The High Cost of Immersion
“People want to participate. They want to belong. Human beings are emotional first. You have to find their emotions. That’s what runs this thing.”
- Joe Rhode, Imagineer
A little while ago, I was invited to contribute to the script for the podcast Daughters of Ferrix, a show that analyzes Star Wars media with a political and historical lens. Specifically, I worked on an episode about Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the themed land in both the Disneyland and Walt Disney World resorts. I have been to both lands and have love for both in unique ways (in short: Disneyland has better food, Disney World has better atmosphere), and naturally have plenty of insights and thoughts to share on both the creative process behind Galaxy’s Edge, as well as the guest experience within the land itself.
The episode is live, and you ought to give it a listen — DoF is a great show, I was happy to collaborate, and they discuss Baudrillard in ways that I probably never will here:
In his now-classic video on Fastpass, Kevin Perjurer of Defunctland explains the history of queues in the Disney parks as an ongoing effort to keep the guests from seeing the line they are waiting in — to prevent guests from being able to visualize the wait time. The less you can see the line, the less you know how long it is, the less you feel irritated. This approach does not stop at lines. The main distinction between a Theme Park and an Amusement Park, after all, is the theme — and the best executed themes, be they fantasy, futurism, nostalgia, nature, or a Galaxy Far, Far Away, do not include the obvious clues of commerce and consumption that are endemic to the carnivals that amusement parks were born from.
Guests are still consumers, of course. Tickets, food, merchandise, hotels, time away from work, travel, all comes with a cost. Often guests who go to Disney parks will assume that the cost of their ticket covers attractions, thus the need to see and do as much as possible. This made more sense in the early Disneyland system of per-ride ticket books of A through E level attractions with different prices, a guest could select the cost of their day, but now — is it really just the rides? What else could you possibly pay for?
The answer, again, is in the name: the theme. The tickets are not for rides, but for the place, and all that it entails. In Disney parks, this is more than attractions; this is smells and sounds, the design of buildings and the pavement on streets. This is immersion, the experience of being in a place so well made that, for the time you’re there, it feels like its own pocket of the world.
I want to talk about immersion today, via two case studies — the aforementioned Galaxy’s Edge, and then to somewhere completely different: Disney’s Animal Kingdom. I want to explore the intentions of the land, the ways they are designed to encompass the guest, and finally what we can — and perhaps should — take away when we exit the park gates and head home.
Galaxy’s Edge: The Hero’s Journey
Star Wars has existed in Disney parks since the 1980s with the introduction of Star Tours, a simulator ride that marked the first non-Disney property to receive an attraction in any park. Although simulator rides are considered outdated and basic today, at the time the experience was exciting: the film was created by ILM using practical effects, the moving base provided unexpected thrills, and it was a significantly popular attraction, eventually opening in four parks around the world. Other experiences would follow in the late 1990s through the 2010s: Star Wars Weekends in Disney World’s Hollywood Studios park (where Star Tours is located), the Jedi Training Academy show in both US theme parks, and various pieces of exclusive merchandise. In the 2010s the Star Tours rides would receive a new overhaul, and in 2015, everything other than Star Tours and the Jedi Training Academy ground to a halt, because Disney had bought Lucasfilm, and Star Wars with it.
Construction for Galaxy’s Edge would begin in 2016, with both lands opening in 2019. The approach with the Star Wars Weekends era (which is what I’ll call the pre-Galaxy’s Edge offerings) was from more of a fan or convention experience: character meet-and-greets were more casual, parades would feature Original Trilogy era stormtroopers next to Darth Maul or Aurra Singh, merchandise would feature Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck dressed as various Star Wars heroes. The vibe was, in short, silly, more of a celebration of loving Star Wars than an in-universe continuation of Star Wars itself. Even the original Star Tours film, which takes place after the original trilogy, features a trench run across the first Death Star — because it’s a fun thing to do, an iconic part of the films.
Would Galaxy’s Edge replicate that experience? Would it be set on an established planet, like the settlements on Tatooine, or in the forests of Endor? Who would the guests encounter — like Star Wars Weekends, would there be a collection of characters?
