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I’ve spent most of the episodes focusing on theme parks like Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando, and other major destinations. Regional spots like Six Flags Great America, Silver Dollar City, and more have also received the spotlight. What I’ve barely touched is how themed entertainment has played a role in the world of VR gaming. A perfect example is Walkabout Mini Golf, which does a lot more than just provide the typical diversion. Developed by Mighty Coconut, this game provides courses that have the level of detail of a premier theme park.
Don Carson joined Mighty Coconut as a Senior Art Director about a year ago, and his background at Walt Disney Imagineering was perfect for that role. He is my guest for this episode of The Tomorrow Society Podcast to talk about his projects at Mighty Coconut and what it’s like to work in VR. Don has been a frequent guest going back to Episode 91 in early 2020. This is Don’s sixth appearance, and I really enjoy the way he describes themed entertainment and technology.
During this episode, Don talks about this new role and its connection to more traditional themed entertainment. The latest course for Walkabout Mini Golf presents the world of Jim Henson’s film Labyrinth, and the results look incredible. Don tells the story behind how that course evolved and why the movie fits so well in this game. We also discuss a recent announcement of three courses themed to the work of Jules Verne including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I really enjoyed the chance to speak with Don about his latest work and a cool use of VR technology.
Show Notes: Don Carson
Learn more about Don Carson and his work on VR and Walkabout Mini Golf at his YouTube channel.
Check out information on Mighty Coconut at their official website.
Listen to Don on these past episodes of the Tomorrow Society Podcast: 91, 99, 114, 130, and 145.
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Transcript
Don Carson: I want more people to have these tools and feel comfortable with them. I want to encourage people that as different and scary as it is, remember that up until now you had to do all of your three-dimensional manipulation with a mouse. I mean, you have a bar of soap in your hand and you’re trying to manipulate 2D things to represent a 3D thing. Now you can go in the space and build the 3D thing while within in the same room as the 3D thing. I can’t wait for more people to have these tools so they can create worlds that I can go visit.
Dan Heaton: That is former Disney Imagineer Don Carson, who’s back to talk about some really cool work he’s done in the world of VR with Mighty Coconut and Walkabout Mini Golf, and a lot more. This is going to be really cool. You’re listening to The Tomorrow Society Podcast.
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Dan Heaton: Thanks for joining me here on Episode 175 of the Tomorrow Society Podcast. I am your host, Dan Heaton. Excited to be back with my latest interview here with Don Carson. Don has been a great friend to the podcast. Originally came on and did an interview talking about his career at Disney, which included work on Walt Disney World’s Splash Mountain, some great designs for Toon Town at Disneyland, other work at Typhoon Lagoon, so much more.
Don essentially was the idea man for the roundtable idea that we’ve done and has appeared on four of them with Joe Lanzisero, Andy Sinclair Harris, Chris Runco, and Chris Merritt. It’s fun to come back and talk to just Don in person with a one-on-one interview. This time it’s focused more on what he’s doing now, which is his work for Mighty Coconut and Walkabout Mini Golf. You may have preconceived notions about a VR mini golf game, what that might be like.
But I tell you, check out some of the clips from their recent Labyrinth course, which you can find on Don YouTube channel or Mighty Coconut Channel, and it’ll blow you away based on the film by the Henson Company. Wow. They’re doing some really exciting courses coming up on Mist and then on Jules Verne and 20,000 of the Sea and others. I admit, I am not someone who spends much time with vr, but after learning more about this and talking to Don, it’s a lot more enticing. And even if you don’t currently have a VR headset, I think you’re going to find this interesting because the worlds they’re creating in this game are a lot like theme park lands or environments.
There’s a lot of connections and not just because Don was an Imagineer. It was really fun. And what I also appreciate is you can tell how excited Don is about the work they’re doing, and so I think that enthusiasm really conveys how cool this is and the potential for this technology and what could happen in the future, which we also talk about during this interview. So let’s get right to it. Here is the return of Don Carson.
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Dan Heaton: Well, I am really excited about a guest who is back for his sixth podcast appearance. He joined Walt Disney Imagineering in 1989, was a lead show designer for Splash Mountain of Walt Disney World. Also worked on Mickey’s Toon Town, Typhoon Lagoon, parts of DCA, so much more. He’s also gotten very involved in the world of VR and is currently a Senior Art Director for Mighty Coconut. It is Don Carson.
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Dan Heaton: Don, thank you again for returning to the podcast.
Don Carson: Hi, Dan. It is always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for having me.
Dan Heaton: Oh, no problem. And I’m excited too because I feel excited about some of the projects you’ve been working on recently. So this excites me because I know in the past we’ve talked about you’re always someone who’s looking to kind of the latest technologies and you post some of your on YouTube, you post some info on that and your creation even of the Alice in Wonderland with the big team that you put together. But just in general, I’m curious to, we’ve talked about it before, but what interests you so much about VR even going back to when it was kind of getting initiated or even just its potential as the years have gone by, what’s kind of excited you about that?
Don Carson: Well, I think VR for me is my interest in it is utterly selfish in that my job description, at least for the last 40 years has been as an art director and a designer, is to do sketches that have the information that are handed to the disciplines that are going to be building it. So my success or failure is based on how successful I am at doing sketches that people understand and will build from. Hopefully the finished product will look like my work.
