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Niantic and Snap's new partnership might redefine the spatial AR game, laying the groundwork for Meow Wolf to extend its weird and wonderful worlds far beyond gallery walls. Netflix House is dropping hints about immersive ambitions, with key AR/VR hires signaling their next move. Meanwhile, Zero Latency marks a decade of trailblazing free-roam VR, offering operators hard-earned lessons on how to survive and thrive. Read on for One Big Thing after the news below…

"Is Meow Wolf about to take over your neighborhood?”

New Developments

NEW DEVELOPMENTS

Theme Parks

Disney Celebrates 70 Years with MuppetVision Rumor—Is VR Finally Going Mainstream?

Disney’s classic MuppetVision 3D attraction could be getting a virtual reality reboot just in time for Disney Imagineering's 70th anniversary. With details scarce but buzz growing, this hints at a broader VR media push on Apple Vision Pro. Will Disney nail the nostalgia-to-tech transition, or is this another Mickey misstep in the making? Read more...

FECs and Arcades

Pinstripes Shutdown: Canary in the FEC Coal Mine?

Illinois-based entertainment chain Pinstripes threatens to close all 18 locations, casting doubts on traditional FEC models. The failure highlights the shifting economics operators face—tight margins, escalating tech costs, and the need for smarter attraction strategies. Is this a red flag or a roadmap to more immersive venues? Or both? Read more...

Semnox Rolls Out Card System at Canada’s Latest VR Arcade

Semnox’s latest Canadian venture introduces cashless payment tech into VR arcades, streamlining operations and improving visitor flow-through. Operators leveraging systems like this report higher throughput, better tracking, and, crucially, fewer bottlenecks. Are card systems now essential for the survival of VR arcades? Read more...

Netflix House Hiring Hints at Immersive Ambitions—Here’s What It Means

Netflix has posted job openings for AR/VR experts at its upcoming Netflix House locations in Dallas and Philadelphia. Roles require hands-on experience with virtual and mixed-reality tech, indicating LBEXR experiences ahead. Could Netflix House redefine entertainment venues or fall into the familiar pitfalls of LBE unit economics? Read more...

Sandbox VR Banks on Stranger Things—Will IP Push Growth?

Sandbox VR’s deal to produce a Stranger Things-themed immersive experience could supercharge its growth—but at what cost? IP partnerships bring instant audiences, but operators often underestimate royalties, scale challenges, and licensing complexities. Will Stranger Things make the unit economics stranger, too? Read more...

Phi Studios and Excurio Take Visitors Back to Prehistoric Earth

Excurio Partners with Montreal's Phi Studios to bring Life Chronicles, the prehistoric VR experience that blends immersive storytelling and interactive discovery, to Canada. With dinosaur adventures historically popular, this collaboration could prove again that history sells—if they nail the right balance of awe and accuracy. Read more...

India’s Nazara Expands LBEXR Push—Can SMAAASH Scale?

Indian gaming giant Nazara Technologies is doubling down on LBEXR, ramping up investment in SMAAASH entertainment centers. After years of inconsistent returns, will Nazara’s new bet on extended reality experiences finally hit profitability, or are they chasing ghosts of games past? Read more...

I’ve been following Evan Shapiro on LinkedIn for years. IMO he’s the most insightful analyst in the media entertainment landscape. He recently posted that movie theaters now boast the YOUNGEST median age of any demographic - even TikTok and YouTube. What’s that mean for location-based entertainment? Join me LIVE to find out. Sign up here.

Museums and Science Centers

Ghanaian Entrepreneur Launches VR-Powered Auto Museum

Kwadwo Safo Kantanka’s new Auto Museum in Ghana integrates VR racing simulators, bridging history and high-octane immersion. It’s a bold local innovation, proving VR isn’t just for Western tech hubs anymore. Can grassroots projects redefine global perceptions of immersive museum experiences? Read more...

Hammer & Anvil: How VR is Unearthing Theater’s Potential

The interactive VR theater experience Hammer & Anvil is debuting, promising to marry virtual worlds with live performance. Theater meets VR at the intersection of interactivity and immersion. Will audiences bite, or is VR theater still too niche to survive? Read more...

