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SIGGRAPH 2006 Review
From Myth to Mountain:
Insights Into Virtual Placemaking w. Joe Rohde
By Hamish Millar
 Nobody can deny that Joe Rohde has a lot of energy. I’m sure he could talk to you about anything and make it interesting, let alone theme park design.
Joe’s talk was about the conception of the Expedition Everest Disney ride constructed in Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Buena Vista, Florida. Strangely, or perhaps not, the pacing of Joe’s speech seemed to model that of the very theme park experience he had helped to create.
Joe started off with some background about himself and rolled along gently offering bits and pieces of information about the project. The ride itself does much the same thing, taking people into the Himalayas, subtly introducing the concept of the Yeti.
Before continuing further, the story of the Yeti is re-told to the passengers just to make absolutely sure that they were paying attention. At this point Joe affirmed his key point that it is not the subject matter of the ride that defines the experience, but the theme placed upon it. In other words, it is not the setting, but the ideas and feelings conveyed in that setting that are important.
At one point the ride crosses a ravine which illustrates that the passengers have now traversed an invisible barrier into a different place: faster paced, and about to change their experience of the world.
And this is exactly what Joe did. He enthusiastically relayed his experience of creating the park in such a way that it could apply to almost anything anyone would ever need to communicate to an audience.
Joe’s roller coaster speech escalated and concluded with the following important points:
- You must use first hand research to create a first hand experience. Joe spent much time in the Himalayas researching the project by talking to many of the locals personally and experiencing their environment for himself.
- If you don’t do this, and you use other people’s resources, then you necessarily take their interpretation and theme with them. This will contaminate your vision. If you take multiple people’s resources and try to construct something of it then you will end up with a collage of inconsistent themes.
- Taking your resources directly from the source means that you can later draw upon your experience surrounding the gathering of those resources. This might include the time of day, the smell in the air, or the sound of the wind rushing against the trees. It provides you with a much richer palette with which you can paint your vision.
- Doing the research yourself gives you great authority to speak on the subject.
- The question that drives great stories is the question of “why”. Questions of “who”, “what”, “when” and “where” offer a setting for a story, but the question of “why” gives it a theme and a meaning.
It is in conclusion, and with great irony, that you finish reading this article which has been subject to my interpretation of Joe’s speech and the way I think it mirrors the ride he created. It is ironic because his message necessarily implies that you should have been there to see it for yourself.
See you in the Himalayas.
Hamish Millar
Web Editor
Vancouver ACM SIGGRAPH
© 2006 Vancouver ACM SIGGRAPH — July 31, 2006
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