I have had the good fortune to talk with many theme park attraction designers over the years. In all those conversations, the phrase I probably have heard most often from them is, “It all starts with story.”
I also have had the opportunity to speak with many creative writers in my career. And I never have heard an author state, “You know, the best medium for my story is a theme park ride.”
So with what stories, exactly, are theme park designers starting? Almost always, it is a story that began in another medium: movies, television or books. It’s tough to set a fresh narrative in a theme park environment because theme parks are not a narrative medium so much as an experiential one.
Now, both narrative and experience can be elements of a larger story. The Venn diagram of these elements definitely overlap on many theme park attractions. But in the end, a great experience can cover for a flimsy narrative, especially in theme parks.
Take the new “The Mandalorian and Grogu” version of Disney’s Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride, which just opened at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Disney has created a narrative that explains why Din Djarin and Grogu are flying beside the Millennium Falcon on a mission to steal cargo for the ride’s smuggling main character, Hondo Ohnaka. But I cannot bring myself to care enough about that to repeat it here. All that mattered to me was the fun on flying a new mission on the Falcon, while getting to interact with the Star Wars franchise’s hottest new characters.
Again, it’s experience over narrative. Because, on a great theme park ride, we get to create our own narrative. We are the new stars, as the established stars of the story become our supporting cast.
On Disney’s Millennium Falcon ride, the story is the teamwork (or lack of it) that emerges when six people are thrown together to play what amounts to the theme park world’s most technologically advanced video game. Disney also has improved the engineer position on the ride, making the adventure a lot more fun for all who participate.
Disney’s other new experience debuting this summer is Soarin’ Across America, the third film for Disney’s flying theater ride. The show opens this week at Walt Disney World’s EPCOT and bows on July 2 at Disney California Adventure. That’s fine by me because Soarin’ Over California is playing at DCA in the meantime, and that original remains by far the best of Disney’s three Soarin’ films.
Again, it’s experience over narrative. Yet Soarin’ Across American’s four and a half minutes is not nearly enough to do justice to America’s iconic sights. Especially when so many scenes in the film are marred with computer-generated wildlife that forced Disney into weird color grading to cover the fakeness of that computer imagery. Hasn’t this year been tough enough for Americans to watch?
Together, Disney’s two new attractions sum up the spirit of 2026 for many fans — get us off this planet and let’s fly someplace a lot more fun.