INDUSTRY OPINION: Dean Lamanna
As thoughts turn to IAAPA Expo 2019 and industry innovations awaiting us in 2020, it seems a good time to step back into the original “immersive attraction” — the walkthrough.
Variations on this early amusement park and carnival staple have been satisfying our craving for fun and thrills since at least the turn of the 20th century. Over the decades, random around-the-corner sensations like air jets, tilted rooms, rotating barrels and mirror mazes gave way to more sophisticated and narratively delivered surprises and the expansive storytelling environments created by Disney and others.
The walkthrough as a stand-alone offering waned with the rise of theme parks in the 1970s — largely relegated to holiday-inspired seasonal installations (e.g. Knott’s Scary Farm) as higher-tech attractions made the concept seem passé.
In recent years, the walkthrough has resurged in disparate forms that are anything but pedestrian. Reinvigorated not just by fun-seeking but our need for connection and the voracity of social media,, it has become a platform not just for diversion and Instagrammable moments but the expression and ingenuity of artists, writers and engineers.
As growing trade / fan shows including Midsummer Scream (Amusement Today, October 2019) and HauntCon (see story, page 56) attest, the business of Halloween mazes and neighborhood haunts has achieved Hollywood-level professionalism and success. Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has expanded the possibilities of the art-based multimedia walkthrough experience while traveling pop-ups such as Funbox (see story, page 32) specifically indulge our childhood fantasies. Escape rooms have turned the old funhouse aesthetic into engaging and collaborative games.
Even museum exhibits — see the new Pacific Visions wing at Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California (AT, September 2019) — have taken cues from the genre, increasingly imparting science and messaging with effects and theming.
Walkthroughs are making bold strides. And though we’ll never pass up the latest whirling and soaring rides, exploring these three-dimensional compartments of the human imagination at our own pace, on our own power, can be the most rewarding thrill of all.
This article appears in the NOVEMBER I 2019 issue of Amusement Today.
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