Museum of Science and Invention

The Museum of Science and Invention from the world of Phineas and Ferb was a project created by myself and Doug Rakoczy for the University of Florida/Point Park University Team for the 2013 Walt Disney Imagineering ImagiNations Design Competition. [Note: This project is the sole property of Walt Disney Imagineering and all rights to use these ideas are exclusive to Walt Disney Imagineering. The competition is a way for students and recent graduates to showcase their talents and for Walt Disney Imagineering to identify new talent. All intellectual property used in this project belongs to its respective owners, and this blog has no affiliation to the Walt Disney company in any way.]

This was the second time Doug and I collaborated on an ImagiNations design contest and the third time I participated. The prompt was to design an experience for a large city that transforms it for the enjoyment of its citizens and visitors. After considering several possibilities, we decided to develop a concept based on Phineas and Ferb because of the comic and educational possibilities of the show. In particular, we liked how the show seems to exist in an alternative reality in which science is real, but making things work is much easier than in real life. This, we reasoned, would make a great basis for a science museum.

I created the concept art, while Doug was responsible for the vehicle design and modeling. We both collaborated on the story. At the end of the day, we did not make it to the next round of the competition, but we generated a lot of quality work we are both proud of.

Below, I have reproduced the text and imagery from our submission:

Project Summary:
The Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated Main Building rises prominently above the skyline of Pittsburgh, transforming the Pittsburgh Tri-State Area into the Danville Tri-State Area from Phineas and Ferb. The Museum of Science and Invention is housed inside this distinctive, environmentally friendly building.

Dr. Doofenshmirtz's latest diabolical plan to take over the Tri-State-Area involves winning the trust and admiration of the citizens of Danville by opening a museum. In addition to highlighting some of Dr. Doofenshmirtz's latest inventions, this museum has an educational mission to inspire children to learn about science and engineering through interactive hands on exhibits. Each exhibit starts with a common everyday invention and breaks it down into fundamental components explained through hands on exhibits and interactive media. Within some of the exhibits are inventions made by Phineas and Ferb, including Where’s Perry? a hydrogen balloon ride over parts of the museum and across Danville on a quest to find Perry while Candace tries to bust everyone.

The finale experience is the Elevator-Inator, an elevator which can travel horizontally and vertically. Guests board the vehicle and are lifted into Dr. Doofenshmirtz's lab, where he reveals that the whole museum was a ruse to fool the residents of Danville so he can take over the Tri-State Area. Agent P arrives and wrestles Dr. Doofenshmirtz for the ride’s remote control, sending the vehicle careening through Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s workshop and activating some of his evil inventions. Agent P eventually defeats Dr. Doofenshmirtz by exploding one of Phineas and Ferb’s hydrogen balloons while guests in the Elevator-Inator are returned safely to the ground.

Story Behind the Design:

Welcome to the greatest museum in the Tri-State Area! Dr. Doofenshmirtz invites you and your family to the new Museum of Science and Invention! Inside, family members will be able to dive head first into the world of science, engineering, and technology.

At least, that’s what Dr. Doofenshmirtz wants you to think. In addition to sharing his love of science, the purpose of this museum is to brainwash the citizens of the Tri-State Area into handing over the deeds to their houses. Dr. Doofenshmirtz invented the Elevator-Inator, but he decided it wasn’t evil enough. So he installed a Mind Control-Inator to the seats so he could make guests give him the deeds to their property.

Phineas and Ferb were taken to the museum by Candace today. When the boys realize Perry is missing, they build hydrogen balloons to find him. They invite other museum patrons to help them locate Perry. Meanwhile, Perry has been captured by Dr. Doofenshmirtz while attempting to foil his plot. Agent P eventually defeats Dr. Doofenshmirtz by exploding one of Phineas and Ferb’s hydrogen balloons near Dr. Doofenshmirtz and reversing the Mind Control-Inator. Once again the day is saved, thanks to Agent P!

