Some thoughts about XR at Disneyland Shanghai

Hello everyone. As you know, I’m currently in China, doing a trip to discover VR here. I’ve said goodbye to the beautiful Qingdao and now I’m in the modern Shanghai. Shanghai is like the Chinese New York, so I thought to find more VR and better VR.

Well, regarding public attractions (arcades, etc…) I’ve not seen a huge difference. Yes, there is a bit more VR, but exactly as in Qingdao, it is mostly in arcades, or booths inside malls and the quality is not always superb. I’ve been handed some flyers of arcade rooms, but I immediately spotted the pictures of the famous “Potato” headsets and avoided paying the ticket. Of course, being the city bigger and more modern, there are more arcades with VR experiences and there are even shops where you can try HTC Vive headsets with SteamVR games like Beat Saber… so if you can’t afford to have one at your home, you can just pay a little amount of money and have fun with VR. Some of them also incentivize users to come by hiring cute Chinese girls dressed as maids… so I don’t know if males go there for VR or for the girls. 😀 Anyway, the fact that is possible to use Vive headsets with SteamVR games, guarantees that there is a good experience for the user. So, Shanghai has better VR than Qingdao but has not surprised me for what concerns the public experiences. And even here, I had some “WTF” moment: on the top of the Shanghai Tower, there are two VR stations featuring an HTC Vive Headset that has been locked to the wall, so that you can’t move it, only slightly rotate it (a genious idea for a headset made for Room scale). These stations show some CGI videos of you going to the space. The headset is never cleaned, so I also got all the skin and eye diseases of all the 1000 Chinese people using it before me. Not the top notch experience I hoped to find, unless I wanted to be hosted on some TV show about strange diseases.

Two days ago, I and my Chinese assistant Miss S decided to go to Disneyland, to have fun and to discover VR there. I have a lot of stories that I will tell my grandchildren about Disneyland Shanghai: for instance I’ll tell them how I ended up at 9pm in a semi-rural zone outside Shanghai, unable to get to our AirBnb (actually, a Chinese clone) house, with an old Chinese man giving me instructions in a Shanghai dialect and me nodding the head pretending to understand every single word, while in my head there was Homer Simpson’s monkey playing cymbals. Or like the day when we went to Disneyland and we had to wake up at 3.30am because it is the only way to experience more attractions. Disneyland Shanghai is like the first day of sales: it is more like going to a brawl than to a place where to have fun with your children. 😀

Anyway, I thought that all of this was worth the reward: playing some high-quality Disney’s XR experiences. Disney is investing a lot in technology and is making cool stuff in VR arcades (see the Star Wars experience playable at The Void park) and also in AR (see the Star Wars experience that is creating with Magic Leap). So I expected there were at least 3 high quality XR experiences and I couldn’t wait to wear my Mickey Mouse VR headset and try them. While getting bored waiting in the line to enter the park (we arrived there at 5 am, with the park opening at 7-8am), I asked to our guide in a terrible Chinese “Is there VR here?”. She looked at me with a “WTF” face… I don’t know if she didn’t understand my Chinese or what VR was (I think both), so Miss S explained her my question. She answered “There’s not that thing here”. I was quite shocked: I’ve read a lot of stuff about Disney investments in XR, and about VR in China…and Disneyland is surely the biggest amusement park in Shanghai, so I thought it was not possible that it featured no headsets.

Well, after having visited it, I can confirm you that there are no headsets, there: no AR, no VR devices. There is AR and there is VR, but of different kinds.

AR is projective AR, where some virtual elements are projected on a wall, an object, or whatever. For instance, I’ve clearly spotted that some real characters of the various attractions had the eyes that were not real, but were projected with a projector, and that gave a more realistic touch to their faces (because for instance, these projected eyes could move). The final show of the park is also all made by projecting stuff on the castle, with a lot of light effects and fireworks.

VR is “big screen VR”. You and all other people are in front of some enormous big screen that covers all your field of view and that shows some content. For instance, we traveled the world this way: we were on a big platform floating in the air and a big curved screen close to us showed a lot of cool places of the various parts of the world and we really felt as being there. The movements of the platform, together with the movie showing a flying experience and some wind effects, really made us feel as flying all over amazing places… even without a headset.

So, no headsets. But…why? Well, talking about this with Miss S, we came to the conclusion that the choice of Disney has sense and in our opinion is due to the following reasons:

• Disneyland is for kids. It is all tailored for little kiddos and even if we grown-up children can surely appreciate some attractions (like the rollercoaster), we are not its target. And we know that VR headsets are not suitable for children below a certain age, so it is better to not make them use it;
• Disneyland is over-crowded. Since the very first moment, all the coolest attractions start having a waiting time of at least 90 minutes. This means that you stay in line for a lot of time, to just try a 5 minutes experience. Imagine if one of these experiences should feature a VR headset: this would include adding the time to clean the headsets, the time to help all people fitting the headsets comfortably on their head and telling them some words about virtual sickness. This would increase the already enormous waiting times;
• The experience is even good without them. The big screens can’t offer stereoscopy and also show a slightly curved view of the contents, but they’re good enough. I had fun with them and the experience was really close to wearing a VR headset, without the hassle of having something strapped onto my face. Yes, a VR headset would have given me a better experience, but even without it, I was ok with it;
• Without the headset, the experience is more social. Without an enclosing device on my face, I could see the faces of all the people around me… it really felt as doing all that stuff together. We could also look at each other eyes and exchange happy looks;
• The experience is enjoyable by multiple people without hassles. For the final show on the castle, we all just got to a point and watched it all together, without having to wear devices on our faces. It’s an easier way to let people enjoy an XR experience;
• VR is new. Most experiences have already been built without it, they have not been designed for VR headsets, that at the time didn’t exist, yet. So, it is normal that most of them don’t feature it.

As you can see, there are valid reasons. This doesn’t mean that won’t ever be headsets in Disneyland Shanghai (I bet that in the future there will be), but it means that it is not a priority for this amusement park. As VR innovators we’d like to see VR everywhere, but actually smart people start working from a problem and then find a solution to that problem and do not start from a technology they want to use. And Disney’s goal at Disneyland is making children have fun, not showcase that “they have VR”. They have so many people going there each day, that they do not need to rush to introduce the technology. I think that they’ll wait until they’ll find a way to offer a high-quality VR experience in a way that is feasible for the park and then they’ll introduce it. This is how things should always be done. So I appreciate their choice.

And it also reminded me once more that for every occasion, we should choose the most suitable technology, not the one we like the most. That’s why I wanted to report you these thoughts of mine, to remember this to you and to also discuss about it with you (contact me!).

And stay tuned because I’m going to interview some cool Chinese startups, to tell you about some very interesting VR projects here. It’s time to stop talking about random public VR booths and to start digging into the people that are really doing high-quality innovation here. And I assure you that you’ll read a lot of interesting information. 😉