2025 Conference Abstracts

Thursday 12^th June

Session 1: Drawn to Life
Transmedia

From Theme Park to Theatre (and Back Again): Spatial Transmedia and the Disney Musical
Rebecca Williams

This paper explores the relationship between the in-park theatrical productions staged within Disney’s theme parks and Disney Theatrical Productions. It argues that overlaps between these two types of production offer a form of ‘spatial transmedia’ (Williams 2020) and that in-park theatrical productions of such shows (especially those versions of popular animated films such as Frozen or The Lion King) function as a form of transmedia ‘gateway’ to the productions within theatres on Broadway, in London’s West End, or across global stages (Bádue 2024).

The paper focuses on two examples within Disneyland Paris’ Walt Disney Studios Park (WDSP); firstly Frozen: A Musical Invitation, a walk-through experience where guests move between different ‘sets’, on their journey towards seeing Queen Elsa. Secondly, it examines the Mickey and the Magician stage show that offers a mix of iconic songs and performances from a range of Disney musicals, functioning as a form of ‘Jukebox Musical’ that allows audiences to ‘participate in new pleasure by drawing out impressions on their favorite old songs in the past’ (Seo and Lee 2014: 188).

The paper thus draws on work on transmedia storytelling and spatial transmedia to examine the affordances and challenges offered by Disney’s corporate synergy between its films, theme park spaces, and theatrical musical productions. It builds on this work to explore primarily how this works in practice in terms of the strategies that Disney employs to lead guests from one experience to the other, and how the different experiences offer forms of ‘spatial transmedia’ to the audiences.

More Magical Music: Epic Universe’s Ministry of Magic as an Extension of an Existing Musical Register
Dan White

This paper engages with music and sound in the ‘Ministry of Magic’ area of Universal’s new Epic Universe, and thus this abstract is almost entirely speculative. However, all of Universal’s promotional materials regarding the park and its areas have been highly musical, with videos related to the Wizarding World being soundtracked almost entirely by cues from the film soundtracks (with some library cues thrown in), and notably not just with Williams cues but those from Desplat and Hooper, as well as James Newton Howard, in line with the area’s intrinsic relation to the Fantastic Beasts films (which he scored). This paper, then, extends work undertaken elsewhere to analyse the background music, ride music and live performed music of Ministry of Magic, here drawing on the notion of the musical register (after Farmer and Summers, 2023) to more clearly articulate how each element relates to the dominant musical register(s) of the franchise as it continues to grow. As cues from Hogwarts Legacy have seeped into television show Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking (an interesting crossover in itself) it will prove interesting to see whether the park’s sound designers and composers restrict themselves to the musical register of the film franchise(s) alone.

Methodologically the paper will (through unfortunate necessity) rely entirely on virtual materials and web ethnography (YouTube walkaround videos, ride POV videos, filmed recordings of performances and engagement with fan discussion online), but this will also provide the paper with an additional interpretive angle: that of fan reception and engagement. As the park area’s first guests will likely be among the most ardent fans (and indeed richest, with only multi-day passes currently for sale), it will be interesting to see what the critical ears of these fans make of the park’s sonic environment.

Part of that World: Sound-coded Seeing and Being in Theme Park Experiences
Clair Nguyen

Universal and Disney theme parks are magical experiences that involve seeing, believing, and hearing. Sound-oriented theme park rides, shows, and character meetings expand the transmedia entities of magic-inclusive franchises like Harry Potter, Frozen, and The Little Mermaid. This presentation argues that parkgoers’ musically underscored agency in theme parks vary on a spectrum of being (high interaction with) and seeing (passive interaction with) part of sound-coded experiences. My criteria for high/passive immersion draw on the scholarship and ideas of transmedia (Jenkins 2006), film leitmotif (Bribitzer-Stull 2015), ludomusicology (Collins 2013), “scripted spaces” (Waysdorf and Reijnders 2018), and theme park’s worldbuilding (White 2021 and 2024).

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter exemplifies being part of the sound-coded magic, where parkgoers create their own multi-park Harry Potter adventures through thrill rides with Harry and friends or interactive wands. Disney’s multi-park Frozen experiences exemplify finding and seeing Elsa and friends perform magic at singalongs, dark rides, parades, and the limited holiday show “Frozen Holiday Surprise.” Parkgoers’ interactions now focus on scripted experiences featuring Frozen songs altered in musical form and narrative outside of filmic context. The studies further highlight theme park sound content (Baker 2024; Carson 2004) and the different roles that film soundtracks (Harry Potter) and musical numbers (Frozen) provide to theme park experiences. The studies also question the belief in Disney’s animated musicals (Smith 2011), trans-mediated roles of “I Want/Won’t” songs (Montgomery 2022), and the “Disneyfication” (Bemis 2022) that compels parkgoers to go into the unknown and be a part of that world.

