Themed Entertainment
Michigan Theme Park Engineering and Design - President 2025-2026, Logistics Lead 2024-2025
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Related Events Attended:
IAAPA North America Expo - November 2024 and 2025
ASTM F24 Committee Meeting - February 2025 and 2026
Students In Themed Entertainment (SITE) - April 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
World of Concrete - January 2026
Ride Engineering Competition 2026
For Michigan TPED's second time participating in REC, we designed, manufactured, and themed a portable flat-ride based on the NebulaZ ride; We presented our final ride in Hershey, PA, where it was judged in-person by REC judges, as well as at the UM College of Engineering Design Expo:
"Constructed in the C-SED Lab and aptly named by Girl Scout Troup #40876, the Krazy Kurler is an ASTM F24 compliant flat ride system completely designed, manufactured, themed, and presented by Michigan TPED for the 2026 Ride Engineering Competition. The prompt outlines design requirements of an amusement ride, for example, stating that the ride must safely accommodate a range of sizes of theoretical candy passengers, cause specific experienced motion, have an acceptable capacity, and operate within a certain envelope while being able to be efficiently disassembled and packaged in a separate portable envelope, mimicking a truck bed. The final deliverables include several technical reports, videos, and a poster, and the team is judged on multiple categories, including Mechanical, Controls, ASTM Compliance, Theming and Artistic Design, Community Outreach, and Factory/Site Acceptance Testing. The ride was presented and operated over a period of six hours in Hershey, PA, on April 11th. Michigan TPED is grateful to have received financial support for this project from ESG, CSG, and ECSO, as well as the lab space and support from C-SED."
My personal role as TPED President included project management, team organization, project logistics, and member education. I also served as the project's Controls Lead, for which I designed the safety related controls system, implemented it on the ride, and created the controls documentation, including TOps. I also modeled the dynamics of the system to simulate the control of the ride as part of a final project for MECHENG 560 - the technical documents can be found in Engineering.
Pokémon Escape Room - March 2026
In partnership with the Center for Campus Involvement's PokéMix event, we designed, planned, and produced "Pokémon: Escape the Training Complex". In order to maximize our throughput, we ran four groups at a time that then merged into one room for the final puzzles.
Guests began in a room with just a research scientist who informed them that the first evolution of Pokémon were sick, and they needed to heal them and advance their evolutions for this groundbreaking research. They were then split into gyms themed to Water, Fire, Grass, and Electricity, which each had identical puzzles modified to the gym's theme. It was then revealed that the research scientists were actually working for Team Rocket, and the four teams had to work together to save (or lose) the Pokémon from Team Rocket themselves.
My personal role as TPED President was in project management, team organization, and leading design efforts, as well as creating the Pokédex puzzle and overall lighting, sound, and set design. Members of TPED acted throughout the escape room, as either research scientists or characters.
RFID Pokédex Puzzle
RFID cards disguised as Pokémon cards were found by guests. The Pokédex was 3D printed and painted, and contained an RFID reader module, LCD, Piezo buzzer, LED, light sensor, and programmed Arduino Uno microcontroller.
Post-event walkthrough of each gym and the final Team Rocket lair:
20260327_231923.mp4Epoxy Live! Student Design Competition - January 2026
Team[8]_FloorDesign_2025.pdfOur team of three members from Michigan Theme Park Engineering and Design worked together to design a flooring concept, including selecting feasible materials and flooring systems, designing a layout with specific color selections, and incorporating environmental and theming considerations. We designed the floor for an Arctic zoo exhibit in Southern California, and our chosen flooring system was created live as part of a demonstration at World of Concrete in January 2026, where we were in attendance and even had the opportunity to speak about our design.
Team[8]_TechExplanation_2025.pdfTeam[8]_Colors_2025.pdfTeam Lead
Technical design work and presentation, including a Matlab model and CAD, done under NDA and presented to a panel of judges from the industry at Universal in Orlando, FL.
Our team of five was given just under 48 hours to complete our response to a prompt for the Technology Design Challenge: "Design and present a technology enhancement for an assigned technical component, system, or function commonly found in amusement rides and devices. This enhancement may improve one or more of safety, sustainability, reliability, or performance of the amusement ride or device as a whole."
As part of our collaboration with SHEI Magazine, in exchange for the work done by their makeup team on our haunted house, we recycled and rebuilt our Art Possessed room for their shoot Trad - inspired by "trad wife" and "trad goth" aesthetics and the connection of changing feminity and expression between them.
Our second annual haunted house since the pandemic (and fourth in the history of the club) was a museum themed experience in the Lurie Bell Tower on UMich's North Campus. We had four separately themed rooms, led by members of the board, included a 1-minute elevator pre-show, and extended the experience into the stairs of the tower. We were operating for three hours, had over 450 guests, 21 scare-actors, and 4 members managing operations. We collaborated with SHEI Beauty (within the student org SHEI on campus) to assist with scare-actor makeup. We further collaborated with SMTD student Nigel Floreska who created a looping soundtrack for each room.
Actor-Controlled Drop Wall
Frida Kahlo's Girl With Death Mask
Makeup by SHEI Beauty
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20251017_215131_1.mp420251024_170039.mp4Scare-Actor Makeup (by Jade)
Projection Mapped Gallery Wall
Dropping Canvas (Saturn Devouring His Son)
This was TPED's first time participating in REC. Our team of six designed, manufactured, and themed a spinning pendulum ride with gyroscope guest compartments. I served as the Controls Lead on this project, and we presented our final project at Students in Themed Entertainment (SiTE) at OSU.
Wiring diagram made in collaboration with Kyler Bautista
This was our second winter semester campus event in collaboration with UMix. We created interactive challenges modeled as life-size iMessage games held on UMich Central Campus. After stepping up to games such as Battleship, Mini Golf, Cup Pong, Knockout, 8-Ball Pool, and more, guests were given tickets that they could cash in for real prizes
Created and run by Michigan TPED as part of the Center for Campus Involvement's event "BooMix". We transformed a meeting room in Pierpont Commons into a tour through several scary and iconic Halloween movies. This was TPED's first Haunted House since 2018, and it accomodated hundreds of guests during the three hour event.
Created and run by Michigan TPED as part of the Center for Campus Involvement's event "BooMix". We transformed a meeting room in Pierpont Commons into a tour through several scary and iconic Halloween movies. This was TPED's first Haunted House since 2018, and it accomodated hundreds of guests during the three hour event.
Beetlejuice Makeup
Puppet of Billy from Saw
Delia's Sculpture from Beetlejuice
Gore Makeup
Sandworm Sculpture Puppet
TMU Thrill Design Competition - 2024
TMU Thrill Design Competition - 2024
Design work, CAD, and concept art done under NDA for the Toronto Metropolitan University Thrill Design Competition with Universal Creative in November 2024!
In 2024, our team was commended for Creative Technical Design for our Open Qualifying submission, and was commended for Technology Innovation and Technical Communication for our Novel Ride Design Challenge presentation.
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