I’m always looking for what’s another tool to help me do that job better. And often what I’m designing is done in my head, and so the drawing is just me doing a drawing of a finished thing in my head. So whether it’s drawing or illustration or Photoshop or 3D modeling or then VR, each one gets me closer to bringing the people I’m working with into my head with me so I can say, this is what I’m thinking.
And if that thing can be measured and that thing can be experienced, then that thing can be walked around. Then it empowers me as a designer to do a better job. So I’ve initially looked at VR as a way to supplement my art direction. One of the things I discovered that VR does really, really well, especially if you can get your client in there with you, is that we as three-dimensional beings living in a physical world, we instantly know when something isn’t working.
When you show someone an elevation or a plan view, you’re basically showing them the pictograph code for how to build a building. It’s a recipe for building a building, but when you both walk into the room and the doors feel too low, even a non-architect will go, these doors look too low and architect. That’s what VR has offered me as a designer. So I’ll learn whatever I need to learn about a new technology just to get that tool in my hand and start using it as quickly as possible.
Dan Heaton: Well, yeah, that’s what I find so interesting because I’m still used to personally with my other work doing meetings through Zoom or WebEx or kind of your basic tools, but for me it’s a lot of talking and you put stuff on the screen or whatever, but it’s not the most always easiest way to explain things. But I’m still kind of fascinated by the idea of when you actually meet in VR with coworkers. So how does that really, I mean, whether it’s with theme parks or other things, when you’re able to meet together and do that, I mean, I know you’re used to it, but is it a little challenging for other people even to figure out how that works and to work in that space?
Don Carson: Not at all. I think the biggest challenge is just making sure everybody on the team has a headset that they can connect to and that the steps to get connected are one button. As soon as there’s 14 steps to meet, Zoom is perfect. Someone sends you a link, you click it, boom, you’re in a meeting. VR is still getting there. I started at Mighty Coconut almost a year ago in September, and almost all of our meetings are in VR. Initially we were meeting in Horizon work rooms, which is a big virtual conference room where we get to see each other, each other’s avatars, but it has a 16 person limit, and our company got bigger than 16.
So now when we have meetings, when we’re not doing it in Zoom, we’re doing it inside miniature golf courses. We sit around our product and have our meetings in there, and there’s just a sense of presence that the VR offers, and also it allows for that presence to be unencumbered by the distance the person is actually physically in. So Edward is one of our very talented modelers.
He’s in Australia often just waking up when we’re having our 4:00 p.m. meeting in Texas where most of the employees live, and he sits next to my elbow, and I’ve never physically met Edward, but I understand his body language and his sense of humor, and I feel like we know each other because of that presence. Something that just doesn’t happen when you’re a little teeny stamp size picture in a Zoom call. So it’s amazingly intuitive if you have the headset to connect to it.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, and you mentioned Mighty Coconut too, which I’m curious for you, how did you end up getting involved with Mighty Coconut and what they’re doing and ultimately with Walkabout Mini Golf?
Don Carson: Well, when Covid hit, we all know that we all went and locked ourselves into our houses, and that really took a hit on the theme park business. So a lot of people weren’t going to theme parks, so a lot of money wasn’t being generated for new projects. So a lot of us were kind of on hold. And so I did a lot of personal projects during that time period, and the way that I stay connected with my friends in Pasadena was we would play miniature golf and VR and we would play walkabout.
Our conversations always went to the fact that the early courses were very theme. I mean, it was like we’re meeting, we’re walking around, we’re theme park designers, and we’re talking about how theme parky this experience is above and beyond the act of playing golf. And when their western course called Bogeys Bonanza came out, each one had gotten better, but that one sort of tipped the storytelling opportunities in a direction that the other ones were starting to.
But it really sort of to me was like, now these are the principles of theme park design manifest in VR. And so I wrote him a fan letter and was like, you guys are doing it. This is fantastic. This is wonderful. The work was still not picking up in the physical theme parks project. So I just offhandedly said, hey, if you’re ever hiring, I’d love to work with you. And luckily, the stars aligned, and Lucas, who is the founder and initial creator of all those initial courses and is my boss brought me on, which was brave, I think because I was not from a traditional gaming environment. So if I have a contribution initially, it was to sort of bring some of those design principles that I’ve learned through Disney and other companies in creating storytelling environments and then applying it to these virtual ones.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, I mean there was a video on the Mighty Coconut YouTube channel with you and two other theme park designers playing miniature golf and talking about design. And it was interesting just because you’re at one point you’re in a Western saloon and stuff, but it’s like this isn’t what I think of when I think of miniature golf to a point. This is more like you said, being somewhere in knots or frontier land, but even more immersive than those. You’re not at such a distance from it. So I thought that was really interesting just because I think there’s a thought when I see, oh, walk about mini golf. I’m like, oh, that might be fun. It’s like you’re playing miniature golf virtually, that’s good for being at home or whatever. But then you see the courses and you’re like, yeah, this is different.
I mean, especially the Labyrinth course that I’ve seen where you get to a point where you’re like, I guess this is still mini golf. There’s still the gaming side to it, but you could almost, there’s parts where you could just kind of veer off and it’s like you’re exploring this world that I would love to see at a theme park, but obviously there’s the whole money aspect to it because what would it cost to create that? I’m not even sure.
