Pete 0:00

Holy underwear! It's Founders Day! What y'all doing sitting over there on the couch eating a dang sandwich? Get yourself the calico, put on some appropriate footwear, and don't forget to bring a party hat! Happy Founders Day!

Kelly 0:24

Hello and welcome to the Lowdown on the Plus Up, a podcast where we look at everyone's favorite theme park attractions, lands, textures, and novelties. We talk in, over, about, and through our week's topic, and then, with literally no concern for practicality, safety, or economic viability, we come up with ways to make them better. My name is Kelly McCovin, columnist for the theme park website Boardwalk Times, and with me as always is Peter Overstreet, University Professor of Animation and Film History in Northern California.

Pete 0:59

So, hey there! What are we talking about today? Well, today is gonna be an odd, odd episode. As a matter of fact, just before we started recording this, we actually were just commenting on how odd this episode is going to be. So, what we're going to talk about today is linked to Kelly's and my recent trip. And uh during that trip, it was inspired by it. We went Kelly, I had never been to um Star Wars Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland before. And Kelly was very enthusiastic. No, Pete, you're gonna like this. If nothing else, the environments are really, really cool. Yeah. But uh I had heard about the interactive uh notion of it. And so I went there thinking there's gonna be a lot of characters running around. It's gonna be a lot of, you know, there's all this stuff that the press was touting and a lot of fans. And I have notes.

Kelly 1:51

All right, but before we get into your notes, let's uh a couple other things. Um it's much inspired by that. Um also inspired by uh you know a lot of uh a lot of uh hype recently about the closing of the Galactic Star Cruiser. Yes. Uh particularly because Jenny Nicholson's video has gone so through the roof. It's at nine last I checked, it was at nine million views. Yeah, and and and good honor, man. She she worked hard on that. That's four hours long and it's riveting.

Pete 2:22

And she got taken on by Disney, who tried to have it taken down on copyright purposes, and she won. And so it's still up. Yeah.

Kelly 2:33

It sounds like they tried to push on like uh some music being in the background and the music being copyrighted, and she she's smart, she's smart enough to know how to deal with that by now. Oh, yeah. But anyway, so we we were interested in that, and then it began it occurred to us that there was some interesting parallels, oddly, uh with our ideas of interactivity in theme parks and the closing of the Galactic Star Clue cruiser and the recent closing of Evermore Park in Utah. Um but before we jump into this, a couple of quick news things I wanted to throw at you. Go for it. Uh one, do you know who Pepe Del Presidio is?

Pete 3:14

Pepe Del Presidio. Yes. Cool name. I have no clue who they are.

Kelly 3:20

Pepe Del Presidio is the tiki room bird that is in the Walt Disney Family Museum.

Pete 3:27

Oh wow.

Kelly 3:28

Okay. Now it makes sense. Yeah. Which I have pictures of you manipulating. Okay. Okay. In a controlled manner. And Pepe's going down for some uh referb, and what I found out recently, they're they're sending him off down south to guess where? Kevin and Jody's? Nope. Oh, who? Garner Holt.

Pete 3:48

Oh, Garner Holt. Awesome.

Kelly 3:50

Yeah. So we wish Pepe well on his flight down south for the summer. And one other thing that we didn't mention last time, but I really wanted to get in was the Lee Adams update, which is I and Pete watched me do it. I asked Bob Gurr about Lee Adams. If you've been following us for a while, I'm I'm a little bit obsessed with Imagineer Lee Adams, who has nothing reported on him, and other people tell me he's uh not that big a deal. But I think that there's a story here.

Pete 4:20

And I asked when Kelly asked Bob, only one person made any noise in the audience, and that was me laughing uproariously because I knew what was coming. And Bob cut, you know, like everybody kind of looked back at me like, who's this cackling maniac in the back row? And I'm just going, oh, I know what he's gonna ask. So anyway, go ahead, Kelly, continue.

Kelly 4:40

And and Bob, and maybe you can you can confirm this. Bob asked, answered a different question than what I had actually asked. It was a good dodge. But but it was, you know, it was an interesting answer anyway. Uh he he knew who I was talking about for sure. He had worked with Lee Adams, um, and he talked about, uh oddly enough, given our last episode was about the Autopia, how uh Lee Adams being the kind of electrician he was, was trying to use direct current to power parts of the uh Autopia automobiles, and uh really wasn't working, and basically Bob took over and sort of said, Hey, Lee, let me handle this, and took it from there. So that was that it wasn't the question I asked, but I did ask Bob Gurr, ladies and gentlemen. And and what other podcast host can say that?

Pete 5:33

Uh another thing I want to do before we really get into stuff is uh this episode is actually, and you'll find out why. Uh this episode is actually dedicated to um Martin Mull, who passed away recently. Right. So let's get back to the the subject matter. Uh the subject matter that we're going to be discussing is this buzzword that has been floating around now for about a decade, roughly, and that is immersion. Interactive immersion in theme park attractions.

Kelly 6:09

Right. And to and to kind of start off, let's let's sort of define, if we can, the distinction between immersion and interactivity.

Pete 6:17

Do you have thoughts on this? Uh yes. Um they are not they are not the same thing. Yeah. That is that is my position on this. Uh immersion. Well, let's let's actually get back to our trip because this is an excellent example of the distinction between immersion and interactivity. Yes. My first reaction to Galaxy's Edge was holy crap, look at all this amazing stuff. Look, there was, I mean, Kelly will tell you, I was walking around with my my jaw hitting the floor with the level of detail, like me going, wow, there's a Gonk Droid. Wow, there's uh a full-size A-wing fighter, one of my favorite fighter designs from the original series of films. I love A-Wings. I used to fly them a lot in the X-Wing, you know, PC game. Really awesome. And then I got chills. I almost started actually tearing up when I saw the full-size Millennium Falcon. And I didn't think I would do that. But what also helped was the fact that there was a cast member dressed as Chewbacca right there. It was like, well, I'm in. You know, let's see, let's go for it. Let's see what happens. And we jumped right on the Millennium Falcon ride. And Kelly had gone out of his way, bless him, to get us reservations at Ogus Cantina. We we woke up early, we we made a beeline for Batuu, and we got to Ogre's Cantina. He had a reservation, we got in, we sat down, and I immediately started getting bored. Here's how the here's how the little experience went. We got in. The first thing we go, like, wow, it's a Star Wars Cantina. Wow, here's these aliens up behind the bar. Look at all the ID88 droid parts that are being used as uh fountain heads and all that kind of stuff. Oh, there's Rex from Star Tours. Right. And frankly, that's actually the best part of Oga's kitchen, uh Cantina. Yeah. And uh and then we were seated in one of the alcove booths. Yep. I I ordered a drink, I ordered a fuzzy tauntaun. I know Kelly uh ordered something else. So yeah, Kelly is sober, so he he said new, but he had something else, and we ordered the food and we waited for about 20 minutes for both. Yeah. And while we were there, we were just sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting. And then the most interactive thing happened. A family sat down with two sweet little girls dressed up as Ray from the new Star Wars movies, yeah, and two moms and a grandparent, and they were crammed into the booth next to us, and they all proceeded to look bored. And the the most interactive moment was me asking one of the moms, Are you bored or is it just me? The lady said she mirrored my thoughts, which is they need to have characters in here that interact with you in some way so that way you're pulled in. Right. And she came up with some great ideas, and I thought it was a great conversation. She did, yeah. And Kelly and I went, Well, we've seen it. Let's go to the rest of Disneyland. I mean, the environment was spectacular. Like I looked at that, I said, Wow, they have like these little like little noteboards that are in the weird Star Wars language font and all these little details. Uh, I can I give them like it gets like an A as far as immersion. You really feel like you're in that world. Yeah. But then the whole thing falls apart the minute you expect anything interactive.

Kelly 9:39

It's it's really interesting to me. So I I think uh I agree with you there. And we we can use that as an example of the difference between immersion and interactivity, and we can use some things about Galaxy's Edge as a whole, which I like. I do like Galaxy's Edge. I do too. Um Yeah, we can use some things as a whole where we can say you walk in, you see the Millennium Falcon, uh, you see these kind of cool machines, you see uh A-wings, you see X-wings, um, you know, you see all this stuff, and and the immersion is strong. Oh, yeah. So that's immersion. Um having a conversation with Chewbacca, that's interactivity. Which Kelly did.

