I am the co-owner and Creative Producer at theme park design consultancy Firefly Creations and it is my role to make sure all of our projects are progressing to deliver amazing experiences. This can include state of the art roller coasters and immersive dark rides through to master plans for whole theme parks and water parks. I love the variety this brings and the opportunity to apply technology and engineering in exciting new ways to transport visitors to worlds they thought only existed in their dreams. To learn more visit www.fireflycreations.uk
Michelle Hicks
My day starts early with a strong cup of tea and an industry magazine that talks about all of the new and exciting innovations on the market. This gets me thinking about all of the new attractions we can create and gets me ready for my first meeting of the day with our Creative team. I love starting the day with these meetings as it really gets the creative juices flowing as the whole team bounce around ideas for a new attraction. At the same time, as an engineer my mind is always whirring in the background to think how we can take these incredible blue-sky ideas and turn them into reality and the technologies we can use to achieve this.
Once we wrap up our creative meeting, we all put on our virtual reality headsets ready for a technical design meeting. We are working on a new roller coaster and have experts from around the world joining us virtually to review the experience. Using virtual reality, we can all meet around a virtual table and walk around a 3D model of the experience, giving an incredible sense of scale. We can explore the area and even take a ride on the roller coaster – but I wouldn’t recommend that unless you’re sitting down!
After this session it’s time for a quick bite for lunch before joining a conference call with a client who is looking to develop a new thrill attraction that will bring something that has never been seen before to their theme park. They have a great space to develop and we start discussing ideas about the stories we can tell and the ride systems that can be used. Whether it is a roller coaster, water ride or dark ride, we see the ride hardware as the means to convey the story. Combined with audio, physical and sensory effects we can design attractions to fully immerse guests in the experience.
The last task of the day is to finish planning a visit to a ride manufacturer. It’s important we make sure the rides being installed provide the physical experience needed and the best way to do this is to try it for yourself! We also visit ride manufacturers to check progress during fabrication and to make the final tweaks to the ride programming. Trying out the rides is definitely one of the perks of the job!
After a busy day I cook a quick meal before putting my feet up to relax and reset ready for another day creating theme park attractions!
Michelle is part of This is Engineering Day on 4 November 2020, a day dedicated to celebrating engineers and engineering. Created by the Royal Academy of Engineering, This is Engineering Day 2020 showcases the feats of engineering that exist all around us and that make a difference to our everyday lives and futures, but often go unnoticed, as well as the engineers behind them. For further information visit www.thisisengineering.org.uk or follow #BeTheDifference.
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