Don Carson: Right. No, exactly. And I think that’s a wonderful opportunity VR allows for is that the Labyrinth, which is a 30 5-year-old property, is not something that Disney or Universal is going to throw down $500 million to build, which is a shame because we all deserve to go there,
But VR allows for those IPs that are not necessarily as mainstream to have a life and really, especially those IPs that are so incredibly loved. And when I say IP, I’m also talking about things that aren’t necessarily in the public domain or in the public domain, like the Jules Verne courses we’re working on, is that we all sort of carry a secret desire or wish list to go to these places that don’t exist. And here’s another venue for us to be able to design those places that aren’t necessarily encumbered by cost, gravity, safety, or any of the things that really, really limit what we can and cannot do in a theme park environment.
Dan Heaton: Well, yeah, because just looking even at Labyrinth, I watched that movie again recently a year or two ago with my daughters who were both just like, this is very strange. This is not, how about movies that we watch as kids? And I even watched it and was like, wow, this is so much odder than I even remember. I mean the bog of Eternal stench and then all the weird, some very creepy kind of almost nightmare uc puppets happening.
But to have that, and then I’ve just even seen the clips from Labyrinth, I look at it, I mean, the clips from the Labyrinth game, excuse me, that I look at, and I’m just like, yeah, I mean, you could easily just do kind of the basics and put in the staircases and put in kind of a maze and put in a few characters, but some of the stranger parts of the movie seem to be totally present, which there’s a level of detail to that that I would not have expected.
Don Carson: Well, any the sort of theme park experience, your audience is coming with expectations of what they want to see or expect they should see when they go to something. So your job one is to deliver it. Also, our job with the Jim Henson Company was to honor and true to the original film, but we are also doing it on a quest, which is basically this has the muscle of a phone attached to your face so that we aren’t going to be able to do a photo reel version of it.
We’re going to be doing more akin to sort of Lego Star Wars or Lego Harry Potter. It’s a graphic interpretation, and I think it was that graphic interpretation that made it so appealing to the Henson Company because it allowed us to sort of attribute as opposed to slavishly photographic reel recreation of the film film.
So it gave us a lot of leverage. Then I think probably our real secret sauce is that in the end, it’s just a miniature golf park, so we can treat things lightly while we can still treat things with respect. So there wasn’t a single person on the team who wasn’t pinching themselves for the opportunity to work on a Labyrinth course. So every single detail was lovingly created by people who really cared. But the obligation was that I want to see the characters I remember from the film, and I want to feel like I’m interacting with them.
And I want to be surprised every time I turn a corner, very much like that movie, every time I turn a corner, I’m in a different place and I’m confronted by a different character. If you were to sort of break down Labyrinth, it’s very Alice in Wonderland in that each character is its own chapter, each comes with his own environment, and then each leads to the next chapter and environment.
It was also written by Terry Jones who was a Python, Monty Python. So it’s off the wall and weird and nuts. Then you’ve got Brian Froud who created the characters, and then you’ve got Brian Henson and Jim Henson in the Creature Shop. It was sort of a perfect storm of weirdness that turned into the film that we see. Oh, and then you put David Bowie in there and he writes all the music that’s incredibly odd, and it was in the ‘80s, so I don’t think it could be made now. So we had all that, and of course our job was to do the best job we possibly could, and luckily the fans really like it, which was not a guarantee. We just hoped that they would.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, I’ve read some really great feedback already about it, and people are just excited. It’s only been out since late July, so it’s a pretty short time period. So you mentioned that your background of course themed entertainment, you’ve worked for a variety of companies, but at Disney and then a lot of freelance work. But I’m curious coming in for you, I mean, how much do you think that having that background maybe helped you to approach things slightly differently than people that are more game designers or more artists in the gaming world?
Don Carson: Well, luckily Lucas and many of the employees at Mighty Coconut come from the film world or animation world, and although they have game experience, we did start out as a game company. I think because we come from such diverse backgrounds, we’re not encumbered by the weight of this is how things should be done.
And as much as the game world has created many, many wonderful things, it is encumbered by the need for achievements or the need for, and often games can be very much like I’ve run through beautiful environments so that I can dispatch as many zombies as possible, and a lot of that beauty is lost on the gameplay and there’s no reward in the game for hanging around. What we’ve discovered is that because of the multiplayer functionality that often after people have played the game, they spend another hour in there flying around and chatting about non miniature golf related topics.
In fact, a good percentage of the sort of mail we get from people is, thank you. I reconnected with my dad or my siblings and I get together every week and we play because miniature golf, probably different from any other kind of sport, involves such long pauses between your chance to play. It’s a wonderful opportunity for banter. And also the mechanics is basically you show up and in your hand as a putter glued to your hand as a putter and there’s a ball and you hit it.
That’s all you need to know and that you can have just as good a time being an awful golfer. I’m living proof because I’m an awful golfer, and yet have a really, really rich, deep connective experience with another person. And then this sort of theme park design principle on top of it just creates a context to make that human connection better.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. Well, the gaming part you mentioned is important too, because I’ve been playing more games again, just when we have a Nintendo Switch and computers and stuff, but I find that things get sometimes, even though I think, oh, I’m pretty good at this, it can be so complicated where you’re like, this game is really cool, and I just continually just run into a wall or die or whatever, and you get to a point where you’re like, yeah, I don’t have that much time. I’m done. So the fact that you mentioned the simplicity of it, and again, if you’re bad at miniature golf, it’s like, okay, that’s fine.
