Immersive experience design

Immersive experience design is the planning of a space where story, technology and the room itself work together so that visitors feel inside the story. Mast Parks offers it through master planning, alongside its experience centre work.

Mast Parks offers immersive experience design as part of Master Planning, its design service. The master plan is the blueprint of the park: architectural drawings, crowd movement, ride and attraction selection, theming placement and revisions until the client approves it.

This page explains what immersive experience design involves, where Mast Parks has done this kind of work and what an owner should settle before starting. It stays at the level of what the work is for. The detailed method is part of Mast Parks' professional practice and is not published here.

See the park type hub: Experience Centres. Before design, a feasibility study decides which park or concept suits the site. After the master plan, Architectural Designing produces the construction-level drawings.

An immersive experience is planned like a story told in a room. What the visitor sees, hears and does, in what order and for how long, is designed together. The route matters as much as the content: a visitor led through the space in the right order understands more and remembers more.

Technology and story must be relevant for a specific target group, and must create awe among visitors. At Jungle Adventures, every guest experiences the story and is transported to a world where the Jungle Book characters and story come alive.

Guest flow

The route through the experience is the order of the story. The master plan decides where visitors enter, where they pause, how many a space can hold at once and how they leave, so that the experience works for a crowd as well as for a single visitor.

Attractions

The attractions are the elements that make up the experience: installations, interfaces and spaces to pause. Each should do one thing clearly and support the one before it.

Theming

The theme is the story the experience tells, and the look and sound that make it real. The master plan decides where each part of it appears.

Drawings and revisions

The master plan for an immersive experience is drawn as architectural drawings and sketches with exact measurements. The client reviews the plan, asks for changes and sees it revised until it is approved. Nothing moves to the construction-level drawings until the plan is approved.

Mast Parks' experience work includes a Mast experience centre in Uttar Pradesh, a national level project under the Viksit Bharat Campaign, where it is shaping the story, theme and design, with the master plan and architectural drawings.

Jungle Adventures provides an immersive storytelling experience around the characters and story of the Jungle Book.

An owner brings the site, with its survey and any documents about its boundaries and access, together with the budget and the concept agreed in earlier stages. The owner also brings their views on the plan as it develops, since the revisions depend on them.

The owner receives the approved master plan for the immersive experience.

Immersive experience design is used by private landowners, existing park owners, family businesses, government and tourism bodies, and temples and religious trusts. Government and tourism bodies, existing park owners adding a new attraction and owners planning a visitor centre.

The master plan gives the owner a clear answer to these questions before any building starts:

• The story, and who it is for.
• The order in which visitors meet each part.
• How technology is used, and where.
• How many visitors the space holds at once.
• How the experience fits the wider site.

An immersive experience designed element by element can feel like a set of screens in a room. Visitors may not know where to go, may crowd one space and skip another, and the story may not hold together. Designing the route and the story as one avoids this.

Visitors rarely come to be lectured. They come to feel something new. An immersive experience works when the visitor takes part, and when the content is made for the audience in front of it. This is why the same skills of story, theme and layout that shape a park also shape an immersive experience. See immersive museums for more on the idea.

Owners get more from this service when they arrive with answers, or at least with a view, on the points below. None of them needs to be settled in advance, and Mast Parks can help to settle them.

• How much land is available, and is it one piece?
• What has the feasibility work recommended for the immersive experience?
• What is the budget range for the first phase?
• Which attractions matter most to your audience?
• What should a visitor feel, and what should they remember afterwards?
• Are there features on the site, such as trees, water or slopes, that you want to keep?

• Master plan. The blueprint of the park: where everything goes.
• Guest circulation. How guests move through the park.
• Zoning. Dividing the park into areas for different kinds of attraction, theme or audience.
• Immersive. Designed so that the visitor feels part of the story.
• Interface. A screen or device a visitor uses to take part.

Mast Parks organises its work as 13 services in four stages, listed here in the order a project usually follows. Immersive experience design (Master Planning) is shown in bold. An owner can start at any stage, but each stage builds on the one before it.

• Concept and Planning. Feasibility Studies, Financial Planning, Concept Creation, Theme Development.
• Design and Execution. Master Planning, Architectural Designing, Project Management Consultancy.
• Rides, People and Operations. Ride and Attraction Planning, Team Hiring and Training, Operations Planning.
• Launch and Growth. Marketing and Branding, Merchandising, Content and Events.

Most owners use several of these services together, and some use the full set from idea to opening. See all 13 on the services page.

Mast Parks works with the owner at each step. The owner approves the work before it moves to the next stage, and revisions are part of the process. The owner knows the site, the region and the ambition. Mast Parks brings experience of designing and delivering parks across eight park types. For an immersive experience, the best results come when the two work as one team, with decisions made quickly and in the open.

To start a conversation, use the contact page. Mast Parks will ask about the site, the park you have in mind and where you are in the project.