The thrills offered by theme parks and resorts are undeniable, but these luxury getaways come at a hefty cost that many consumers simply can’t afford these days. In July 2022, the index of all goods and services in the US rose by 5.9%, and jumps in inflation and cost of living are being felt worldwide. However, kids and families are still hungry for live experiences; they’re just on the hunt for more budget-friendly options. And that makes it the perfect time to suggest simply going for a walk.

Trail experiences encourage adventurers to explore a curated walking path where they can engage with a range of attractions, character statues and interactive apps. These affordable location-based offerings can be built in a variety of environments (zoos, parks and even city streets), and they’re ideal for creating photo opps that guests can’t resist sharing on social media. This is especially true for IP-based trails.

More and more licensed trails are popping up around the world, with players like Warner Bros. Discovery (Harry Potter) and the UK’s Magic Light Pictures (The Gruffalo) paving the way with some of the largest brands in their portfolios. In June, UK-based Aardman Animations and advertising agency Kids Industries partnered with wheelchair charity Whizz Kidz to launch Morph’s Epic Art Adventure. This trail featured more than 50 life-size sculptures of Aardman’s Morph character, each one designed and painted by a local artist. The statues were then set up around the city of London to raise awareness for the needs of young wheelchair users. Families could find them near several of the city’s iconic landmarks, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tate Modern art gallery, the Tower of London and
the historic Borough Market.

“Morph’s Epic Art Adventure was designed as a trail from the outset,” explains Gary Pope, CEO and co-founder of Kids Industries. “We partnered with a company called Wild in Art that supports various charities in building these art trails, but there had never been a fully accessible one before.”

It took close to two years to bring the project to life, notes Pope. Kids Industries created the art trail’s advertising, communications and interactive map, all of which invited visitors to follow a step-free path around London to discover all of the Morph statues. Once found, each statue unlocked fun facts and rewards in the app.

About 12 million people experienced the trail during its 62-day run, according to Kids Industries. Visitors who downloaded the app collected 371,749 Morphs and uploaded 5,444 images and selfies with the statues.

Morph’s Epic Art Adventure featured 50 life-sized Morph sculptures on the streets of London

On the heels of this success, Kids Industries is interested in developing more art trails in the future, and Pope says the plan will be to keep working primarily with charities and nonprofits in order to do the most good.

“There’s no question in my mind that trails have massive brand-building power, and if you play your cards right, they can actually be a revenue generator as well, because people want these experiences now,” Pope says. “A lot of it hinges on having the right IP, and placing it in the correct setting to build a meaningful connection with the consumer.”

For Magic Light Pictures, forging that meaningful connection involved placing 12 wooden sculptures based on its flagship IP The Gruffalo in several woodlands across the UK, including Salcey Forest, Sherwood Pines and Whinlatter Forest. Its Gruffalo Orienteering Courses, which Magic Light began developing in 2010, challenge kids and families to uncover each statue as fast as possible, using the map provided for each course.

“The values of nature are deeply rooted in the Gruffalo books created by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler,” says Magic Light co-founder Martin Pope, who adds that the trails let families go beyond reading the books, watching the film and engaging with the toys to absorb those outdoor values first-hand. “Kids have this big desire to experience the wider world around them and engage with nature daily.”

All of Magic Light’s Gruffalo trails are free for the public to enjoy, and they attract a steady stream of visitors each year—ranging from families to classrooms of kids heading out to the woods for a school trip. While the trails themselves aren’t monetized and don’t directly promote any merch, Pope says the brand engagement experience they create increases audience awareness and motivates users to purchase licensed consumer products at retail later on.

In order to create a suitably memorable experience, Magic Light needed a partner that understood the UK’s forests inside and out. “We work with Forestry England, and they do an enormous amount of lifting,” notes Pope. “They’ve developed a lot of the materials we use.”

A new trail takes about nine months from concept to completion, he adds. “It’s an investment that comes from our partners in terms of design, installation and maintenance to run the trail, but it’s also an investment that we make in finding the real estate and tasking our teams with imagining new touchpoints for the experience.”

In 2017, Magic Light developed and launched an augmented reality app called The Gruffalo Spotter. By scanning designated markers along the trail with a smartphone, kids can see the book’s characters come to life on their screens and take pictures with them. Within a year of rolling out, the app was downloaded more than 400,000 times, and it helped the trails reach 1.5 million total visits by 2018, according to Pope.

“People want photo moments at live attractions, and the AR app has really helped with that,” he says. “Working out how to get valuable social media engagement built into the trail and other experiences is really important. We’re always thinking about how technology can be used now, from the best way of incorporating it to whether it’s even appropriate for a specific section of the experience.”

Magic Light is already well into the development of its next set of trails for 2024, and the in-house team is planning new sites in Scotland and Wales. The company has also received a fair bit of international interest, leveraging that into licensing deals for new trails based on brands including Pip and Posy, Room on the Broom and The Snail and the Whale, to be located in an Italian woodland park and several sites across Australia. However, this kind of expansion can present a new set of challenges.

“In some countries, the management of forests is less unified,” says Pope. “This can make it harder to engage or find new partners in each market. One of the reasons trails work particularly well in the UK is that there is a strong desire [from the government] to engage with families and try to get them to explore the great outdoors.”

Sustainability is another key objective for this experiential licensing category, adds Peter van Roden, Warner Bros. Discovery’s SVP of themed entertainment. “We go through a number of ecological sign-offs to ensure the trails—including the trees and wildlife—are treated with the utmost respect,” he says. “This can lead to the necessity of shifting a path to avoid things like vulnerable tree roots or even a family of bats.”

WBD started its journey into the trails market with the launch of Harry Potter: A Forbidden Forest Experience in the UK two years ago. And the experience has since rolled out to new locations in Belgium and the US (Virginia and New York). The Forbidden Forest Experience takes visitors through an illuminated night-time forest set, where they encounter several beasts from the Wizarding World and learn to cast spells using their wands. WBD has also cooked up some additional on-site monetization opportunities, including themed food & beverage offerings and exclusive Harry Potter merchandise for kids.

“The Forbidden Forest Experience is a way to extend the storytelling of one of the most [iconic franchises in modern entertainment],” says van Roden. “It allows guests to physically interact in a space that they have previously only seen on the big screen or read about in a book. To that end, experiences are always a great way to reach a broader audience.”

Despite the starting ticket price of US$48, families were more than willing to take a ramble down WBD’s trail. Between October 2022 and January 2023, more than 620,000 guests experienced the Forbidden Forest across all of its locations. And Harry Potter fans around the world are asking (through social media) for their city to be one of the experience’s next stops, says van Roden.

Despite the smaller scale of these experiences, trails show that IP owners don’t have to build huge theme parks and resorts to get large crowds and families through the door. The most important part of any LBE experience is to ensure that the IP is placed in a fitting setting and creates long-lasting memories to build up valuable brand affinity with its core consumers.

This story originally appeared in Kidscreen‘s October/November 2023 magazine.