Disney Park visitors exchanged virtual stamps for real tokens that were good for a free soda during showings of the "Tron: Legacy" movie at Flynn’s Arcade. Graphic courtesy of Gregory Jackson.

When Capstone Media contacted Disney we learned that Disney Theme Parks wanted to engage their visitors with virtual stamps collected at specific Park attractions using Disney Gowalla stamps.

Gowalla is a location-based service app, also known as game mechanics, which adds gaming features to make checking-in at locations fun.  Gowalla however, considers itself to be more of a social travel guide. Gowalla functions like a real passport in a digital format where virtual stamps are collected on your mobile devices.  Each stamp represents an actual place of interest.

“Disney Parks has tested Gowalla with incentives for users to redeem a virtual good for a physical good (Flynn’s Arcade Coin),” said Tom Aronson, Disney Parks Digital Marketing Director.  “While results aren’t sharable – this was a test, and only a test – I can tell you that Disney Parks Guests who tried it enjoyed it.” [Read more...]