MouseTour
React Native • Mobile • GPS • Design • Media
An Audio Tour App for Disneyland, where Dr. Miles Ouse, is giving you a lesson on exploring.
This was purely a passion project. Built entirely in React Native, it's available on both Android and iOS.
The idea was born out of doing an Audio Tour of Pompeii. The audio tour was telling me to go one direction, but I really wanted to go the other. I thought why doesn't it just tell me about what I was near. I thought I would make my own, using the place I know the best, Disneyland. I started with the theme, a class given by the noted explorer Miles Ouse, and built the dry humor and flow of the app based around that theme.
The first major step was to write the script for the tours. I knew I wanted around 2 hours of content. I captured every ride, and started to write up everything I could find about each ride, and then cut it down to something that would flow better.
On the tech side, I started doing research, and ran across some APIs around Geofences, I coded up a basic version of the app, recorded the audio with my own voice, took it to the park, and MASSIVE FAILURE. The app would constantly notify at random locations. Turns out the minimium distance for geofences is not well documented, but turns out to be around 25 meters. Way too far away for my uses when I want to let people know when they are within feet. I ended up having to switch to something more similar to run keeper, where I would wake up, get the location, then go back to sleep, that way I was constantly tracking the location in the background and could notify the user.
That worked, but I hated the sound of my own voice, so I hired a voice actor to do the final version of the tours, as well as an illustrator to do what Dr Miles Ouse would look like.
The reaction from the community was so good, I added California Adventure shortly after.