This is kind of a cool area. It’s a little different than just like I’m repeatedly jumping off the edge and just giving up in some game. So I think that’s important. But when the team at Mighty Coconut designing these courses, now you probably are aware of it, but how much was the hangout part of it present or was that almost like a side effect that happened naturally with gamers as they interacted? They picked it up as just you didn’t expect that much?
Don Carson: Well, if Lucas was here, our founder, he’d tell you that really the company was a one person company when he was developing it, and initially it was developed to be a single player experience, and it just happened to come out just before the Quest two came out. And Facebook or Meta now really, really encouraged Lucas to have a multiplayer functionality. It wasn’t necessarily something that they had planned, it was just sort of added, well, that’d be nice and added, not knowing that that was going to be kind of really the true magic of Walkabout is the human connection that happens. And I’d say that everyone’s experience who first starts is there’s the initial, oh my God, I can’t believe I’m here because VR is very immersive.
I’m 3D, and oh, and then your avatar is represented by a floating head, which you can customize, but there’s no body attached to it, and yet the mouth moves when you move and it blinks and it, it’s just enough for you to know when you’re scanning your environment, who’s talking. But instantly the multiplayer thing became the reason people got together and played mini golf was the chance to connect. Although our numbers say that a fair number of people do play solo who really, really just like the game for the game sake.
Dan Heaton: Well, it makes sense too, especially given the environments. I even think about theme parks and I think like, okay, you get beyond this ride is great or this ride is not great. Or even something like a Pandora or something where I’m like, Flight of Passage is fun, but I also hanging out, especially when it’s not crowded, I just hanging out in those areas.
So it seems like in a way some of these are becoming like, I mean they’re not themed environments, but they have that same idea where if you make these really cool areas, the game is part of it, kind of like the rides at theme parks, but it’s more, it just feels like, I mean goes back to original Disneyland and architecture of reassurance and whatnot, that it’s just a very comfortable place that probably I’m sure as Jules Verne and Myst, you’re going to do everything those seem designed for that, especially Myst that feels like a place you just want to chill in basically.
Don Carson: Yeah. Well, and it’s a combination. It’s certainly I’m there to play the game. The theme park opportunity, very much like we did in Labyrinth is that every time I turn a corner, something new is revealed to me. Imagine if you’re in a ride vehicle and you’re moving from scene to scene, everything has been orchestrated to compositionally present itself as you arrive.
So we’re definitely doing that. We definitely did that in the Labyrinth to a lot of success, and we’re definitely doing that in the Jules Verne ones too and everything we’re doing since. And then as far as the just hang out part, probably one of the highest compliments I’ve gotten was my daughter asked if, hey, let’s play some golf together. She is around me all the time, so she knows what I do for a living, and in many ways it’s sort of familiarity, breed contempt.
She’s like, whatever. But she hadn’t played miniature golf and we played around in Sweetopia, which is this sort of big Candyland landscape of when that was fun. And I said, can I take you one more place? I just want to show it to you. And at the time, Shangri-La is one of our lost cities course, and there’s each a course has two versions as a day version and then often a night or a harder version where we have sort of variations on the same holes but made a little bit harder, more challenging. And Shangri-La has a night course. The Shangri-La is up in the Himalayas behind, it’s this very low poly Mount Everest, and it’s this monastery perched on the cliffs, and then there’s a lantern festival happening where the lanterns are being lit in a very tangled way floating up into the night sky.
And I had her and I fly out to the furthest monastery and sit on the roof and look back at the buildings and she said, I finally get it. I get what you’ve been working towards all this time. It isn’t about the golf, it’s about this sort of intangible. You and I are here in the Himalayas sitting on a rooftop, and we sat there for an hour and just talked about life in general and how she was doing and what was going on. We had a wonderful time playing golf too. That is what we’re working for. That’s what I’m working for certainly is constantly producing courses that give context for humans to interact and socialize in.
Dan Heaton: Well, and I don’t mean to totally push aside the golf because I know that is part of it, but I think that’s kind the, you have that so you can do all the other things. I mean, that’s important, right? But it’s something that’s extra. Yeah, I mean, because I’m curious too, because I think of theme parks and even when there are theme parks, games are a big part of right now with a lot of the recent attractions and there’s still a thought like, oh, we need to make sure there’s a storytelling beyond it or storytelling through the environment.
I mean, how much are you still thinking in terms of that approach? You’re working more on the conceptual side, but when you’re designing that or putting what’s in your head down, I would say on paper, but it’s probably not just on paper, but how much are you thinking in terms of the story of each show, of each course and how that works?
Don Carson: Well, very much like theme parks, Disney has story with a capital S, which is often misconstrued as being a linear story once upon a time, chapter one, I enter chapter two, this happened chapter three. And although there are attractions that that episodic events happened, Rise of the Resistance definitely has a course of events that happen. Pirates to the Caribbean is much more environmentally focused and it has a loose structure, but it doesn’t have a protagonist.
You are the protagonist until Johnny Depp shows up. But with the miniature golf courses, we have a theme. I went through a bunch of places and I ended here, and our beats are 18 no matter what. It’s going to be 18 because we have 18 holes while the first courses were much more, you’re in a fun island that’s sort of pirate-y themed and it’s just enjoyable to be there. And we do interesting things with the terrain.
