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Pouring one out for a dream too big to survive. RIP, PDP. I loved you very much.

Reminiscing. Back in 2018, I rope-dropped with a bag of quarters to unlock all the Esmeralda cards. Pure magic to trigger a fortune telling machine without touching it, and getting an exclusive serialized story chapter each time you visit? Lovely.

Play Disney Parks, even in its compromised state, represented a lot of ambitions I'd waited my whole life to see. Exclusive merchandise unlocked though gameplay was one of those concepts, if only briefly and timidly attempted, and I still think it holds vast untapped potential.

The minigames that occasionally frustrated other guests were just an alibi, and the real secret sauce was the interactions enabled by the app's backend. It was a profound moment the first time a theme park ride remembered me.

The most gutting loss for me (naturally, as a founding phone case kitbasher) is the Datapad experience hosted within the PDP app. A wealth of original, land-specific, epistolary Star Wars fiction rendered inaccessible to new visitors to Batuu. A tremendous shame.

I still believe the ultimate potential of this embodied medium is interactive. The Play app took a giant leap toward empowering curious folks to peel back a layer & explore these spaces on a deeper level. Its wings were clipped, but I will forever celebrate the miracle that it existed at all.