I was listening to an interview with Frederic Pastuszak, an attractions designer for Europa Park in Germany. Europa Park is the second most popular theme park in Europe, after Disneyland Paris.

Frederic said that he was often disappointed with theme park fans, because they would come up to him with great ideas, and say “Oh, we could do a dark ride, we could do this and that”, and he would ask “Well, what is your job?” And they would answer, (for example) “I work in a bank.” These theme park fans had great ideas, but were not doing anything about them.

Frederic said that he actually knew only a few people who intentionally studied and worked to get their job in the theme park business because it was their dream job, and he wished that more people would follow their dream.

Actually, I was surprised to hear that so few people intentionally worked to get their dream job in theme parks. As a theme park fan, I assumed that everyone working there had their dream job, but I realized that sometimes it’s not the case. I’ve even met some people who work at Disney who aren’t really Disney fans.

Frederic always knew from an early age that he wanted to work in theme park design, so he studied to be an architect. One of his colleagues pursued his dream and studied mechanical engineering to design roller coasters. Whatever dream you have, don’t just think about it, try to figure out how you can actually do it.