It was understandable that fans were expecting something accurate to the films; after all, the closest comparison to what Star Wars Land could be was the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (which I won’t share my thoughts on here — they are well documented) across town, which had just opened the Diagon Alley expansion at Universal Studios. Wizarding World had painstakingly recreated film sets, despite the attractions not necessarily lining up with any specific time frame in the books. The ride in the new Diagon Alley section was set during the final film, while the ride in Hogwarts takes place much earlier; Hogsmeade appears to be covered in snow while other areas and rides are not and has wanted posters from the third film, but Diagon Alley has wanted posters from the sixth film — you get the idea. The point of a visit to the Wizarding World was to experience the familiar, revel in its accuracy, relive the details. An analogous Star Wars Land would have, perhaps, a podracing experience and an X-Wing dogfight, with characters from all six films present at various times. For many, this would be perfect. For the imagineers, it wasn’t enough. According to The Imagineering Story:
Imagineers have a year and a half of conceptualizing what to do. According to Scott Trowbridge, the project’s director, “We really focused in on the ideation of it. What are the core ideas that we want to develop? What are the primary themes?” The team settled on a theme of self-empowerment, “what it means to be a hero. What it means to rise above your station.” To fit this idea into a theme park, they realized they could not create an environment that already belonged to “someone else’s story.” Early discussions of recreating one or more environments familiar from the films were shelved. Instead, they “wanted to build a place that was not reminiscent of a place we’ve been to. We wanted to build a place where we could discover our own story — a story for us.”
It was a risky strategy, relying on the guests to be more than spectators. This is, I think, the end goal of all immersive experiences; not to just create a suitable facsimile of something else, but to convince the guest that they might be a different version of themself. In Galaxy’s Edge, when you ride on Rise of the Resistance it’s as a recruit for the Resistance, on Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, the smuggler is you. Early concepts of the land would track your adventure so that cast members — acting as citizens of the Outpost — would know your exploits; that you saved the day or crashed the Falcon or built a new droid. The result was a cross between a LARP and a Renaissance Faire. Visitors could spend a few hours or the entire day as a new citizen of the Black Spire Outpost of Batuu — the new land on the edge of the galaxy where adventures awaited.
The lands opened in 2019 to rave reviews — Time Magazine named the Disneyland location as one of the best places in the world that year — before a sudden drop in attendance. The reasons for this are complicated; on both coasts Annual Passholders experienced blackout dates during most of the busy season, and Disneyland’s virtual queue system to enter the land in its first few weeks excluded many more guests. The head of the US parks resigned, and the Internet began to suspect that the land was a flop, that it had failed to meet the high expectations of Star Wars and Disney Parks fans. Even after Rise of the Resistance opened to even stronger reception the naysaying continued.
As some had expected, the lack of original trilogy experiences was a hard sell for many, especially as the land’s timeline is strictly in the midst of the controversial sequels, taking place after the excellent but divisive The Last Jedi. There were also rumors of scrapped experiences; there would be droids and aliens walking around the guests, even a ride through the middle of the outpost on an animatronic Bantha. The cost of the experience was also criticized; the lightsaber building experience is $250 for one prop, the droid workshop is $120. The cantina, which was almost impossible to get a reservation for, carried pre-batched cocktails around $20 each. With so much sticker shock, it was difficult for the Imagineers’ ideas of immersion and participation to work for many guests, especially as the Covid closures and restrictions in 2020 and 2021 rendered the land even emptier.
Adjustments were made: in Disneyland, characters from the sequels like Rey, Kylo Ren, and Chewbacca were joined by characters from popular Disney+ shows like The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. Menus were updated, Rise of the Resistance became easier to ride, droids like R2-D2 and Chopper roll through the land, with more to come. The Imagineers finally were able to create their end-to-end hero’s journey, too, with the Galactic Starcruiser, an experience that has been praised and criticized in kind but that, at the very least, serves as a proof-of-concept. It is possible for a guest to be in Star Wars, at least for a few hours.
The last time I was in Galaxy’s Edge in Disney World, in December of 2022, I booked a late reservation at Oga’s Cantina so that, when I’d finished my drinks, I could take a beer to go and wander through the land after the park closed. The diagetic sounds of the outpost were still on, I could hear creatures in the distant woods and residents arguing in their apartments. The little droid that I’d gotten earlier that day whistled at various technology around me. I was able to take in the scope of the place, the intentional wear and tear in the ancient marketplace and the small elements of design in the flags hanging on the walls and the droid tracks at my feet. At night the place is lit with blue and purple ambience, making it even more otherworldly. There are nights I’ve gone back to a hotel or an apartment through a city and walked up streets like that, in the world outside of the theme parks, but those weren’t in Star Wars.
