Teaching theme parks is, for quite obvious reasons, more difficult than teaching most other media—theme parks are embodied, immersive spaces and, as such, are best experienced firsthand, on location. But there are ways of bringing them to life in the classroom, and I want to provide some examples here for best practice to do so, as well as some pointers for student excursions to the parks for anyone who is able to facilitate them.

I have previously defined theme parks as “a participatory medium that relies on strategies of theming to entertain an audience within a transnational consumer culture,”[1] in conversation with several other scholars’ research that firmly embeds them as a central part of what Henry Jenkins has called “transmedia storytelling.”[2] Florian Freitag has studied them as parts of processes of inter/or crossmediality, as they remediate other media such as film,[3] and Rebecca Williams has argued that they

Using this angle also makes them accessible to media and cultural studies, as well as cultural history—my own approach has largely been to situate Disney theme parks within the cultural and historic context in which they opened (and eventually evolved in).[5] This is perhaps the easiest to translate to a classroom as well, where we as historians or scholars of cultural studies often work with primary sources. In the case of theme parks, we can thus make use of “paratexts” to the parks,[6] such as park maps, flyers and other leaflets, paper tickets, or the glossy guidebooks that Disney has published over the years. For those who do not have any from their own visits, many fans have made these readily available online. Similarly, a lot of visual material is easily accessible because of fans—for instance, a massive collection of early Disneyland photographs can be found on “Daveland,” and old TV and home video ads for the parks can also be on the usual suspects like YouTube, and, by now, even TikTok.

Arguably, studying these materials does not replace a park visit, but the same video platforms are also increasingly filled with vloggers’ on-ride videos, show and parade recordings, and the like, including of defunct attractions, making them especially valuable to those studying theme park history rather than theme park present. Generally, the availability for these is a lot better for the US Disney parks than for the international ones, but the reach of social media and increasingly internationalized fan networks prove incredibly useful here.

Physical artifacts can be equally valuable teaching tools, depending on the focus of the class: mouse ears, collectible pins, and other merchandise can provide inroads into park history but also fan studies, widening angles on how to critically reflect on these spaces. The vast fandom of the parks (that Williams has discussed, as well as the contributors to my own essay collection, Fan Phenomena: Disney),[7] also calls into question the longstanding criticism of Disney’s role as a global cultural imperialist—or at least vastly complicates this one-sided assumption. The colonialist underpinnings of the Walt Disney Company’s business operations nevertheless play a large role in how we as scholars should study and teach on them,[8] bringing theme parks into conversation with broader studies on US Empire and Hollywood’s global influence and reach.

Working with such artifacts also further highlights the parks’ status as key cogs in the transmedia storytelling machine of Disney’s vast conglomerate. Almost every newly developed attraction or show at the parks around the world is currently IP (Intellectual Property) based. And yet, this practice is by far not a new development—ever since Disneyland’s opening in 1955, synergy has been a central component and reasoning behind the parks, even including its icon, Sleeping Beauty Castle, that received its name to promote the then-forthcoming animated film.[9]

Viewing scenes from Disney films or television series that have been remediated into parks attractions opposite on-ride videos could thus also prove fruitful to illustrate this remediation process and animate students to think about the vast reach of the multi-media conglomerate, its corporate practices, but also different ways of storytelling and narrative adaptation and “recycling.” As theme park rides have also been turned into film (most famously, Pirates of the Caribbean [Gore Verbinski, 2003], or recently—again—the Haunted Mansion [Justin Simien, 2023]), this process can also be flipped on its head, highlighting the parks’ cultural influence. Further, comics and novels based on rides that Disney has published make it possible to incorporate even more diverse media into teaching. Lastly, music is another medium central to theme parks and one still understudied; but as the company has increasingly made available recordings of ride songs and even background “loops,” they now provide interesting and interdisciplinary ways of bringing the Disney parks to the classroom.

A potential exercise that uses easily accessible material would be to watch an on-ride video of the original “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride from Anaheim’s Disneyland and juxtapose it with scenes from the 2003 film—especially scenes that directly remediate sequences from the ride (such as Barbossa and the other pirates turning into skeletons). Adding another layer of remediation,[10] you can then discuss the very different “Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle of the Sunken Treasure” ride in Shanghai Disneyland, that in turn adapts the film series. This is an excellent case study in transmediality as well as corporate practice of synergy and transcultural practices of adaptation, as the Shanghai ride is only available in the Mandarin language. To take this a step further, depending on focus of the class, is to bring in physical artifacts like ride merchandise Disney sells in the parks, or alternatively, compare it to rides in other non-Disney theme parks that clearly copy this classic, such as “Piraten in Batavia” in Germany’s Europapark.