Guest Experience:
Every guest that visits the museum is transported into the world of Phineas and Ferb and experiences interactive, hands on exhibits about science and the history of invention. It is the mission of the museum to enrich the ideas, imaginations, and passion of all people and to explore the world around them in the light of science. Exhibits range from hands-on demonstrations to rides and interactive media, ensuring that there is material presented in ways suitable for all types of learners. In addition to the many exhibits and attractions, several programs are offered for the educational outreach of school children. The Doofenshmirtz Summer School of Science is where children will learn how to become the next generation of mad scientists… er, inventors! Programs for school groups will also be available. This museum will entertain and inspire tourists from around the world, but it will also provide a valuable educational environment for the people who call the Tri-State Area home.

The full-scale recreation of the Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc. Main Building will permanently transform Pittsburgh into Danville, and the museum will inspire the children of Pittsburgh with Phineas and Ferb’s spirit of invention.

Pittsburgh was selected to be transformed into Danville because it is the second largest Tri-State metro area in the United States, and the largest without a state-of-the-art family science museum. Home to over 2.6 million people, the Pittsburgh Tri-State area has the population necessary to support this educational entertainment complex.

“Welcome, citizens of the Tri-State Area! I hope you enjoy my museum that is definitely not some sort of evil scheme.”

Guests enter through the Atrium of Genius, a tribute to our generation’s greatest inventor, complete with a collection of his masterpieces. Each of the museum’s exhibits can be accessed through this atrium, but the exhibits are also designed to flow from one to another internally.

Exhibits include full-scale recreations of historic moments in the progression of ideas along with demonstrations, displays and interactive media. Shown here is part of the Make it Float-Inator, where the Wright Brothers perfected the ideal wing shape for flight. Here, guests can test different wing shapes in a wind tunnel, read how it was done or interact with the Wright Brothers in person. Lighter-than-air flight is described in Where’s Perry? While visiting this exhibit, Phineas and Ferb realized Perry was missing, so they invented hydrogen balloons to look for him. This ride (a suspended variation of the Omnimover ride system) goes over this wing of the museum before leaving the building and soaring over Danville (done in miniatures, like Peter Pan’s Flight).

Attractions and Exhibits:
The Lair Restaurant and Observatory is a family dining environment complete with great views of Danville and furnishings fit only for the future ruler of the Tri-State Area.

The Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc. Hotel and Suites are generally less evil than most of the Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc. projects, because it is operated by Doofenshmirtz’s bank, with whom he is late on mortgage payments.

The 1st floor is occupied by the Hotel Lobby, Museum entrance and Retail Space. Guests exiting the museum do so through a Disney Store featuring an extensive collection of Phineas and Ferb merchandise.

Museum guests enter through the 1st Floor, ascend stairs to the Atrium of Genius, and travel by escalator to the top museum floor. Each exhibit flows into the next, although they are all accessible through the Atrium of Genius.

The Time Warp-Inator allows guests to witness the discovery of some of the most groundbreaking inventions.

Follow in the footsteps of Henry Ford and design the next generation of electric powered vehicles at the Car-Inator.

Discover what it really takes to make things fly in the Make it Float-Inator complete with a hydrogen balloon ride invented by Phineas and Ferb.

Finally, ride Dr. Doofenshmirtz's latest invention, The Elevator-Inator! On this thrilling ride, witness experiments that are in progress and discover what it really takes to be an inventor.

The Elevator-Inator is a new style of family thrill ride that takes the classic dark ride and turns it on its side. The vehicle combines conventional simulator movement with a unique track configuration to simulate an elevator that can travel up, down, left and right. In order to be accessible to the greatest number of guests, seats and restraints are able to be raised and lowered so that the height restriction is only 36”. In order to be accessible to guests with disabilities, those needing special assistance will be placed in a custom wheel chair at the station. Once the other guests are seated, the wheel chair is locked into position in the center seat of the front row.

