The ‘urban’ park, combining city atmospheres with different decades in easily-divided slices, united by a peoplemover system that weaves through the radial time-zones.
Ticketing is outside the park area, then you board a peoplemover that carries you through an entry strip in a tunnel (so that park is a perfect circle) and you emerge from the darkness into 1900, and can get off or keep riding, which then circles through 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000, and finally into the deep future before cycling again or returning to the ticketing area.
The peoplemover that does the inner loop [and the entry tunnel] has all of its cars as separate entities, more like taxis than a tram, and all travelling on a track with a constant quick speed; you push a button to call a car into the loading area, then—inside the car—select from eight buttons, each coordinating with a time-zone or the entry tunnel, to let the track know when to push your car onto the outer track. The outer track is slower and has seven significant U-shapes, and they slow significantly in the load/unload area at each stop.
Each time-zone is decked out with period regalia and posters; their atmosphere and layout in accordance with buildings and roadways of the time period. The time-zones aren't explicitly named for their decades (nor are their towns) and it's never a specific date—merely the aesthetics and history for the ten-year-periods BEFORE and AFTER the eponymous year.
Shows, animatronics, museums, and rides: each period would have at least one thrill ride (think rollercoaster), one lazy ride (think boats), one story ride (think omnimover), and one animatronic ride (think stage show), and additional rides of these styles may be included depending on what best suits the area. Also, restaurants and stores will be reminiscent of their period in both appearance and design: immersive dining and shopping experiences rather than mere façades with modern establishments within. Shows and rides about history, technology, communication, transportation, language, literature, art, science, math, etcetera will dominate the majority of buildings within the urban landscape of each time-zone, creating an environment for learning while playing, with many museumettes duplicated [but updated] in one time-zone after another.
The big rides for each time-zone are nearest the center, where the space compacts. Hotels for each time-zone are on the outer edge, themed appropriately and all connected by their own monorail; hotel-goers would have a separate entry into the park (in that staying at the hotels includes admission tickets).
Double-decker trolleys rove the streets of the time-zones; these and pseudo-taxis (open-top and open-side cars that can be flagged) can take guests down onto a highway system that circles the underground area of Urbania: unseen roads that move guests around the park in a way other than the “time traveling” monorail, and other than walking through the numerous weaving city streets.
The sole parking lots in 1900, 1920, and 1940 are inside tenement housing buildings, whose interiors are gutted. The sole parking lots in 1960, 1980, and 2000 are legitimate parking garages, albeit with smaller spaces. The sole parking lot in Deep Future is a tower parking garage—like the “elevator/vending machine” ones in Germany and Japan.
1900: Boston
Third Party Restaurants: Subway, Chipotle.
Inner portion of glamorous Americana décor (reminiscent of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair) juxtaposed by dingy tenements on the outer portion.
Shop where they make pretzels in front of you (like Julius Sturgis of Lancaster, PA) and a shop where they make chocolate in front of you (like Wilbur Chocolate of Lititz, PA).
Alley with a waylaid penny-farthing among other abandoned things, to be looked upon from the opposite side of a porous fence.
Duplicates of this staged “alley dump” should appear in every decade area, with an incarnation of the bicycle in the same spot, as well as radios, signage, automobiles, furniture, etc.
1920: Brooklyn
Third Party Restaurants: Popeye’s, Auntie Anne’s.
Speakeasies, jazz lounges…
Warehouse containing a dark ride about gangsters in a gunfight.
Rum-running rollercoaster.
Thrill ride at the dockyards.
1940: Los Angeles
Third Party Restaurants: Culvers, Dunkin Donuts.
Urban ‘film noir’ detective experience, in a series of harshly-lit greyscale rooms, solving a murder or a disappearance.
Racing antique cars down Sunset Boulevard.
Posh dining experience.
Carthay Circle theater, featuring Code-era films.
1960: Upper Manhattan
Third Party Restaurants: Sonic Drive-In, KFC.
Madison Avenue, Hell’s Kitchen, MOMA, 30 Rock, Columbus Circle, Radio City Music Hall, Central Park…
Dining and shopping galore.
Bevy of music and performance venues.
Some kind of ride based on the roaring advertising industry…
1980: Beverly Hills
Third Party Restaurants: Burger King, Taco Bell.
Tour of the homes of the stars—an obscene journey through A-list schlockbuster Hollywood.
EMV courses through a studio lot, traversing the terrain, décor, and special effects of different genre movie sets.
Garishly-retro eateries and clothing shops.
MTV dance hall.
…
2000: Lower Manhattan
Third Party Restaurants: Raising Cane’s, Starbucks.
Broadway, SoHo, Chinatown, the Financial District, the Lower East Side, Battery Park…
Circuit of 90-minute stage show musicals.
Small simulation vehicles inside 270-degree theaters, racing and reeling during the simulation of a taxi speeding through the streets of the city.
Good eats and hip fashion stores.
Some kind of ride rooted in Wall Street, inside the Stock Exchange…
Deep Future: Seattle
Third Party Restaurants: Five Guys, Panera Bread.
Have arcing, flat, clear boards arc across street with side-scrolling text of park updates, information, and news about the company (both real and “time period accurate,” AKA invented and predicted news about the company.)
Aura of sarcasm—for example, the queue for a ride has advertisements and announcements extolling the “new and amazing” “Turn-With-Me Turn-o-Matic Turnstiles,” which are simply the turnstiles used to enter the ride’s loading area. The ride isn’t mentioned before entering it; the queue is a showroom for the turnstiles, basically, leading to an inevitable lackluster climax.
Beseech Matt Novak, of Paleofuture, for influence on designing the area.
Have public announcement system constantly chiming in (like in Stark HQ in Marvel’s Ultimate Alliance (PSP) or in Rapture in Bioshock), kindly reminding people to not stop in the middle of the road, to pull over if they’re stopping, to take bathroom breaks frequently, etcetera. (PA voice is placid and feminine.)
Launch coaster “testing” a new Hyperloop-type system that “goes haywire”.
Robot show…?
Original document created 01/11/2015.