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A deep dive into theme park Easter Eggs
- Katapult Team
- 2 days ago
- 13 min read
We celebrated Easter by recording a special podcast about Easter Eggs. No, not the chocolate ones! We're talking about the Easter eggs in theme parks and visitor attractions. Those hidden secrets or details designed to be discovered by the guest. Get ready for some mind blowing facts with three of our design team. Andy Sinclair Harris, Lily-Ann Bedder and Alice Young.
What is your most favourite Easter egg in a theme park?
Andy
That's a fantastic question. I think for me, my favourite one, being a huge Disney fan, are the windows on Main Street. And I think a lot of people know about those. They're quite widely known within the industry. But I think that a good chunk of guests wouldn't know about them by just looking up at the windows and just think, yeah, these are proprieties, these are businesses here on Main Street. That's a nice thing. But to know more deeply about that when you see Elias Disney and then knowing that's Walt's dad and he's got a building firm which has allowed Disneyland to be built.
For me, that one has a really lovely depth of history and story about it, which I think if you know, it's a wonderful thing to know. So that would be my favorite, Windows and Main Street.
There was a really lovely one, actually. The former, I think he was one of the chief executives at Disney, Frank Wells, he tragically passed away in a helicopter crash back in the 90s, 94 or something. And to kind of pay homage to him, how he'd helped kind of revive Disney to kind of bring it back to some luster. They added like a tribute window to him. And it was, I think it was, I think called Seven Peaks or something, because he'd climbed
He was an avid mountaineer, he's climbed all these peaks. So it was like, it was a beautiful line about, know, like summiting things and stuff like that. So again, that was a wonderful homage to someone who's no longer with us as well. So there's some kind of windows there that have relevance to people with Disney who are still alive. And then you've also got ones that have been wonderful tributes to people who are no longer with us. So Alice and Mark Davis have a joint windows, like a husband and wife, their husband and wife team used to work for Disney and they've got this beautiful tribute one of like, and she was a costumer here, so they've kind of got this dual window ship. So there's some really beautiful ones.
Alice
I feel like I'm going to pick something that's a lot more low brow than our just beautiful like tributes. I do love the tributes to artists and like finding them amongst the park. The kind of tributes to imaginaries I also love. But I also love the silly interactive ones like in the Muppet Vision Theatre, which I'm just nostalgic about because they're closing it. You've got the key under map sign and then if you lift the map, there is a key sort of screwed into the ground. So it's like a combination of like a findable Easter egg and an interactive.
It is very, very low technology, super analog. All you can do is find the key, but everyone is thrilled by it. And the same with them in Tower of Terror, where you can find little hidden details amongst the queue. It's like the most passive interactive parts of a queue, but people find them so exciting and they're so easy to implement.
Well, that's the stuff I feel like it's mentioned all the time is the so in as you go into Tower of Terror , which I am a wimp. That's the one ride that I don't do. Love the queue. Don't like the ride. So as you go in, there's a sort of what I don't know what you call like a listing of all of the floors of the building. And certain letters are fallen down to read sort of hidden note at the bottom. So you peer over the screen. You can read take the stairs or Evel Tower, Yule Die or whatever it is at the moment and its made up of the letters that have fallen over. Everyone does it, everyone peers in because it feels like very secret and personal that you found it even though there's such well-known details at this point.
Lily-Ann
Yeah, I think in terms of Easter eggs, one that I think is really good is there's so many in Toy Story land in Disney. And I think that's just because of the opportunity of the land. because of the nature of it, you can see like any opportunity to sneak in an Easter egg, there's one. So because there's a lot of barcodes, there's a lot of dates, there's a lot of like, well-known like dates, numbers, anything like that. They're usually of some sort of significance.
And just because the land is designed in, you know, it's kind of this gorgeous upscaled world, there's a lot of world building there for Toy Story as well. So there's like nods to Andy's address. There's kind of nods to, I think on Rex's, there's a Rex box somewhere. And it says that they also made another dinosaur toy, which we're assuming is like Trixie from Toy Story. So it just, everywhere you look in the land, there's just very fun, quirky nods that kind of build the world of Toy Story without you even realizing it. I think I'd saw one that was really intricate that was some dominoes and the dots on the dominoes were the numbers of like a very iconic like date, which you would never think that that's like an Easter egg that you would just pick up on, but it's there. And if you know what you're looking for, then it's a really like cool nod to a bit of Disney history, which I thought was really cool.
What is it that we love about Easter Eggs in theme park design?
Andy
Yeah, I think you want an Easter egg, the actual, best Easter eggs are ones that you shouldn't really ever know. They shouldn't stand out. Obviously they have to be, for us as designers and creators of theme parks have to be thematically consistent. That's the first thing you have to, you have to be able to appreciate that. The fact that it can live within a land, shouldn't draw attention to itself. But as Alice, that wonderful example of the Tower of Terror, that is the kind of like the tip board at the Hollywood Tower Hotel. So we wouldn't ever think anything more of it.
