitress bringing us our drinks, probably—and after a quick “cheers,” he said, “So the man is hunting the stag, and then what?”

I hadn’t said he was hunting the stag, but…of course he was! The way I saw the story, he’s merely gathering fruits and vegetables to bring home, and in helping the stag, his food is trampled: his kind deed brought him misfortune. But the events are rather unrelated, and implausible: why would be put his day’s work so close to the deer’s hooves? It also doesn’t really follow that his wife would be so upset after he lost only a few hours’ worth of work that she would immediately send him out to find more.

But if he’s hunting, a lot of these points become more clear. First, he’s not just collecting food for that evening—surely they have some means of doing that on a regular basis, and have a bit of produce stocked at home. This is a special occasion. He’s hunting for a feast. A gift for his wife. And they’re very poor, so they can’t afford to keep a horse or a hound, which were all but necessary when hunting large game in the middle ages (which is roughly when this story is supposed to take place). So his hopes were low, but he was out there, trying, stalking around with his bow, trying to make something happen.

Then there’s this deer with his antlers caught in some branches. It doesn’t notice him, it’s not going anywhere, and it’s enormous. Perfect!

For the man to let this thing go is huge. Whether it’s because he feels wrong killing a helpless creature, or because he’s scared of the aura around it, or because he just finds those silver antlers fascinating: that goes unexplained. It’s up to you to decide. But suddenly there’s something to decide here! There’s emotional conflict! It’s not just things happening!

I’m so glad that waitress showed up.

I’m researching how people hunted in the middle ages, to figure out how this works. (That’s how I knew about the horse and hound thing.) I know now that the man has a bow, which is awesome. I learned the word hart, which is a name for an adult male red deer, the kind most suitable and honorable for hunting. I’m learning about hunting traditions, like how big honor’s role was in the practice. And I found Saint Eustace.

I had heard his name before, but I didn’t know his story. Here’s the exciting bit of Saint Eustace’s hagiography, written by Jacobus de Voragine in The Golden Legend in the 13th century:

So on a day, as he was on hunting, he found an herd of harts, among whom he saw one more fair and greater than the other, which departed from the company and sprang into the thickest of the forest. And the other knights ran after the other harts, but Placidus siewed him with all his might, and enforced to take him. And when the hart saw that he followed with all his power, at the last he went up on a high rock, and Placidus approaching nigh, thought in his mind how he might take him. And as he beheld and considered the hart diligently, he saw between his horns the form of the holy cross shining more clear than the sun, and the image of Christ, which by the mouth of the hart, like as sometime Balaam by the ass, spake to him, saying: Placidus, wherefore followest me hither? I am appeared to thee in this beast for the grace of thee. I am Jesu Christ, whom thou honourest ignorantly, thy alms be ascended up tofore me, and therefore I come hither so that by this hart that thou huntest I may hunt thee.

Cool. (Here’s the whole story if you’re piqued.) I don’t want Silver Antlers to be a tale steeped in Christianity, but there’s exciting potential in this story that I might be able to incorporate.

And the next time I’m at that bar, I think I’ll have some Jägermeister.

Here’s the first of undoubtedly many times I’ll be referencing one of my favorite blogs: “All the Lights of the Kingdom” from Passport to Dreams Old and New. The author, who goes by FoxxFur, is the best source of information I know on themed attraction design theory. She writes almost exclusively on work in the Disney parks, but that makes sense, because no one else has yet found the (energy? inspiration? motivation?) to do what they do¹.

On Monday we’re going to look quickly over the whole history of this art (or at least as much as I can manage to write), but for some real deep scholarly investigation, Passport is the place to be, and this is where we’ll start. In two installments (the second is here), we’re taken on a tour of the Magic Kingdom, hopping from one light fixture to the other, and with just the slightest bit of attention, we quickly and clearly see the amount of care involved in these choices. The Magic Kingdom is broken up into many “lands,” each with a very distinct theme, but they all butt up against each other and the transitions are smooth. (Here’s a map if you’re not familiar.) The architectural styles, the materials used, even the scale of the props changes in relation to the little piece of the world they belong to, and all the plans are illuminated by those lights.

Take a look! And if this breakdown is too dry for you, don’t worry: I have many more Passport recommendations lined up on my syllabus.