Pete 10:17

Which did which was so great. I think he was actually taller than Chewbacca. Kelly is. You could see the cast member's eyes kind of light up, like somebody who's taller than me. You know, Chewy's gonna meet somebody taller. So he started to walk up to Kelly, and this kid jumps out in front of Chewy and starts going, ah and Kelly just looks over at Chewbacca.

Kelly 10:39

No, I just looked at him and said, that was inappropriate. To which Chewaca looked at me and nodded his head and went, that was pretty great.

Pete 10:49

For the 10 seconds that it happened.

Kelly 10:51

Yeah.

Pete 10:52

But we were there for two days, and I we tried the Kelly introduced me to the magic band interactive panels that are all over Batuu. So I gave in, I bought the cheapest magic band I could get over in Frontierland, slapped it on, turned it on. I went and took a nap. And he did. He he's like, I'm gonna rest up. I go, I'm gonna try this because I'm this is my experiment. I'm gonna try this. Like, I'm gonna go all the way and see what happens. Like, there's gotta be something that's really cool that happens. And I did the bounty hunter interactive game that they have in butt two. I went up to the screen, flashed it, and it says, Okay, you want to join the bounty hunters guild, look for this person. And I didn't know how this works, and Kelly was just starting to show me how it worked. And one of the cast members, I can't remember his name, but dude, you were awesome. Yeah, he started helping us, start talking through with us, yeah, and actually tried staying in character with it. Except there was another podcaster there who spied like my Tomorrowland badge went, I have a podcast about Tomorrowland, and then the whole thing fell apart. Yeah, yeah. But you know what? It was still fun. It was still fun to interact with these guys, and it was really, really great.

Kelly 11:57

And I I just to give him credit for the niche of his podcast, his podcast wasn't about the land tomorrowland. His podcast was about the movie Tomorrowland. And I was like, dude, you are cool. You are people like us.

Pete 12:10

Yep. And he was and he was so cool. And and I'm the the guy is probably like listening, going, they're talking about me. And I'm so sorry, I cannot remember your name because I I looked everywhere for your card that you gave me, I couldn't find it. So I'm so sorry. But it I'm sure at some point, you know, for those who listen regularly, you know that Kelly on social media will post updates of saying, Yeah, here's some fact-checking. So I'm sure we will find his podcast and and forward it over to you.

Kelly 12:34

Yeah, and jump onto our Facebook group. That's where we post all that stuff. And we actually add pictures and and and we enriched information and stuff on there. And and we tell you when we get stuff wrong, which we do. Oh, yeah, a lot.

Pete 12:47

Uh so anyway, uh, I did the bounty hunter thing, and it's it's like 20 some odd bounties that you have to do. Wasn't it 20 exactly? Yeah. Okay. I think I think so. I mean, I could open up the app and you use the magic band, but you also have to download the app onto your phone of the Disneyland Play app. So you're you go up to the panel, it tells you, look for this Jawa. He's worth 350 credits. So, okay, and your magic band will start pulsing. So it's a little bit like you're getting warmer or you're getting colder, and it'll vibrate and it'll flash red, so it's pulsing more and more and more. And you actually start getting into it. So it's a little bit like having suspense music building up in your body of going, doot doot do and you go, aha, here it is. And you use your phone to scan the door, and all of a sudden you can have like this X-ray, you know, quote unquote X-ray scan, and it'll show you the little jow on the other side of the door, and it goes, bounty collected. Yeah. And then you run back to the door and you put your hand in this special panel, and this video panel opens up, and these pair of alien eyes come out and say, Ah, I see you found your first bounty. Oh, you are definitely going to be a great candidate for the guild. And it slams shut and it gives you 350 credits. You go, I'm gonna do that again. That was easy. Kelly took a nap for about I think he was gone for about two, two and a half hours. Yeah, that's about right. The entire time that he was gone, I was doing this thing. I didn't stop for a bathroom break, I didn't stop for snacks, I didn't stop to shop for lightsabers. I did the whole and it took forever. I was surprised that you kept going. I was dedicated to doing this. But when I finally did it, you know, I get a bounty of Benicio del Toro, and it's like, okay, cool. Now what? Yeah. Well, now you get to start the whole thing all over again. You're like, that's the same Joe I started with. And then and then you go, and so it's very anticlimactic. But during my final bounty, this is just total serendipity. This is not a feature of the game. Total serendipitous moment. I was at one of the doorways and I was scanning the door, and all of a sudden I feel this tap on my shoulder. And I turn around, I thought it was Kelly, and I turn around and there's Boba Fett. And he says, Are you trying to collect my bounties? And I went, Oh, I would never do that. I'm trying to assist the guild, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah, you know. And his handler, you know, every cast member who's a costume, they have a handler to make sure they don't fall over, make sure people don't mess with them. The handler says, So have you um have you picked your bounty hunter name yet? And I said, Well, yeah. And they said, What? It's it's it's Hauser. He goes, Hauser? I go, Yeah, Hauser by you. And the the the the assistant goes, Hauser by you? I said, I don't know, Hauser by you. And Boba Fett gave me these double finger guns, like, hey yo! And he just walked away. Like that was it. But it was like this great little moment, and I wanted to keep going, like I kind of wanted him to challenge me, like in some way, like, let's play a game of Sabok or Chance Cube to see who gets this bounty. You know, like that would have been cool. Yeah. Opportunity completely missed out with someone who's obviously wanting to play. Right. Right. And that's when I had the idea for this podcast, which is for this particular episode, which is okay, we've got interactivity in the park, but it's not working. And then this needs to like this would be fabulous, it's fabulous immersion, but they didn't sell it on immersion, they sold it on interactivity. Yeah, and and they had just recently suffered this closure of the Intergalactic Star Cruiser and Evermore. And there's all this talk about all these people obviously disappointed and obviously wanting this to happen.

Kelly 16:31

Right.

Pete 16:32

So I thought it'd be kind of cool for us to examine this phenomenon that's fairly new in the theme park world and examine, like, well, why didn't this work in Galaxy's Edge or Intergalactic Star Cruiser or Evermore? And yet, it does work at a few other places that we're going to talk about tonight. So we're going to talk about that. And by the way, I've been saying Intergalactic Star Cruiser. I meant Galactic Star Cruiser, Disney Do Not Sue me. So that's okay.

Kelly 17:02

They clearly don't care about it anymore.

Pete 17:03

Well, it's apparently the planetary, you know, Star Cruiser because it's grounded. So Galactic Star Cruiser. Yes.

Kelly 17:11

So you were talking about like where like the that this is a technique that has worked in the past.

Pete 17:17

It has worked in the past, and it is still being used by different venues with some degree of absolute success. As a matter of fact, uh it's banked on heavily by some places.

Kelly 17:27

Yeah.

Pete 17:28

I mean, Kelly and I are both experimenters with LARP. Kelly did a lot of LARPing in his youth. I've done I've done Nordic LARPing over in Sweden. Can't believe you outed me like that. We've all we've all done the vampire masquerade. I mean, I blame I blame Tom Hanks and Mazes and Monsters. Yeah. Of of starting with a tabletop game, going into role-playing games, and then like, hey, let's go into the sewers dressed up in bad theater costumes and then go crazy.

Kelly 17:57

Yeah.

Pete 17:58

Um yay, satanic panic. Right. Um, but I have always wanted to be immersed in different worlds. Right. And I think what did it for me? Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. Oh, yeah, yeah. So for those who do not know, Colonial Williamsburg is uh an 18th-century village that is still maintained as an 18th-century village. They have shops, they have blacksmiths, they have weavers, and they also have British soldiers and American soldiers trying to tell you to either stay loyal to the king or to actually join the revolution. Right. They have all aspects of life, and the docents stay in character. They want you to feel like you have stepped back in time into that American colonial era. And when I went on this road trip with my grandparents when I was 12 years old, they took me there and my grandfather hand, you know, bought me a tricorn hat. He bought me a poofy shirt. Yeah. And he goes, Okay. And he bought me a vintage pencil and a pad of paper, of handmade paper. He says, Okay, this trip is not just for fun. We're teaching you about American history.

Kelly 19:06

Yeah.