Now we’re doing it so that there’s a sense that I’m in this room where I’ve arrived, I’m taking a step into this next room and I’m diving deeper into this, and it’s working its way through to a climax of some kind. And that climax can just be how much more challenging the holes get. The ninth hole is usually kind of a middle, this intermission sort of peak, and then it’s leading to the 18th hole.
But what we’ve learned too is that story can be something that is not a necessity to grok when you are participating. So in Shangri-La, it’s just pleasant to be in a monastery hanging off the cliffs of the Himalayas, and yet if you’re in the day course, there’s preparation for a festival. So you’ll see moon cakes being made, you’ll see paper lanterns being built. You’ll see instruments sort of being collected, has nothing to do with miniature golf.
It’s just things that are in the background. And then when you go to the hard course, you see the culmination of all that work in this lantern festival. The course would be just fine without any of it, but it’s just that feeling of life that things, people were here, you could have a teapot and a glass of tea. Could you arrange those objects so that you felt like the people that were drinking it had just stepped away and you were approaching it? So very theme park kind of mentality. For Labyrinth, we knew we had to represent the characters and the characters are treated almost like animatronics are in a theme park.
We know you weren’t going to interact with them necessarily, you weren’t going to be able to talk to them, you weren’t going to have a conversation with them, but we wanted at the same time you to feel like you were in the presence of it living the moment from the film without that interaction. Same thing will be true of the Jules Verne ones is that the heat’s ratcheting up as I get further through this environment or a series of events are leading to the climax of the 18th hole. So that’s its main similarity to the theme parks is that story with a capital S as opposed to a linear once upon a time.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, we definitely feel that even just with Labyrinth where there’s the movie, like you mentioned, the structure of the movie really connects well to that kind of anecdotal, I dunno if that’s the right word, episodic kind of approach to it where you’re meeting different, not even meeting them, but seeing them. And I always respond really strongly to the atmospheric. Rise of the Resistance is great, but the atmospheric type rides I feel like are the ones that I want to revisit the most. And I think that’s probably the case here too. Well, you’ve mentioned a few times the Jules Verne courses, which were announced very recently.
Perfect timing here, which of course, Jules Verne with Disney, whether it’s in Horizons to Timekeeper, especially Tokyo DisneySea or Discovery Land, so many different areas where it comes up. And to have that now three courses coming, one in September and then two next year is really exciting. So how excited are you about actually being the subject of upcoming courses?
Don Carson: Well, very excited. In the theme park world, you are really lucky in the span of a 35-year-career of being able to work on a handful of things that went from concept all the way to opening and ended up opening as something you’re proud of saying you worked on. I’ve worked on hundreds of things, but only a handful of those things opened.
And in that span of the career, you just hope that something as juicy as journey to the center of the Earth drops on your lap, but the odds of that happening are very slim. What’s really great about Mighty Coconut is that we are producing multiple courses during the course of the year, and because the financial hit of generating them is so much less than a theme park attraction, we really can be picky and pick the stuff we want to work on.
So unanimously we thought that, oh my gosh, well Jules Verne, that would be really cool place to go play miniature golf. But it would also be a cool place to just get a chance to lower yourself under the earth and explore the caverns that Jules Verne talked about, or to be actually on the Nautilus, seeing what that’s like. And also it gives us an opportunity to have our say, not say, but have our interpretation of those experiences. A lot of them are rooted in other people’s interpretation, like the look of the Nautilus is so rooted in Disney’s interpretation, Harper Goff’s design of the Nautilus.
And yet if you look at, there’s a website that shows every version of the Nautilus has ever been done by anybody. You can see how that design influence has touched each of them over the years, that they all have a very similar kind of bity. I mean, granted, they’re supposed to tear through clipper ships and destroy them. So we are doing our version with a wink and a nod to other interpretations of those classic stories, but largely because that’s kind of what people’s expectations are. If we did something really, really off the wall, it may fail to deliver on what we think is what it should be.
Dan Heaton: Right. Well, yeah, because the first thing that comes to mind when I think of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is well, the movie which I saw as a kid a decent amount, though it had been out for a while, and then the Walt Disney World ride, which I wrote a lot at the time, but I know there’s even just within Disney, you had the Disneyland walkthrough, you have what’s in very different attractions in Tokyo.
So even with just within what they’ve done, it’s changed a lot. And that’s not even, like you said, that’s, it’s not a Disney property completely. It’s been interpreted a lot. That is, I believe the first one that’s coming out. So probably is coming along pretty well. I mean, I believe you are able then as someone who works on it to go in and kind of test it out and all that. So have you had that experience with any of these where you’ve been able to explore and kind of test it out as you go?
Don Carson: Well, one of the greatest parts of working in VR is you’re actually a lot of the time building in the environment that you’ll ultimately be experiencing it in. So although I still probably draw more now than I was even doing at Hettema, we call it the gray box phase, which is where you’re starting to build the structure and you’re just using basic shapes, but at any time the team meets inside of it while it’s being built.
And as soon as we can get those holes playable, we’re having play tests so often we’ll have half a dozen to 10 or 11, 12 play tests before a course is released. And each step of the way we’re refining it as a team and getting to experience what that looks like. So in the case of the first Jules Verne, we’ve played that many times. It’s very, very close to being polished now.
