People visit theme parks for an experience. Whether they’re seeing a show, going on a ride, or simply strolling through the marvelous landscapes that make up the theme park world, they desire more than entertainment. They want to be amazed.
In modern theme parks, technology plays a central role in creating an atmosphere of amazement. It is used in various ways to enhance the viewer’s experience, adding one or more layers of enchantment to the physical venues visitors move through and the human performers who meet them there.
Yet the artists who design and develop theme park attractions know technology can’t stand alone, especially in a world where home theaters and robotic toys are a common component of everyday life. They have learned that technology works best when it supports a larger viewer experience, taking classic entertainment to new heights by integrating technology-driven enhancements.
Adding layers to animatronic characters with projection technology
Projection technology has a long history of use in the entertainment space. Moving pictures have been drawing crowds to theaters for more than 100 years. In theme parks, the use of projection to enhance attractions dates back more than 50 years, with Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion emerging as 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 mapping, images can appear on irregular surfaces, including sculptures, buildings, and landscapes. The technology makes the projection appear to be a part of the object, such as an animated face appearing on a sculpted head.
In fact, Universal Studios was the first theme park company to utilize this projection technology on an animatronic/mechanical face. The technology was debuted at Universal Studios Orlando’s latest theme park, Epic Universe, in May 2025.
Projection can also be combined with movement and sound to provide an immersive experience. Rides in which projection comes together with carefully orchestrated movements and sounds to give visitors the feeling they are flying, falling, or in the grip of some outside force are common in today’s parks. Projection technology is critical to the experience those rides deliver.
While theme parks will probably never tire of developing new projection-based attractions, they are also learning that the technology and the attractions that utilize it can be overdone or relied upon too heavily. For example, one park that invested in using projections to put faces on characters is shifting to animatronics for that purpose, realizing that a faulty projector can suddenly make an attraction unattractive.
Designers have also learned that projection is best when it carries part (but not all) of the weight of the experience. The best attractions combine different technologies, techniques, and tricks to bring people in and out of the experience.
Adding variety with trackless technology
Every ride seeks to take riders on a journey. With conventional rides, that journey follows a predetermined course. Wherever the tracks direct, that is where the ride’s vehicles go every time.
With modern technology, however, designers can make rides trackless, enhancing the experience by introducing variety and flexibility. Trackless vehicles are programmed to move through an attraction rather than being propelled on a track, giving them the ability to reverse, spin, and cross paths they have already traveled. These rides contribute to the feeling of immersion, allow for physical sensations that are not possible with rides confined to tracks, and introduce the potential for movement to be customized to the needs of the particular riders.
Trackless technology is also popular with dark rides, which bring together a variety of technology tools to enhance the viewer’s experience. Dark rides draw upon special lighting, music, and other sounds, as well as animatronics, to create engaging scenes. Trackless technology introduces more capabilities to the dark ride design process, giving creators the potential to randomize movements as they carry riders through immersive environments.
Adding believability with animatronic technology
Engineering believability into technology-based entertainment is vital for theme parks to stay competitive in today’s market. The settings, situations, and characters driven by the technology are not always realistic — after all, many occur in a fantasy land or involve cartoon characters — but they must be believable. If the look and feel are off, the immersive nature of the experience can quickly be lost.
Today’s leading animatronics developers have made believability a core component of their design process. For example, their development pipeline carefully considers the character they are bringing to life, engineering the tech that supports their movements to mirror those crafted by their animators. Following the exact animation performance, the animatronic can provide a more fluid experience that empowers greater overall believability.
Next-level animatronics leverage modern robotics to create characters that are not tethered to a particular location, meaning they can move about freely, enhancing the experience by breaking down the barriers that have traditionally been in place between the performance and its viewers. For example, fan videos recently showed some of the free-roaming robotic baby dragons now being used at the “How to Train Your Dragon” experience at Epic Universe in Orlando, Florida.
For the artists crafting 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 satisfy the viewer again and again.
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