Was I experiencing a hero’s moment? I don’t think so. I have done almost everything that can be done in the land and haven’t quite gotten a sense of what Trowbridge said the Imagineers were aiming for, “a place where we could discover our own story — a story for us.” But I could sense what Imagineer Chris Beatty called “Cinematic Storytelling” — “pulling you through the scene to a destination you just haven’t seen yet.”
This does not mean that the Imagineers failed at their goal in creating a heroic experience, rather they made a space where more than just that story could be told, where a sense of wonder was possible from different viewpoints. Still, there are valid critiques of the land; it would benefit from kinetic energy, or a ride that was more family-friendly being included in its offerings. And, yes, it is very expensive to visit and participate in. The prices for lightsabers and droids and drinks are the same. We are not going to go into the cost of the Galactic Starcruiser, as it does not exist in its original form (and who knows when or if it will come back), but the extra price of everything created an air of exclusivity, that enjoying Star Wars, a piece of populist art that celebrated underdogs, was only for the wealthy. Of course, that’s true of any theme park experience these days — Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is just further proof of the class divides that are keeping this truly great form of entertainment away from far too many people.
But then, isn’t this a lot of hay to be made over some kids’ movies that were made to sell toys? It’s nothing new to say that Disney and its parks around the world represent an insidious product of American Capitalism; the idea that they sell emotional experiences at high value to the infantilized masses. Do you remember when the parks reopened after the Covid-19 closures and guests cried? Should we think of that as proof of the Disney Parks’ ability to transcend being a mere product, or the opposite, that they are purely cynical entities, void of humanity to the core?
Could these places ask for anything more than money?
Animal Kingdom: The Call to Action
In the mid-1990s, Michael Eisner — then the CEO of the Walt Disney Company — was coming out of the failure of Euro Disneyland and already halfway through the Disney Decade. Several misguided attempts at finding a new theme park in the USA had flopped, including an ill-advised park in Virginia about American History. He had suggested the idea that, already having a Magic Kingdom, perhaps Florida should have a “Wild Animal Kingdom,” but was hesitant on the idea. He told Joe Rhode, the imagineer who was working on the concept, that he wasn’t sure that animals would draw the same sort of fascination as theme park attractions.
The next time they met, as Rhode was pitching further ideas about the park — including the massive hand-sculpted Tree of Life at its center — the door opened, and a 400lb Bengal tiger strode in, brushing against Eisner’s leg before sitting down at the center of the room. Seeing the awestruck look on Eisner’s face, Rhode allegedly closed his pitch with a simple “any questions?”
The beauty of animals aside, there were still concerns about the park (I, for one, would like to know where Rhode got that tiger). Walt Disney had initially conceived of the Jungle Cruise as having live animals, an issue that quickly went out the door when his team realized that the animals would be impossible to control in that setting, especially as most of the species Disney was interested in were nocturnal. Disney World had a small animal sanctuary, Discovery Island, and 40 square miles of its land has been set aside for local wildlife, but still — a zoo? Safari Parks are not uncommon in Florida, but they are highly controversial, even the larger Busch Gardens in nearby Tampa with its white tigers. To ensure that Animal Kingdom would be several cuts above its peers, Imagineers worked with conservationists like Jane Goodall and Rick Barongi to design wide open areas for animals to roam and state-of-the-art housing and medical care facilities.
At the center of the efforts was Rhode, who had devised an ethos for the park that would, hopefully, make it more than just another collection of attractions. He outlined the core values of the park as:
- Intrinsic value of nature.
- Transformation through adventure.
- Personal call to action.
To Rhode’s team of designers, the challenge was not to create an entertaining zoo, but to show how human society interacts with and, in the end, is subservient to the natural world. This exists outside of the animals themselves into the themed lands of the park. In the Asia section, for example, the nature trail through the tiger habitat is designed to appear like an old palace that’s been consumed by the jungle. The flagship attraction, Kilimanjaro Safaris, is a real-life Jungle Cruise in Jeeps with seemingly endless plains of savannah where giraffe, zebra, antelope, and gazelle run freely, not far from a rocky outcrop where a small pride of lions rests in the sunshine. The ride had been conceived with a story about poachers killing a mother elephant and kidnapping her calf, which proved to be both too disturbing and too much of a distraction from the very real and very much alive animals guests came to see.
Even the thrill rides in the park follow the themes of nature, adventure, and the importance of curtailing human intervention. Expedition Everest, for example, is a roller coaster not unlike the Matterhorn (it even features the Yeti), but its mayhem is caused by the humans who dared to build their train through a forbidden habitat. Even Pandora: The World of Avatar (the James Cameron film series, not the Nickelodeon cartoon) shows the aftermath of environmental devastation and the hard work of restoration and conservation.
