The Wizarding World of Harry Potter engages all of the senses / Photo: Shutterstock/Paula Montenegro Stock
I’ll never forget my first visit to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando. Although it was more than a decade ago, I distinctly remember how I experienced it and how I felt when I was there.
Understanding how visitors remember their experiences is key in the world of attractions. Visitors can’t recommend attractions to others or decide to visit again if they can’t remember them.
The question, then, is how to ensure experiences are as memorable as possible.
In my PhD research (Strijbosch, 2022), built on the work of many others, I explored the factors that determine how an experience is remembered. Using questionnaires and state-of-the-art electrophysiological equipment, I studied how emotions wax and wane during leisure experiences, and how these emotions relate to the way people remember their experiences.
The world of experience Experience is a complex concept. On the one hand, experience can be understood as a verb, referring to the continuous sensing and feeling in the here-and-now. When awake, we continuously attend to stimuli both from the world around us and from within ourselves, resulting in a flux of experiencing.
On the other hand, experience can be understood as a noun, referring to experiences that transcend the here-and-now and are stored into memory.
The flux of experiencing is incredibly complex. In order to manage this, our brain uses mental models to cut this flux into smaller pieces – so-called experiential episodes.
Mental models are a type of reference frame based on earlier experiences, so that the brain knows what experiences generally start and end with – an experienced theme park visitor will know what to expect, allowing the brain to view a visit as a separate experiential episode from whatever happened before or after.
In turn, our brain can subdivide such episodes into sub-episodes that form experientially coherent units in time, such as attractions in a theme park or exhibits in a museum.
The role of emotion Most experiential episodes are so ordinary that they won’t make the shift towards a remembered experience. However, sometimes there’s an ingredient in our experiential episodes that makes them relevant enough to be stored into memory.
That ingredient is emotion. And that’s why arriving at Disneyland Paris from the freeway with the Disneyland Hotel in the distance is more memorable than a standard freeway exit, why Moaning Myrtle’s sound effects make The Wizarding World of Harry Potter’s toilets stand out and why the queue line at Efteling’s Flying Dutchman is probably the most memorable section of the entire attraction.
Emotions determine not just if we will remember an experience, but how we remember it. Emotions aren’t static during an experiential episode. Instead, they wax and wane as experiential episodes unfold. For example, the sense of tension that you feel on a rollercoaster has different levels on the chain lift compared to the various inversions or the final brake section.
More emotion is not always better In experience design, we tend to believe that we have to blow people’s minds – the more emotion the better.
This turns out not necessarily to be the case. In one of the studies in my dissertation which involved measuring emotions in visitors watching a musical theatre show, we indeed found positive relationships between the emotionally stronger scenes and overall evaluations of the audience members: the stronger the emotional engagement, the better the evaluation.
However, for some scenes we also found negative relationships: the less strong the emotional engagement, the better the evaluation. Perhaps, this suggests that to have emotional highs, you also need emotionally less intense moments.
A good example might be PortAventura’s Sesame Street: Street Mission, which combines game-driven moments putting riders on the edge of their seats together with tranquil moments in-between where beautiful animatronics calmly tell the story of the ride.
Another study in our lab found that museum visitors on a guided tour were more inclined to recommend the tour if they felt less emotionally engaged (Mitas et al, 2020). This seems to suggest that the relation between emotional engagement and overall evaluation might be highly context dependent.
Attraction designers therefore need to get a good sense of which emotions work best in the context of their attraction and to consciously consider which emotions they want to evoke at which points in the attraction.
The bigger picture Attraction designers shouldn’t think of their attraction as happening in a vacuum, where nothing happens before or after. They should remember that how they want visitors to feel is not necessarily how visitors truly feel, and that this may be influenced by events outside of their control.
In the same musical theatre show study, we made a comparison between the emotion profile as intended by the designers and the lived emotion profile of the visitors. To some extent, the lived emotion profile could be predicted from the emotion profile as intended by the designers.