That's can thematically consistent with the actual kind of attraction there, but a closer look reveals just that little bit of interplay and something more in of story. And we talk a lot about Katapult about paddlers, swimmers and divers. And it's something that was so important to our industry, the fact that you need to provide guests all three of those options to do that. So some guests just love to come and paddle their feet and they come to a theme park and just enjoy the rides and take kind of a superficial look at things.
Other guests have a little bit more of like a swim and they like, you they will engage with things. And as you pointed out, Robbie, other guests really have a massive knowledge and they're huge super fans. They want to dive into those details and see those details and be rewarded with them. And that's some of the work we can do as well with those kind of guests who are really the fans and they're kind of the deep seeking of knowledge. We can give them those fantastic little nuggets that are there to be discovered.
Robbie
And I do wonder whether Easter eggs play more of a critical role in the operations of theme parks. I don't know if there's ever been a study into Easter eggs in like every themed attraction, but they do play quite a pivotal role. mean, for the guest, it's amazing. You know, there's an experience. They feel like the in-crowd. There's something extra that they can do with their kids, but maybe for operators, I mean you might be taking away from those busy queue lines or actually pushing people around the park in different ways is actually alleviating high footfall areas. Is there any other advantages you can think of that Easter eggs may give other than just something that's amazing to do if you know about it?
I went to an art gallery experience recently, which was about bees and they had an interactive piece of glass, let's say, and it was fogged over with sort of like bee paraphernalia. But I knew there was a piece of interpretation behind it. Only when you held your hand on there for around 10 seconds did the fog fade away and then it revealed, which was one of the most amazing interpretations I've seen, which is an old beehive that have been formed in a violin. So you could see the structure of it inside. It was absolutely beautiful. But after I did it, obviously, I analyzed the hell out of everything that I go to, how many people just walk past that? How many people just go, it's not working, forget it, and move on and not enjoy sort of that experience?
Alice
I think like all of that is true as well as like, it's, it gives the impression that there's more to find at all times. So as well as like maybe it's keeping people away from cues because they're looking in all the areas. It also keeps you occupied in a queue because you're constantly looking within all the details and seeing there's always something hidden more and I think that's why we talked about there's a reason there's no clear list and map of hidden mickeys or clear list of Easter eggs. Even like a study of Easter eggs makes me a little nervous because there's no fun in like analyzing the magic.
Lily-Ann
I wonder if it is that nature of why Easter eggs are so successful is also that curiosity. And I think you can also allow a guest who is a little bit curious the opportunity to dive in a bit deeper if they want to. And I think sometimes, especially when we're looking at the design of an attraction, you almost look at it as a beautifully put together puzzle. But sometimes there's little pockets of surprise and delight, there's little pockets of mystery really engaging for a guest to get involved in the story more that we're trying to create or tell.
I wonder if we should always think about when we're designing something, is there an opportunity to create a little bit of that exploration for the guests so that they feel well and truly woven into the thing that we are creating? Because it's so easy to slip into designing the most perfect thing ever but sometimes it's that little bit of, know, let the guests fill in that little bit of like 5 % and allow them to really kind of like be curious around what it is that they're involved in. You know, I think it just helps to elevate it that little bit more.
Why is theme park design synonymous with Easter Eggs?
Andy
The fact that as theme park designers, we work in a very interesting medium. It's that really, it's that blending of theatricality, film design, and there's a real visceral reality to it. But there are no film credits in the work that we do. There's no applause for the amazing team of designers who are sat in front of you right now. So it's really nice to have that. Sometimes the windows are Main Street or other more discreet things in a queue.
If you walked past a queue line and you saw Professor Bedder in there, that's a really nice Easter egg and a film credit to someone who's worked on that. So it's a really nice way, as Lily-Ann said, to have that depth of story and to validate and to celebrate the people who've worked on it. Those are our kind of film credits and it's in keeping with our industry to make them something you discover that they don't stand out in front of everything else.
Alice
Also as a guest, it's the closest you get to kind of locking eyes with the designer because designers should be completely invisible in the land. And if you're the kind of people like I was the kind of kid when I knew Andy you were too, you have to know what's behind the curtain. You have to see how things are made. So if you feel like you can see through and see kind of like behind the curtain and who made it, especially now, because they feel so, like theme parks feel so grand and like knowing there's actually a human behind it can feel very special.
