SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Walt Disney Co.’s chief executive has no interest in having theme park visitors strap on virtual reality headsets that block out their view and place them inside a digital world.
Smaller rivals have turned to such virtual reality experiences as an affordable way to spice up rides.
But Disney CEO Robert Iger said reality-destroying headsets would be “ersatz” at his stable of parks. He’s ordered his team not to even think about the idea.
Iger, speaking at a recent USC Marshall and Annenberg event in Santa Monica, instead talked up the possibility of launching high-tech augmented reality attractions. Those will still probably involve headgear, but the devices will blend the real and digital worlds.
Iger noted that he spends each Tuesday afternoon at a Disney engineering lab sporting a head-worn device that enables him to hold a lightsaber and duel with a Stormtrooper from the “Star Wars” film franchise.
He could be referring to a partnership with augmented reality device maker Magic Leap. Iger expressed hope that the gadget would get lighter and more comfortable someday.
He didn’t shed more details. But it’s possible that game would contrast with virtual reality rides at other theme parks because people would be on a large set and moving around other people, as opposed to standing in place and only seeing computer projections. Disneyland currently offers a popular Jedi Training Academy in Tomorrowland, with live characters who pretend to fight lightsaber-wielding children visiting the park.
“What we create is an experience that is real,” Iger said. “When you walk into Cars Land, you feel you’re in Radiator Springs because of what we’ve built — not only the attention to the detail, but the scale.”
Iger described how Disney spent considerable time and money ensuring robots cast as “Avatar” characters would have vibrant facial expressions at an attraction opening in May at its Orlando, Fla., theme park.
This “will have expressions you will not believe in terms of how Na’vi-like they are,” he said, referring to the human-like alien race in the film franchise.
Theme park experts had already speculated that virtual reality headsets would be unlikely at Disneyland.
“Theme park purists don’t like” them, Martin Lewison, a business management professor at Farmingdale State College in New York, said last year. “They’d much rather go on a $250 million ride at Disneyland than throw a mask strapped to a Samsung smartphone over my eyes.”
Iger also shed some insight into the upcoming “Star Wars” attraction at Disney parks in Anaheim and Orlando. One ride is expected to let visitors joyride in the cockpit of Han Solo’s spaceship, Millennium Falcon.
“It’s pretty good, real good,” Iger said of test rides he’s done in a simulator.
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