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I only wish Creating Memorable Worlds: A Journey into Themed Experience Design by Theron Skees had been around sooner. To be precise, several years ago when I started to try to find my way in the industry. I could have learned from a book what I instead learned through error. It gladdens me that future job seekers can have this leg up when starting their career journeys!

An eye to career applicability pervades all parts of the text. In particular, the emphasis on client brand and the implications for storytelling and design sets it apart from other introductory texts. Using the brand itself to start idea generation and a visual library would have led to better results on several of my school projects. With my particular interests, the Idea Blender Technique also serves me well. It reminds me of affinitizing research but specifically for creative solutions. That would have been even more useful had I learned about it earlier.

A large part of why I recommend this text so strongly is the clarity of the explanations of key concepts. Skees tailors many explanations for readers without much of a background in the field. These include the explanations of story themes and immersing visitors by providing them a role in the story. Skees also includes the obligatory couple of pages on how theme parks and amusement parks differ. If that sounds familiar to you from other texts, you can safely skip those pages.

That said, I recommend reading most sections even if you have read other texts on the subject. A career-focused perspectives shines through enough that you will likely still learn something new. Skees addresses value engineering, not a particularly fun topic to think about, through a cost evaluation funnel approach. This stands out as a positive and useful take on the subject with applicability to projects even beyond themed experiences. Other highlights include many insights on the subjects of presentations and client relations, usually left out of other sources. The presentation sections in particular would have helped me design more elegant presentations as a student.

One stand-alone insight that I personally found very thought-provoking was the idea of designing “life” into employee break spaces. That got me thinking about my own work experiences and what I learned from them. Good examples of “life” include the ability to walk to an aquarium during a lunch break in one job and the treat of homemade tablet in the break room during the busiest season in another. Those sorts of reflection-inducing insights make the book worth discussing in a group of class, not only working through individually.

In regards to career advice, Skees emphasizes a clear path of choosing a specialty in the industry based on your existing skills first. Only after that comes thinking about how to approach the industry as a whole. With that emphasis in mind, the sections on the different roles involved in the industry jumped out at me, providing much more detail than previous books on the subject. Insights such as the technical contributions from game design and the prevalence of architects and designers in design management roles make what could be a dry summary a useful and interesting tool. Such clear insights, in fact, that I personally found this section distressing to read. It reminded me too much of my own career development mistakes.

The structure of the ending reinforces this message, explicitly prompting readers to return to the beginning and reread the book with an eye specifically to how it applies to their personal careers. This book certainly does make a good self-development resource for themed industry aspirants and professionals, especially with such instructions for study. It also would make an ideal first textbook for a themed experience/entertainment curriculum. Providing such a clear road map to students at the beginning of their studies would benefit them greatly, both in school and in the industry.