Scent Attraction Blog

For years theme parks and other entertainment businesses whose whole agenda is to create and experience for people have been scenting the air in some kind. This builds memories along with the other stimulants in their attractions these consist of;

• Sight and visual stimulants, these can be bright colours, bright lights, characters dressed up dancing around entertaining people, some different areas of the attraction are themed to give the appearance of being somewhere else.
• Sounds, there are many sounds going on around you, for example catchy music being played, music is also great at setting a theme, for example a haunted house may player slower spooky sounds and of course many other people on rides screaming with joy and fear.
• Feel, when you experience a ride you are sitting on the ride, whether it being a roller coaster with the harness coming over your head builds up to the excitement. Additionally a carousel horse that you sit on could have heat and breathing movement to it (like the Avatar ride in Disney’s Animal Kingdom), a haunted house may have an un-even floor to disorientate the ride goers, temperature of rides, hot and cold areas can set the scent and a recoil of a gun on a ride is also an experience of touch and feel.
• Taste are an important factor, different areas of some theme parks will sell different foods to cater for the theme. For example a Cowboy area may have turkey legs and BBQ foods. A great example of this is Disney’s Epcot centres Food and Wine Festival, all the different country areas have different food and drinks sourced from those countries. Quite often you will have to make a purchase to experience this.
• Smell, one of the most powerful tools to businesses that is underused and so powerful. For experiencing a toy or sweet area of a theme park, make it smell sweet, it costs very little and attracts people in and that smell and memory will stay with them for a long time. Experiencing a few seconds of different scent during a ride adds to an amazing experience, like the Disney Soarin’ ride or the Avatar ride, during the ride you will experience different fragrances as well as corresponding visuals to whisk your consciousness off to experience a heightened sensation of being totally emerged in the ride.

Fragrancing an experience or attraction is such a cheap and doable solution today and brings new people in to the experience that may of previously only waited on the side line.

Closer to home, another attraction that uses scents to build upon the experience for visitors is the Jorvik Viking Centre here in York. The attraction is a totally immersed experience based upon how Olde Yorke would look, feel and smell back 1000 years ago. One of the most important features on the attraction is the careful, well thought out and controlled scents that are experienced during the ride.

There maybe a fire being used for cooking, so the fragrance experienced when seeing that will be a burning wood, flint aroma and possibly slight food smell, later on, the sanitary conditions will be shown and maybe a fragrance resembling this, additionally, basic living conditions back 1000 year ago may have smelt very different today, so these can be also experienced, these could resemble medieval farming, animals, pigs and barn smells.

One of the hardest things to do when fragrancing is the removal of the fragrances once they have been experienced, this is ok when there is movement of people on the ride, but what if they are not moving, for example, in a cinema or theatre? The air will have to be moved by the way of large fans. So for this to work successfully, the image on the screen should be that of movement as to not confuse the viewer while the fans are one, so it is works out to being a visual, fragrance and feel experience they are experiencing while being sat still.

Some examples of fragrances at work in theme pars are;

• Main Street USA in Disney World, these can smell sweet like cookies, vanilla and chocolate, (checkout those 3 vents at the bottom of the shop windows).
• Soarin has the smell of citrus and fresh sea air, this can also be experienced on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
• Rum or an alcohol aroma, also on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride when you pass by a drunken pirate.
• Fresh wood / pine fragrance while on the ET Ride at Universal Studios, in the queue when you pass through the forest.
• Burning wood used in some rides when experiencing a burning scene like on Space Ship Earth.
• Avatar ride, when flying around there is the earthy, foliage smell when flying low to the ground, the smell of a fresh salty sea scene when over the water.
• The Haunted House ride at Magic Kingdom has a musty smell to “set the scene”.

All the above carefully thought out aromas are all building on the experience for people. This is how human beings learn, from experiences.

Make visiting your business memorable by adding an aroma – contact us today to discuss adding an aroma, scent or fragrance to your business, we can custom create an aroma for you or choose from one of our many already created fragrances.