It’s going through all its technical and sort of made a testing hoops of fire that need to be jumped through. But even stuff that’s coming out next year, all of those can be experienced in one way or another, even if they’re not completely playable yet. And also the very first meetings we have with a project is often with Henning, Lucas and I with 3D scribble markers where we just draw what it’s going to be, and then each phase is firming that up, even before color starts showing up, we’re starting to get an idea and have meetings inside the environment, placeholder holes where they’re going to be designed those holes, and then start bringing the team in and start tape play testing it.
Dan Heaton: Wow. It’s exciting just to have that, because I even think about Discovery Land in Paris where the initial, it’s incredible, but the initial concepts like Tim Delaney and the others were involved in, it’s just mind boggling. But obviously we talked about earlier, there’s budgets, there’s physical, can you actually fit what they wanted to do and all that. So I mean, for you coming in, we talked about this a bit earlier, but in terms of Jules Verne, I mean being able to work on something that doesn’t, I mean it has restrictions with the game and with what you’re doing but doesn’t have those same restrictions physically. What does that feel like given, you’ve probably thought in the past about this type of project in terms of a theme park.
Don Carson: Well, actually when I left Disney in ‘95, my first job was with Dynamics doing video games. And my naive thought was, oh, good, now I can actually build whatever I want and I don’t have to deal with gravity or safety. I can just anything. Well, what I didn’t realize was there’s an entire other form of limitations and budgets you have to deal with often based upon how powerful the computer is that’s going to be running it.
So back in the late nineties, you could make a 3D room, but you could only put two chairs in it because anything more complex than that would freeze. Your computer just couldn’t render that many objects at one time. And so Walkabout’s a perfect example of here’s this entire Labyrinth universe that we’ve created full of animated characters and theatrical lighting and interaction that’s running on your phone attached to your face.
So we lean into those limitations. Our textures is usually just one texture that’s applied to all surfaces. So it’s almost like color coding, very much like Legos, you color blocks and we aggressively log them so that anything that you can’t see because a wall is obscuring, it doesn’t exist. Everything is meant to optimize what’s happening detail wise where you are. And the detail starts to sort of ratchet down as it gets further away from you, very much like your eyes aren’t making out what’s happening in the distance. So a good at least half of the process is this crafting a version of this concept that we came up with early on, so it will be optimized to run. So your experience is as good as possible while working within the limitations of the medium, which is the quest.
Dan Heaton: That’s a good reminder. Yeah, I have the same thought you had where I’m just like, there’s anything, and it’s like, well, I have to remember, even with my computer or any other computer or any device, you try to do too much and then you get to a point where it’s just like, okay, this is moving too slowly. It’s jumpy, it’s jittery, it’s all that, and then it’s not what it’s designed to do. I’m sure there’s that balance. So that’s really interesting.
So unrelated note too, because you mentioned during the height of the pandemic, obviously everyone was inside. We all talked about that, but there were questions I know about theme parks and physical places and what’s that going to be like in the future and everything. I mean, obviously the people are going back to parks and they’re very popular and everything, but I mean, going forward, I still think there may be aspects of what you’re doing in VR and what others are doing that could be incorporated into theme parks or into attractions more or in different ways.
So I mean, looking ahead as we, people are more comfortable in spaces, but we still a bit different. I’m curious what you think whether in that or just in general with this technology, are there ways it could apply to themed entertainment in person better or more often than it is?
Don Carson: I don’t know. I know that the theme park industry, certainly the design portion of it is concerned that very much like in the ‘90s where they were worried that video games were going to make theme parks obsolete. I don’t know if there’s a home for VR in the theme park world; I think where it really exists is supplementing a physical environment with a virtual experience. You could have outside of the theme park enrich your connection and your loyalty to an attraction based on the fact that you can consume it in multiple different ways. I think that’s very much like how they’re dealing with, there’s the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland, but there’s a movie called The Jungle Cruise, which potentially expands on that universe. I think VR is another opportunity to continue expanding it.
The way that it used to be done, and this was part of the gaming world, is that Toy Story comes out as a movie and then a Toy Story game comes out, which is often the Toy Story characters applied to a known mechanic that’s basically Mario jump and jump and die and jump and die and jump all the game point accumulation achievement. Is there another way in which to experience it? That’s more theme park where you get to be woody and then you get to interact with the characters in a way that is not necessarily about shooting something or collecting something. And if that experience could be shared, and I would use as a hypothetical example, we all love the Haunted Mansion.
It fuels our imagination. Is there an opportunity to recreate a virtual version of the Haunted Mansion that allows you to go through the doors that are locked in the attraction? What would be behind those doors? What could it add to the story that makes the theme park experience richer? And if I could go with my friends and go through those doors together, how does that enrich my experience with my friends, with the theme park, with the IP and with Disney in general? That’s where I think the real potential of VR is as opposed to necessarily enhancing a physical experience, which just trumps VR every time because you can smell the water at Pirates of the Caribbean, you’re just not going to be able to do that in VR.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, I think about a few examples. There was roller coasters where they started putting VR headsets on it, and those did not seem to really take, because again, people are like, well, I like being out and seeing what I’m seeing in the roller coaster. I don’t need to be in space or whatever. Or I know there’s one at Bush Gardens Williamsburg where you just walk in a room and sit down and put on a VR headset, and people don’t really love that either, because again, you’re like, I’m at a theme park. I want to do the theme park thing.
