Have you ever been to a resort or theme park and felt personally invited and escorted into a fantasy world? Melody Matheny guides and curates such a journey. From visualizing the story through concept art to the many details that bring a new attraction to life, Matheny applies her unique skill set to the job. You will find her personal thumbprint on attractions from Jamaica to Orlando, all over the nation as well as right here in Williamsburg.
It makes perfect sense that Matheny claims Busch Gardens Williamsburg as one of her favorite clients since she has been intimately involved with the park since childhood. “My mom worked there as the telecommunications manager for more than a decade, so I can remember going to work with her when I was only eight years old,” she says. “I’m 44 now, but there are still people working there who remember me as a kid. My first job at 15 was as a games operator, but since I was always artistically inclined, I pushed hard for the chance to be assigned to the sign shop.” By the time she was 18, Matheny was proving herself to be an asset there by hand painting and installing signs all over the park. She graduated from Lafayette High School in 1999, but even while attending college (first Virginia Commonwealth University, then later James Madison University), she still spent every summer at Busch Gardens with a paintbrush in hand. After earning her undergraduate degree, she decided to pursue a Master of Italian Renaissance Art History degree as well.
“I realized that at 22, these would be the only years of my life that I wasn’t tied to responsibilities like a house and a family, so I took full advantage of this when I moved to Italy for an amazing year,” she remembers. As enjoyable as it was, the young woman missed Williamsburg and working at Busch Gardens. “I really loved it there, but I’d expanded my mind and learned so much in Italy that it seemed like moving home would be a step back professionally,” she says.
After much thought, Matheny decided that theme parks were her true passion, and what better place to begin an adult career in that field than Orlando, “Theme Park Mecca”. “My first job was with Sea World, since they were a sister park to Busch,” Matheny remembers. She loved working at Sea World and Busch Gardens, because it still felt like a familiar small family. “At first, I was designing signs again as a foot in the door, but I aggressively pursued any new thing they’d let me do, and after just four years I was named art director for the entire park’s event and entertainment programs. I just kept stretching! I’ll say yes to a thing before I say no,” Matheny says with a laugh.
When she first moved to Orlando, she was freelancing at Ripley’s Believe It or Not!’s corporate headquarters as well as Universal and Disney World but would, over the years, work full-time as staff for several companies. One of those jobs was with Idea Orlando, designing cruise ports in the Caribbean. “That job morphed into one I’m still doing 16 years later, working primarily in Jamaica.” Her task there is to design attractions for cruise ship passengers who want to get off the boat and do something fun. “The people who own these properties want to entertain and educate their guests, whether it’s about the history and culture of Jamaica or Bob Marley and his music,” Matheny says. “The story can be anything, since I employ the same skills as I do for The Incredible Hulk or Spiderman. I use the same visual discipline to tell a different story.”
Her favorite assignment was telling the history of the town of Port Royal, Jamaica, also known as “The Pirate Capital of the Caribbean”, and Captain Morgan, a famous pirate who also happened to be the lieutenant governor of Jamaica. Port Royal was a sanctuary city for those maritime marauders of the seventeenth century before an earthquake caused it to sink into the ocean with great loss of life. “The Port Authority was interested in developing an attraction that would approach the city’s history from different viewpoints, being sensitive to the natives of Jamaica whom the pirates originally enslaved, as well as covering the subject of piracy in the Caribbean,” she says. It was up to Matheny to bring this history to life as a narrative that would make Jamaica proud. She filled a 120-page book with site plans, illustrated maps, and carefully crafted historically accurate scripts that would accomplish that goal. “The Prime Minister had to sign off on it before it was constructed,” she says. “He approved it on the spot, and Phase I has already been completed.”
For the last three years before she moved, Matheny was Universal Studio’s senior scenic designer. She was responsible for designing their shows, events, and parades. Her area of expertise was anything that a live performer was involved with, be it stage production, street atmosphere, props, scenery, and opening of ride events, as well as parades from Mardi Gras to Christmas.
“If you could take a building and turn it upside down and shake it, whatever fell out would be considered “theming” and my responsibility,” she says. “Basically, it’s anything visual that would help tell a story, from the signage and graphics to the props and physical environment.” In her design toolbox are many helpful computer programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and SketchUp, which she utilizes to accomplish her vision. “When asked what I do, I usually say I’m an artist for theme parks, because people don’t understand the difference,” Matheny says, “but, I’m actually an attraction designer. A designer solves a visual and functional problem. A fine artist creates their own vision of beauty and emotion.”