Pete 19:06

So, you know, we we eventually wound up on in Washington, D.C. on this trip. Anyway, excuse me. Um, we went to Colonial Williamsburg and my grandfather just said, I no offense, you're gonna go off on your own. Yeah. I want you to find someone and interview them about their life. Oh, that's so great. And you're gonna be a journalist and you're gonna interview them about their life and what they're doing today. Yeah. And I want you to come back and give me a report. Yeah. So I went looking around. I went to all the different places. I went to a blacksmith shop, but there was like so many kids looking at this guy making sparks, and okay. I went to a weaver, wasn't that impressive? And I got a little bored, and I sat down at this bench and there was a guy reading a newspaper. And they even have a printing press where they print a daily newspaper. Yeah. And the guy lowered his newspaper, and it was the docent dressed up as Benjamin Franklin. Oh, that's awesome. And I went, excuse me, uh, Mr. Dr. Franklin. Because I was already a big Ben Franklin nerd. And I said, Excuse me, Dr. Franklin. He's Yes. I said, Hi, my name's Peter Overstreet. Um, I'm from Maine, and I wanted to uh I'm looking for someone to interview uh about life here in Williamsburg for our newspaper and uh about the changing times that seem to be going on around here. Uh do you have a moment for to answer some questions? He says, Why, certainly, young man. You know, and so we talked for a little bit, and then I actually really blew his mind. I said, So when you were in Paris and you met uh Madame Tussaud, were you impressed by her wax works? And he kind of went, Hold on. He says, Look, I have to meet someone for lunch. Would you care to join? And he bought me lunch at the tavern. Wow. So he bought me, uh bought me Welsh rabbit and some apple cider, you know, which they hand press there. It's not Martinelli's, they hand press it at Williamsburg. Yeah. And in comes Thomas Jefferson. So I spent lunch with Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and for a fleeting moment, I really, you know, we're in this conspiratorial colonial, you know, Dr. Sin alias the Scarecrow light booth with just candlelight lighting everything. And I went, I'm back in time. Yeah. Whoa, this is, and it messes with your head. You're like, whoa. And it wasn't until I left the tavern and I finally saw some dudes in bad Bermuda shorts, I went, okay, I'm still in the 20th century. But that's when I got bitten by the bug with interactivity and immersion. And so I've always been fascinated by this particular art form because it is not just, to me, it's not just an art form of a physical environment. It is not just an art form of an of a bunch of actors in costume. The art form also takes place in the brain of every single audience member. And the trick is, is that none of them have the exact same story going on in their head. Yes. And that makes it very, very difficult for a lot of organizers to wrap their heads around. So we're going to talk about that with the rest of the show.

Kelly 22:07

Yeah, for sure. It takes a very specialized kind of performer to deal with an audience that is interested in participating, is is interested in doing what we'll sort of casually call role-playing here. And and to draw them, not only draw them in, but make them feel safe and participating. Lowdown on the Plus Up is a Boardwalk Times podcast. At Boardwalk Times.net, you'll find some of the most well-considered and insightful writing about the Walt Disney Company, Disney history, and the universe of theme parks available anywhere. Come join us at BoardwalkTimes.net.

Pete 23:21

So I've had some experience with, and I want to add some definitions here in this, some classifications actually of audience members.

Kelly 23:29

Yeah.

Pete 23:30

You have from a wide range. So on one side of the spectrum, in the red side of the spectrum to green, red to green, you have uh the completely disinterested. They're not interested, they don't care, they don't want to be there, whatever. Right. Then you have the casually interested who are like, well, this was neat. Yeah, let's go get a bud. Then there are the people who are very interested. Those who are like, okay, I want to see what's going on here. This is really neat. I gotta come back. I want to tell people about this. This is cool.

Kelly 23:58

Yeah.

Pete 23:59

Then you have the next level, which is a term that I call white elephants.

Kelly 24:05

Okay.

Pete 24:05

White elephants are the ones that'll actually start um dressing up. They don't say much, but they they just want to be part of the environment. Like they they don't want to feel like they stand out and take away. They want to participate, but they're maybe shy. Right. It's various levels of shyness, or they're just not they're just not really an actor, they're not really into that kind of stuff, but they don't want to take away from it by showing up in blue jeans and a t-shirt. They actually like, no, no, I really want to wear a costume of the era because I still want to internally feel like this, but don't talk to me.

Kelly 24:37

Yeah.

Pete 24:38

And then lastly, on the other side of the spectrum, the full green is what I call Velveteen Rabbits. And these people are the ones that get dressed up, they buy their ticket, they show up multiple days, and they will actually adopt their own character name, their own persona, and will actually start befriending performers and interacting with them directly, thus contributing to the fabric of that reality, and they're not even like official cast members.

Kelly 25:05

Yeah, and you know, it's it's really interesting. So I think, you know, bringing this to Evermore for a second, I think that those people carried Evermore on on their backs for like a long, long time. Absolutely. And it and it's really it's stunning to me. So uh, you know, Evermore is was it was deeply underfunded right right from the beginning. We kind of know this right away. It was it was uh put together by um uh Ken Brent Schneider, who basically sold his stake in Digicert, which he founded, to build Evermore.

Pete 25:42

And what year was that? Do you remember?

Kelly 25:44

Oh, that would have been a little before twenty sixteen, I think. Okay. Ever Evermore itself was open from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty-four. As far as we know, the earliest mention of it, or the earliest mention that kind of got some traction was about twenty sixteen. Okay. Which is when they went to Comic-Con in San Diego and and had a little booth. Right. And uh at that point, much like the Galactic Star Cruiser, the promises were very large. Yes. That's that's kind of where that all started off. A couple of um imagineers from from Disney, uh both of which had worked, I believe, on Shanghai, got got pulled over. This Josh uh Shipley and Josh Steadman got pulled over to do design. It seems pretty clear to me that it was underfunded from the beginning. Uh it's it's it's small. Like the the location for Evermore's 13 acres. Uh by comparison, Disneyland, just the park, not the resort. Disneyland Park is 85 acres. So Evermore was like the size of a land in Disneyland. They were they were underfunded, they had some kind of broad ideas about what they were going to do, and it seems like they were struggling from the get-go to implement them. Yeah. But to get, and this is why I mentioned it, to get back to what you were just saying about people did get become deeply invested in this kind of interactive experience, people did. People grabbed on. And Evermore was a place that actually seemed to be paying attention to what the people were doing. To to listen to listen to the two Josh's from uh Imagineering.

Pete 27:26

Yeah.

Kelly 27:26

Uh what they claimed was that early on that they would go to the park, like in previews in the first several weeks and see what people were doing, and literally go to the fabrication shop, which was five minutes away from the park, and build it and have it in there in in in a few days. Um how much this actually happened compared to what they described is a little vague because a lot of stuff never got built there. But it did sound like they were very gung-ho about having the customers, having the guests influence the story and playing along with that. And the guests took to it. And the guests kept that place open for what, six years? Yeah. Six years where there were buildings that weren't finished on day one and they weren't finished on the last day. Yeah. Like the they they had problems. There was an entire season of Evermore where they just fired everybody through a text message. Oh God. And didn't open. Oh, gee. And then asked for people to come work for them for free, and people did. People were deeply devoted to Evermore in spite of the fact that it l seemed to lack money and it seemed to be unable to progress. So you can't di I I I guess my point here is you can't discount those people that were obviously hungry for this kind of entertainment.

Pete 28:54

Yeah, absolutely. There's I think there was a promise there that people saw and a potential that people saw, and they were like, they they wanted to be Velveteen rabbits. They were like, we want to be a part of this. Like, oh, it was like the most epic role-playing game idea ever of, oh, you have built this world and you are looking for people to inhabit it. I will, I shall inhabit it. And I have to admit, in those early days, having seen all the videos, if I lived in Utah, I probably would have wound up there. Yeah. And you know, and going, I'll participate. What do you need? You know, give me a corner and I'll take over it. And that's my that's my shtick, is right there.

Kelly 29:33

And one of the other things that I think pulled people in, and I'm with you, I would have been fascinated. Yeah. One of the other things that pulled people in, and this is a cautionary note for people trying to do this kind of thing, yeah, is that people were drawn in because there was a lack of separation between the performers and the guests.

Pete 29:55

Yeah.