So I like your idea because I feel like as opposed to the theme park attractions just becoming, you don’t want, I mean, yes, there are examples like The Void and others pre-pandemic that did a really good job of combining where you’re moving around and touching things, but you’re using it. But again, that’s not exactly in a theme park. It’s almost, it’s freestanding separate place, but there’s probably some mix of that. But I love the idea of connecting it though to things like with Labyrinth, same sort of thing, but with the Haunted Mansion or other known quantities that you almost want to learn more rather than just it replacing something.
Don Carson: Well, and then that was the whole experiment of us doing the 1958 version of the Alice n Wonderland ride is that it’s a historic recreation of something that no longer exists, but if you have the component of being able to multiplayer into it, you could take a class field trip and experience an attraction that no longer exists as a teaching tool. And if that’s true, then any attraction could be recreated. And if that’s true, any historical event could be recreated for the purpose of relating to and better understanding what it’s like to be in the foxhole in World War I or what it would be like to be in the room when some important law was signed.
I think that our brains have difficulty making a distinction between a physical, we’re never going to create a virtual Florence, Italy that’s going to be better than Florence, Italy, but our brains, if you and I were to sit in a virtual cafe in Florence and have a conversation, it stored in the same part of our brain as if we were physically there. And so our memories of being together are as much about where we were as what we were doing there. I would far prefer to have coffee with you in Florence, Italy, but I would be more than willing to do it in a virtual version if it was done well, and it would potentially trigger that same emotional response.
Dan Heaton: Well, in a sense too, doing that, the virtual one might inspire someone to go to the real place, which is it’s not replacing it. Or even you do the 1958 version of Alice in Wonderland and someone says, well, I really want to go and see how it is now. And so it’s in a sense, that idea, it’s supplementing and another way too for using the example of having coffee there is that you don’t have the, oh, I have to fly there, and then my flight gets canceled and then I have to get a hotel and all that, and you’re still able to have that moment, but it’s in some of the logistical issues kind of slip away a little bit.
Don Carson: Well, and if it’s an easy, like a Zoom call, hey, you free? Let’s go play some golf, and 30 seconds later we’re standing in the Labyrinth with Hoggle playing a round of golf, and then also being able, we’re working on the Myst island right now, which is also a labor of love for all of us. We have such deep connections with it. You can visit Myst island in VR now, but you can’t visit it right now with your friends and you can’t fly in it, but on ours, you will be able to. So going to Myst island to hang out with your friends and then fly around and have a conversation while you’re doing it is exhilarating and enjoyable and adds, I think, richness and depth to that experience.
Dan Heaton: I want to go to Myst island and not get stuck trying to feel like I didn’t press the right button or I just remember, I haven’t played in a long time, but I just remember being like, I’ve touched everything in this room. Why is nothing working? So if I could just hang out there and not have that thing, then I play mini golf. That’s cool.
Don Carson: I was sure the blue pages were the ones I was supposed to be collecting.
Dan Heaton: Okay, I’m going to buy the guide. I don’t know what’s going on. Yeah. All right. Well, I have a couple more questions before we finish. I’m curious, I know that you are somebody who’s looking ahead at not just the technologies for their sake, but also kind of how it can benefit. I mean, are there certain technologies right now that you’re excited about either using at the moment or in the future that are a little, I’m not talking 20 steps, but a step or two beyond maybe what most people are using or that could lead to something really cool?
Don Carson: I’m in the enviable position where although all the tools could be better and they will be better, that pretty much anything that I would want to reach for, there’s some semblance of it. If I was to go back in time, even 10 years and describe to myself what I’m doing right now, my 10-year younger person would say I was a liar. So I use a product called Gravity Sketch, which allows for group create creation in VR where we just draw in the air together.
Size is relative, so one of us could be the size of a teacup, applying the handle to the teacup while someone else is the size of the roof and is placing the roof on the cafe where the teacup is, all the while having a conversation about the design. That’s incredibly wonderful. We’ve got walkabouts so we can wander around even while it’s being built and talk and make design decisions as we’re wandering around.
I aspire to those tools only getting better and becoming more commonplace. I also aspire to more people having familiarity with the VR headset so that I could call you up and say, hey, let’s have instead of this going on Zoom and having this conversation, let’s meet in Shangri-La and have this conversation while allowing the environment to be a character in our conversation as much as even if people aren’t seeing where we’re sitting, our relationship would be a little bit different sitting.
We can watch each other’s body language across from a table, but also the future is turning out to be infinitely weirder than I think any of us imagined with the introduction of AI-driven image generation with Dall-E 2 and Midcentury, Midjourney and some of the other tools, I think right now to be an artist is to question what the future is going to be if you can type in a prompt and beautiful imagery starts coming out, how are we as artists going to use these tools to make the pictures on our head communicate better?
And some of those pictures are going to be generated as opposed to, but generated by our hand would be generated by a relationship with an AI. It’s not a very big leap to imagine that that auto generation will become a VR experience too, where we just say, I feel lucky on a Google search page and it auto generates a dream landscape that hopefully isn’t a nightmare, and you go explore it. I want more people to have these tools and feel comfortable with them; I want to encourage people that as different and scary as it is, remember that up until now you had to do all of your three-dimensional manipulation with a mouse.