Session 2: Timekeepers
Musical Histories

The Musical History of Humans at the Zoo
Sarah Caissie Provost

The zoo has long served multiple functions, including education and amusement. The earliest public zoos retained their associations with the aristocratic menagerie, incorporating cultural hallmarks of the aristocracy and promenade culture. Even following the zoo’s 20^th-century shift towards education and animal welfare, the zoo has retained some of its prior association as entertainment venue, often including amusement park rides and cultural performances. Musical performances in these venues are often lost to history. This paper begins the work of tracing the history of music at zoos, focusing on the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

19^th century European zoos often included a concert venue, usually as a way for the middle class to adopt aristocratic traditions. Zoos were social places where the aim was to see other humans just as much as exotic animals, and musical performances allowed the burgeoning middle class to distinguish themselves from commoners. The zoo’s human and exotic aspects were jarringly juxtaposed in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries when zoos began to include “exotic” human exhibits. Existing on a spectrum between cultural exchange and enslavement, contemporary accounts of human exhibits often cited musical performances as mediating influences between patrons and the people in the exhibits. I posit that music has played a complex, overlooked, and sometimes problematic role in the drawing of patrons to the zoo. Additionally, music’s changing role in zoos reflects the larger philosophical move of the zoo from social to scientific in the 20^th century.

Disney, Copland, and Lincoln
David Miller

A tender orchestral introduction is followed by a biographical sketch of the sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln; then comes a succession of quotations from Lincoln’s most famous speeches, each more impassioned than the last; finally, a soaring crescendo as the orchestra brings the proceedings to a rousing conclusion.

For some, this description will call to mind Aaron Copland’s 1942 work for narrator and orchestra, Lincoln Portrait. For others, it will seem obviously to describe Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, an audio-animatronic attraction created by Walt Disney for the 1964 World’s Fair, which was installed at Disneyland the following year. In fact, Copland’s work and Disney’s attraction are so similar in their structure that it is almost hard to believe the parallels have gone unnoticed until now.

In this paper, I investigate the possibility that Disney, who admired Copland’s music, may have modelled Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln on Lincoln Portrait. I document the parallels between the two and argue that they were successful because of the calming, hopeful message they delivered at moments of national crisis (the Second World War and the Cold War, respectively). Finally, I query the relevance of that message to contemporary audiences, as Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln continues to play at Disneyland and Lincoln Portrait remains a fixture of the modern classical music canon, and I consider how theme parks and concert halls alike serve as sites at which middlebrow aesthetics are joined to mainstream political ideals.

Session 3: Space Rangers
Sonic Environments

Problematizing the Sonic Constructs of Theme Parks: Toward a Postmodernist Ethnographic Methodology and Anthropocene-Infused Reformulation of Space
Scott A. Lukas

Theme parks have long used sound/music as a tool to immerse audiences, employing techniques such as sonic cues and soundtracks derived from transmedia sources. As well, researchers of theme parks, not unlike modernist ethnographers, have been complicit in privileging (accipiens aliquid ab initio) the sonic realities of theme parks as the theoretical and methodological preconditions of their analyses. However, these spatial and methodological constructs often reflect modernist assumptions, emphasizing control, hierarchy, anthropocentrism, and universality in both their creation and study. This paper critically examines the limitations of such methods, proposing a shift toward postmodern approaches that embrace multiplicity, ambiguity, and decentralization. Drawing on theoretical frameworks such as Stephen A. Tyler’s concept of evocation and middle voice in anthropology, as well as the sonic avant-garde perspectives of Murray Schafer’s Soundscapes and Xenakis’s innovations, this study highlights the need for new methodologies to analyze and design soundscapes within theme parks.

Through this lens, the paper also explores how soundscapes intersect with broader cultural and environmental themes, particularly the Anthropocene, which challenges notions of human dominance and foregrounds ecological interconnectedness. By deconstructing traditional approaches and integrating avant-garde techniques, this research proposes an alternative framework that prioritizes sensory diversity and the dynamic interplay between sound, space, and audience. This shift not only deepens our understanding of theme park sound but also aligns with emergent paradigms in postmodern anthropology, fostering a more inclusive and reflexive engagement with soundscapes.

