Yesteryear: Designing A Scale Model of a Novel Theme Park Attraction for the Ride Engineering Competition; An Examination of Accessibility in the Theme Park Industry through Ethical Frameworks and Actor Network Theory 4 views

The theme park industry is a global force that is consistently growing each year with billions of dollars in both investments and revenue. Through a desire to exceed expectations on delivering a unique, immersive, and memorable guest experience, theme parks are consistently finding new ways to use technology and brilliant engineering to create complex ride systems. The careful design of these ride systems is critical to ensure guest safety. Furthermore, as society works to become increasingly accessible and equitable to all individuals, the capacity of ride experiences to safely welcome guests with wide ranges of abilities must be examined. My research aims to investigate the safety aspects of theme park ride engineering, as well as the accessibility of such attractions. Through the technical portion of my research, I worked alongside a team of students to produce a small-scale 3 degree of freedom robotic arm theme park attraction. Designed to be experienced by candy-sized riders, this ride met the industry standard safety requirements of ASTM F24 2291, highlighting the engineering principles and methods that are applied to real-world attractions to ensure guest safety. This ride is constructed for competition in the Ride Engineering Competition, which imposes further requirements of a minimum height and rotation for all riders. By both meeting the requirements of the Ride Engineering Competition as well as industry safety requirements, the completion of this capstone reveals to technical challenges of theme park engineering design related to both guest experience and safety. However, oftentimes guest safety is only considered for those guests without disabilities, thereby limiting large groups of visitors from participating in these experiences. I aim to explore this issue through the STS component of my research. There are a multitude of interrelated parties shaping the theme park industry. Thus, Actor Network Theory is utilized to analyze these complex interactions and how they contribute to the current design and accessibility of theme park rides. Then, multiple ethical frameworks are applied to the issue to examine the extent to which these actors share a responsibility to increase accessibility in their attractions. Through the application of both methodologies, it is concluded that numerous factors such as technological limits, operational efficiency, and economic gain have halted the advancement of theme park accessibility. Yet, social forces continue to drive it forward, as the conclusion of multiple ethical frameworks insists on an increased level of attraction accessibility. When considered together, this research examines the critical aspects of theme park attraction design that shape the nature of current theme park attractions. While through the technical portion, the strict engineering side of this industry is examined. In combination with the STS research, the influence of all actors, both technical and non-technical, is realized to form a holistic view of the shaping of theme park rides. From this STS research also comes the importance of increasing accessibility through the design of such rides, calling for a better future for all guests as the theme park industry continues to expand.

BS (Bachelor of Science)

Theme Park; Accessibility; Amusement Park

School of Engineering and Applied Science Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering Technical Advisor: Gavin Garner STS Advisor: Sean Murray Technical Team Members: Cavan Meade, Solana Wesley, Silvia Wardell, Charles Cardine, John Follis, Ian Willinghan

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2026-05-07