After 25 years in Florida, Matheny had a thriving career, with a house, two children, and two dogs, when a combination of events called her strongly back home to Williamsburg’s small-town life. “I never liked the hot Florida weather, was single again and working remotely anyway, so I was able to make a seamless transition. My clients didn’t even notice I moved, but I knew this was where I wanted and needed to be. As an only child, I wanted to be close to my aging parents as well as extended family and my friend network from high school,” she recalls. “Williamsburg is where I prefer to raise my kids.”
In her business interactions, Melody Matheny is known as Cosmos Creative, offering her own design services, but she also wears another hat. In 2012, she established Slice Creative Network, an organization that connects attraction designers in order to promote their unique skill sets. “As I freelanced, I was meeting all these incredible artists and was using my own programming skills to keep track of them,” she says. “I figured a website was the best way to utilize hyperlinks and find the people I needed to help me perform my job. Soon these people started noticing and asking to use it, too. It just exploded, and now we have 350 members who are vetted professional freelance designers and a volunteer board of directors. We have nonprofit status.” It resembles a social organization where the members network and promote one another, and Matheny administers it but takes no salary and never has.
“In 2016, I was contacted by the corporate team at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, who hired me as the signage designer for their new ride, the InvadR wooden roller coaster. After that, I was promoted to Art Director, in charge of making sure all the visuals were being produced to conform to their vision, which was of a Canadian town being invaded by Vikings. “It was designed by a friend of mine, and my job was to make sure the fabrications studio adhered to the original design.”
A fun project for Melody at Busch Gardens was “Burgermeister’s Hideaway” where she was hired by local architecture firm, Guernsey Tingle, as their graphic designer. This is an attraction in the Germany section which is themed like a speakeasy. For the price of a separate ticket, adventurous guests can enter through a hidden door into a back room with a tiny bar. It is an intimate space that holds just 20. These guests will be treated to their own live minishow, with the added cachet of being seated at the bar and trying fun cocktails.
Historically, Busch Gardens has celebrated the musical arts during the months of June and July. Last year in 2024, they wanted to layer in the fine arts on top of that theme. Melody was put in charge of the very new and different Summer of Wonder subset focused on the visual arts. She worked closely with the Williamsburg Artist Group (WAG), hiring multiple local artists to paint plein air (live in the park) and to interact with guests as they viewed and purchased original artwork displayed in the Prost Pavilion kiosk in Germany. “We wanted the guests to understand who the group was, and that WAG is a valuable community resource available to them,” she says. Matheny also hired talented muralists to paint enormous intricate designs on buildings, with the theme of celebrating what it feels and looks like to be in Virginia. The concept was so successful that Busch Gardens has decided to extend and broaden the relationship with WAG into 2025 and perhaps beyond. There was a successful fine arts display tied to the park’s recent St. Patrick’s Day celebration, another one planned for the summer months, with more exhibits to come for the holiday season.
Working with such clients as Busch Gardens, famous Orlando attractions, and cruise lines does not mean that Matheny is too busy for her hometown citizens. Her true passion is to elevate smaller Tidewater businesses by offering her particular skills. “I really prefer to work with small businesses and tell their unique stories. Everyone has a history, and people love knowing what it is. This is how my brain works. If I’m taking my son to his karate lessons, I’m wondering how this studio came to be. Is it a family heritage? What inspired the owners’ passions to start this business? In my head I’m designing the space to communicate what may be their personal story and make sure visitors connect with it. Murals on the walls picturing the history of the sport, framed vintage photos of family members in competitions, and an impactful sign or logo are all things that add layers to the story the business owner wants to tell. With my years of experience in design, that would be a quick and affordable job,” she says. “I worry that people will think that they’re not important enough or that they could never afford my services. That’s not true. Also, part of what I do is to establish a budget and keep the design choices economical. It’s truly amazing what a little paint and attractive signage can accomplish!”
There are so many fascinating potential stories waiting to be told, and Matheny is a storyteller at heart. “I really want to reconnect with my community and enhance their experience. I visualize the greater Williamsburg area as a colorful tapestry waiting to be unveiled, and I’m truly excited to apply and share what I’ve learned through my travels to help that happen,” Melody Matheny says with a smile