When Camp opened their Houston Galleria location in February 2025, it marked the completion of an unusual retail experiment. Seven years after launching their first Manhattan store, Camp has managed to scale something most industry observers thought was impossible: a retail concept that requires families to book timed appointments, charges admission fees, and completely rebuilds its main attraction every eight weeks.
The company now operates ten locations across major U.S. markets, each one drawing families willing to pay $37-65 per child for 50-minute experiences behind what Camp calls their “Magic Door.” The average visit lasts 90 minutes—roughly six times longer than typical toy store visits. Yet despite this operational complexity, Simon Property Group has made Camp a key part of their expansion strategy, opening locations at prestigious properties like King of Prussia and Houston’s Galleria.
This raises obvious questions: How do you design retail spaces that can transform into entirely different themed environments every two months? What does it take to train staff who function as retail associates, camp counselors, and theatrical performers simultaneously? And perhaps most importantly for other operators—what can Camp’s approach teach us about creating sustainable immersive experiences?
Flexible Architecture Meets Fixed Real Estate
Camp’s fundamental innovation lies in their approach to space. Where most retailers maximize selling floor, Camp dedicates roughly 70% of their square footage to adaptable experience areas. Their Houston location spans 7,500 square feet, with 5,000 of that reserved for the immersive experience currently featuring a recreation of Bluey’s house.
This space allocation seems counterintuitive until you consider the revenue model. Traditional toy stores generate revenue per square foot through inventory turnover. Camp generates it through admission fees, extended dwell time, and the higher conversion rates that come when families make purchase decisions after emotionally engaging experiences.
The Magic Door itself solves multiple design challenges. The pivoting wall creates sound separation between retail and experience areas—crucial when one side hosts a dance party while the other maintains shopping ambiance. It manages crowd flow by creating clear entry and exit points for timed experiences. Most importantly, it provides psychological separation that allows the same families to mentally shift between shopping and entertainment modes within the same visit.
Behind that door, everything must be modular. Camp’s partnership with RWS Global, a live entertainment production company, reflects the operational reality that changing themed environments every eight weeks requires capabilities closer to touring theater than traditional retail. Electrical systems need flexibility to support vastly different lighting requirements. Flooring must handle everything from dance parties to crafting activities. Storage areas must accommodate set pieces that range from life-sized dollhouses to muddy puddle splash zones.
Content Strategy: Borrowing from Theme Parks
Camp’s experiences follow theatrical structure, but adapted for much smaller spaces and budgets than traditional theme parks. Take their current Bluey experience, developed in collaboration with the show’s Australian producers at Ludo Studio. Families enter a detailed recreation of the Heeler family home where they play games from the show—Keepy Uppy, Magic Asparagus, grannies—guided by staff who stay in character throughout the experience.
The production values matter. Bluey’s house includes functional kitchen appliances, character voices that trigger based on guest location, and Easter eggs hidden throughout that reference specific episodes. This attention to detail serves practical purposes beyond fan service. When parents recognize authentic elements from the show, they’re more likely to document and share the experience on social media, providing organic marketing that Camp couldn’t afford to buy.
Staff training becomes critical. Camp employees aren’t just facilitating activities—they’re maintaining narrative immersion while managing group dynamics that include toddlers, teenagers, and sometimes reluctant parents. This requires hiring people comfortable with performance while teaching them crowd management techniques typically found in live entertainment venues.
The rotation schedule creates constant operational pressure. As Houston launches their Bluey experience, Camp’s Washington D.C. location is preparing to open a Peppa Pig experience this summer, complete with muddy puddles and character meet-and-greets. Each transition requires complete environment teardown, new staff training, updated marketing materials, and coordination with licensing partners who have their own brand standards to maintain.
Revenue Streams: Making Complex Operations Profitable
Camp’s business model stacks multiple revenue opportunities within each visit. The admission-based experience generates the highest per-capita revenue, but retail sales, activity fees for things like slime-making, and food partnerships create additional income streams. Their free membership program drives repeat visits—over 40% of transactions come from returning customers, unusually high for retail.
The challenge lies in optimizing these streams without degrading the experience. Families arriving early for timed experiences browse retail while waiting, but staff must balance encouraging purchases with maintaining punctual experience start times. Post-experience shopping generates higher conversion rates, but requires managing guests who want to extend their visit against those waiting for the next time slot.