The Elevator-Inator is driven by a unique system that uses a worm gear and sprocket that connects to the track. On the track itself is a 3” wide toothed bar which allows the car to climb the vertical portions of track. Each car is powered by 2 bus bars that also run the length of the track. Linear actuators on the top and back of the car allow it to rock front and back as well as side to side to keep the car level. Speakers are located in the head rests and under each seat in order to produce binaural sounds to create the effect of the Mind Control-Inator.

Guests board the vehicle and are lifted into Dr. Doofenshmirtz's lab, where he reveals that the whole museum was a ruse. He activates the Mind Control-Inator but before the riders give up their homes, Agent P escapes and wrestles Dr. Doofenshmirtz for the ride’s remote control, sending the vehicle careening through the workshop and activating some of his evil inventions. Agent P eventually defeats Dr. Doofenshmirtz by exploding one of Phineas and Ferb’s hydrogen balloons while guests in the Elevator-Inator are returned safely to the ground. Once again, the day is saved, thanks to Agent P!

***

I hope you've enjoyed reading about The Museum of Science and Invention. We only had a few weeks to work on this project, which we completed while I was a full time graduate student who also worked 20 hours a week as a research assistant. So I am extremely happy that we managed to complete as much as we did. The only thing I wished I could have added to this was a layout for the Elevator-Inator ride. Maybe I will get back to it one day.

The Monorail Project - Resort Loops and Comparisons

Now that I have outlined the main theme park connector monorail, I can begin to fill in the extensions to the resorts. I will show maps of individual concepts grouped based on their theme park transfer station. Where multiple options are given, I will compare them based on their combined scores and lengths.

Magic Kingdom Transfer Station




The first addition is the extension of the existing resort line to stop at Wilderness Lodge. It would require approximately one mile of new monorail alignment between the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC) and The Contemporary Resort. The big downside to this alternative is that it would preclude the land between the TTC and The Contemporary from being able to be the site of a resort with a monorail station.

If the Park Connector line described in the previous post has to be built new around the Seven Seas Lagoon for capacity reasons, the Wilderness Lodge Extension could be built for relatively little cost. The existing Resort monorail beam between The Contemporary and TTC stations could be used for the Express line and the new Park Connector line could use the existing Express monorail beam.

Hollywood Studios Transfer Station



All three versions of The Hollywood Studios Loop have a station at the entrance to Hollywood Studios and at the International Gateway entrance to Epcot. The Hollywood Studios Loops A and B also have stops at the Boardwalk Resort, a combined station for the Yacht and Beach Club resorts, and a combined station for the Swan and Dolphin resorts.

Loop A crosses Hollywood Studios between Tower of Terror and the Fantasmic! theater and at the park entrance. The visibility of the monorail within the park is not necessarily an issue in these areas for two reasons: a monorail system was proposed for Los Angeles by the Alweg company in the 1960's, and the area around Fantasmic! has a contemporary aesthetic. The theme park crossing may limit future expansion in the areas adjacent to the monorail, so the other alternatives for this loop do not cross the theme park.



Loop B has all the same stations as Loop A, but it goes around Hollywood Studios instead of through it.



Loop C has an additional station at Blizzard Beach and Coronado Springs. However, it is still the Hollywood Studios alternative with the lowest Station Score/Mile. This alternative is the only Hollywood Studios-based alternative with a possible station at Coronado Springs. Coronado Springs had the 15th highest Resort Score (of 20) and has been classified as having a moderately-convenient layout for monorail transit. So It may not end up having a station in every final resort network alternative.

It is interesting to note here that all three Hollywood Studio Loop alternatives have a substantially higher Station Score/Mile than the existing Resort line. This suggests any of these alternatives would be very highly used if it were built, and it suggests that a large number of rooms (as much as 6,580) would increase in value because of the monorail.

One of the downsides to all of these alternatives is that they include a stop for the Swan and Dolphin resorts, which are not owned by Disney. This is a problem because Disney may not be able to convince the hotel's owners to pay a premium to pay for the construction, staffing, and operation of the Monorail at that site. If Disney chose not to include a stop there because of these negotiations, Disney would look bad for not including a station because the average guest doesn't know that the Swan and Dolphin are not Disney-owned resorts. I would suspect that after the difficulties in justifying an expansion of the monorail system financially, that this may be the second biggest obstacle to any monorail expansion.