Greece Launches Interactive Museum of Technology and Culture

The new interactive VR Museum of Technology and Culture in Greece blends immersive experiences with educational content. VR museum projects like this offer operators a blueprint for compelling storytelling with repeatable economics. Is this the future standard for interactive museums? Read more...

Art, Music, and Culture

Niantic and Meow Wolf Join Forces—The Future of LBEXR?

AR gaming pioneer Niantic is collaborating with Meow Wolf on new LBEXR attractions. Merging AR's accessibility with Meow Wolf's quirky installations could unlock next-level creative and economic potential. Are location-based experiences ready for this reality remix? Read more...

"War of Resistance VR" Revisits Chinese History Through Immersion

A new VR exhibit, War of Resistance, immerses visitors in pivotal moments from China’s WWII history. Historical VR continues to prove popular globally, but will this ambitious exhibit resonate culturally and economically beyond initial curiosity? Read more...

Fever Goes All-in on LBEVR with Titanic in Dubai

Fever, the world’s largest LBE ticketing and marketing platform, is launching its own LBEVR experiences after years of promoting third-party locations. Titanic VR aims to provide visitors with a dramatic virtual dive into history’s most famous maritime disaster. With strong global appeal and built-in drama, is this the iceberg-proof formula for LBVR? Read more...

Truth Traveler Christian 5D Experience Expands to Pigeon Forge

Kentucky's Ark Encounter is expanding its Truth Traveler immersive attraction to Tennessee. This blend of biblical narrative and tech-driven immersion is attracting a unique audience, but will it stand the test of time, or is it preaching to the converted? Read more...

Travel and Tourism

BattleKart Drives into Mexico—Karting Gets Immersive

BattleKart, the immersive karting concept blending gaming and physical racing, opens its first location in Mexico. It’s fast, competitive, and capital-efficient—could this be a new high-speed blueprint for profitable VR entertainment? (en Español) Read more...

Cultural Tourism Meets VR in China’s "Recluse Dongpo Rise"

Recluse Dongpo Rise VR experience combines cultural history with immersive tourism, illustrating the growing trend. As VR tourism heats up, will experiences rooted in local authenticity drive sustainable success? Read more...

Technology

Bob Cooney Sees Clearly into AR’s Future—Do You?

Bob sheds his long-held AR skepticism after attending hands-on demos at AWE 2025, notably with XREAL’s Project Aura. He dives into the four critical metrics—field of view, brightness, battery life, and weight—and applauds Aura’s promise of a 70° field of view, 700 nits of brightness, and swappable battery packs that strip bulk from wearable AR. Bob calls this the clearest evidence yet that AR hardware is rounding the corner toward real-world usability. Read more…

If you're tracking the next wave of head‑worn tech and want straight‑talk insights on XR trends, subscribe now for future Dropping In posts and stay ahead of the curve.

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One Big Thing

Downloadable Theme Parks Go From Concept to Reality

Last year, after a deep dive interview with Brent Bushnell, I started talking about the concept of a downloadable theme park. Something with more bits and fewer atoms. Atoms are expensive and hard to change. Bits can be developed once and distributed everywhere for almost nothing.

Since then, we have been seeing signals of downloadable theme parks coming to life. And last week at the Alternate Worlds Expo in Long Beach, California, it became even more real for me. I finally got to experience Brent’s Dream Park on the show floor. I spent about 10 minutes feeling like Super Mario, breaking blocks, dodging cannonballs, and ultimately sinking a flying pirate shit. It was goofy fun and showed the promise of mixed reality in a physical venue.

But the big news was when Niantic, the makers of Pokémon Go, and Meow Wolf announced a collaboration to add an augmented reality layer onto Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver.

Meow Wolf is known for its story-driven, immersive, and interactive art installations. Each of their five locations spans between 50,000 and 90,000 square feet, filled with a mind-boggling amount of discoverable content. Each site has a story that plays like an alternate reality game. Guests who want to delve deep into the rabbit hole find hours of content. Each location has a tie-in to a larger story arc, encouraging cross-visitation.

Niantic recently sold its video game division to Saudi Arabian mobile game studio Scopely for $3.5 billion. They never found follow-up success after Pokémon Go. The sale included Pokémon Go, Monster Hunter Now, and Pikmin Bloom mobile gaming titles. Niantic is now focused on location-based augmented reality, to map the real world and create a digital twin that can work as a virtual layer on top of “physical” places.

