"Add Interactive Fun to a 27 Year Old Venue? KimPossible!"

How can you re-invent your museum to attract “digital natives” – young people who have grown up with the Internet, video games, and 24/7 connectivity?

Do you have to tear out your exhibits, replace artifacts with plasma screens and risk alienating your older visitors with flashy, loud, bright eye candy? Maybe not.

Walt Disney World’s Epcot Theme Park has a reputation as a staid, slightly stuffy “educational” experience with few attractions for younger people. To change the “blink” on Epcot, Disney just introduced the “Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure.” Kevin Yee went there, and describes how the attraction works. (Click on the title of this post to read his adventures.)

What’s most interesting about “Kim Possible” is how Disney solved their “digital native” problem. They didn’t build a new attraction. They simply re-defined Epcot as a great site for a digital “treasure hunt adventure game.”

Everyone wins here. Kids can play with parents. Parents don’t have to put up with bored, cranky kids all day. The game creates a “park within a park”, presenting a different experience for different generations. All this is accomplished with a clever use of digital technology – no new buildings.

When this game has run its course, new games can be introduced and promoted with relative ease.

Have you ever thought of your museum as the site for a treasure hunt? Maybe you’ve got a treasure trove of young guests just waiting to be discovered.