Placemaking and Soundscaping Practices in the Nested Acoustic Environments of Disney Theme Parks
Kate A. Galloway

Auditory tourists, or interactive soundwalkers, come to know the aural cultures of a place through the dynamic interactions of sound and place using site- and time-specific media, stories, soundscapes, and expressive culture sourced from the transmedia franchise the ride or region adapts to the park that play alongside real-time encounters with the physical materiality and soundscapes of the Disney theme park environments. The concept of soundscape and its application has spread widely since Schafer and it continues to be a generative way to understand the complexity of sonic environments, whether that soundscape is a live concert, a scene in a film, an internet meme, a podcast episode, or a themed experience. Theme parks are nested sonic environments, a collection of interconnected yet disparate regions, enclosed and open-air rides, entertainment experiences, enclosures, and mobile and time-based performance events (e.g., fireworks, character experiences), each with their own place-based identity. In this presentation I draw on a range of examples to develop a theory of placemaking and soundscaping practices that compose the acoustic ecology of a specific park. These illustrative examples range from Animal Kingdom’s wildlife enclosures to the Mad Tea Party ride, and from the Silly Symphony Swings to the Magic Kingdom’s audiovisual fireworks displays. I focus on the soundscaping practices of theme park tourism and the ways placemaking strategies are deployed in theme park design, use, and tourism. Soundscaping practices are remix strategies that remediate and rearrange sonic-spatial content for it to be experienced anew while calling back to the source.

Friday 13^th June

Session 4: Videopolis
Theme Parks, Video Games, and Anime

Playing the Parks – Music, Sound, and the Virtual Guest Experience in Theme Park Video Games
Matt Lawson

This paper explores the interdisciplinary use of music and sound in theme park video games through the lens of theme park theory and ludomusicology, examining how audio elements shape player experience, immersion, and narrative in virtual theme park environments. Drawing upon the insights presented in the 2024 Orlando conference on theme park music and sound, this study investigates the translation of real-world theme park audio strategies into digital experiences. Real-world parks are renowned for their intricate soundscapes, which blend environmental sounds, atmospheric music, and ride-specific compositions to enhance immersion. In the digital realm, games such as Theme Park (1994), the RollerCoaster Tycoon series (1999-2016), and Planet Coaster 1 and 2 (2016-24) replicate these elements, creating interactive audio landscapes that mirror the physical attractions they represent.

This paper converges the worlds of theme park audio theory and ludomusicology across case-study based analyses. In Theme Park and RollerCoaster Tycoon, music functions not only to evoke a sense of nostalgia but also to guide player decisions, with looping tracks reinforcing the rhythm of game progression. Meanwhile, the more advanced Planet Coaster games leverage dynamic audio systems that respond to player actions and environmental changes, simulating the reactive soundscape of an actual theme park. By synthesising these theoretical frameworks with game examples, this paper demonstrates the importance of music and sound in creating virtual spaces that replicate the experiential design principles of theme parks, offering unique insights into their role within interactive media.

Swinging in the Queue: Reimagining Nintendo’s Cues in the Super Nintendo World Theme Parks
James Heazlewood-Dale

Emanating from the speakers above the crowded lines of Super Nintendo World in Universal Studios Hollywood are the sounds of Nintendo’s past. Patient attendees listen to the music representing a wide variety of Nintendo games as they wait, sometimes for hours, to take rides such as “Yoshi’s Adventure” and “Bowser’s Challenge.” As one such attendee who attended Super Nintendo World in both Los Angeles and Osaka, one particularly striking aspect was how Nintendo’s music from decades past was arranged. These celebrated cues were not presented in their original format. Rather, they were reimagined; the music was recorded by a jazz big band. Such observations have prompted the following questions: How does Nintendo sonically represent their digital worlds in their two theme parks? How might the reimagined cues differ from one geographical location to the other? How has Nintendo reimagined their chip music through a live ensemble for their theme parks? The present research explores these questions and presents an analysis of field recordings from attending Super Nintendo World in both Los Angeles and Osaka. Additionally, this paper draws from and builds upon scholarly writings on Nintendo’s 8- and 16-bit music (Summers 2024; Schartmann 2015), place studies (Feld 1996; Cresswell 2014), and ludomusical world-building (Galloway 2024; Scoggin 2023). A study of the cues heard in these two theme parks offers a unique opportunity to hear how Nintendo reimagines their music and sound from 8- and 16-bit games as a musical device to situate audiences within physical representations of these past ludic places.