Kelly 29:55

And this became a problem at Evermore. And um it doesn't seem like anyone was ever hurt, but there it does seem like there were guests who overstepped their bounds with the performers. Uh there were there was uh uh some sort of attachments that the guests thought they had with the performers that weren't real. Um there were also points where the performers trusted the guests too much. Um have you heard about the night that Evermore went dark? No. So at one point they were in lore, which is their their uh spooky time of the year, their their autumn season. And there are monsters sort of in the fringes of lore. Yeah. And the people that work there who are the performers that are the good guys sort of keep the monsters at bay. Except one night the performers decided it would be a really fun idea to have the monsters win. And so the monsters charged into the supposedly safe areas. Oh dear. And the the heroic performers started yelling at the customers to escape. Oh no. So they started yelling at them, like, r run, you've gotta get out. And they kept saying, like, they're coming, they're coming, you've gotta get out. This is problematic for so many reasons. Yeah. It's problematic because if you're there with a kid and the kid's somewhere else, you're suddenly running out the front gate without your kid. You don't know if there is a shooter, you don't know if there's a fire, you don't know. So this is this is the double-edged sword of really, really trying to form relationships between those the performers and the audience. Yeah. Uh mistakes can get made.

Pete 31:58

Absolutely. And this is this is one of the you know the reasons why Disney still kind of frowns upon you know guests dressing as cast members. That's that's right. You know, it's because of that delineation because all it takes is one guest who's wearing the white security hat or wearing the jungle cruise skipper attire that can mess the whole thing up with a bad stage direction to audience members or leading them someplace they don't need to go, or being a trusted person where something's gonna go wrong. Right. Um I think the other part is yeah, I mean, this there was there was a promise of interactivity. There was a lot of great characters that would like the characters themselves actually start becoming a sales point. Like there's a a dwarven forger who you know ran the bar, and there was a couple of brothers, you know, there was all these different characters, the falconers. And that was kind of cool. Like it was kind of goes back to the Wally Bogue factor of like, come and meet this character. Right. They're here. Yeah. That's kind of neat. Uh, but I you could lead to that type of issue.

Kelly 33:01

Um well and one one of the characters that um evidently rose to some prominence really quickly was this it was actually a puppeted character with someone doing a voice that was known as the Fay King. And interestingly, it's one of the examples of the the designers of the park watching to see uh he was kind of an afterthought. He was someone they wanted to develop later, but they went ahead and put him in at the beginning and they discovered that people loved him. Oh yeah. And so they suddenly put him in a place of prominence, they built him up, they staffed him all day long, and he became this huge character because the audience loved him.

Pete 33:35

Yeah. I think what really killed it, and I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people who make comments and so forth, but my humble opinion of Evermore is some of that lack of delineation, some of also that lack of dedication to growing truly organically.

Kelly 33:51

Yeah.

Pete 33:52

Which I think a lot of these, a lot of these entertainments fall flat on their face. They want to grow so big, so fast, and they don't realize that it actually happens a lot more organically than you think. Yeah. And there's some examples of this. Um and uh one of the examples is uh other fantasy adventure attractions out there that I would like to mention briefly. I'm not gonna go super deep, but these are ones that started early, much earlier than Evermore, and are still successfully in operation. Okay. Uh one of which started in 1994 in Quebec, uh, and it is called the Duchy de Bicolin. Okay. Bicollin is a fantasy live action role-playing combat experience. It started in 1994 and um it became the grand battle or le Grand Bataille, you know, in which people will come from miles to participate in this giant boffer sword LARP action fight. Okay. They built stockades, they have campgrounds, they have taverns, they have shops, they have grocery stores. It is a fully functional LARP environment that is only run for a short period of time during the summer in Quebec. And thousands of people. There's actually a um travel uh group that will take Americans up as a bus tour and get you right into Bicaline and going for a week. Huh. And you are there's three or four guilds, it's heavily involved with its lore, and you can choose to be as involved as you want to be or as non-involved as you want to be.

Kelly 35:40

Um what do you do there if you're not that involved? Is it still just like a kind of a nice environment to hang out in?

Pete 35:46

Yeah, I mean they they have everything ranging from you just want to come out and party and hang out. Okay. Or you can go on nighttime quests in order to shut down cultists in the middle of the forest. I mean, and those and if you don't do it, your faction will lose the battle. Or you will gain a dragon for the battle. Okay. You know, and you and your character evolves. You gain reputation points, and you gain they actually have their own banking system, Kelly. Wow. Yeah, like they have their own coins and their own banking. Like you can exchange all of your money for Bicoline money.

Kelly 36:20

It's crazy. Which is worth exactly the same as your own money, but it's fun.

Pete 36:25

Right. Just like Disney dollars. Um, and that's pretty much, you know, and that's you know, so that's one. And and this is like very organic. It's not like it's a big corporate event. It's just somebody who had a lot of land. And I'm sure I'm sure someone, either in English or enfancais, is going to come totally correct me about Bicoline. I'm fascinated by Bicoline. I would actually like to visit it at some point because it sounds super neat. It sounds super cool. Yeah. Um, it's roughly about you're expected probably anywhere from $800 to $1,500 when all is said and done. That's your food, that's your campground, that's your gear. The works. Yeah, if you want to get more involved, you can. Yeah. Um, but for us LARPers who who grew up going, I want to do something like that at least once in my life, yeah, that might be the place to try.

Kelly 37:12

Yeah. And it does sound like kind of what Evermore was ultimately going for. They were trying to build into that, but s sort of inexplicably, they just never paid for it. Now I do w I do want to say, so neither of us ever went to Evermore, and neither of us are super rich, so we could never go to the Galactic Star Cruiser. But my uh my wife and kid went to Evermore. Yes. And they had a great time. It sounded very ramshackle. It w you know, it was it was it was late, like maybe a year, year and a half before it closed. It was a lot of it was broken down, it was organizationally chaotic, but they had fun. You know, there were performers there that they could latch on to and they would get sent on these little quests. Um sometimes the quest seemed just kind of made up on the fly, often just to screw with another cast member in another part of the park. Um but they had a nice time there. So there's there's something there. There's a there's a spark that that was good, and if they had really invested in it, I think I don't think they'd be closed now.

Pete 38:22

Um so let's talk about another one of these geeky adventures. And I say geeky affectionately, because I am in May. Okay, so there's another one for those who I man, I read I ran a changeling LARP.

Kelly 38:34

I can't be pretentious about this. That's dedicated. Yeah. Um I'm hypnotizing Pete with my glamour right now.

Pete 38:43

Wow. Um so there's another one that's a company called True Adventures. Okay. They operate mostly at gaming conventions, most notably Gen Con. Okay. Uh they are known. Uh it's a company that was started by a gentleman by the name of Jeff Martin, and it's called True uh the company's called True Adventure, but their activities are called True Dungeon and the True Dungeon Fantasy Tavern.

Kelly 39:09

Okay.

Pete 39:10

So you should check them out at some point. And so they have various uh story arcs, um uh various uh so they've had like The Teeth of Kavag uh uh Kavadar, which is the ongoing one. They also have The Missing Dwarfs of Ice Crag Keep. Yeah. Uh so it's it's it's really involved. So it's it's almost its own entire role-playing game that you can jump into very easily and play and still feel a level of immersion and interactivity without it being as involved as, say, Beaglein or Evermore. Right. And because it is ongoing, they're still running it like crazy.

Kelly 39:46

Yeah.

Pete 39:47

So that's another one that I should note where the mechanics are part of the interactive experience and part of the attraction to the interactive experience. The last thing I want to mention along these lines is actually Anita Connor and Stuart Kurumoto uh down in Santa Clara. It started in the Santa Cruz Mountains and then moved to Los Gatos and it has now wound up in Santa Clara. This troop of act uh this troop of actors kind of run a haunt, but it's not a classic haunted house.

Kelly 40:16

Yeah.

Pete 40:17

It almost always has been more of a family-oriented nighttime adventure, kind of a linear adventure with this level of here's a quick little shtick, here's some interactivity, let's move on to the next thing. Yeah. Uh they have recently uh so it's uh sometimes it's been called the Haunted Forest, sometimes it's been called Goblin's Glen. Uh so sometimes it's been called Grimm's Hollow, which is its current incarnation, and it's mainly aimed at families and kids. And again, it's all volunteer, it's to raise money for schools. Um and they do they now have a maze where they have different paths that you can take. So left, right, over to here, over to here. Yeah. Your choices will affect your next, you know. Oh, you can take a secret route back to this way and see that thing or do this and do that. And it's really clever, but it's very, very simple. But people love it because it's so simple, it's easy to do, and it's just enough to get your yaas of immersion and interactivity, yeah, but not feel like there's a massive commitment. So that's like the wide, excuse me, the wide spectrum from Beacleen to Grimm's Hollow.

