Five Act Structure And Themed Experiences
Ok so now you have your four pieces of framework. Now what? Well let’s look now at classic five act structure. You’ll remember it from English class. I’m no expert, but here’s my summary
Act 1: Exposition: the world is introduced
Act 2: Rising Action: the main character sets out on a journey
Act 3: Arrival: the character achieves their initial goal. But at the midpoint of this act something happens which changes the equation and sets them on a new journey
Act 4: Journey Home: character sets off on the final quest. The final confrontation occurs at the transition to act 5
Act 5: Resolution and Denouement
The key thing to remember is that each key moment in the story occurs at an act transition, with the third act split in two - the key reversal occurring there. (All of what I’m about to say could be mapped onto 3 act structure too, but I think 5 makes it easier to talk about).
So anyway…you’re building a ride. What goes where? Well I’d propose that nearly all attractions follow a simple rule. The Journey is everything that happens before the midpoint and the Core Experience is nearly everything that comes after. The theme and subject are what color each scene within and determine the ultimate outcome.
In modern attraction design it looks something like
Act 1: Entrance and early queue. The setting and world are introduced.
Act 2: Queue: the queue takes us on a journey into the world on our way to a promised experience (not always the core experience, but often). We learn about the world, and it’s rules, and why we’re there.
Act 3 Part One: Preshow: We arrive at the promised destination and new information is revealed that will set us on a new quest.
Act 3 Part Two: Load/secondary queue: The core experience (which follows its own three act structure) begins
Act 4: The Ride: We live out the meat of the core experience which leads us to one final climatic moment.
Act 5: Climax & Exit: We experience the climatic moment of the core experience, and the story quickly resolves itself as we exit the vehicle with a denouement then or shortly thereafter.
For example Indiana Jones and the temple of the forbidden eye
Act 1: We come across an archeological dog at a temple
Act 2: We venture into the temple to see what’s up and learn this is a creepy place.
Act 3: Part 1 : we come across Sala and he tells us about quest expeditions we’ve somehow signed up for and the legend of the forbidden eye. Also we need to find Indy.
Act 3 Part 2: we decide to go on our own expedition (the core experience begins)
Act 4: The expedition throws up many obstacles of increasing threat level, preventing us from rescuing Indy until
Act 5: we nearly get crushed by a Boulder and narrowly escape. Indy lectures us since we were the ones that needed rescuing and we slowly make our way out of the scary temple.
Or Rise of the Resistance
Act1: we find the rebel base
Act 2. We are tasked with a mission to space but something goes wrong
Act 3 Part 1: We’re captured and thrown in prison
Act 3 Part 2: We’re rescued and begin our prison break (core experience)
Act 4: we journey through the prison facing increasing obstacles trying to make our way home until
Act 5: a final climatic encounter and daring escape pod run. We’re told we did a good job and exit.
As long as queues are long, and rides are short I predict this is the specific way we’ll see the structure implemented. What’s interesting though is looking to the past to see how rides and attractions then still followed the same structure BUT implemented it differently.
For example, before queues were really designed as part of the experience, it was common for the ride to begin as early as the beginning of Act 2. Let’s reference Pirates of the Caribbean (California version)
Act 1: We are introduced to New Orleans square and the Blue Bayou.
Act 2: We begin a journey through the bayou and enter mysterious caves
Act 3 Part 1: We learn that pirates used to inhabit these caves
Act 3 Part 2: The pirates materialize and the core experience of seeing pirates do pirate things begins
Act 4: Pirates do pirate things until
Act 5: The town climatically burns down, they all drunkenly kill themselves, and we exit this fever dream and end up back where we started.
Now consider how pirates was adapted when it moved to Florida and it adopted the new fangled immersive queue. The immersive queue replaced The Journey portion of the ride leaving only the core experience. The overall structure of the story was preserved, but what elements achieve it changed.
There’s even a ride that has a more unusual implementation. Let’s look at The Living Seas. For starters
Theme: The ocean is majestic and cool
Core Experience: Explore an Alien World (And/or aquarium)
Journey: Specialized technology takes us deep under the sea
Act 1: We’re introduced to the history of sea exploration in a museum and documentary
Act 2: We begin our journey under the sea via Hydrolator
Act 3 Part 1: We take sea cabs to further our journey
Act 3 Part 2: We arrive at Seabase Alpha
Act 4: We explore Seabase Alpha (core experience)
Act 5: We leave Seabase Alpha via Hydrolator
This is the only attraction I’m aware of that used has used the ride as a journey rather than the core experience. It’s an unusual implementation but it just goes to show that any means can be used to achieve any part of the structure, as long as all parts of the structure are there, you get yourself a satisfying experience.
The more I think on it, the more I think nearly all attractions can be conceptualized in this framework, and better yet this framework provides a nice blueprint to develop new attractions. Does it apply to your favorite?
