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Week 13: Theme Park Draft

Camelot: Rethinking the RenFair

Camelot is a historically themed Dark Ages theme park focused on telling the history and lifestyle of Dark Ages England and their neighbors through the legends of King Arthur, both the well-known ones and the obscure ones. The goal of this park is to entertain and educate by creating a genuine historical experience with a living museum and presenting it not as a clinical reenactment but as an interactive adventure where guests can experience the history for themselves. The park is a return to the original purpose of reenactment, while reinvigorating it to make the purposes of research and education more readily appealing and accessible to an audience.

            The main attractions of the park are interactive ‘exhibits’ where guests can watch and learn medieval crafts and skills from trained actors, stunt performers, and craftsmen, who turn the process of educating guests into an exciting hands-on experience. You don’t just watch some guys swinging swords and talking about it in a clinical dry tone, you get to go hands-on and learn moves from them. This makes the events more accessible by allowing an approach from multiple angles – if you are not directly hands-on you are still learning from watching, and engaged by the interactions between guests and staff

            All throughout the park, in addition to events, are character actors who enhance the experience and authenticity as they interact with guests, explain the attractions and roles to them, and guide them through the park while performing their roles as ‘decorative’ entertainment. These additional actors offer opportunities as well to conceal the more modern necessities of an amusement park such as security guards, janitors, medics, etc. and blend them more naturally into the historically focused environment.

            The park is focused on maintaining as close to a period-appropriate feel and appearance as is practically possible – shops that sell more modern amenities like sodas or t-shirts will still blend in naturally with the stalls of blacksmiths or woodworkers instead of being overly distracting anachronisms. For the same reason, guests cannot enter with costumes of their own – the anachronisms of guests who do not fully understand the period would distract from the educational goals of the park.

            To keep the park from becoming too same-y for returning guests, each “season” of the park would have a particular overarching theme based around a major event of the Dark Ages and Early Medieval Period, tying it into the mythology of King Arthur and its characters. The key to a living museum is the “living” part – Guests should be able to expect a new experience when they visit over many years, while still getting a familiar atmosphere.

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