Niantic's VPS: Redefining AR Localization

Niantic Spatial's Visual Positioning System (VPS) represents a quantum leap for AR, achieving precise centimeter-level localization and 6-Degrees-of-Freedom (6-DoF) orientation. With over 1.5 million real-world locations already mapped, VPS is becoming the critical infrastructure layer for truly immersive AR experiences. Importantly, Niantic's approach is hardware-agnostic, meaning that any device—phones, glasses, or headsets—can seamlessly leverage this technology to anchor digital experiences in the real world.

Current GPS-based location mapping is not nearly accurate enough for realistic, 3D augmented reality experiences. To map a virtual object onto a real one, the AR system, using machine vision, must recognize the object for what it is and where it is, so it can accurately place the virtual object in the surroundings. Any misalignment breaks immersion, such as when Pikachu is hidden behind your couch while you play Pokémon Go in your living room.

Tech platforms hope to build accurate maps of both indoor and outdoor locations. Ultimately, artificial intelligence will enable AR systems to interpret what they see in real-time. But until lightweight, on-device AI models are available, the latency of cloud processing makes them impractical.

Snap Partnership: Amplifying Reach and Tools

Snap's recent multi-year partnership with Niantic integrates VPS into Snapchat, Lens Studio, and Spectacles, dramatically expanding potential distribution channels and enabling developers to craft experiences with unprecedented spatial precision. Snap’s user base offers an immediate audience, while Spectacles provide an intuitive, hands-free method for AR delivery. This integration is pivotal in making VPS-based AR widely accessible and engaging.

Snap is also building a platform for location-based AR experiences for their Spec AR glasses, coming in 2026. This enables creators to easily build location-based experiences that work with both Snap on mobile phones and the new wearables, which feature 6-DOF capabilities and include hand tracking, as well as integration with Google Gemini AI. This means that by next year, virtually anyone will be able to transform a parking lot, city park, or shopping mall into a downloadable theme park experience.

Meow Wolf: Extending Art into Public Spaces

For Meow Wolf, renowned for immersive multimedia installations, VPS offers an extraordinary opportunity to extend their narrative-driven, surreal experiences into not only existing Meow Wolf LBEs, but also into urban and public spaces. Meow Wolf envisions embedding persistent AR portals into neighborhoods and landmarks, allowing visitors to uncover hidden narratives, engage in interactive adventures, and deepen immersion both within and outside traditional installations. This transforms the physical world into a vast, continuous canvas for storytelling.

Meow Wolf has already built a virtual reality course in Walkabout Mini Golf. Imagine what they can do as they extend their creativity, combining virtual and physical realities.

Now, Meow Wolf has not announced a deal with Snap yet, but with the new Specs coming out next year, I expect to see them working together in the future. By combining Niantic’s VPS tech, Snap’s widespread platform, and Meow Wolf’s storytelling prowess, this partnership provides a roadmap for scalable, persistent AR content. For creators and brands, this means that spatial AR will power the downloadable theme park movement. It isn’t a distant future—it's here, robust, and ready to be deployed at scale.

Back to Brent Bushnell: One Caveat

I asked Brent at AWE what he thought of Snap Spectacles and augmented reality glasses in general. He’s chosen to use Quest 3 for its mixed reality features in Dream Park. “AR glasses don’t quite create a realistic 3D experience for me. The images always seem flat,” he said. And I agree.

When trying out Spectacles at the show, I played a new game from Enklu for their Verse Immersive platform. It was a frantic AR dartboard experience. And while I had fun trying to throw virtual energy darts at targets popping up all around me, the targets themselves felt a bit two-dimensional. This is one of the current limitations of waveguide technology used in AR glasses.

Several companies are working on holographic displays, which promise more depth. But until the field of view catches up with the latest waveguide technology, they’re unlikely to see the consumer markets for several years. Other technologies, such as MicroLED and Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS), also show promise. For developers looking to design augmented or Mixed Reality experiences, it will be imperative that they choose the right technology to deliver a quality consumer experience.

Stay immersed,

Bob Cooney