Kelly 41:25

Right. Yeah. You know, so it's it's interesting. A lot of what we've been talking about so far has been this kind of LARPy role-playing uh interactivity. And um I I think that that is exactly the sort of thing that um we're seeing the the big theme parks starting to promise more and more. That's that's what they're going for. Whether or not they deliver is a whole other question. And and as we know, well, first off Galaxy's Edge, and then later the Galactic Star Cruiser had a whole lot of promise as far as you know, reputation tracking and and really enhancements to your role-playing. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Pete 42:07

And we're not just talking about a light promise like, oh, I see promise in this. No, they were really promising us this.

Kelly 42:13

Yeah, no, no, no. They they said flat out that's what they were doing. Yeah. And and and they flat out didn't. But what was what's interesting to me about this is that they had run they had done trial runs prior to opening Galaxy's Edge and prior to opening the Galactic Star Cruiser, where they absolutely did do this. Uh Legends of Frontierland is is maybe the great example. You know, it ran for four months. For four months total. That's it. That was it. But you could come and participate and things you did affected things.

Pete 42:51

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 42:52

And characters like rolled with the story, and people loved it.

Pete 42:57

I got to do this one. Um, tell me about it. Love Legends of Frontierland. Yeah. Um and I knew something was up. Yeah. Because And this is Disneyland Park. And this is Disneyland Park. Yeah. And I know this sounds so cynical of me, but I knew something like I knew this wasn't a permanent thing. Oh, yeah. I really wish it was.

Kelly 43:17

Yeah, and in fact, I when I've seen pictures of it for like the first month or so, the signs are kind of just crayon on paper, man. They didn't they didn't do much. Uh later, they got a little savvier with that, but not much.

Pete 43:33

Yeah, by the time I went, it was uh August. And so they had enough time to kind of develop it. They had a jail where um you could fill out uh a wanted poster on on your dad or somebody, and if somebody found your dad that brought you back, yeah, then they were rewarded with coins that they could then take. They were literally wooden coins that said, you know, uh uh what do you call it? Legends of Frontierland, yeah, and trade it in at this trading post that was a real estate. So I had this big map. Of Rainbow Ridge, Big Thunder, Big Thunder Canyon, and you would buy parts of land.

Kelly 44:06

Yeah.

Pete 44:07

So by the end of the day, all the different people buying these different parts of land, and you'd get other things like little paper stickers and stuff like I did this and this part of Frontierland, you know? And um at the end of the day, they would tally up how many people had scored one team or the other. And they would raise the flag over the front, you know, over the fort of the which is the entrance of Frontierland from Main Street with either an RR for Rainbow Ridge or BTC for uh I mean I'm sorry, uh Big Thunder Canyon. Yeah. And so you're basically getting it was a fight for dominance of who's right.

Kelly 44:43

And it wasn't wasn't the idea that the people of Rainbow Ridge had decided they were going to move into the canyon. Yeah. And so the and the people from the canyon, uh, you know, being the nimbies that they are, didn't want those rowdy yokels from up the hill.

Pete 45:00

Absolutely. And and uh there was you know, they had a training post, they had a sheriff's office. You could go into uh one of our favorite places, the golden horseshoe, and gamble. Uh, you know, simple gambling, you know, like blackjack and that kind of stuff.

Kelly 45:14

I think they played high card almost exclusively. I think that's what that was, yeah.

Pete 45:18

And and the map of it's really, really clever. You you know, all over Frontier, it made Frontierland valid again for a lot of people. Yeah. Because you had all these delightful characters, and and the people who were the cast members who were running it, they weren't going all out, but they were going out enough. Yeah. And people were kind of going, I kind of like this. And then they did another one, which was in um Adventureland. And this was uh a simple premise of kind of um very close to the bounty hunter experience, except it was all with pencil and paper. Yeah. And you were looking for all these different icons and different landmarks all over Adventureland, and you would check in if you got enough, you know, a scavenger hunt, basically. And you were rewarded with little miniature Rand Dotty, you know, style tiki's. And my friend Jason Simpson has collected a bunch of these, and yeah, they were all from this experience. But it was all a ruse because it was literally just a testing ground for Galaxy's Edge.

Kelly 46:26

Yeah. The whole thing. Yeah. Which which uh Legends of Frontierland seemed to also be.

Pete 46:31

Oh, 100%.

Kelly 46:32

Yeah, both of these. Yeah, both of these. And the the lessons that they learned from these things, they didn't use. Which was biz bizarre to me. And maybe they figured it was going to be too difficult to deal with long term, and they might be right. Um I you know, I look at uh our our recent uh trip to Galaxy's Edge, and I noticed, and I tried this, I didn't even talk to you about it, but I tried this. Um I tried using little bits of the official language of Galaxy's Edge. Like I would greet people and say bright suns, and um I would ask about the refresher, and and nobody responded to it at all. Oh, jeez. And I and it occurred to me maintaining that level of interaction with your staff involves some dedication on the part of the park. It involves really training people and working with them consistently. And uh, you know, it's not uh no skin off my nose. Like I j I was just curious if they were still doing it, you know, how many years out. Yeah. And uh and they really weren't. One thing I think that was maybe going on is that, you know, we see this with Legends of Frontierland. We see it kind of working and then them walking away from it and saying, we would like to do this with technology instead. Yeah. Now this is interesting to me because there's certain levels of technology that you can do this. First off, I I'm gonna say right now, I am absolutely not interested in attractions that are just games. Um I I I enjoy them. I'm not saying that I, as a person, don't enjoy kind of riding. I w I will. I enjoy riding them. Um but for this conversation, that is just a moving video game as far as I'm concerned. And it is not the kind of interactivity we're really talking about. Right. So let's let's dismiss those and put them off to the side. Uh but what I do see is them building the interactivity like the the um bounty hunter game that you played and like the Adventureland game in Florida, though the pirate hunt game. Oh, yeah, which is really fun. Yeah, and then the other one Oh Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom. That's it. Uh, which ran for a pretty long time, but was mostly like uh screen-based adventures. What I find interesting is that of all of these things we've talked about, and we'll we'll lump in Evermore, we'll lump in the Galactic Star Cruiser, um all of these things we've talked about, the thing that has lasted the longest is the Pirates Adventure, Treasure of the Seven Seas. It is still running. It opened in 2012. Oh wow. Yeah. And and and it's a great experience. And it is maybe the perfect balancing act between people and technology to have this interactive adventure for the park. I can go with that. I think when they go one step further, you end up with Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom, which I'm sure is is perfectly fine, but I've never heard anyone talk about it without saying, but eventually you get tired of the screens.

Pete 49:53

Yeah.

Kelly 49:53

But the pirate adventure, even though it is ultimately a technological feat, it doesn't look like one.

Pete 49:59

It doesn't feel like one. You really feel like you're a character of like it's a little bit like Indiana Jones or or The Pirates of the Caribbean movies, in which you're going through stuff that has been waiting for you to discover it. Yeah. And you're like, you're gonna find some treasure. We're gonna go over there and do some treasure thing. That's my bad Jack Sparrow. Um and then you activate something happening. You know, the booby trap gets set off, or the skeleton comes to life, whatever that is. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's totally a direct interaction. It's still a direct interaction because you're making up the story in your head of what's to happen. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Kelly 50:33

And so it doesn't have the advantage of of like Evermore or other sort of role-playing uh installations where the story can advance with you. I mean, it's gonna be pretty static no matter what. They I think they they will give you different maps, but that's mostly just load balancing the attraction. Yes. Uh but nonetheless, it does feel like you're having a physical effect on the environment. Because if i for people who haven't done this, and I highly recommend it, it's terrific fun. Yeah. You will go and take, you know, they'll say, Go find this space where this X is, and there's a clue. And you'll you you do need a magic band for it, but you go up and you'll touch the space, and sometimes that will cause a cannon overhead to fire and hit a target on the other side of the street, and that just feels cool. And like at one point you go up to this fish tank and you put your your magic band in front of it, and the fish tank drains, and you see the clue inside the wall where the water was. And it's like, this is great. I love this kind of interactivity.

Pete 51:37

That's pretty fun. Yeah. And it's it's about discovery on your own pace at your own time with your own story. Yeah. That's what I love. Yeah, you said over and over again for the in the past minute, you said the same word over and over again that's gonna lead me to a quick little deep dive. Okay, go for it. Okay. What what did I say? You said the word clue. Uh-huh. So let's do a quick little deep dive about interactive theater. This is related to interactive theater and interactive immersive theater.

