Tech + Ops: The Power Partnership Behind Immersive Guest Experiences

A Q&A with Rob Seely & Eric Soto

Estimated Read Time: 5 Minutes

In the world of theme parks and location-based entertainment, it’s no longer just about the rides — it’s about the experience. The most successful attractions today are powered by a seamless blend of digital innovation and operational excellence.

To explore how those two worlds come together, we sat down with Eric Soto, a senior technology leader at Gigantic Playground, and Rob Seely, Associate Vice President of Operations Strategy & Design at WD Partners.

Soto helps bring iconic IPs to life through large-scale interactive systems and digital storytelling platforms, while Seely leads teams focused on designing operationally sound, guest-first environments. Together, they share how technology and operations align to turn creative concepts into scalable, unforgettable experiences.

Q1. What cross-functional teams are most critical to success when implementing a new digital experience?

Eric Soto:
Attraction development today isn’t just about the creative idea — success happens when you bring creative, operations, technology, and data together from the start. For Gigantic Playground’s projects, that means show teams, engineers, safety, network/security, and park ops all have a voice. A queue-line interaction or mobile app hook might seem small on paper, but if it’s not coordinated with operations and throughput, it can fail at scale.

Rob Seely:
Integration is everything. Each workstream has to understand how they impact the overall vision. The key is when and how each team engages. With visibility into the strategy, operations can balance creativity and reality — developing the processes that ensure the digital experience actually works in practice.

Q2. What role do operational processes play in the development and placement of digital experiences?

Eric Soto:
Ops defines reality. We’ve seen amazing creative concepts fall apart because they didn’t align with operating rhythms. Our software has to account for things like throughput resets, power cycles, and scheduled downtime. When you design around those processes, the tech blends into daily park life instead of fighting it.

Rob Seely:
Operations’ job is to make sure the experience is executable and supportable. Early on, we like to stay a bit of a silent partner — observing rather than interfering. We take note of things like team deployment, space sizing, and guest flow so the creative process stays free, but the end result is operationally sound.

Q3. How do you take into account guest flow and engagement during peak periods?

Eric Soto:
We rely on throughput modeling and prototype simulations to predict guest behavior. On one projects, we’ve used wireless check-ins and realized they could create “micro-lines” inside a space. Setting limits like interaction timers helped prevent logjams. Guest flow analysis is where tech, ops, and creative must stay completely aligned.

Rob Seely:
We test and validate how digital experiences impact flow, space, and labor needs. That can mean simulation modeling before launch or real-time observation afterward. We analyze velocities, volumes, dwell times, and team member interactions to spot friction points — and then collaborate on ways to balance experience and efficiency.

Q4. How do you jointly optimize digital touchpoints to improve guest satisfaction and reduce friction?

Eric Soto:
Two key approaches:

• Unified backend systems so guests never feel the seams between experiences.
• Real-time monitoring and ops dashboards so issues are spotted and solved before guests notice.

When it’s done right, the digital layer disappears — guests just experience the magic, not the mechanics.

Rob Seely:
Once an experience is live, we collect and analyze real-time data — throughput, queue lines, team member productivity, activity times — to understand what’s working. Combined with digital data in the background, we get a full picture of performance and opportunities for improvement.

Q5. What guest behavior data do you collect, and how does it inform creative and operational improvements?

Eric Soto:
We collect anonymous data points like check-ins, dwell times, and completions. Creatively, that tells us which stories or rewards resonate. Operationally, it highlights choke points, underused zones, or systems that need backup.

Rob Seely:
That same data helps us prioritize improvements that enhance both guest and team member experiences. Because when the team is set up for success, guests feel it — every single time.

Q6. How do feedback and monitoring influence ongoing improvements?

Eric Soto:
We’ve built loops that feed real-time insights back to both creative and operations. Creatives see engagement patterns, what guests love or skip, while ops sees metrics like system health and staffing needs. It keeps everyone moving in sync and allows fast, informed adjustments.

Rob Seely:
We share all the testing and observation data and keep a regular cadence of conversations. That open dialogue ensures no one’s working in a vacuum — and often sparks ideas for future innovations.

Q7. What’s the most exciting project you’ve worked on, and how did digital and ops play a role?

Eric Soto:
Epic Universe has been a standout; an entire park built with tech and ops integrated from day one. We used digital interactions to create invisible, seamless experiences like wireless collectibles and real-time participation triggers.

That said, Super Nintendo World will always be special for me. The Power-Up Band ecosystem blended game design, guest ops, and backend reliability perfectly. Ops managed cooldowns and retry limits; tech made it feel effortless.

Rob Seely:
Every project brings something new. The exciting part is that each one challenges us to think differently and push the boundaries of what’s possible — while still grounding everything in real-world operations.

Final Thoughts

At the intersection of tech and ops lies the future of guest engagement. Whether through smarter data, unified systems, or better collaboration, both Eric and Rob agree: the magic happens when innovation and execution move together — and the guest never sees the seams.