However, this prediction became gradually stronger towards the end of the show. We observed a lot of variation between visitor emotions at the beginning of the show, arguably because of carry-over effects from experiences directly preceding the show. Some audience members might have been in a traffic jam, some might have stood in a long queue for the wardrobe, some might have had higher expectations than others.
When aiming for visitors to get in line with designers’ intentions, designers should consider that it takes time for visitors to get attuned to an experience.
The takeaways Emotions form the key to making experiences memorable and to determining how they are remembered.
When steering towards memorability, as an attractions manager, you consciously need to think about what emotions will be effective in the context of your attraction and what emotions you want to evoke when. Then, study whether those emotions are actually evoked at the desired level and examine how the emotions at the various points in your attraction are related to its overall evaluations.
Managing memorability is difficult – in the end, it’s a process that takes place within the visitor. But while the process itself might be difficult to unlock, using the best-fitting key will be the best shot towards turning it to your advantage.
Photo: Breda University of Applied Sciences
Wim Strijbosch published his doctoral thesis, Experience unpacked: On the temporal dynamics of emotions in tourism and leisure experiences in October 2022.
“The research was concerned with the study of how emotions wax and wane over the course of tourism and leisure experiences, and how these ‘temporal emotion profiles’ relate to how people remember their experiences,” said Strijbosch. “I used both a newly-developed questionnaire method and state-of-the-art electrophysiological equipment to measure bodily properties of emotion.”
The research involved studying emotions over time during the viewing of a 15 minute virtual reality movie, studying emotions for the duration of a 90 minute musical theatre show and studying the brain processes related to being emotionally moved by engaging with artworks.
Read more from this issue of Attractions Management magazine
View contents of Attractions Management 2023 issue 4
People: Clara Rice
The director of global marketing for Adirondack Studios shares her plans
Interview: Delphine Pons
As Parc Asterix launches a new themed land and celebrates record attendance figures, its CEO tells us what’s next for the much-loved French park
First person: The power of play
Can the power of play help heal divides in our world? Can art and attractions bring people closer? Meow Wolf’s founder is sure that it can
Museum: Lighting the way
With major new museums taking shape in Jeddah and Abu Dhabi, digital art sensation teamLab are riding high. We speak to the team
Opinion: We need a revolution
It’s time for radical thinking to address the staffing crisis in our industry, argues Margreet Papamichael
Tourism: On the road
With its Scenic Routes project, Norway has turned the road trip into an attraction, and boosted tourism in a huge way. Terry Stevens gets behind the wheel
Museums: Mark Cutmore
What’s the future of immersive technology in museums? The head of commercial experiences at the Science Museum Group shares his thoughts
Research: Joined up thinking
Natural history museums around the world are sharing details of their collections to help find solutions to some of the most urgent issues of our time
The arts: Show time
As the UK’s biggest cultural venue for decades opens, we hear from the team behind Aviva Studios
Research: Making memories
The link between the emotions of visitors and their memories of an experience helps shape their reactions. Researcher Wim Strijbosch explores his findings
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter engages all of the senses / Photo: Shutterstock/Paula Montenegro Stock
I’ll never forget my first visit to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando. Although it was more than a decade ago, I distinctly remember how I experienced it and how I felt when I was there.
Understanding how visitors remember their experiences is key in the world of attractions. Visitors can’t recommend attractions to others or decide to visit again if they can’t remember them.
The question, then, is how to ensure experiences are as memorable as possible.
In my PhD research (Strijbosch, 2022), built on the work of many others, I explored the factors that determine how an experience is remembered. Using questionnaires and state-of-the-art electrophysiological equipment, I studied how emotions wax and wane during leisure experiences, and how these emotions relate to the way people remember their experiences.
The world of experience Experience is a complex concept. On the one hand, experience can be understood as a verb, referring to the continuous sensing and feeling in the here-and-now. When awake, we continuously attend to stimuli both from the world around us and from within ourselves, resulting in a flux of experiencing.
