8 Ways to Add a Little More Play to Your Visitor Attraction

Visitors might come for the rollercoaster, the animals, the beautiful gardens, or the perfect pumpkin patch, but often it’s the unexpected moments along the way that make a day out memorable.

A little extra play, creativity, and music can encourage people to pause, explore, interact, and experience a destination differently. And it doesn’t always need another major attraction. Outdoor music can transform an overlooked space, add interest to a trail, or simply give visitors an unexpected opportunity to stop and play together.

Here are eight ways to bring more playful moments into your visitor experience.

Why should the experience only start when visitors reach the main attraction?

Trails and pathways can become places for discovery in their own right. Adding interactive features along a route gives visitors reasons to pause, explore, and see what’s around the next corner.

Outdoor musical instruments can even act as playful landmarks and wayfinding points, helping turn the journey into an experience.

2. Create a Sensory Garden

Sensory spaces can offer a welcome change of pace from the hustle and bustle of a busy attraction.

Music adds another dimension alongside planting, texture, color, and scent, creating opportunities for discovery, creativity, and wellbeing. Thoughtfully designed sensory spaces can also provide more inclusive experiences for visitors with different sensory preferences and neurodiverse needs.

Not every activity has to be just for the children.

Create intergenerational spaces where children, parents, grandparents, and friends can participate together. Music is particularly good at breaking down those age barriers because there are no complicated rules and no previous experience is required.

Just pick up a beater, tap a drum, or strike a chime and see what happens.

4. Make More of Underused Spaces

That quiet corner. The space beside the café. The path between two attractions. The garden visitors usually walk straight through.

Sometimes a small intervention is all it takes to give an overlooked area a new purpose.

Interactive musical features can transform these spaces into places where visitors stop, play, and spend a little more time.

Pumpkin patches, mazes, Christmas light trails, festivals, and seasonal events are all about creating an experience visitors can’t have every day.

Adding interactive music along the route provides another surprise to discover and another opportunity for visitors to get involved rather than simply look.

And yes, a family percussion session halfway around a maze could be exactly the kind of wonderfully unexpected moment they'll remember.

6. Create a Feature That's Unique to Your Destination

The most memorable attractions usually have something visitors associate specifically with that place.

That could be a musical trail through a woodland, instruments inspired by the surrounding landscape, or even a familiar melody visitors can play themselves.

With MyTunes, for example, individual notes are arranged so visitors can strike them in sequence to play a recognizable tune. A melody connected to your location can turn a musical feature into part of the destination's identity.

Outdoor play isn't only for traditional visitor attractions.

At wedding and event venues, interactive music offers guests something unexpected to discover as they explore the grounds. It can keep younger guests entertained, bring different generations together, and create some wonderfully spontaneous moments between the more formal parts of the day.

8. Give People Permission to Play

Perhaps the simplest idea of all.

Adults don't get many opportunities to play.

Put an outdoor instrument in front of someone, however, and curiosity often takes over. Someone taps a note. Someone else joins in. Before long, you've got a completely improvised family band.

No lessons. No musical experience. No right or wrong way to play.

Just curiosity.

From a single-statement instrument to a complete musical trail, there are countless ways to bring music, play, and discovery into your visitors' experience.

Looking for more inspiration? Explore our Visitor Attractions page and discover how outdoor music can create memorable experiences for visitors of all ages.