Kingdom of Dreams and Magic: Musical Representations of Theme Parks in Japanese Media
Thomas B. Yee

In Japanese anime and video games, Disneyland-esque theme parks present a fascinating nexus between virtual and real worlds. Culturally, Tōkyō Disneyland represents a world of magic, dreams, and pure fantasy, providing an apt setting for anime and game scenes. Japan’s flourishing leisure industry during the 1980s bubble economy (バブル景気, baburu keiki) introduced theme parks across Japan to drive tourism to countryside towns. After the bubble economy burst in the 1990s (失われた10 年, ushinawareta jūnen), many theme parks went out of business and became
abandoned places (廃墟, haikyo). Thus, the abandoned – even haunted – theme park became an established trope in the Japanese cultural imagination.

Musically, the theme park topic typically resembles main street or parade music, with common musical characteristics including ‘oom-pah’ or waltz beat, two-beat bass, calliope organ, brass fanfare, glockenspiel/celesta/toy piano, simple major-mode harmonies, and lively melodies. Four categories of musical theme park representation – evoking, inflecting, distorting, and irony – theorize whether music references the theme park music topic and whether it affirms or subverts its typical mood of joy and wonder. Four case studies illustrate these approaches:
● Persona 5: ‘Destinyland’ evokes Disney Main Street Electrical Parade music; Digital Devil Saga: ‘Point 136’ distorts theme park music to underscore a post-apocalyptic, abandoned Destinyland.
● Aggretsuko: Season 1, Episode 9 features a musical duet evoking the conventions of Disney’s animated movie musicals (e.g. ‘A Whole New World,’ ‘I See the Light’).
● Kirby and the Forgotten Land: ‘Wondaria Remains’ and ‘The Wondaria Dream Parade’ evoke main street and parade music; ‘Welcome to Wondaria’ and ‘Circuit Speedway’ are inflected by the timbre, instrumentation, and harmony of theme park music.
● Cowboy Bebop: Episode 20 scores Space Land using distortion and irony, employing either sound design alone or a grotesque calliope waltz during the battle against Pierrot Le Fou.

Session 5: Carousels of Progress?
Variations on Themes

The Everlasting Dance of Death: The Legacy of Saint-Seäns’s Danse Macabre in De Efteling
Maria Schreurs

In 1978, Dutch theme Park De Efteling opened Spookslot, an animatronics-show that transported the guest to a haunted churchyard. As impressive as the original show was, arguably the most memorable aspect of Spookslot was its music. Instead of composing an original soundtrack – as later would become the norm for De Efteling – the show was set to Camille Saint-Seäns’s symphonic poem Danse Macabre (1875). While Danse Macabre is not the only piece of classical music heard in De Efteling, it is by far the most memorable and enduring. For many Dutch people, Danse Macabre and The Efteling are synonymous.

When De Efteling announced in early 2022 that Spookslot would be demolished in favour of a thrill ride, this decision sparked outrage. While people were rightfully upset about the disappearance of a historically significant attraction, many people also mourned the potential loss of Danse Macabre. However De Efteling soon announced that Saint-Saëns’s symphonic poem would not only be preserved in the new attraction, but that the ride itself would also bear its name: Danse Macabre.

Now that Danse Macabre has opened to the public, this presentation will closely examine Saint-Seäns’s Danse Macabre and how this composition has woven itself into the cultural heritage of De Efteling. I will do so by examining how De Efteling has applied and transformed the piece throughout the years: first as an underscore for an animatronic-show, then as a marketing strategy, and finally as the soundtrack of a thrill ride.

Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion Transformation: “Queue” the Variations of Theme & Variations
Amy Hatch

The opening of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion in 1969 brought precedence in the growing field of imagineering through its development of the omni-mover ride vehicle, continued success with animatronics, and use of special effects such as Pepper’s Ghost. While these elements are essential to the ride itself, they were heightened by the composition of “Grim, Grinning, Ghosts” by Buddy Baker. Baker introduced a four-measure theme first played by the piano. Throughout the duration of the ride, he developed this theme into variations, which reflected the mood of each scene. For example, when entering the ballroom, the variation is an
instrumental waltz; in the beginning of the graveyard scene, you see and hear a ghost band playing a quirky instrumental variation.

In 2024, Disneyland began and completed construction on the queue that included the addition of newly composed music by Ego Plum (Ernesto Guerrero). I call these additions “variations of the variations” because 1) Plum preserved the original theme through variations of Baker’s waltz variation and John Debney’s Phantom Manor score from Disneyland Paris, and 2) the variation of how the music is heard: As one continuous loop with no boundaries for the scenes in the queue. In this paper, I reveal the phenomenon of these musical loops set to specific scenes within the attraction versus the continuous forty-minute loop in the queue of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion through an analysis of its form: Theme and variations. With this exciting addition to the queue, the innovative music ties the mansion together with its spacious grounds, as originally intended by Walt Disney himself.

