This article makes an original contribution to tourism research by examining how enchantment is produced. Light installations are presented as storyscapes, crafted from technical metamorphoses and mythical, fairytale and folklore narratives. The findings uncover the importance of the creative praxis of designers, which infuses the peculiarly enchanting affective agency and presence of their installations. We demonstrate how the production of enchantment differs conceptually from other forms of tourism development by offering visitors disturbing, sublime, uncanny, unexpected experiences. This leads to a reappraisal of the imagineering of tourist enchantment as less programmed and more anarchic. The findings indicate how enchantment can defamiliarise and refresh intangible cultural heritage, opening up the possibility of new imaginative thresholds within the tourism industry. •The production of enchantment is purposefully destabalising, sublime and uncanny.•Enchanted storyscapes can use fantasy narratives to defamiliarise cultural heritage.•The presence of enchantment is infused with the creative trace of its designers.•Enchantment is designed to act as a threshold to the poetic imagination.•Imagineering can be anarchic, free-flowing and surreal.