Walt Disney Imagineers Bringing Video Games To Life At Walt Disney World Resort

With over 168 million Americans now considered gamers and a growing faction of the global community playing casual games online through networks like Facebook or on mobile devices, PCs, and consoles, Walt Disney Imagineers are expanding the offerings at Walt Disney World Resort to appeal to this audience.

Jonathan Ackley is a great example of how the game world is now converging in Disney theme parks. Ackley was a producer, game designer, programmer and writer at LucasArts in the late ‘90s, where he worked on classic point-and-click adventure PC games like The Curse of Monkey Island, Full Throttle, The Dig, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max Hit the Road and Night of the Living Statues. These days, he’s building interactive attractions at Disney theme parks that utilize the same core principles of game design theory. He’s a senior director at Walt Disney Imagineering focusing on interactive shows.

Anyone who goes to Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando can play a brand new gaming experience that’s spread throughout the park. Sorcerer’s of the Magic Kingdom has two entry points for players to pick up a free starter pack of cards and learn how to interact with the 20 kiosks hidden throughout the park. The game is like a real-life version of Magic: The Gathering and a live action role-playing game experience like EverQuest fans partake in at Sony Online Entertainment’s FanFair events. Check out the video below.

Ackley and his team worked with Hollywood talent and Disney animators to craft an original 90 minutes of animation that will propel players through an interactive story that’s spread throughout the park. The Disney villains are trying to take over, and players must use their magic cards to stop them. The route players take through the kiosks is controlled in real-time by technology that shows the flow of foot traffic through the park, so that this is one attraction guests won’t have to wait in line for.

Ackley is also updating one of the very first attractions that took video game principals and applied them to a real world adventure. He designed Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure at EPCOT, which used cell phones to allow “agents” to help Disney character Kim Possible and her friends thwart an evil plan by Dr. Drakken. The attraction, spread throughout the different lands in the World Showcase portion of EPCOT, allowed guests to unlock special areas of the pavilions using the phone. Characters also spoke directly to guests through animation on the phone’s video display. Check out the video below.

Now the popular Phineas and Ferb are replacing this attraction come late June with another interactive adventure that includes a new communicator device (for animated Phineas and Ferb relays) and new interactivity spread throughout the pavilions of the World Showcase. Check out the work-in-progress for Agent P's World Showcase Adventure in the video below.

Gaming, and interactivity, is also fueling the new re-design of EPCOT’s Test Track. The ride will open this fall as a brand new journey into the computer. Although not a TRON ride, the concept art certainly looks right out of Disney’s TRON movies. Guests will design their own Chevrolet concept car and then take that vehicle for a test drive in the new attraction. See what’s in store in the video below.

Thanks to the endless acreage of the Walt Disney Resort, the theme parks are growing. Disney is going to add an AVATAR theme park to its Disney’s Animal Kingdom park in the coming years. But right now, there’s a huge expansion happening in Fantasyland. And some of these new rides and attractions are open already, while others are opening this year. Check out what’s in store in the video below.