Ryerson Invitational Thrill Design Competition (RITDC)
Presented By Universal Creative
1st Overall, 1st Roller Coaster, 1st Mechanical Design, 2nd Place Retheme Attraction
In November of 2018, I was a part of an 8 member team for The Ryerson Invitational Thrill Design Competition (RITDC) Presented By Universal Creative. RITDC is a multidisciplinary, nine challenge design competition involving 86 students from 12 schools across 4 days, hosted at Universal Orlando Resort.
Teams are presented challenges and are tasked with creating a solution and presenting their ideas to a panel of judges of senior leadership in Universal Creative and its partners. The challenges showcase real skill expectations for entry level professionals and interns, including technical knowledge, interdisciplinary collaboration, time management, creative agility, and presentation skills.
My experience with ASTM standards, containment and restraint analysis, and interactive storytelling contributed to the success of our team. Each team selects 5 of the 9 challenges. Placing in the top three of each challenges awards the team points. The team with the most points wins the competition, which we accomplished in our first year attending. Our team selected the following challenges:
(Challenge 3) Roller coaster design (using NoLimits2 software and dynamics analysis to design a roller coaster meeting assigned specifications (2-week preparation, but “twist” provided 21 hours before presentation)
(Challenge 5) Inclusive design (consider guests with particular disability accommodations and improve their experience) (24-hour preparation)
(Challenge 6) Mechanical design (for a specific ride action, design the required mechanisms and safety control systems) (45-hour preparation)
(Challenge 7) Experience design (rider experience within a thrill ride) (48-hour preparation)
(Challenge 8) Rethemed ride (keep an existing ride mechanism, but introduce a new theme) (48-hour preparation)”
The content created for the competition is confidential and cannot be shared outside the competition.