Kelly 52:06

Yeah.

Pete 52:07

So the question is, where did this all really come from? Okay. It starts in the 1920s with the publication of the works of Agatha Christie. Wildly popular. There had been detective novels before with Sherlock Holmes, but something about Agatha Christie just struck a chord with people.

Kelly 52:31

Best-selling author of all time, I believe.

Pete 52:33

Yes, absolutely. Whether it is Miss Marple, whether it's Acu Poirot, doesn't matter, but Christie's got it. Yeah. It was so popular that I've brought an artifact with me. This is a reproduction. It was reproduced in the 70s. Yeah. But actually, it was originally printed in the 1930s.

Kelly 52:54

Yeah.

Pete 52:55

It's these interactive adventure games by a guy named Dennis Wheatley. And they are dossiers, murder dossiers, in which it is full of murder scene photography, letters, telegrams, evidence of even a poison pill in a little glassine envelope.

Kelly 53:16

That's great. It really, I'm looking at this thing that Pete's showing me, and it really does look like there's a pouch with a pill in it.

Pete 53:21

It really is. And there's about three or four of these, one of which was based heavily off of Sherlock Holmes's study in Scarlet. And it actually has like a wedding ring on the inside. And these were wildly popular as an entertainment for long winter nights so families could get together and solve a murder mystery. These were originally uh published in the mid-30s, 1936, is when this particular adventure, the Malinsay Massacre, uh and this they also did uh Who Killed Robert Prentice and The Murder Off of Miami. Huh. Very, very popular. And so when people saw this, they went, the level of detail that Mr. Wheatley has put into this game is pretty great. I mean, it's on the on the back there, it says how many copies were sold. Um, what does it say?

Kelly 54:10

400,000. Oh, yeah. In 12 months.

Pete 54:14

Yeah. So is and so that shows you how popular and how hungry people were to be a detective. And so this is also the time when people took it a step further and they started having murder mystery parties. Yeah. In which you would have a couple of people pretending to be these different characters. Yeah. So here's our Martin Mull connection. Yeah. It was kind of the foundation of the murder mystery party of we're all together, somebody pretends to get murdered, let's solve the murder together. And using the the inspiration from Mr. Uh Wheatley's uh games, yeah, that's where we get the murder mystery adventure. Like clue. Which was an offshoot of this because all these people that had loved this wanted to keep doing it because it was a very, very popular game for people to play in England, especially. Yeah. During the Blitz, uh, you know, in in England in 1943, uh, they would start playing these games like Who Done It and Murder and using little pieces of paper and cloth. They would play this game while the bombs are going off overhead to distract themselves while they're stuck down in the underground. Yeah. There was a fellow who is a musician who's a British musician by the name of Anthony E. Pratt, and in 1943 he formalized the rule system. He originally called it murder, but then he actually said, you know what? Let's have a little play on words here. The British version of it is called Cluedo because that is a combination of the word clue and the Latin word ludo, which means I play.

unknown 55:50

Huh.

Pete 55:51

So that's why it's called Cluedo. Yeah. Um, and so clue with all of the classic characters, that's kind of where we get that interactive game. But then post-World War II, we have another format, which is the immersion, which becomes the historical immersion. And this is when you start having costumed docents popping up at various locations, whether it be a Bronze Age village, whether it be in Marseille, whether it be at Hampton Court or even Colonial Williamsburg. Uh-huh. And the reason is because there was a resurgence of an interest in history at the end of World War II, mostly because a lot of us almost lost a lot of history. Yeah. Whether it be bombing, you know, famous spots in medieval times, uh, it was we were all feeling a little bit like knights of the round table. We had just vanquished a big enemy. And so we're kind of going back to those earlier times, which is why you see a big push in this time post-war of Robin Hood and you know, yeah, um dunno-da, it's the king's men, you know, that kind of stuff. Um, and so you have costumed interactivity popping up in these historical worlds. Now, because of that, yeah, we would be very remiss. And I know Kelly and I both are kind of gonna roll our eyes a little bit, but we have to mention this because it is actually really important about what we're talking about. Yeah. In 1963, uh there was a school teacher who uh wanted to put together a little class activity to try and instill a love for Shakespeare with her class. Her name was Phyllis Patterson, and in Laurel Canyon, California, uh they used a little had a little backyard, they set up a little gypsy wagon, and she and her husband Ron Patterson presented the Renaissance Pleasure Fair. And so in 1963, the birth of the Renaissance Fair happened because of the Patterson family. And then in the 70s, early 70s, Ron Patterson started to realize that this was mostly Phyllis's bailiwick.

Kelly 58:00

Yeah.

Pete 58:00

So he said, Well, I want to do something. And so they the movie Oliver came out with Oliver Reed and uh as Bill Sykes, and it was wildly popular. They said, Why don't we do that world?

Kelly 58:13

Yeah.

Pete 58:14

So Renaissance Fair is Shakespeare, but let's do uh Christmas focused on the works of Charles Dickens. And so the Dickens Christmas Fair was founded in San Francisco and it still runs today. The Patterson no longer run their own Renaissance Fair, but they still run the Dickens Christmas Fair.

Kelly 58:32

Yeah.

Pete 58:33

Um, and it has gone through many, many different transformations. Yeah, yeah. Uh, but it is also a place where I got to dabble in building uh interactive environments. I used to run an environment called La Legion Fantastique, which is based loosely off of the works of Jules Verne. The premise was that Phileas Fogg, which was my character, I dressed up as Phileas Fogg, had gone around the world and won his bet of going around the world in 80 days. Yeah. And then he decided to take a much more leisurely trip. Yeah. And during that journey, he met all the other characters from Jules Verne's books Captain Nemo, Robert the Conqueror, Princess Auda, uh the Lidenbrocks who had gone to the center of the earth and brought all these artifacts and all these people with him to share their adventures with people and to tell people the wonders of science, exploration, and imagination. Uh there is a video. Kelly and I will share it with you guys so you can kind of get a look into this. It was all volunteer, it was all handmade, but we had a giant squid that we would feed every hour and we just squid feedings. We did a slot, you know, a magic lantern show about our journey to the center of the earth with dinosaurs. We had a dinosaur egg that over the course would grow and grow and grow and then finally cracked open. We had a baby pterodactyl in the environment at the end of every season. Uh, we ran it for five years and we learned so much.

Kelly 59:53

Yeah.

Pete 59:54

And the best part of that was that's how I kind of got to uh become an interactive designer and really test a lot of the stuff. And I got to meet a lot of interactive designers, including Tony Baxter, who is a friend of the Patterson family. And also how I got a job as a creative director at the Winchester Mystery House, yeah, being a haunt producer. Right. But also I got to meet another individual who uh is very eclectic, very creative, and has made interactive theater his life mission.

Kelly 1:00:35

Okay.

Pete 1:00:36

And it's a gentleman by the name of Scott Levkoff.

Kelly 1:00:38

Yeah. Our our mutual friend.

Pete 1:00:40

Yeah, our mutual friend Scott Levkoff runs an entertainment that he's been running for about a decade and much longer. He's been in operation uh doing this for, you know, since the 90s. Yeah. Um, he also was interacting, working at the Winchester Mystery House for some time. But he's been doing immersive theater since the 90s. And his his probably the most well-known thing uh that he's done, I mean, he's done a lot of great stuff, but one of the big ones that he was working on was something called the Mystic Midway, which was semi-esoteric, semi social engineering, interactive, immersive world. Yeah. But he had figured out a lot of great mechanics, and one of which was the more he did one called Midwyville, which was great. It was this pop-up theme park that had food trucks built all around it, and when you popped in, yeah, the theme park was okay. And then you started to realize, oh, the more I do, the better the park gets. So, like the more the people would interact, people would start bringing out all these like flashing lights and these light trees and these different types of games and attractions would pop up, the more you would do. So by the time the audience was done interacting with everything, they had basically made the park grow organically through their interactivity, which I thought was really clever. Yeah. He developed his own currency, he developed his own gameplay based solely off of sharing conversation.

Kelly 1:02:09

Well, and the interesting thing is pretty great. The interesting thing that Scott did, and I love Scott, um, is that he created a sort of um adaptable template for how he was going to build these experiences. And and it, you know, it's it's sort of like you know, remember back in the 70s when the s Steve Jackson had uh like built role-playing uh templates where it was just like you can use this for anything.

