This is huge, awesome news. In early 2018, experiential entertainment company Two Bit Circus will open the country's first micro-amusement park in downtown Los Angeles. The company's founders Brent Bushnell and Eric Gradman will house the high-tech park (that will have an old school carnival feel) inside of a former power plant in Lincoln Heights. The entrepreneurial duo are hoping it will be the first in a chain of such parks that will use technology to bring people together to play.
Radio station KPCC recently interviewed both founders.
Two Bit's CTO and former professional acrobat/fire dancer Gadman believes that the small-scale park will completely disrupt the entertainment industry. He says,
"The world has nothing like this. There's no place that takes advantage of smaller spaces like we intend to do. There's no place that's filled with content that's constantly being rotated… there's no place where new technologies can come and live and be showcased in a place that allows everyone to play with them, and when they get old and stale we replace them with newer, cooler stuff."
Bushnell, Two Bit's CEO and son to the man who founded both Atari and Chuck-e-Cheese (!), talked about how IRL immersive experiences are the new "cool,"
"People want new life experience you could think of their Instagram as kind of a new kind of currency rate and is not wearing the shirt that has the Porsche logo that says you're cool, it's what kind of cool new experiences you're getting into, and so this is about a place for new life experience."
The company raised $15 million dollars in January to help bring their vision to life.
Want to get on their Beta list to try (and debug) their latest park experiences before they go public? (Yes, you do.) Sign up here.
Thanks, Noah!
Previously: Create a customizable animal robot
photo via Two Bit Circus' Facebook
