Khan Academy has a nice easy to follow introduction to theme park design titled “Imagineering in a box” similar to Pixar In a Box.

Explore how to create worlds and attractions which incidentally can be applied to games. Do register for free.

Looking at the course materials it goes back to fundamentals of design themes and different disciplines to create immersive entertainment.

I remembered some years ago watching a talk by Warren Spector who also worked at Disney at some point and made the Epic Mickey games said to look at Walt Disney Theme park design principles to bring players into a virtual world and have freedom to play. (Though I can’t remember which talk it was)

Resources

1. https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/hass-storytelling/imagineering-in-a-box
2. https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2019/08/walt-disney-imagineering-partners-with-khan-academy-to-bring-you-imagineering-in-a-box/