Tyrannosaurus Hand-Job.

pureimagineering:

Forget Seinfeld—theme parks are unique in telling a type of story where nothing happens.

They feature neither dialogue nor action. There are no visible protagonists, objectives, or antagonists. The events began, escalated, and resolved long before we arrived.

These stories are forensic. They leave archeological clues that imply what happened, which lets us assemble the pieces together into a narrative.

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pureimagineering:

A GIF is an image that can support animation. Nothing too complicated, mind you, just a few actions. Roughly as much as we’d see, passing by an animatronic in a dark ride.

Here, for example, is a GIF of the clock from it’s a small world.

Just wait ‘til the hour strikes.
Any minute, now.
…aaaaaany minute, now.

That’s all that clock does, all day, every day, rain or shine. There are classier ways to argue for theme parks as a valid artistic medium, but goddamn if that 8-bit image doesn’t capture what makes that clock as fun as it is in real life.

Some animatronics take their GIF-like movement a step further—by telling stories. There are fewer of these characters, but they enrich their surroundings immeasurably.

A ride populated with living characters who tell small-but-complete stories feels less like a narrative and more like a world. Everyone’s dealing with their own problems, but they’re all related to problems you’d find in the jungle. Or with ghosts, or pirates, et cetera.

Of course, there aren’t many GIFs of animatronics. That would be helpful. That would illustrate my theory. That would make this essay easier to read. Thank heavens the internet hasn’t cursed us with more than a handful of GIFs of animatronics.

The internet has, mercifully enough, provided us with a wealth of GIFs from Disney cartoons. In theory, these could be adapted into animatronic figures, so for our purposes, we’ll pretend that’s what they are.

Without further ado, let’s discuss the GIF story.

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