Pete 1:02:36

GURPS. Yeah, GURPS, absolutely.

Kelly 1:02:38

It's like like this is a s this is a kind of mechanics that you can just place it in whatever you want to place it in. Yeah. And Scott did the same thing, but instead of for paper, he did it for live action experiences.

Pete 1:02:53

Yep. And he and Scott's partner, Marty Kaplan, uh, was also doing a lot of game design in this as well. So these two guys have been doing it uh and they're doing a new one loosely based off of I think it's actually a thumb in the eye to the Scottish organizers of a very badly failed Willy Wonka exhibit. But they're doing they're using a lot of the same mechanics with a new attraction that's loosely based off of the Wonka verse. Yeah. I mean, obviously, you know, they call it the Wonky Verse. Yes. So to avoid copyright issues, but we all know what it really is. Yeah. Scott does it with this delightful little wink. Yeah. Um, and I really think that the one place that is actually taking the stuff from Disneyland, both its failures and its successes, yeah, Renaissance Fairs, and even a little bit of what Scott does with the Mystic Midway is not very far.

Kelly 1:03:44

Yes, 100%. I'm glad you brought this up because I didn't want to let you get by. Yeah, so in in tw. This month at Boardwalk Times, we're talking about Inside Out 2, an Independence Day salute to the most patriotic attractions ever, Deadpool vs. Wolverine. But the real showdown is between Volcano Bay and Typhoon Lagoon. Come check it all out at BoardwalkTimes.net.

Pete 1:04:30

Yeah, and they do a thing that is called Ghost Town Alive.

Kelly 1:04:35

Yeah, its first year was 2019, but I think they announced it a few years before. Yes, yeah.

Pete 1:04:39

And they were playing with different little little things, like they're experimenting, working it out, and it is an interactive experience that takes place in the ghost town area of Calico inside of Knott's Berry Farm.

Kelly 1:04:52

Yeah. It is a role-playing experience, much in the same way that Legends of Frontierland is. Um but there's some real ambition there that they've managed to pull off, which is, you know, they the it's set in the first year was set in 1888, but every year that ticks up one. Uh-huh. Um characters come and go, repercussions from the previous season last through to the next season. You know, they shut down for one year due to the pandemic, and they advanced Old West Time two years the next year, so they included that you had missed a year of activity in the Ghost Town. I mean, it's real brilliance. And people love it. Oh, yeah. And in fact, didn't our friend Paul Berry over at Window to the Magic say that during the Halloween season is the the one time of year that he doesn't go to Disneyland. He goes to Knott's, so he can sit and watch Ghost Town Alive.

Pete 1:05:45

Absolutely. And what's really interesting about Ghost Town Alive, it's almost all analog. It's all people. It's all people. This is zero technology on this one. This is totally what you're talking about here.

Kelly 1:05:56

Yeah, this is absolutely important because I And and it seems to be the place where uh Disney feels uncomfortable.

Pete 1:06:06

Yeah.

Kelly 1:06:14

But to maintain that's got to be supplemented with a lot of technology. And uh you know, I I didn't experience it, certainly. And I like every good theme park p fan have watched Jenny Nicholson's three and some change hour-long video about it. Yeah. But I've heard an a number of people who felt like the technology was underbaked, uh and that it just didn't feel like the full-throated experience that you wanted to have for your $5,000. Yeah. Uh also, it didn't it the plot never advanced. You had your weekend and there was no reason to ever go back. Ghost Town Alive, there's a reason to go back. And they're not dependent on any half-back technology. I don't mean to be mean. I'm sure there were some real some incredible marvelous things about the Galactic Star. Nice save.

unknown 1:07:12

Yeah.

Kelly 1:07:12

Well, you know, I want to be fair. I wasn't there. But Yes, okay. That's fair. But goes Ghost Town Alive just depends on really smart performers. But I you know, it's just I was thinking about like, okay, so what what are the other kinds of of interaction that that we see in in theme parks specifically? Yeah. So um, you know, there's the gamifying stuff. It's okay. It's fine. But it's limited. Yeah, it is limited. Um there's the kind of stuff that you see in Rise of the Resistance, where it's like a a multi-tiered queue, basically, but the people working the queue are in character and they are um interestingly for a Disney park treating you poorly. Yeah. So, you know, they're they're taking you in to be interrogated. You've been caught. Yeah. So it's it's a it's a slight interaction. You know, we we see this kind of uh multi-tiered thing. I I don't know if you've heard of this, but I just ran across it rec recently. This thing called Pacific Rim Shatter Dome Strike. No. It's in Indonesia in in in in Jakarta. No, we flew. Sorry. Sorry, bad 1930s joke. Anyway, go ahead. But it's it's you know, like anything with uh kaiju these days, they put the Pacific Grim name on it. Yeah. But it's super interesting. It's done by some of the people that were involved with Star Trek the Experience. The much-beloved and much-missed Star Trek the Experience.

Pete 1:08:47

Which is gonna get its own episode. Because it has to. That's a retro episode we have to talk about.

Kelly 1:08:52

Yeah, because it was so cool. But they um in it, they do this clever thing where they send you uh like they say, hey, you're gonna go into a Jaeger simulator and you're gonna pretend you're fighting monsters, and you stand in line in front of, you know, what looks to be a normal cue door, like with rails and stuff, and everyone's in their lines, and someone comes running into the room from a different direction and says, Uh-oh, there's actually been a kaiju attack. We gotta get out of here. So the cue is fake. Those doors don't open. And and you go chasing down the hall with what you know, interacting with this person that's like, oh no, no, no, something's gone horribly, horribly wrong. Oh my god. And you you do eventually get to a ride vehicle. You're going like they hand you flashlights. Whoa. And then you're going through dark tunnels with flashlights. Um, I think this is super cool. Like they put you on a ride vehicle, you go a little ways through through the ride, and then that breaks down, and they're like, You gotta get off. The ride's broken.

unknown 1:09:58

Oh, jeez.

Kelly 1:09:59

And you go running through more halls. At one point, you see a um uh kaiju face painted on a door, and they're like, Oh, yeah, this is just something that's part of the ride. And they open the door, and there's an actual head of a dead kaiju in the room. It's a Godzilla-looking thing. Oh man. And to get out, you have to walk through his mouth down his body and get out through his the hole in his intestines. Oh my God. So this and then and then there's an actual vehicle ride. Wow. Where you're fighting them. And it's just like this is so it's a whole different kind of interactivity. Yes, you don't have much say in it. Sure. But you are being involved. You are being involved as a character, which is something that does you know, as much as the early Disney guys would say, well, you are Snow White. Nobody thought of it then. No. Nobody understood. Not really. No. No offense. Yeah. Yeah, no offense. No offense, guys, but no. So yeah, there's stuff like that. There's stuff like the long-term evolving stuff like Ghost Town Alive. Yep. There's obviously escape rooms. Oh, yeah. It's a whole thing we we maybe is a whole other episode. I think so, yeah. Um in Bali, there is an attraction, uh, what's it called? Uh Road Rage is what it's called. I don't know why. And and it is a fairly standard, you know, just vehicle through a dark environment. Sure. But you start off locked in a room and you have to do the escape room. You have to solve the puzzle to get out of the room to get on the ride. Ooh. These are neat ideas. These are these are neat combinations. But you know, it's it started leaving me to ask. I was like, what is what is the responsibility of you as a guest towards your own entertainment?

Pete 1:11:57

Yeah, and you had mentioned actually before we did this. Yeah. Um the entertainment of others, actually. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, and in the and in the entertainment of others, absolutely. Um and and how interac like how important is interactivity in a theme park? You had posed this to me, and I want to hear your take on this.

Kelly 1:12:14

Aaron Powell Okay. So I think, and and maybe I'm alone in this, but uh I don't think so. I think I think amusement parks they have a singular job. Yes. And that job is to take someone, usually a young someone, through a frightening experience safely.

Pete 1:12:38

Yes.

Kelly 1:12:39

So they the you build up some some fear, but the the kid knows, or the adult in our case, knows that it's gonna be okay, and they come through it and they've grown a little bit from that.

Pete 1:12:52

Aaron Powell It's the old axiom that is a sign and universal creative danger minus death equals thrills. That's right. Yeah, and and that's an amusement park. Like a yeah, thrill parks.