Guests can donate to the Disney Conservation Fund in stores or with the purchase of cocktails. The Nomad Lounge gives them the chance to write down their own personal adventures to be added to the bar’s ceiling and walls. A short train ride can take them to the veterinary clinic, where they can watch animals receive care from the dozens of doctors and keepers on staff.
This is all in line with the arguments in favor of ethically managed animal care and zoos: nothing inspires a person to be invested in the animal world than seeing it for themselves. By having animals in captivity, scientists can learn more about them while leaving wild populations alone and, in some cases, use breeding programs to help grow dwindling populations. The animals at Animal Kingdom are not made to perform — a guest is meant to feel that, by turning a corner or checking just beyond a few trees, they can come across something that feels legitimately wild and compelling.
There are, of course, just as many arguments against zoos — PETA, of course, hates Animal Kingdom — and there is always a feeling of ethical conflict when I go there. I think, though, that is by design, because of Rhode’s third core value for the park: the personal call to action.
A few years ago, a friend and I went on a backstage tour that took us and a few other guests to see the small crash of white rhinos that live at Animal Kingdom. After meeting the keepers and learning the names of the rhinos, we were brought around the side of their area where one of the rhinos, Kiama, was brought right to the edge of the fence, and one by one we washed our hands and touched her flank.
According to the keeper, this was a regular exercise that helped the rhinos become accustomed to more people and keepers (it is worth noting here that all the animals at the park were either born there or brought from other zoos, and none are captured from the wild). Given how often these tours happen — a few times a week, at least — that seems like an exaggeration, and that the animal knows to hold still for a few minutes while she is pet by strangers, and then she goes on her merry way.
There was one child in the group, who was around the age of eight. He was one of the first to meet Kiama, holding his hand out gingerly. You might, by the way, think that rhinos are large creatures, but up close they are massive; over five feet tall at the shoulder and built like a bank vault. The kid had to look up to see Kiama’s eyes and ears, which were each larger than my hand. When the kid touched her skin, his face lit up, and for the final 20 or so minutes of the tour, including the ride back to the main park, he was chatting nonstop with his parents about how amazing she was, how beautiful the rhinos we saw were, and how scary it was that so few were left in the wild.
I don’t think that kid left Animal Kingdom that day remembering everything he ate, or all the twists and turns of whatever rides he enjoyed. But I have no doubt that he walked away with a new interest, something that would keep with him for years. I’ve seen the same expressions on the faces of people who ride the safaris and who take the animal paths to see tigers and gorillas and meerkats — in the settings of ruins and sun-baked villages, the animals seem to be the only thing that will last. In an entirely man-made place, the pettiness of the man-made world is made apparent.
We should not require zoos or parks to be convinced that the natural world is one that we are the stewards of and its preservation is our highest calling. Likewise, we should not need a theme park or a ride on a fictional spaceship to instill a yearning for adventure or to internalize the fight against evil. I am sure there are many who do not need these experiences to share the values they are made to impart.
And yet, at its best, the immersive impact of an artificial space like Galaxy’s Edge or Animal Kingdom can still be personally profound. The difference between the two is that Galaxy’s Edge is the adventure, it is the gateway to a realm of exploration and excitement. When I am there and really feel the vibe of it, I am reminded of how much I love Star Wars as a weird, funny, compelling piece of human imagination. I feel almost a sense of belonging in the unfamiliar strangeness of it — a feeling that carries over to Pandora at Animal Kingdom, though I am not half as invested in those films. The first time I went to Pandora I couldn’t stop thinking about it for my entire vacation, and ended up changing my schedule to see it one more time, just because I’d never seen anything like it before.
Where Galaxy’s Edge (and its space-based counterpart, Pandora) is the adventure, Animal Kingdom proper is about the transformation adventure yields. The natural exists alongside the manufactured, bringing into a subtly stark relief how beautiful and necessary the wild parts of the world are. If it works, when you leave the park you want the natural world restored. If it works, the apotheosis of Animal Kingdom is for Animal Kingdom to no longer be needed.
There is more to both lands worth discussing: the conversation Animal Kingdom has with culture and colonialism, the Galactic Starcruiser, how Galaxy’s Edge interacts with the politics of Star Wars itself, what to make of the soon-to-die Dinoland, USA. Those are essays for another day, I think. I’ll be in both of these parks in a couple months, and though I have a good idea of what I’ll be taking with me, who’s to say what I’ll bring home.
