Top 10 Common Issues Affecting the Comfortable Experience of Family Theme Parks
The experience of families in theme parks is multifaceted, not one-dimensional. Children and parents have distinct needs within these environments, often wearing dual hats as consumers and decision-makers, and their likes or dislikes can significantly influence repeat visits. The specific demands of park visitors also differ greatly across seasons and times of day. Thus, concentrating only on the design and playfulness of amusement rides is quite inadequate. For Jego Group's theme park design endeavors, the creation of safe, entertaining, and astonishing equipment is a crucial yet not the sole component of our systematic approach. This article offers a brief sharing on ten common issues typically considered beyond the equipment in theme park design.
1. Public Space Design in Family Theme Parks
At JEGO Group, we prioritize the design of public spaces in family theme parks, an area often undervalued by investors and landscape companies. Our focus is on outdoor squares and lawns, which are crucial for the park's overall appeal.
We face questions like, "Why have such a large/small square/lawn? Why not add more play equipments?" Our answer lies in creating spaces that cater to different visitor needs. We believe in larger open spaces for leisure and smaller ones for movement, based on a deep understanding of visitor behavior.
For example, in a 50,000 square meter park, we allocate up to 10% for open lawns. These areas help regulate the pace of play, provide relief for children's energy, and host various activities. They are popular with visitors and offer operational flexibility.
By balancing rides with public spaces, JEGO Group designs parks that are not only thrilling but also comfortable and enjoyable for families. Our approach ensures every aspect of the park enhances the family experience.
2. Sunshade System Design in Family Theme Parks
In family theme parks, outdoor comfort is paramount. JEGOPLAY's parks, being mainly outdoors, face the challenge of variable weather and constant sunlight and temperature, which greatly impact visitor comfort. The effectiveness of our shade systems can make a world of difference in the visitor experience.
We design shade systems to be both functional and sufficient, ensuring that families can enjoy their time without being affected by harsh weather conditions. Our focus is on creating a comfortable and enjoyable environment for all visitors.
We categorize our shade systems into three main types: equipment area shading, waiting area shading, and rest area shading.
1） Equipment Area Shading: This is designed to provide a more comfortable play environment for children, minimizing the impact of high temperatures and light rainfall on their enjoyment.
2） Waiting Area Shading: Primarily serves parents watching over their children and visitors in queue areas around popular attractions. Effective shading in these areas significantly enhances comfort during waiting and caregiving, reducing anxiety caused by the combination of waiting and discomfort, thus greatly improving the overall experience.
3）Rest Area Shading: Addresses the comfort needs of families for resting, dining, and socializing outside of playtime. The longer families can comfortably stay, the better the consumption experience and the more touchpoints for spending.
These targeted shading solutions ensure that every area of our parks contributes to a pleasant and enjoyable family experience.
3. Restroom Design
In the operational practice of children's amusement parks, we have found that children's physiological characteristics dictate that they cannot fully prepare for restroom visits. One minute they are fully engaged in play, and the next minute they are frantically searching for a restroom due to an urgent need to urinate. At this point, restrooms placed within a 200-meter radius simply cannot meet the requirements. Instead, the configuration of restrooms should be based on the ability for children to reach them within a 3-minute walk.
Additionally, families visiting the amusement park often have more females than males, so the ratio of restroom stalls should be more skewed towards female users. The provision of baby care rooms is also essential, ensuring that all users in visiting families with children will be well taken care of regarding restroom needs.
4. Rest Area Seating Design
1）Unlike the seating designs in parks and scenic spots, the rest area seating in children's amusement parks should consider the concentrated use by multiple family members, often adopting curved and semi-enclosed layouts.
2）Parent-child families carry a lot of personal items, so the length and width of the seats should be greater than those of ordinary park seats.
3）There is a difference in sitting height between adults and children, so more consideration should be given to the comfort of children to prevent fatigue caused by dangling legs.
4）The material of the seats should have a high affinity with children's bodies and prevent bumps and scratches, so it is best to avoid using hard stone and iron surfaces.
5）The distribution radius of the seats should not be too far from the play groups to facilitate parental supervision.
6）The gaps between the seat slats should not be too large to prevent items from falling, nor too small to prevent children's fingers from getting caught.
5. Amusement Park Fence Design
In the design of Jegoplay Amusement Park, the fence design not only considers prohibition and separation, but also embodies the "guiding" role for visitor behavior, the "protective" role for parent-child visitors, and the "decorative" role in presenting the park's design themes.