Kelly 1:13:02

Aaron Powell And and and I don't want to just leave it at thrills. I want it I want to say this is these are important rites of passage. Oh yeah. Like you you getting on, you know, for me as a kid growing up in Texas, getting on the shockwave, which was the double luke roller coaster at Six Legs over Texas. That was a rite of passage. When I did that and came out, I felt bigger than I was before. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Pete 1:13:28

I felt the same way when I rode the demon at Great America. Yes. Yep, absolutely.

Kelly 1:13:32

And so I think that that's the case for amusement parks. And I think theme parks, which we'll call Disneyland and Knots and Universal and stuff like that, have a similar responsibility, but just there's a slight level of intellectual nuance added on top, which is that there is some story there. It doesn't I I I would argue that telling a story from beginning to end is not the point. I agree. And this is this is where I m might take issue a little bit with things like Rise of the Resistance, which I like, but I don't know that that kind of complex narrative uh is the work of the amusement park. So I think that the amusement park is there to take post-industrial society kids who have not had to face the kind of trials that earlier generations have had to face and put them safely in those trials and and through them and give give them a sense of triumph out of that. Which leads me to sort of conclude to make this work, failure has to not be an option. Ultimately, you need guardrails. Right. That's the point, is that you're going through these things with guardrails. And so my question about bringing kind of role-playing interactivity into amusement parks is are we mixing two things that shouldn't go together? The reason being that if you are, like this is how I started this off, if you are somewhat responsible for your own entertainment, you can fail. And and you know, you could feasibly fail others.

Pete 1:15:30

That's true.

Kelly 1:15:31

And it's and you could fail with embarrassment. You know, I I did uh enough I didn't do a ton of LARPing, but I did enough to know what it was like to have a bad night. In fact, I might argue that there were more boring nights than there were great ones.

Pete 1:15:49

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kelly 1:15:50

So that's putting a level of responsibility on the patron. I know this is getting a little esoteric, but it's been whirling around in my mind lately.

Pete 1:15:59

Um this is this is this is a hurdle that needs to be overcome.

Kelly 1:16:03

Yeah. You know, in the same way that you ride a roller coaster and you have to believe that you're going to be safe in spite of the thrill that you're going to have, and in the same way that you ride a dark ride and you have to believe that the thing that's going to pop out at you is actually not going to hurt you, even though it's still going to thrill you. If you are role-playing in an amusement park, you have to believe you're not going to be embarrassed. Yes. And this is the thing that is why I'm like, we are not there yet.

Pete 1:16:42

But the the trick is that the the audience is sophisticated to know what's going on. They also know when, like you say, they're being embarrassed by someone who's lording it over them. Yeah. This happens a lot at Renaissance fairs. The minute somebody starts making fun of what you're wearing, oh, prathy me lord, you're wearing a weird shirt with Mickey Mouse on it. What is that? You know, and you're like, don't don't be don't be stupid. Just pretend I'm dressed like a knight.

Kelly 1:17:10

Well, and even worse in a situation is if you're trying to play along and you start stumbling or you can't keep up. And there's yeah. Which is that's most people in the world. They're not ready for that kind of improvisation. And I think and I'm in no way am I trying to cast shade on Renaissance Fares or Nick's fair or anything like that. I'm saying it might be a different art form.

Pete 1:17:34

I agree. And and I saw this at Galaxy's Edge, where you actually had uh adults and kids dressed as Jedi with absolutely no idea what to do with that.

Kelly 1:17:46

Yeah.

Pete 1:17:47

You know, and and it's let's face it, walk around and say, uh, I'm a Jedi. Okay, now what? You have to have a moment. You have to be able to have actors who are flexible enough to go, I'm not in charge. I'm not the main character. That kid, right now, the the the camera and the film that it's projecting, it's recording, yeah, is in his skull. Yes. Not around us. Yeah. There's no hidden camera going, here's this actor. He's playing Boba Fett, and he's the star of this story. No. The little kid who's dressed up as Ray, who desperately wants something to happen, that's the main character. You have to have everybody's ego needs to go out the door and understand that when you transform a kid or an adult or an elderly person who is willing to go through the trouble to say, I'm ready to play. You do everything that you can to maintain that fabric because you're literally holding them up and you're taking them by the hand, very much like Superman flying around with Lois Lane. Yeah. The minute he lets go, she's gonna fall. Right. You have to be willing to go, I'm not in charge. You're in charge, kid. What do you want to do? You want to be a Jedi? You know what? You look like someone who might be interested in joining the new order. That's the magic. That's the magic that needs to be there. And that's basically my plus up is well, also, uh, this is a little butt-kissy, but I think I think Disney needs to hire someone like Scott or Scott to actually work with him and say, okay, we've got you for a week, we're gonna pay you for a week. Tell us how you make that work. Yeah. So we can really make that promise come through.

Kelly 1:19:35

Or or someone that is specifically an improv teacher.

Pete 1:19:40

Yeah, I mean, the the it needs to be a new position at imagineering where it's it's not just about the people who are developing all the new technology, excuse me, all the new technology, all the droids, all this, like, hey, that's really great. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:53

Yeah.

Pete 1:19:53

But you need someone else to go just as far with psychology, with game development, uh, with interactive theater to do that type of deep dive to say, if you're gonna put on an immersive and in and interactive environment, they've got immersive down. Yes. That's not their problem. Absolutely. Their problem is saying, and it's interactive. Well, you haven't even scratched the surface, man. Yeah. So you need someone who's just as dedicated to developing. And that would be my plus up for not so much knots, because knots is kicking butt with that.

Kelly 1:20:25

Yeah, they've they've got it working. And what they've managed to do is make it uh seemingly as fun whether you participate or not. Absolutely. So if you're like kind of shy uh and and don't want to participate, that's fine. You're still gonna have a great time. And and I'm I I think you're in my plus ups almost exactly the same. It's just lean into the people. It's the people. Lean into the people, give them the training and support that they need, and don't keep leaning into the technology. The technology is neat enough, but and I'll plug me. If you've read either of my articles about tech debt in Disneyland Park, you will see that the technology is getting away from them a little bit right now. Um but people are reliable and people can sense emotions. You know, we saw the um we saw the little uh Huey Dewey and Louis Droids at Galaxy's Edge. And um very interesting. I looked I looked at them, uh looked up a little bit what was going on there, and obviously we we both saw the guy that was controlling them, but they are only sort of controlled. They do see human body motion and they do react to that, um, which is a remarkable step. Um, but they still can't do it as well as a person can. Right. So more people when as Disneyland's slowly getting rid of, for some reason, live performers. Yeah, I'm saying put more live performers in, put them on the streets, put them, put them in the attractions, put them in shows, more people. I agree.

Pete 1:22:12

100%. I mean, yeah, put put more more people everywhere, not just in Galaxy Edge, but everywhere.

Kelly 1:22:18

Yeah.

Pete 1:22:19

Because it's it's what that's where people really want to connect. They don't want to connect with just a building, they want don't want to just connect to a colored light. Yeah. They want to connect with people. And that's that those are those men that there's a reason that there are people personalities like Tiki Maynard, yes, who have left an indelible mark on the park. I mean, he is long since retired, but he's still left an indelible mark on the park. Yeah. So I agree. Totally agree.

Kelly 1:22:44

All right. I think this is a good place to leave it. I think this has been a great discussion.

Pete 1:22:48

It's uh it's a bit a weird one, but it was a good, I think it was a good discussion. It was an interesting dive on uh what is a buzzword that I think will be uh actively changing, and who knows where it will go. So uh again, Disney, hire Scott Levkoff. Anyway, uh I'm sure Scott's like, no, don't hire me. Uh anyway. Stop saying my name. Yes. So anyway, I'm Peter Overstreet. I'm Kelly McGovern.

Kelly 1:23:12

And you've been listening to The Lowdown on the Plus Up. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of The Lowdown on the Plus Up. If you have, please tell your friends where you found us. And if you haven't, we can pretend this never happened and need not speak of it again. For a lot more thoughts on theme parks and related stuff, check out my writing for Boardwalk Times at Boardwalk Times.net. Feel free to reach out to Pete and I on our Lowdown on the Plus Up Facebook group or send us a message directly at commons at lowdown-plus-up.com. We really want to hear about how you'd plus these attractions up and read some of your ideas on the show. Our theme music is Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy by Kevin McLeod at Incompitech.com. We'll have a new episode out real soon. Why? Because we like you.