On the other hand, experience can be understood as a noun, referring to experiences that transcend the here-and-now and are stored into memory.
The flux of experiencing is incredibly complex. In order to manage this, our brain uses mental models to cut this flux into smaller pieces – so-called experiential episodes.
Mental models are a type of reference frame based on earlier experiences, so that the brain knows what experiences generally start and end with – an experienced theme park visitor will know what to expect, allowing the brain to view a visit as a separate experiential episode from whatever happened before or after.
In turn, our brain can subdivide such episodes into sub-episodes that form experientially coherent units in time, such as attractions in a theme park or exhibits in a museum.
The role of emotion Most experiential episodes are so ordinary that they won’t make the shift towards a remembered experience. However, sometimes there’s an ingredient in our experiential episodes that makes them relevant enough to be stored into memory.
That ingredient is emotion. And that’s why arriving at Disneyland Paris from the freeway with the Disneyland Hotel in the distance is more memorable than a standard freeway exit, why Moaning Myrtle’s sound effects make The Wizarding World of Harry Potter’s toilets stand out and why the queue line at Efteling’s Flying Dutchman is probably the most memorable section of the entire attraction.
Emotions determine not just if we will remember an experience, but how we remember it. Emotions aren’t static during an experiential episode. Instead, they wax and wane as experiential episodes unfold. For example, the sense of tension that you feel on a rollercoaster has different levels on the chain lift compared to the various inversions or the final brake section.
More emotion is not always better In experience design, we tend to believe that we have to blow people’s minds – the more emotion the better.
This turns out not necessarily to be the case. In one of the studies in my dissertation which involved measuring emotions in visitors watching a musical theatre show, we indeed found positive relationships between the emotionally stronger scenes and overall evaluations of the audience members: the stronger the emotional engagement, the better the evaluation.
However, for some scenes we also found negative relationships: the less strong the emotional engagement, the better the evaluation. Perhaps, this suggests that to have emotional highs, you also need emotionally less intense moments.
A good example might be PortAventura’s Sesame Street: Street Mission, which combines game-driven moments putting riders on the edge of their seats together with tranquil moments in-between where beautiful animatronics calmly tell the story of the ride.
Another study in our lab found that museum visitors on a guided tour were more inclined to recommend the tour if they felt less emotionally engaged (Mitas et al, 2020). This seems to suggest that the relation between emotional engagement and overall evaluation might be highly context dependent.
Attraction designers therefore need to get a good sense of which emotions work best in the context of their attraction and to consciously consider which emotions they want to evoke at which points in the attraction.
The bigger picture Attraction designers shouldn’t think of their attraction as happening in a vacuum, where nothing happens before or after. They should remember that how they want visitors to feel is not necessarily how visitors truly feel, and that this may be influenced by events outside of their control.
In the same musical theatre show study, we made a comparison between the emotion profile as intended by the designers and the lived emotion profile of the visitors. To some extent, the lived emotion profile could be predicted from the emotion profile as intended by the designers.
However, this prediction became gradually stronger towards the end of the show. We observed a lot of variation between visitor emotions at the beginning of the show, arguably because of carry-over effects from experiences directly preceding the show. Some audience members might have been in a traffic jam, some might have stood in a long queue for the wardrobe, some might have had higher expectations than others.
When aiming for visitors to get in line with designers’ intentions, designers should consider that it takes time for visitors to get attuned to an experience.
The takeaways Emotions form the key to making experiences memorable and to determining how they are remembered.
When steering towards memorability, as an attractions manager, you consciously need to think about what emotions will be effective in the context of your attraction and what emotions you want to evoke when. Then, study whether those emotions are actually evoked at the desired level and examine how the emotions at the various points in your attraction are related to its overall evaluations.
Managing memorability is difficult – in the end, it’s a process that takes place within the visitor. But while the process itself might be difficult to unlock, using the best-fitting key will be the best shot towards turning it to your advantage.