The flexible and versatile combination fences regulate the gathering and dispersal of crowds at the park's entrances and exits as well as around the equipment. Appropriately tall vertical fences prevent children from crossing boundaries and falling. Smooth, non-climbable fences eliminate the safety hazards brought by children's unconscious climbing and crossing. Transparent fences can convey the park's joyful atmosphere unobstructed to onlookers. With clever decorations, the fences become cute and interesting decorations that convey the park's unique cultural theme... All these are the design logic behind the seemingly cold and solid fences.
6. Hand and Foot Washing Pool Design
At Jego Amusement Park, the most popular activity among children is playing with sand and water. However, this can be a bit of a challenge for parents. Little feet that have stepped through puddles and ditches, dirty hands after digging for treasures in the sand, and sand particles that get everywhere are all concerns for moms.
Generally, within 5 meters of the entrance and exit of the sand and water area, there will be a conspicuous hand and foot washing pool. Based on different usage habits, we offer a variety of options, including manual and sensor-activated choices. There are also different arrangements such as fountain-style upward water flow and faucet-style downward water flow, as well as separate settings for upper and lower water outlets and four-directional water outlets. These designs meet the needs of different activities, situations, visitor densities, and usage intensities. This ensures that all children can stay clean and happy, while parents can enjoy the park experience with ease.
7. Queueing Area Design
Similar to traditional large-scale mechanical theme parks, Jego Amusement Park also has many popular attractions that require queuing, and the design of the queueing area greatly affects the visitor experience. During the design process of the queueing area, the following principles should not be overlooked:
1) First, there should be a moderate redundancy in the area/length of the queueing zone. In parent-child amusement parks, visitors often queue with their children, requiring a larger unit area and thus a larger total area. When a large crowd converges, insufficient queueing area can cause congestion on adjacent roads and groups.
2) Second, the location of the queueing area should be chosen to avoid overlapping with the main traffic routes, reducing the chaos and negative experience caused by conflicting pedestrian flows.
3) Third, the queueing area should not only consider waiting visitors but also those exiting or temporarily leaving the queue. It is necessary to separate the entrance and exit areas and to set up emergency exits at regular intervals.
4) Lastly, the comfort of the queueing area must be considered. Visitors should not be made to stand for long periods. The design should include parts of the queueing area fence that can be leaned on, and even areas where visitors can sit down. Adequate consideration and provision should also be made for shading and cooling measures during high-temperature days.
8. Photo Zone Design
In the design process of Jego Amusement Park, we not only endow the core attractions with exceptional visual appeal but also carefully consider their orientation—how to frame views, how to coordinate with sunlight conditions, and how to maintain a relatively clean midground space, providing visitors with suitable spots for taking photos.
For some dynamic attractions, such as the mini car riding area, we reserve 2 to 3 photo spots for parents to capture their children's joyful playtime, strategically placed along the track and themed packaging. Additionally, we create independent photo spots near the park entrance or along the main landscape axis, combined with IPs. These areas are relatively separate from the amusement equipment space system.
9. Back-of-House Pathway Design
Given the relatively fixed nature of the external traffic around the park, how can we ensure that the back-of-house/service routes and visitor routes intersect minimally or not at all?
With a fixed upper limit on personnel management radius, how can the back-of-house/service routes within the park be designed to allow for the most timely and efficient management, transportation, and emergency services to serve visitors?
This requires early determination of requirements and information closely related to the efficiency of back-of-house/service operations, such as entrances and exits, road networks, office spaces, and restaurants. This ensures a high degree of alignment between design and usage, facilitating efficient park operations.
10. Waste Room Design
Positioning the waste room away from crowds, with an independent flow line, visually shielded, and in the downwind direction ensures that visitors are not affected by garbage odors and that waste can be handled promptly and conveniently with nearby collection and transportation.
At Jego Group, the amusement park operations team regularly communicates and shares issues encountered during operations with the design team. These 10 common issues have been identified through numerous discussions and practical improvements, and they are now standard considerations for our design team when creating amusement park designs.
In addition, there are many other issues, some of which arise from these 10 problems, while others are specific to the unique conditions of the park site and do not have universal significance. Design is the art of solving practical problems, and also an art form in itself. In the design and operation of family-oriented amusement parks, we never stop striving for improvement!