The Main Street Electrical Parade as a Travelling Harmonic Theme and Variations
James Bohn

The Main Street Electrical Parade has existed at Disneyland, the Walt Disney World Resort, Tokyo Disneyland and Disneyland Paris on and off in various version from 1972 though today (currently existing as Tokyo Disneyland Electrical Parade: DreamLights). The parade came out of the Electrical Water Pageant (1971-present) at the Walt Disney World Resort. It is the first parade to use a continuous, synchronized musical score. Simply put, every float features its own music, but every float’s music is in the same tempo and key, and is synchronized with a common backing track. The backing track itself uses the melody “Baroque Hoedown,” an instrumental song written and recorded by Jean-Jacques Perry and Gershon Kingsley for their 1967 album Kaleidoscopic Vibrations.

Accordingly, the score can be described as a series of harmonic theme and variations, in which a variety of Disney melodies are re-interpreted and super imposed over a cyclical harmonic structure. Ultimately, this is often accomplished by utilizing pan-diatonicism giving the music a somewhat Neo-Classical flavor. Investigating how these Disney melodies are incorporated into the “Baroque Hoedown” theme forms a lens through which this revolutionary musical / technological achievement can be appreciated.

Session 6: Dreamflights/Droomvluchts
Experiencing Theme Park Music

What Story Will You Find? – The Role of Music in Tokyo DisneySea’s Fantasy Springs
Carissa Baker

Tokyo Disney Resort (1983) is fully owned and operated by the Oriental Land Company, or OLC Group, under a license from Disney that includes design and intellectual property usage. Previous literature documents the success and importance of the resort to Japanese culture as well as the theme park industry’s expansion in Asia (e.g., Clavé, 2007; Kawamura & Hara, 2010; Raz, 2004; Toyoda, 2014). Tokyo DisneySea (2001) is widely considered a pinnacle of theme park design filled with elaborately themed lands. This presentation will provide a case study of the importance of music in one of these lands: Fantasy Springs. According to OLC Group, Fantasy Springs, opened in 2024, cost a hefty $2 billion. While it shares several design elements with other immersive areas, Fantasy Springs is also a master-planned musical environment. The land has both original and intellectual property-based soundtracks as well as theming and musical motifs that are carried over to the adjacent Tokyo DisneySea Fantasy Springs Hotel. Musical styles differ between the four distinct land sections. For example, the Magical Springs area is represented by water motifs and peaceful, wistful orchestration (as in “Fantasy Springs Suite”), whereas the songs of Peter Pan’s Never Land are often jaunty and playful such as the new sea shanty entitled “Jolly Roger Boat Song.” Of particular importance to the land is “Journey to Fantasy Springs,” the land’s theme song, which served as a marketing tool that garnered excitement, visitation, and multiple covers. The music’s success generated three albums with a single, a regular album, and a deluxe compilation. This presentation will detail how music is used throughout the experience to establish the setting and create a detailed and evocative space that stands apart from other global themed lands.

Where Nostalgia Meets Frisson: Music for Disney Fireworks
Gregory Camp

The Disney theme parks are known among the fan community for their careful attention to musical detail, but academics have only recently begun to examine the inner workings of theme park music. Most visitors see at least one fireworks spectacular during their time at the parks – each of Disney’s twelve international parks presents at least one – and these are often at the centre of their subsequent reminiscences. These shows use new and classic Disney songs to reinforce the existence of the Disney music canon and to engender notions of nostalgia as visitors are guided to reminisce about their earlier musical experiences. In this paper I examine how Disney crafts their fireworks scores around newly composed and pre-existing music to create cohesively structured musical narratives. The Magic Kingdom’s current fireworks show Happily Ever After is indicative in that it includes 24 songs in its 18 minutes, ranging from full choruses heard in their original film versions to single phrases newly arranged or combined with other songs. But far from being merely Disney song highlights reels, these shows are carefully crafted to convey narratives of success, triumph, and/or imagination. Happily Ever After and Fantasmic! (at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disneyland) are case studies that demonstrate this narrative drive through a pointed ordering of the musical material in a way that builds large-scale narratives from disparate songs, and dramatic modulatory progressions borrowed from contemporary film scoring practices. Disney keeps its visitors coming back to the parks through their fireworks displays and their frisson-inducing music.