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Start Date
12-6-2025 10:00 AM
Description
Universal and Disney theme parks are magical experiences that involve seeing, believing, and hearing. Sound-oriented theme park rides, shows, and character meetings expand the transmedia entities of magic-inclusive franchises like Harry Potter, Frozen, and The Little Mermaid. This presentation argues that parkgoers’ musically underscored agency in theme parks vary on a spectrum of being (high interaction with) and seeing (passive interaction with) part of sound-coded experiences. My criteria for high/passive immersion draw on the scholarship and ideas of transmedia (Jenkins 2006), film leitmotif (Bribitzer-Stull 2015), ludomusicology (Collins 2013), “scripted spaces” (Waysdorf and Reijnders 2018), and theme park’s worldbuilding (White 2021 and 2024).
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter exemplifies being part of the sound-coded magic, where parkgoers create their own multi-park Harry Potter adventures through thrill rides with Harry and friends or interactive wands. Disney’s multi-park Frozen experiences exemplify finding and seeing Elsa and friends perform magic at singalongs, dark rides, parades, and the limited holiday show “Frozen Holiday Surprise.” Parkgoers’ interactions now focus on scripted experiences featuring Frozen songs altered in musical form and narrative outside of filmic context. The studies further highlight theme park sound content (Baker 2024; Carson 2004) and the different roles that film soundtracks (Harry Potter) and musical numbers (Frozen) provide to theme park experiences. The studies also question the belief in Disney’s animated musicals (Smith 2011), trans-mediated roles of “I Want/Won’t” songs (Montgomery 2022), and the “Disneyfication” (Bemis 2022) that compels parkgoers to go into the unknown and be a part of that world.
Transcript
Recommended Citation
Nguyen, Clair, "Part of that World: Sound-coded Seeing and Being in Theme Park Experiences" (2025). Theme Park Music and Sound. 3.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/tpms/2025/thursday/3
Part of that World: Sound-coded Seeing and Being in Theme Park Experiences
Universal and Disney theme parks are magical experiences that involve seeing, believing, and hearing. Sound-oriented theme park rides, shows, and character meetings expand the transmedia entities of magic-inclusive franchises like Harry Potter, Frozen, and The Little Mermaid. This presentation argues that parkgoers’ musically underscored agency in theme parks vary on a spectrum of being (high interaction with) and seeing (passive interaction with) part of sound-coded experiences. My criteria for high/passive immersion draw on the scholarship and ideas of transmedia (Jenkins 2006), film leitmotif (Bribitzer-Stull 2015), ludomusicology (Collins 2013), “scripted spaces” (Waysdorf and Reijnders 2018), and theme park’s worldbuilding (White 2021 and 2024).
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter exemplifies being part of the sound-coded magic, where parkgoers create their own multi-park Harry Potter adventures through thrill rides with Harry and friends or interactive wands. Disney’s multi-park Frozen experiences exemplify finding and seeing Elsa and friends perform magic at singalongs, dark rides, parades, and the limited holiday show “Frozen Holiday Surprise.” Parkgoers’ interactions now focus on scripted experiences featuring Frozen songs altered in musical form and narrative outside of filmic context. The studies further highlight theme park sound content (Baker 2024; Carson 2004) and the different roles that film soundtracks (Harry Potter) and musical numbers (Frozen) provide to theme park experiences. The studies also question the belief in Disney’s animated musicals (Smith 2011), trans-mediated roles of “I Want/Won’t” songs (Montgomery 2022), and the “Disneyfication” (Bemis 2022) that compels parkgoers to go into the unknown and be a part of that world.