Atlas 9

Started: 2026-02-03 19:42:55

Submitted: 2026-02-03 20:51:48

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A nostalgia trip in KCK

On our second full day in Kansas City, we visited Atlas 9, an "immersive" experience located across the state line in Kansas City, Kansas. (The locals appear to disambiguate the Kansas Cities by calling the city in Kansas "KCK".)

To get there we drove, which meant picking up our rental car from the hotel's valet parking. When the car arrived the valet pointed out the low-pressure warning on the dashboard and pulled out a portable tire pump, powered by the car's DC power jack. (I had seen the warning and watched the tire pressure gradually decrease as we drove through the snow to get to Kansas City, but I didn't do anything about it.) They pumped up the tire and sent us on our way, more than justifying the tip I was already planning on giving them.

Theater marquee inside Atlas 9

The setup was that Atlas 9 was a movie theater in the 1990s where some unknown event had occurred that resulted in locations from the movie being materialized in the real world. (The wall next to the theater marquee had real 1990s movie posters intermixed with the fake movies that they had created for the experience.) We were assigned the role of paranormal investigators at a shadowy organization that had been sent in to uncover what had really happened. We did this by scanning the rfid tags in our wristbands at readers throughout the building. (Calvin is still wearing his wristband in this picture.) Some of the readers just gave us credit for scanning them. Others we had to perform some puzzle to complete the event. Once we hit all of the stations in a particular story line in the correct order we could scan the last one and unlock the ending. In order to see the frog king in the room based on a charming animated fairy tale about a tribe of children who collect trash I had to collect a key (by scanning the key token hidden around the corner) and collect a map (upstairs in another room) and one more thing whose identity escapes me. (I didn't realize until later that evening that the QR code on the wristband would let us track our progress, which would have been easier than finding the small number of stations inside the building to do that.)

Frog king

Each room was elaborately decorated, but even the normal rooms were a bit off-kilter. The movie theater's break room kitchen fridge had been taken over by sentient chewing gum. One of the rooms had a giant birthday party room table (I crawled under it to see if there was anything interesting to see, but there was not) and giant reproductions of movie theater snacks. The theater manager's office had a moving file cabinet with a murderboard concealed behind it, with clues we might need elsewhere. There were computers we could log into and read emails uncovering the story, and watch videos of a projectionist's attempts at harnessing energy from movie magic. (This experiment went wrong, and brought the movies into the real world for us to explore.)

Clues on a murderboard at Atlas 9

One of the gimmicks was movie posters that injected our own photos into the fake movies created for the exhibition (probably AI-generated, because the fingers and guitar don't look right).

Some rooms where just art projects: there was nothing to scan, no story to uncover, just a hall of mirrors or a music-producing podium in a dead-end room. Everything looked hand-crafted, one-off; clearly a lot of time and effort had gone into everything and I began to wonder how much it had cost to pay the writers and artists (though I'm thinking in terms of Bay Area wages and costs so it's certainly less in the middle of the country).

And then I wondered about the audience: How big is the addressable market for a place like this? It didn't seem like there would be much replay value: once I uncovered the story, would I want to go through the whole thing again? Would they replace parts of the story to attract repeat customers? (Would they have to replace pieces that wore out?) I saw reviews comparing Atlas 9 in Kansas City to Meow Wolf in Las Vegas; but Las Vegas has a constant stream of new visitors and a tourist-driven culture that encourages experiences. (I haven't been to Meow Wolf so I can't compare it myself.)

A couple of weeks after my visit I got a partial answer, in the form of an email telling me about older movies screening at Atlas 9, including The Matrix in May. The list of movies appeared to be specifically chosen to hit the 1980s/1990s nostalgia that the entire experience was based on. If I were anywhere near Atlas 9 I would go back to see The Matrix on the big screen again, surrounded by fans riding the same wave of nostalgia that I was.

We spent all afternoon at Atlas 9. (I took a break to get movie-theater refreshments in the lobby.) As the afternoon progressed it grew more crowded, making it harder to get to the places where I had to complete a puzzle to get credit. In the end I found all of the points to scan, in the right order, to unlock all of the stories and learn the true fate of the theater.

We wrapped up the day back at Bethany's apartment, then returned to our hotel to pack to head to Colorado for the third part of our Christmas vacation.