I mean, you have a bar of soap in your hand and you’re trying to manipulate 2D things to represent a 3D thing. Now you can go in the space and build the 3D thing while within in the same room as the 3D thing. I can’t wait for more people to have these tools so they can create worlds that I can go visit. And so yeah, I think AI is going to make the world infinitely stranger, and I hope that all of us as creators aren’t rolling over and showing our bellies that we’re actually going to grasp these things and bend them to our will to make better and more amazing places for people to visit.
Dan Heaton: I hope so. I mean, yeah, I’m excited. Then also my brain, like you mentioned yourself 10 years ago, even now, my brain is trying to wrap itself around even things like what we’ve just talked about going in VR to that, because I wouldn’t say I’m a late adopter, but I’m definitely not as much of an early adopter with things. So I’m somewhere in the middle, but I aspire to be an earlier adopter Don, or I’m probably already too late with VR headsets. I’m like in the last, the mid-tier…
Don Carson: Never too late. I think that my gift of permission to you is that each one of these tools does a thousand things. You just need to learn to do three things all I have to learn the three things. And the first thing is just to open it, right? Oh, now you only have two things to do. And what’s interesting and what’s happening is that I think we’re leaving the world that was dominated by companies like Autodesk, which will still be a behemoth and is still sort of determining how we go about designing and implementing architecture and facilities of any kind.
We’re seeing a lot of these small companies sort of made by people who are tired of that paradigm and are creating tools that are intuitive, are fun to use, and no less powerful in a way. The old way in which these tools were created was very much, you get the impression that an adversarial relationship with the user, almost like we don’t need to ask the user what the kind of brush they need.
We’re just going to give them something. A perfect example is Photoshop, which people have been using to do illustrations for years, but it doggedly calls itself. Photoshop has never made anything called Artist Shop, but artists are using it despite the fact that it’s meant for photo manipulation to do digital oil paintings. But then Procreate comes out, which is something that costs $10 runs on an iPad with an Apple pencil, and you can do beautiful paintings with brushes that are actually called brushes that act like brushes. The Gravity Sketch, although it thinks of itself as an industrial design tool, and if you were to look at majority of the advertisements they make for their product, you would think it was designed only for sneakers and race car creation. We use it to build Labyrinth.
We’re using it to take journeys into the center of the earth. So those tools, despite the creator’s idea of what they’ll be used for, are being used for much more than that. And so to encourage you to be an early adopter, especially when the program’s free, just go in and dabble, learn the two things you need to learn, and then if it hooks you, go learn a third thing and then a fourth thing. And before you know it, with only a little bit of investment in time, you can start your imagination can start thinking, what else could I do with this?
Dan Heaton: Well, excellent. I think that’s a perfect way to kind of leave everyone as we all look to do the three things or two after we’ve opened them. But before we finish, I want to make sure, Don, that listeners can learn if they want to learn more about what you’re doing or Mighty Coconut or Walkabout, what are some good places they can go online to learn about it and potentially possibly pick up these cool games?
Don Carson: Well David Wyatt, our marketing guru, is very, very good at letting everybody know on all the various social medias what we’re working on. So whether you follow on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, there’s always updates as to the stuff we’re doing and how we’re doing it. So that’s a great place to go. I have lots of YouTube videos. As you know, I’m an over sharer. I love the process so much. And I think everybody wants to hear about it. I think that there’s only a handful of people really all that interested, but I do do post a lot of stuff there.
I also created a Patreon page that I use really for sort of insider conversation, was my main selfish reason for doing it. It doesn’t make me lots of money. It basically pays for coffee. But it’s a way for anybody who really, really wants to have a one-on-one conversation or to have a conversation with like-minded people who are interested in theme parks or VR.
It’s a place where they can go and hang out. Majority of people just come and consume the posts and leave, but some of the stuff originates in Patreon, and then some of the videos will eventually make their way to YouTube so you can find it there. And my Instagram, you can also find the stuff that I’ve been working on traditionally in the theme park world. It’s under strict NDA. You can never show anybody anything you’ve ever done on this, even if you did hundreds of pieces for it.
At Mighty Coconut, we graciously, once the attraction is open or once the course is open, we’re allowed to share a process. So as soon as things release and I share a lot of the steps we went through to create it, and the similarities between the concepting that goes into a theme park attraction and the concepting that goes into a VR attraction are the same, basically.
Dan Heaton: Well, excellent, Don. Yeah, and the YouTube channel is really fun because I enjoyed when you were doing the Alice ride, but also more recently, there’s just a lot of great material on there, especially for people that are interested in theme park design or the industry, or even just some of the tools you’re using, which I think are pretty cool.
Don Carson: And my goal in every single one of those is to say to the viewer, you can do this too. It’s not, look how great I am. I can do these things. It’s me constantly saying, no, really, you could do this too. There’s nothing stopping you other than the investment in learning the three things.
Dan Heaton: Well, Don, it’s always great to talk with you. Hopefully we can do it again in the future. Maybe after I get a headset.
Don Carson: Yes, we’ll meet inside the virtual world.
Dan Heaton: That’s the driving force. But thanks so much. It was awesome to talk with you.
Don Carson: Thank you, Dan.
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