Building Anticipation, Literally
– By Ben Cober, director of business development and research
Over the course of the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing many of our vice presidents and PGAV’s principal about how to design extraordinary entrance experiences at destinations. These are intended for a piece I’m aiming to publish later this fall regarding the ins and outs of this process – what makes them great, poor, unique, best-in-show, essential considerations, etc. An ‘entrance experience,’ if you’re unfamiliar, is everything you think about and experience when you arrive at a theme park, zoo, aquarium, museum, or resort – from parking, to ticketing, to restrooms, personnel, food, retail, and all the thematic glue that holds these together before you actually enter the destination.
In the course of these interviews, among the many themes that keep popping up, is the idea of building anticipation on approach to the destination via a really exciting icon. Something big, thrilling, ‘cool,’ one-of-a-kind, that you can see from the far edge of the parking lot – and actually miles away, if done right – that just gets everyone in your car thrilled and excited to get there. If you’re a parent wondering if the destination you’re going to has one of these, you should look for three things:
- An exponential increase in “are we there yet?”s from the back-seat the closer you get
- Visible nose and handprints on the back windows after you arrive
- An Olympic, record-breaking interval of car doors opening and closing after you park (and potentially needing to shout “get back here!” before the ignition’s off)
The psychological justification behind this ‘entrance icon’ is that it generates positive emotions in the soon-to-be-guests before they’ve actually arrived – before they’re actually experiencing a destination’s offerings. With setting up these great feelings of excitement, anticipation, and wonder – the day simply starts off better, and those positive endorphins can help place a destination’s guests in the right mind-set to better enjoy their day, purchase the things that make their day better (food, memorabilia, etc), and even set the stage for a more positive review when they leave, a return visit, and a great recommendation for friends and family.
I started to think about this more in my personal life, and realized just how incredibly true it is. I grew up in Cincinnati, OH; and each summer, when the weather was just right, my friends and I would go to King’s Island in Mason, OH (at that time owned by Paramount with a lot of great movie themes). It wasn’t necessarily part of their entrance experience, but you could see the park’s massive coasters from miles away – in fact, we all knew where the exact break-point in the trees was along the highway where you could start to see rides like Drop Tower, The Beast, Vortex, The Eiffel Tower, and Face Off (now named Invertigo). This visual queue would always, without a doubt, ignite a flurry of excitement and conversation in the car – recounting stories of past-conquered coasters, the order in which we were going to tackle them that day, and imaginations of the thrills, foods, and shows to come. Had we not been able to see those icons from miles away – we would probably still have been excited, but not nearly to the level that we were having actually seen them and being able to picture ourselves with our hands in the air and screaming.
After college I spent three years working at Cincinnati Museum Center (CMC) in various roles, and loved every minute of it. CMC is housed within Union Terminal, an Art Deco train station built in the 1930’s which is absolutely beautiful – breath-taking – and can be seen from the highway during the long drive up to its parking lots. Boasting the largest half-dome structure in the western hemisphere, iconic dancing fountain, and light-up clock large enough to fit more than ten people inside, there’s no real wonder why the building is dubbed the ‘Crown Jewel of Cincinnati.’ The visibility of the building – the museum’s “most valuable artifact” – builds a lot of anticipation on approach – in addition to the facade of the building being thematically decorated around holidays and displaying banners of current exhibitions. If the building were obstructed, the front crumbling and falling apart, or if you were inside in mere seconds without being able to behold its wonder, the anticipation would be greatly diminished.
Lastly, I just spent a few hours this weekend at our family’s cabin in Tennessee. The house sits way on the top of a mountain all alone; but as you hit the base of the mountain, you begin to get glimpses of the cabin through the dense woods. During the 30-minute drive up the steep inclines interspersed with tenuous switchbacks, you can see more and more of the destination from different angles. Sure, this isn’t a multi-million dollar destination with flashing lights or rockets standing hundreds of meters into the air; however, especially if we have friends in the car who’ve never been there before, the anticipation factor is palpable. They begin to calculate where the best spots are to catch sunrise and sunset; they begin to talk about the potential view from the top of the various angles; and they ask questions about its construction and the wilderness surrounding it – giving an opportunity for education and background (and building more insight, which leads to more anticipation). It is so fun – and by the time we reach the top, friends can barely contain themselves from jumping out of the car, running to the back-side of the cabin, and silently looking out over the view of the valley (once in a while with perfect timing to see one of our resident bald eagles screech and fly by).
As you travel around the world, destinations of all shapes and sizes face many challenges with creating these anticipation-building icons – the nature of their destination just isn’t ‘tall’ (no roller coasters), the surrounding geography just may make it impossible to see anything until you’re right on top of the destination, or budgetary restraints keep the destination from creating something awe-inspiring at the front gate. The article this fall, among other things, will hopefully shed some light on strategies to create excellent anticipation-building icons.
In the meantime, I’d love to hear from the readers – what are some of the coolest entrance icons you’ve seen at destinations? In addition, what are some of the biggest pain-points you’ve faced trying to enter a destination, and what things just made it absolutely smooth and enjoyable?
