Just in case Orlando Florida needed another theme park, we decided to create one that would stand out on it’s own against the likes of Disney World, Universal and Sea World, just to name some of the big dogs in the theme park business in this part of Florida. We would like to introduce you to the Garden Gateways Park of Orlando.

Also, in case any of you reading about this concept get excited because you really, really like gardens, please temper your expectations. This is simply a labor of love on the part of our staff and is based on hopes, wishes and a run-a-way imagination. Unfortunately, no-one has approached us to create such a venture and probably never will. We are simply landscape design and planning people who love gardens so much that we are convinced that everyone else does as well.

Other than wanting to engage in this flight of design fancy, we justify the concept on the basis of “Why hasn’t someone done this already”? and then wait to see if somebody will do something like this.

When you realize that many botanical gardens have an attendance of nearly 1,500,000 visitors a year such the Denver Botanical Gardens, you understand how popular these venues are.  Then you notice that other attractions such as Disney’s Epcot attract nearly 11 million visitors a year and place such an enormous value on gardens and you have to think, why not make fantastic gardens the primary focus for a theme park? Of course, there are all of the practical considerations such as costs relative to production and operations and on and on. There will always be as many reasons why something can’t be done as there are reasons to do it. But we will leave all of that to someone else. We are just designer-dreamers-imagineers after all.

Now, what is the Garden Gateways Park all about? It’s all about gardens of course and plants and water and food and nature and beauty and having a good time and even gaining knowledge. Come to think about it, it’s also about the birds and bees, at least the kind that fly about. This also includes photography for those who love to get immersed into that great past time and now in the days of the smart phone, almost everyone loves to take pictures. Come to think of it, gardens are also about walking and sitting and exercise and bringing families together on at least one activity that all of the family members can enjoy together. Did we mention fresh air and sunlight? We even like rainy days in a beautiful garden. And gardens are places where thoughts of work and politics don’t belong.

Garden Gateways Park was conceived to have all of the usual features and amenities of any typical and successful theme park such as rides, attractions and dining appropriate to the venue.  Garden Gateways has all of these features in spades and adds some additional elements to the mix. We have created the following outline with features placed in the generally acceptable categories for you to see and analyze, but only if you care to. There are probably those that would get into the design weeds just to see how others might create a garden theme park and many others that would determine that they could create a better garden theme park concept than we have and we welcome all of them to have at it. In any case, we would enjoy whatever garden theme park that anybody or any group might ultimately bring into being.

Targeted age of visitors:

This would obviously be all ages and even though the gardens themselves might have a greater allure for adults, the insertion of appropriate rides and interactive displays for every age group will serve to attract everyone. For an example, in a fantasy garden such as Alice in Wonderland, the gardens themselves would be composed of imaginative plant forms such as topiaries, shrubbery and flower beds displayed in unusual formats and shapes, all supporting the characters and objects familiar to those who know this storyline. Additionally this garden scene will be sure to charm those who have not previously been introduced to Alice and her story. And I for one have never seen a child that does not succumb to the allure of being in a delightful garden and further I would be really suspect about the nature of any adult who did not react favorably when surrounded by the elements that go into creating a beautiful landscape.

Park Elements:

• The gardens themselves  would be beautiful, varied, specific to themes and informative to everyone. Our intent is to put visitors into a fanciful and beautiful place where reality is temporarily suspended to a significant degree. The rides are geared to every age group and although not up in complexity and volume to the larger local theme parks that are designed primarily for younger visitors, they should be more than sufficient to keep them active and happy.

• Transportation: A modern tram system is used to quickly transport visitors from the parking facilities to the Parks reception area and from them to each major attraction Depot station. Electric Jitneys continuously move passengers on assigned routes throughout the park for the internal transportation needs of visitors.

• Dining: Virtually every attraction will have a place where food and drinks can be purchased. The major venues such as the country attractions surrounding the lake would have major sit down dinning while other domains might have a variety of snack or kiosk style eateries.

• Attractions: For simplicity in a concept plan, we have selected various domains and placed them in acreage plots that might be significantly larger than actually needed or desired. In an actual planning session, we would design a theme park based on due-dilligence and adhering to budgetary restraints and then a more realistic sizing of venues would occur. But we are not restrained by such realities, so what you see is what you get and what we wanted in our concept. Please visit our attached graphics to see all of the various attractions we have conjured up for our garden Gateways Park.

• Technology: This would be a lot to get into with a conceptual project, but needless to say todays’ mobile technology would play a large part in a visitors experience. On every step of the journey through Garden Gateways Park, the mobile phone or pad apps will assist the guests in getting the most out of their experience. All internal botanical gardens will contain plantings that will be tagged and when the tag is scanned by their devices, inform the user of relevant identification and other information of that plant. A snapshot can be taken at any time of any plant and the information will automatically be digitally recorded and tagged to the photo. Additionally the plants image can be photographed without scanning the tag and the Garden Gateways App will attempt to identify the plantings and display the information. Any destination within the park can be located with the Garden Gateways App and selected. Information about that destination will be shown to the guest. When the guest then boards a Jitney, their device will indicate to a scanner what destination they desire to visit. The Jitney pilot will then take them to their chosen attraction. The Park can also deploy an Alert system that will interrupt all other current processes on the mobile devices when an emergency arises such as a security alarm or severe weather warning. And of course, purchases at the Reception, toll booths, gift shops and dining can be made through the mobile App system.

As you can see, we have done a lot of “wool gathering” when thinking about our Garden Gateways Park concept and we have hopefully given you plenty to think about.