The next chapter

Most of you know me from Pursuit of Thrills. But there’s a part of my story I’ve never really shared.

My senior year at Purdue, I started building a system with one of my best friends to understand how guests moved through theme parks. We called it Ridelogix.

We developed passive Bluetooth tracking before Bluetooth Low Energy even existed. No wristbands, no active scanning. We could understand how guests moved through an entire park in real time.

The day after graduation, we moved to Cedar Point to test it at full scale. I was 22. Eventually, Universal brought us in.

The technology worked. But we were ahead of our time. Deploying it at scale was simply too expensive, and the industry wasn’t quite ready for it. Still, that experience fundamentally changed how I saw theme parks.

And over the last 15 years, I’ve watched something else happen to the industry I love.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve planned the fun out of theme parks.

What used to be a relatively simple day exploring with friends and family has become an exercise in reservations, complicated systems, and carefully orchestrated itineraries. Entire industries have emerged just to help people navigate that complexity.

And somewhere in all that planning, the spontaneity, freedom, and simple joy of spending time together have taken a back seat.

We’ve become so focused on making the most of our time that sometimes we forget to enjoy it.

That’s part of why I started Pursuit of Thrills. I wanted to share the beauty, atmosphere, and little moments that make these places special. The things we so easily overlook when we’re rushing to the next attraction.

And it’s why I’ve spent nearly 15 years thinking about how technology could make visiting theme parks simpler, rather than adding to the complexity.

For a long time, making that kind of intelligence accessible to everyday parkgoers just wasn’t practical.

Until now.

For the past year, I’ve been building something called Ridemore.

It’s an app that uses real-time data and forecasting to help you know when it’s worth riding and when it’s better to come back later. No rigid itineraries, no deciphering wait times, and no need to plan every minute of your day.

But the bigger idea is much simpler.

I don’t want technology to tell us how to have fun. I want it to give us the freedom to enjoy it.

To explore, change our minds, spend time with the people we love, and make memories we never could have planned.

I’m opening Ridemore to a small group of early beta testers, and I’d love for those of you who share my passion for theme parks to be among the first to experience it.

You can learn more and request an invitation at ridemore.app.

Thank you for following my work and being part of this journey. I’m excited to finally share what comes next.

P.S. The Pursuit of Thrills shop has closed. Thank you to everyone who brought a print home and gave it a wall. The art isn’t going anywhere. It lives on at @pursuitofthrills, and it’s coming with me into Ridemore.