Lily-Ann
I think it's easy to talk about kind of big attractions and I think, but something that I feel like there's Easter eggs all the way through is just when we took a thing around like queue lines, just exclusively queue lines. And that could be queue lines for literally anywhere. It could be any park. It could be one of the big ones, one of the small ones. But there's always some form of Easter egg hiding in there. I think Andy touched on a good one as well. Like you'll usually see if a ride is replacing something that you'll see some form of homage in the queue line to the old ride. So it's always worth looking out there to see if you can spot anything. Props, usually any sort of prop that's from an old ride usually gets a second life in a new ride but dressed as something else. And, you know, it's really fun to sort of look at queue lines specifically because we see it in attractions and we see it in theme parks in general, but especially queue lines.
A lot of key lines are mostly like 50% Easter eggs, storytelling, gommages to other things, celebrations of story from the IP. But yeah, I'd always sort of say like, always pay attention to the key lines. They're usually elaborate for a reason. And there's usually some real hidden gems in there. If you see it and you can see it and it looks really cool if you don't know what it is, amazing.
If you kind of have been around, you've been to the parks before, you've been to the attractions before, then sometimes you might see something that looks familiar, but just in the wrong place. there's something that instinct you have to, right? You kind of go, look, there's that thing. Like, look, let me tell you about this. Yeah.
Why do theme park guests love Easter Eggs so much?
Lily-Ann
It's just like a chain reaction of information. That's how Easter eggs start. It's a chain of people telling each other that they've seen something and them telling somebody else. And that's how they live is through people telling each other every time they're in the same location with somebody new.
As guests, we love exploring and really like peeling away and just kind of scratching what's beneath the surface. Like there's just something in our nature where we, something like that, you go like, okay, that sounds like it's plausible. How? Let me find out. I'm going to really dive into why this is. And I think that's just us as humans, that's like our nature, isn't it? Like we love scratching beneath the surface and seeing what's there. We're just, yeah, really inquisitive.
Alice
Well, this has reminded me, I do love to eavesdrop and hear the kind of, it's like that whisper game, the way that one person nudges someone and tells them what an Easter egg means. And then two years later, they're sharing it in all different ways. And there's all this deep lore about the parks and Disney films get the same thing. Like you've got the Moana thing and there's all sorts of speculation about like, I think the Little Mermaid has a link to Frozen because they've all got it interlink.
I think a really fun Easter egg that really like rewards curiosity is picking up phones and being able to hear stuff. Audio clips are always good. know Punch Drunk use this in their walkthrough theatre. it's like, even if it's sort of secondary to whatever the key story is, got it in Disney, definitely got it in escape rooms and things. It's just something so fun about picking up something and being rewarded that this is actually an intractable element. think, what is it? Is it a Megamark?
Robbie
I completely agree with the audio one. I had a brilliant example a couple of weeks ago when I went to the Friends exhibition in London and they'd created one of the sets from the episode where Friends comes to London and they had an old fashioned telephone booth and it rang twice maybe and we was in that room for about 20 minutes. So the chances that people were going to walk past and not hear that or not even think to pick it up was quite high. Luckily we walked in as it rang and I had the just inbuilt curiosity to just pick it up because I thought it'd be funny even if there was no one on the end of it.
And they piped through the audio of Phoebe from the episode exactly what she was saying during the episode. And it was just amazed! I handed the handset over to my wife. was like, my God, it's Phoebe. It's Phoebe, listen to her. Because in that moment, it genuinely felt like I was speaking to her. things that was hidden, but there is something not just about seeing a physical Easter egg, but hearing it or I don't know, tangible ones. I have absolutely no idea. But so many different ways where we can kind of encapsulate guests.
What's your top takeaways from a deep dive into theme park Easter Eggs?
Andy
I think the final thought for me is I would encourage guests as we've talked about anyone visiting an experience or a theme park is to look closer and to question. as, as we've all said, curiosity is it might have killed the cat, but it won't kill the theme park attraction. And, uh, hopefully you will, you will enjoy your time there.
So I would say question things and look, look a little bit deeper. So taking a look at the superficiality and then looking deeper into the stories and questioning. if you see a date, you see a character, what do think it could be? What could it relate to? And I would imagine people listen to this theme, this podcast. Have an appreciation for theme parks and can connect the dots. So I would say look a little bit closer and find those Easter eggs.
Lily-Ann
I think I would also put one in there for the designers and the creatives as well. think when we're making experiences and just, you know, just see what you can add there, but not just in like a personal way, but really think about your audience. Think about the guests, think about where your experience is going and how can you add those hidden layers into the experiences that will, really enhance that, that guest experience of when they're in an attraction.
Alice
I definitely, think layers is the key one. If we're talking to designers, think keeping all three layers is so key to having a rich design and getting those details in, especially if it feels like you're being bit self-indulgent and you're putting your own credit in. It will add depth. Do it. It's the fun credit that you get to do, and it allows every part of the story to get richer. I could not possibly comment on becoming a tour guide. It's a completely secret operation.