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Finalists and the eventual winner of our Theme Park Designer Competition, have collaborated with the Katapult team to create a brand new theme park design – featuring an exciting brand, park masterplan and ride concepts designs.
The competition was created at the start of 2021 and provided a free activity book for children to design the theme park of their dreams. Since the launch, we’ve had over 5,000 downloads of the activity book that has helped lift the burden of home-schooling for pupils, parents and teachers.
Brand & Masterplan
With so many inspirational ideas sent in as part of the competition, we decided to work with the young designers to bring their theme park to life.
10-year-old Maddi provided the name and brand of our fictional theme park, Magnificent Manor, which we helped create. We also made a park masterplan to honour all the fantastic rides and rollercoasters designed by the children.
Ride concept
Our competition runner-up was Rory. A huge fan of space and intergalactic adventure, he created a rotating ride called Space Horror. In his own words, Rory described this ride as: “A crane that takes you up to the sky. It has glass robots attached with rope, then it spins around and a projector will project an image of space on the glass.” We created a key visual to sell the excitement of his Space Horror ride.
3D Design & Visualisation
Our competition winner was Ethan, who not only drew his rollercoaster ride ‘Volcano of Doom’, he also made a model using paper, card and foil – a truly innovative theme, design and approach! Ethan was suitably rewarded with a hamper of goodies, including drawing equipment to brainstorm his next theme park design idea!
We decided to go the extra mile, just like Ethan did with his model, to bring the Volcano of Doom to life even more. Our design team worked with his designs to create a replica 3D virtual model that showed what it would be like to be a passenger on his rollercoaster. (Play the video below to ride the Volcano of Doom for yourself and see Ethan’s reaction!)
Inspiring a generation
The Theme Park Designer project has been an inspirational project for us, working with children to bring their imaginations to life. As well as providing educational support during tough times home-learning, we wanted to inspire the next generation of workers in our leisure and attractions industry. Judging by the reaction to his rollercoaster design we’d worked on for Ethan, we’re proud to see we’ve achieved our goal!
Although the competition has closed, the Theme Park Designer Activity Book is still available to download for free for children (and adults too!) to design the theme park of their dreams.
