Merlin Entertainments, in association with Bear Grylls, launched a new attraction in 2018. A one-of-a-kind experience “bringing together Bear, one of the most celebrated and recognised faces of survival and outdoor adventure, and Merlin’s expertise in creating fantastic, memorable experiences for guests across the world”. (Nick Varney, Chief Executive of Merlin)

Situated in Birmingham, the attraction offers a range of experiences, from scaling the heights to exploring the depths, offering climbing, high ropes, diving and indoor skydiving. 

Merlin Entertainments contracted CTI to bring their daring new adventure park to life digitally. Together we achieved this by creating a website and booking store for the brand new attraction: The Bear Grylls Adventure.

In order to increase brand awareness and to provide users with the most up-to-date information before launch, the chosen strategy was to follow an accelerated route to market.

The brief ultimately required 4 deliverables:

Deliverable 1

An enticing holding page, to ensure potential guests were able to search for the attraction and gain initial information.

Deliverable 2

A more complex pre-launch site; to enable users to sign up to newsletter mailing lists and gain familiarity with the attraction.

Deliverable 3

A fully functional site, delivering all necessary information, ticket purchasing and documentation capabilities. The final site would also need to nurture customers through a complex post-purchase journey, similar to flight tickets.

Deliverable 4

A wallet-free payment solution for use at the park that blurred the lines between online and offline technology.

Interactive Payment Kiosks

A video of the payment journey in real time

The Bear Grylls Adventure is the UK’s first theme park to offer digital wristbands that allow for a wallet-free experience. Bear wanted users to focus on the adventure, made possible by leaving their belongings, and wallets, behind in secure lockers.

Powered by Adyen, we built a system that enables users to pre-load smart wrist-bands with funds that can be used at all vendors within the park. Designing and building the website payment window and digital kiosk interfaces in tandem, we were able to create a fluid and consistent user journey.

For those users who don’t complete these actions in advance, the attraction houses digital, touchscreen kiosks at Bear’s “Base Camp”, which process payment in less than 30 seconds.

Distinct Activity Sections

The design of this site had to incorporate a user’s need to access key information as well as targeting their enthusiasm for adventure. Uniform page layouts throughout the site with an informed content hierarchy make it simple to seek out important details.

Despite the similarities between each page, visual cues were used to quickly differentiate activities. To make it clear to users that they aren’t looking at the same page, each activity was given a separate colour scheme, logo and evocative imagery, all of which still maintained the essence of the ‘Bear Grylls Adventure’ brand.

Post Purchase User Engagement 

The adventurous nature of the attraction requires preparations to be put in place before a guest can attend. As such, the website needed to nurture the customer journey, beyond the point of purchase. Providing important information, as well as the opportunity to complete key documents (such as signing waivers). Ticket sales are only the beginning for this fully integrated digital user experience.

Reflecting the structure of an airline website, the final website includes a portal for all necessary pre-application. Digitally complex, integrating multiple third-parties servers, the portal has a simple and easy-to-use interface for users.

Integrating the Bear Grylls brand

The attraction is built around the Bear Grylls brand, which in turn centres on Bear as a supportive survivor and philanthropist. This personal branding necessitates a positive user experience, to align with the idea of Bear acting as host.

The homepage welcomes users with a striking close-up of Bear Grylls. This well-known figurehead triggers familiarity in the user, capturing their attention and sticking in their memory. As users navigate throughout the website, they are met with further striking imagery of what to expect at the attraction. 

Video, filmed in the style of a Bear Grylls documentary is embedded to communicate the USPs of the attraction, and to create a sense of direct one-to-one communication between Bear and the user.