The Hollywood Studios station is also ideally located as a transfer point for a monorail serving the resorts located on the southeast portion of Walt Disney World near the ESPN Wide World of Sports. Below are three possible alignments connecting Hollywood Studios to the sports complex and the nearby resorts.



The Sports Loop A serves the Caribbean Beach, Pop Century, and Art of Animation resorts as well as the ESPN Wide World of Sports. Art of Animation and Pop Century had the 16th and 13th highest Resort Score (of 20, respectively) and had been classified as having a moderately-convenient layout for monorail transit. The Caribbean Beach resort had the 19th highest score and a low-convenience layout for monorail. Therefore, all three resorts along this alternative have relatively low priority for monorail access. The one big advantage to this line (and the two other Sports Loop alternatives) is the station at the ESPN Wide World of Sports and the fact that many people coming to the sports complex stay at the nearby resorts.



Sports Loop B adds the All Star Resorts to the station lineup, which is a good fit for this line because sports groups using the Wide World of Sports are frequently booked in the All Star Resorts. Unfortunately, at 8.2 miles, this alternative is one of the longest proposed in the system and is longer than the existing Epcot line by 0.7 miles.



Sports Loop C drops the Caribbean Beach station from the layout of Sports Loop B, saving 0.9 miles. However, both Sports Loop B and C have a lower Station Score/Mile then Sports Loop A. All three alternatives have substantially a lower Station Score/Mile then the existing Resort line, and would probably be relatively low priority.

I will discuss the Animal Kingdom and Epcot transfer station lines in the next post. Let me know if you have any thoughts about the alternatives I discussed here. I would love to hear your ideas.

The Monorail Project - Overall Network Design Strategy

[Note: This was originally posted on April 7th, but due to a technical issue related to the tables, I had to repost.]

Given the Convenience Scores for each resort in the previous post, I am able to determine the Score/Mile of the existing system and some potential monorail alignments. Before I do this, I should assign Convenience Scores to the non-resort station locations. Otherwise, monorail lines that connect theme parks would show lower scores, even though connecting the resorts to theme parks is the whole point of this project. So, for the sake of creating some sort of score, I arbitrarily assigned a score of 100 to theme park stations and 75 to water park and activity center stations. Using this scoring system, the existing monorail network has the following characteristics:

The existing monorail system and the locations of all the possible resort and activity center stations is shown above. The backbone of the expanded monorail network id dictated by Goal 3 from the Monorail Project Goals and Assumptions, which calls for all hotel-to-park trips to be possible with only one transfer. The best way to accomplish this is to have a monorail line that stops at all four theme parks.

The Park Connector monorail line would use the existing Epcot Express line as a base. To get to the Magic Kingdom (if capacity allows) the Epcot Express line could be combined with the Magic Kingdom Express line. If capacity does not allow for the Magic Kingdom Express line to be combined, there may be a need to create a third monorail beam around the Seven Seas Lagoon.

A new monorail alignment would need to be constructed to connect Epcot to Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom. Most of the alignment would probably follow existing roads like the Hollywood Studios entrance road and Osceola Parkway. But there is also the opportunity to stop at the Blizzard Beach water park. Below are two potential alignments, one that stops at the water park and one that does not.

The table above includes Station Scores and Station Scores/Mile for the total proposed alignments and for just the new alignment segments. Note how both Park Connector alternatives have higher average Station Score/Mile than the existing Epcot line. I believe that this points to these alternatives having at least as much usefulness as the existing Epcot line, even without additional resort hotel connections.

At this point, I do not know if it is better to include a stop at Blizzard Beach on the Park Connector, even though the Station Score/Mile is highest for that alternative. It will become apparent whether this station should be a part of the Park Connector line or a resort line after I put together the possible overall resort network combinations.

I will describe some of the possible monorail routes that would connect additional resorts in the next post, along with a way to determine which combinations are worth further investigation.