While I have not had the chance to take any students to a Disney theme park—as being based in Germany makes this rather geographically challenging—I have been able to visit them with fellow scholars, and have also taken a seminar group to non-Disney owned theme parks in Germany. Since these are obviously cost-prohibitive to get into, I realize the chance to do so is small, but I still briefly want to touch upon the potential opportunities and challenges this brings. Firstly, colleagues who have done research at theme parks and other immersive spaces (such as shopping malls or themed hotels) have noted that security has stopped and questioned them when taking notes or detailed photographs.[11] Disney’s security operates in near invisibility (as they do in other theme parks), as to not disrupt the immersion.

Yet, crucially, groups of people talking or taking notes or pictures would not constitute a violation of any rules—when we took students to an excursion to Europapark or conducted research as a group of scholars at Phantasialand, security never actually questioned or stopped us. So, you do not have to face Disney jail unless you are planning to have students do official surveys (only the company is allowed to do so), or actively disrupt park operations. What you can do, and what I have found useful in the past, is to prepare worksheets/questions for specific themed areas or rides for students to take notes on as they are on location. Another pedagogical approach to prepare for the visit are short presentations students or you as the lecturer then give on-site—although granted, space and noise can be a problem here, so these factors have to be taken into account. But for the most part, such research is indistinguishable from any other visitors enjoying the parks; at the end of the day, you’re still riding rides, watching shows, eating food, and are sometimes waiting in long lines to do so.

Overall, I do think studying theme parks generally, but especially when we study “Disney” (that is, the Walt Disney Company), is crucial to a comprehensive understanding of the entertainment industry and practices of transmediality. As I highlighted in my own definition of theme parks, they are central to transnational consumerism and thus the late-stage capitalist world we live in. Ever since Disneyland opened in 1955, they have become integral parts of the multi-media conglomerates that Hollywood studios have evolved into following Reaganite deregulation policies and an increasingly global economy. Further, they are true mass entertainment—even following the Covid-19 pandemic, the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida, and Disneyland in Anaheim both received about 17 million visitors in 2022 (in 2019, these numbers were closer to 20 million).[12] Disney itself is also fully aware that theme parks are what opens new markets (such as the notoriously hard to penetrate People’s Republic of China), and that they are a steady cash cow—in September 2023, the company announced to nearly double their investment in them over the next 10 years.[13] Ignoring them from a media or cultural studies perspective thus means ignoring a central part of contemporary media production, as well as a rich environment of study for how media interact with each other.

1. Sabrina Mittermeier, A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks—Middle-Class Kingdoms (Bristol: Intellect, 2021), 8. ↑

2. Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling 101.” HenryJenkins.org, March 21, 2007, http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html. ↑

3. Florian Freitag, “Like Walking Into A Movie: Intermedial Relations Between Theme Parks And Movies”, Journal of Popular Culture, 50, no.4 (August 2017): 704–22. ↑

4. Rebecca Williams, Theme Park Fandom: Spatial Transmedia, Materiality, and Participatory Cultures (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020), 12. ↑

5. Mittermeier, A Cultural History. ↑

6. Florian Freitag, “The Happiest Virtual Place on Earth: Theme Park Paratexuality,” Virtual Interiorities Vol.2, ed. Vahid Vahdat, Dave Gottwald, and Gregory Turner-Rahman (ETC Press, 2022), 97–121. ↑

7. Williams, Theme Park Fandom; Sabrina Mittermeier, ed., Fan Phenomena: Disney (Bristol: Intellect, 2022) ↑

8. Michelle Anya Anjirbag, “Reforming Borders of the Imagination: Diversity, Adaptation, Transmediation, and Incorporation in the Global Disney Film Landscape,” Jeunesse 11, no.2 (2019): 151-176: Sabrina Mittermeier, “Transmedia Storytelling in Disney’s Theme Parks Or How Colonialism Underpins Participatory Culture,” Virtual Interiorities Vol.2, ed. Vahid Vahdat, Dave Gottwald, and Gregory Turner-Rahman (ETC Press), 123–135. ↑

9. Mittermeier, Cultural History, 45. ↑

10. The term was coined by Grusin and Bolter; see Richard Grusin and Jay David Bolter, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020). ↑

11. Scott A. Lukas, “Research in Themed and Immersive Spaces: At the Threshold of Identity,” in A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces, ed. Scott A. Lukas (ETC Press, 2016), 159. ↑

12. These figures are based on TEA/AECOM’s annual Global Attendance Reports: https://aecom.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2019-Theme-Index-web-1.pdf; https://aecom.com/wp-content/uploads/documents/reports/AECOM-Theme-Index-2022.pdf ↑

13. The Walt Disney Company. “Disney Plans to Expand Parks Investment, Doubling Capital Expenditures Over 10 Years” TheWaltDisneyCompany.com, September 19, 2023, https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-plans-to-expand-investment-in-parks-business/#:~:text=The%20Walt%20Disney%20Company%20is,domestic%20and%20international%20parks%20and. ↑