Designing Attractions: Innovation in Blue Sky at the Festival of Innovations 26

Why It Matters

This approach reduces risk in multi-year attractions projects by prioritizing enduring guest experiences over transient technologies, helping operators build resilient, culturally relevant attractions that remain compelling as tools and trends evolve.

Summary

At the Festival of Innovations session, creative leaders from For and Moment Factory framed "blue sky" as an enduring mindset that privileges bold what-if thinking while grounding ideas in cultural and emotional context. They described starting design by studying destination, audiences and rituals—illustrated by projects like Legoland Shanghai and Curiosity Cove—then iterating over long timelines and rethinking tech use as tools to serve story and emotion. Speakers emphasized that innovation often comes from novel choreography of proven technologies rather than pursuing bleeding-edge hardware, and that future-proofing means designing for timeless drivers—curiosity, connection, agency and wonder—rather than betting on fast-changing tech. The creative process, they said, is continuous: blue-sky thinking should recur throughout development to adapt to operational, cultural and technological shifts.

Original Description

Henry Kim, creative director at Forrec, and Virginie Valastro, producer at Moment Factory explore what blue sky thinking means, where to begin when designing an attraction or experience and how to future-proof ideas.