Photo: Breda University of Applied Sciences
Wim Strijbosch published his doctoral thesis, Experience unpacked: On the temporal dynamics of emotions in tourism and leisure experiences in October 2022.
“The research was concerned with the study of how emotions wax and wane over the course of tourism and leisure experiences, and how these ‘temporal emotion profiles’ relate to how people remember their experiences,” said Strijbosch. “I used both a newly-developed questionnaire method and state-of-the-art electrophysiological equipment to measure bodily properties of emotion.”
The research involved studying emotions over time during the viewing of a 15 minute virtual reality movie, studying emotions for the duration of a 90 minute musical theatre show and studying the brain processes related to being emotionally moved by engaging with artworks.
Read more from this issue of Attractions Management magazine
View contents of Attractions Management 2023 issue 4
People: Clara Rice
The director of global marketing for Adirondack Studios shares her plans
Interview: Delphine Pons
As Parc Asterix launches a new themed land and celebrates record attendance figures, its CEO tells us what’s next for the much-loved French park
First person: The power of play
Can the power of play help heal divides in our world? Can art and attractions bring people closer? Meow Wolf’s founder is sure that it can
Museum: Lighting the way
With major new museums taking shape in Jeddah and Abu Dhabi, digital art sensation teamLab are riding high. We speak to the team
Opinion: We need a revolution
It’s time for radical thinking to address the staffing crisis in our industry, argues Margreet Papamichael
Tourism: On the road
With its Scenic Routes project, Norway has turned the road trip into an attraction, and boosted tourism in a huge way. Terry Stevens gets behind the wheel
Museums: Mark Cutmore
What’s the future of immersive technology in museums? The head of commercial experiences at the Science Museum Group shares his thoughts
Research: Joined up thinking
Natural history museums around the world are sharing details of their collections to help find solutions to some of the most urgent issues of our time
The arts: Show time
As the UK’s biggest cultural venue for decades opens, we hear from the team behind Aviva Studios
Research: Making memories
The link between the emotions of visitors and their memories of an experience helps shape their reactions. Researcher Wim Strijbosch explores his findings
Expo 2030 Riyadh is being planned as a permanent visitor destination, with organisers
confirming the six-million-square-metre site will become a Global Village after the event closes.
The owner of one of Australia's best-known waterparks has acquired a major competitor,
creating a new attractions business spanning two of the country's largest visitor destinations.
The Toverland theme park in the Netherlands has announced a €98m expansion programme
that will add a resort, new attractions and staff facilities as it pursues plans to become a multi-
day destination.
Hotel de France, located on the British Isle of Jersey, has created a wellness retreat package
that includes a hot yoga session that will take place in Jersey Zoo’s butterfly sanctuary.
A new immersive attraction designed to transport visitors into the final hours of ancient Pompeii
is preparing to open near the world-famous archaeological site in southern Italy.
Experience design company, BRC Imagination Arts, has completed a transition that sees founder
Bob Rogers pass ownership of the business to four long-serving senior executives, while
remaining actively involved with the company.
Movie Park Germany has opened a new Paramount Pictures-themed attraction as part of its 30th
anniversary celebrations, using immersive storytelling and adaptive reuse to reinforce the park’s
longstanding “Hollywood in Germany” positioning.
Therme Manchester’s 28-acre development, which will include interconnected glass pavilions
that measure 65,000sq m, will be the largest bathing and wellbeing attraction in the world once
complete, according to prof David Russell, CEO of Therme UK.
Efteling has opened Hooghmoed, a new family drop tower designed to broaden the appeal of its
recently launched Sirene Island themed area and introduce younger visitors to thrill attractions.
A proposed Puy du Fou development near Bicester and Universal Destinations and Experiences’
planned resort in Bedford are emerging as part of a wider transformation of the Oxford–
Cambridge Growth Corridor into a major centre for UK leisure and tourism inv
