Let’s not tiptoe around this: if the team at Walt Disney Imagineering and Lucasfilm can pull of what they revealed yesterday about the Star Wars expansions at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, then we are just two years away from live immersive entertainment going completely mainstream.

While I was scurrying about the Los Angeles Convention Center for the VRLA expo, our friend Bryan Bishop of the Verge was serving the will of the Force and texting me updates from the panel. As Bryan reports, they are pulling out all the stops. Here’s the standout passage from his write up in the Verge:

While the Falcon ride as described would be fun unto itself, [Scott] Trowbridge and Imagineering executive creative director Asa Kalama stressed that that was just the beginning of a much more in-depth kind of interaction. If visitors bring the Falcon back all beat up, that might anger another character in the world — one that might decide to say something when they next see the pilot. “An experience might begin on board the Millennium Falcon, and follow you right out the door of the attraction and into a local watering hole,” Kalama said. “So it really is up to you to determine how you want this thing to play out.”

Honestly you should just go read Bryan’s whole piece and then come back here for some quick analysis. I’ll wait. No, really. What follows assumes you have read it.

Get Noah J Nelson’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

SubscribeSubscribe

In the meanwhile I’m going to rewatch this video while you read:

Video: Disney Parks Youtube channel

How LARP and theatre lead to cantina encounters.

Let’s focus on Asa Kalama, long a rising star at WDI, who came to Disney after graduating UCLA. Kalama is a theatre guy who brought LARP into the WDI toolkit, working on projects that would create a computerized game master which could direct role playing experiences around the park. His name is on the patent granted for it back in 2015, which they filed in 2013.

Kalama and company tested out the ideas with human game masters and hired actors, running Pirates of the Caribbean themed adventures for resort guests. Which sounds like the ultimate dream job until you realize it was just dress rehearsal for the actual ultimate dream job: doing that with Star Wars.

Nor can it be stressed enough that a huge number of Imagineers are enamored with immersive theatre — from the artistry of Punchdrunk and Third Rail to the wizardry of projection mapping artists like a dandypunk. All of this is serving as inspiration for creating a sandbox environment like no other, with what is easily the most beloved story world in existence.

It seems as if a virtuous cycle has sparked: with innovation in theatre and gaming feeding into the most artistically ambitious expansion Disney has ever undertaken in its parks. We can only hope that a generation that encounters immersive sandboxes from early childhood will push the boundaries of the artform even further. In the interim, it’s hard to imagine that park guests won’t step out of the Star Wars lands and want to find even more immersive adventures in the larger world.