Information for faculty
Faculty guiding student teams or making decisions about giving academic consideration to student participation at the Toronto Metropolitan University Thrill Design Competition may wish to review some past publications about the competition to understand its design as a learning experience, and its results to date. Links are provided to some publications.
The competition was first held in 2014, in Toronto. The second edition was held in 2016 at Universal Orlando Resort, with the sponsorship of Universal Creative™. Except for pandemic disruption, it has been produced as an annual in-person Invitational since. The Competition may be discontinued at any time. All references to “next year” presume another edition may be produced, but that edition is not assured until announced. The competition is directed and produced by Dr. Kathryn Woodcock, PhD CCPE ICAE PEng, Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University. There is no alternate director. If anything happens to her, an unscheduled cancellation might occur.
Faculty/staff interaction with participants
Due to scarce spaces for presentation of challenge solutions, limited information is revealed about the competition and university groups learn of it by word of mouth. Teams register for an Open Qualifying stage in late Winter term and submit their design in early summer. Invitations are issued mid-summer. Teams know only the general nature of their challenge (e.g., mechanical design, safety/accessibility, attraction design) until the opening day of the competition. Time pressure is part of the challenge.
Both stages are subject to participant agreements that prohibit disclosure of challenges or team work in progress and competed designs to any party outside of the team or competition, for both Open Qualifying and Invitational stages. No faculty, staff, friends, family, or colleague may advise the group pertaining to the challenge. As all participants are age 18+ and teams have at least one age 21+ member, teams may not be accompanied by chaperones, advisors, or other interested parties at the Invitational. This is not the witness protection program: participants may communicate that they arrived safely, are having a good time / are exhausted, etc. but must not communicate about the competition challenges and must follow social media posting guidelines.
Advisors may be of great value to the teams and individual members in the months after the Invitational and before the next Open Qualifying stage. Advisors may also counsel teams on group dynamics and general professional techniques, using prompts of their own creation. Faculty should be circumspect about any hypotheticals presented to them by student groups participating in the competition. Teams in receipt of any unauthorized advising will be disqualified and deemed ineligible for the next edition of the competition.
Faculty members interested in exploring the relevance of themed experience and attractions to their academic discipline may look into the Themed Experience and Attractions Academic Society. TEAAS produces the Themed Experience and Attractions Academic Symposium on the last day of IAAPA Expo, with a full program of industry keynotes and academic presentations and posters.
Competition schedule
The competition dates are anchored to the annual IAAPA Expo produced by the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions. Many student clubs have limited budget to attend industry events, and the consecutive schedule allows them to participate in the competition and IAAPA Expo for a single travel expense, except for the extra nights of lodging.
The competition begins with arrival on the Wednesday preceding the IAAPA Expo, reveals challenges on the Thursday, and begins challenge presentation sessions Friday continuing through Sunday. IAAPA educational programming begins on Monday, and the industry’s largest exhibit event opens on Tuesday. The IAAPA Expo is attended by over 40,000 professionals in the attractions industry with over 1,000 companies (prospective employers) exhibiting.
The competition team registration fee includes admission to the IAAPA Expo including education and exhibits, and student membership for the following full year to all participants attending the competition.
Further information about the IAAPA Expo can be obtained from IAAPA.
Current year competition
Posts related to the current and previous competition editions are linked here.
Academic papers and presentations
International Competition as Stopgap Curriculum: Case Study of Ryerson Invitational Thrill Design Competition
Kathryn Woodcock, PhD CCPE ICAE PEng
Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University (then known as Ryerson University)
Symposium on Education in Entertainment and Engineering, 2019
Students aspiring to careers in the themed entertainment and attractions industry have few formal options to learn and demonstrate skills and knowledge specific to the industry. Students have shown initiative in developing extracurricular activities, and industry has reached out to offer “next generation” programs and internships. It still remains problematic for industry employers to select the best qualified students from a large pool of aspirants and for motivated candidates to stand out as highly qualified for these opportunities. The Ryerson Invitational Thrill Design Competition (RITDC) was developed to address this problem. RITDC provides learning experiences and performance evaluation with not only completion as an indicator of accomplishment, but concurrent interactive evaluation by judges from industry. As such, although the competition is formally an extracurricular activity, it functions as stopgap curriculum. This paper describes the origin and evolution of the competition and the challenges it has encountered, and the response from participants and industry.
Growth and evolution of an extracurricular design competition for university
students pursuing professional interests in themed entertainment
(Navigate to page 57-65 as the proceedings does not have discrete links for each paper.)
Kathryn Woodcock, PhD CCPE ICAE PEng
Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University
Proceedings of the 2025 Themed Experience and Attractions Academic Symposium
This paper reviews the evolution of an extracurricular themed entertainment design competition from inception in 2014 to the 10th edition in 2025. This account begins with the original educational intent of the competition to reinforce human-centred approaches to engineering design, and describes an action-research approach of revisions based on observation and reflection. Positive experiences produced growth, necessitating some of the revisions. Other adjustments arose from the need for interdisciplinary collaboration and reflections on the priority of winning within the educational setting. The competition has exposed over 1,000 diverse students to attractions industry careers, including many in engineering programs, many of whom pursue industry careers after university. Continued production of the competition will increase the complexity of managing growth, and will require consideration of remaining unsolved issues, including discrepancies in participant costs, international mobility, and adapting to the implications of the use of GenAI in the context of education and assessment.
Curricular considerations for engineering in themed entertainment
Presentation to the 2024 Themed Experience and Attractions Academic Symposium
Kathryn Woodcock, PhD CCPE ICAE PEng
Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University
Engineers contribute to attraction design, manufacture, systems integration, construction, installation, commissioning, and regulatory approval of attractions including amusement ride and show components from multiple manufacturers sourced from around the world, to be operated at venues ranging from major fixed-site theme parks to travelling carnivals.
Some branches of engineering education explicitly identify an application domain, but no specific theme park and amusement ride engineering program exists, nor is establishment of one likely. This paper begins a discussion of complementary learning goals applicable to engineers aspiring to theme park engineering careers.
