This is the first of a week’s worth of emails dedicated to highlighting the best in immersive amusements coming to the IAAPA show in Orlando. If you’re going, don’t miss these—I promise you’ll thank me. If you’re not, try to manage the FOMO. (I put that em dash there on purpose - no GPUs were harmed in the writing of this email.)

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The First Downloadable Theme Park is at IAAPA

In 1995, Nicholas Negroponte, in his book Being Digital, coined the expression “from atoms to bits” to describe the coming shift to a digital age. He wrote about how the Yellow Pages (that’s a giant multi-thousand-page directory of landline phone numbers for you kids out there).

Two years ago, in a webinar with Brent Bushnell, I asked him how far we were from a fully virtual FEC, and before I could get the question out, he blurted out: The Downloadable Theme Park!

So what did he do? He helped build it. DreamPark is the first fully downloadable theme park. All it requires is some Quest 3 headsets, a QR code, and any space, public or private, no matter how big, can become a virtual amusement attraction.

This is the 25K-square-foot warehouse they converted in Seattle.

They also have one on the 3rd Street Promenade, just opened in Long Island, and are about to launch a partnership with the City of Santa Monica to add them to city parks.

It’s insanely affordable because there are very few atoms. It’s all bits. I got to try it at AWE, and it was insanely fun. I watched kids and adults all having a great time. It’s super accessible, no instructions required. You hold the headset up to your face, look at a QR code, and off you go. You only need one hand to play, so they got rid of the headset straps to make it even more accessible.

They even have a version where you race drift karts. Make sure to hit the First Time Exhibitor Pavilion - Booth 7050 - to check them out for yourself. For next to nothing, you can turn your parking lot into a downloadable theme park.