Birthday parties and private events provide additional revenue during off-peak hours, but require different operational configurations and staffing models. The Houston location includes dedicated party rooms and event spaces, but these must integrate with the overall experience without disrupting regular operations.
Partnership Strategy: Access Without Ownership
Camp’s IP partnerships go beyond traditional licensing arrangements. Their collaboration with BBC Studios for the Bluey experience includes marketing support and cross-promotion opportunities that extend Camp’s reach far beyond what a 10-location chain could achieve independently. Disney partnerships include exclusive content and character appearances not available through standard licensing deals.
These relationships provide built-in audience awareness and emotional connection, crucial advantages for a concept that requires families to plan visits in advance and pay premium prices. But they also create dependencies. Changes to licensing relationships could significantly impact Camp’s appeal, and content partners have their own brand standards that must be maintained across all locations.
The partnership with Simon Property Group offers different advantages. Access to high-traffic, affluent customer bases, professional property management, established relationships with complementary tenants, and marketing support that positions properties as entertainment destinations rather than just shopping centers. However, this focus on premium locations limits expansion opportunities and requires Camp to consistently justify higher rents through superior performance.
Operational Realities: Safety, Sound, and Scalability
Creating interactive environments for children within retail spaces requires navigating complex safety regulations that vary by jurisdiction. Occupancy limits for timed experiences must account for emergency evacuation scenarios. Interactive elements need design approaches that balance immersion with protection against injury from enthusiastic participants.
Acoustic management becomes crucial when maintaining sound levels between retail and experience areas. The Bluey experience includes dance parties and active play, but these can’t disturb adjacent mall tenants or violate noise ordinances. Audio systems must create immersive soundscapes while containing sound within designated areas.
The tension between flexibility and immersion drives every design decision. Infrastructure systems must support multiple experience types with different requirements—muddy puddle play demands different flooring solutions than character meet-and-greets or dance parties. Storage areas for experience transitions must be adequately sized without consuming revenue-generating square footage.
Staff scheduling adds another layer of complexity. Peak experience times don’t necessarily align with peak retail periods. Training requirements differ significantly from traditional retail, and employee turnover affects both retail operations and experience quality. Camp must maintain performance standards across locations while accommodating local labor markets and operational variations.
What This Means for Other Operators
Camp’s success offers several lessons for operators considering similar approaches. The analog-first design philosophy proves that physical, tactile interactions retain their appeal even as digital experiences proliferate. Parents actively seek screen-time alternatives for their children, creating market opportunity for well-executed physical experiences.
Modular design approaches enable content rotation that keeps experiences fresh while amortizing infrastructure investments across multiple themes. However, this requires upfront capital for flexible systems and ongoing operational complexity that many retailers aren’t equipped to handle.
Partnership strategies can provide access to premium content and marketing reach, but require co-creation relationships that go beyond simple licensing arrangements. Success depends on finding partners willing to invest in experience development rather than simply collecting royalty payments.
For property developers, Camp demonstrates that experiential tenants require different support than traditional retailers. Success demands active partnership including assistance with specialized infrastructure, flexible lease terms accounting for higher build-out costs, and marketing support that positions properties as entertainment destinations.
The real lesson may be that sustainable immersive retail requires treating space, content, operations, and partnerships as interconnected systems rather than separate challenges. Camp’s Magic Door works not because it’s a clever theatrical device, but because it anchors an integrated approach that addresses the fundamental challenges of creating compelling experiences within commercial real estate constraints.
For operators willing to embrace this complexity, Camp proves that families will pay premium prices and invest significant time for experiences that create lasting memories. The question becomes whether others can execute at similar levels while maintaining the operational discipline that makes it profitable.
Working with Camp: The Reality for Property Developers
Camp’s expansion strategy remains tightly controlled, with most deals flowing through their partnership with Simon Property Group rather than individual property outreach. The company doesn’t maintain a traditional real estate development team that actively scouts locations—instead, they appear to evaluate opportunities on a case-by-case basis through established relationships with premium mall operators.
For properties outside Simon’s portfolio, the pathway to securing Camp as a tenant isn’t clearly defined through public channels. The company’s rapid growth from concept to ten locations suggests they’re prioritizing operational excellence and proven partnerships over aggressive expansion. This approach creates challenges for developers in markets where Camp doesn’t currently operate, particularly smaller metropolitan areas or properties without the demographic profiles and infrastructure that Camp requires.
The company’s space requirements alone eliminate many potential locations. Camp needs 7,500-10,000 square feet of contiguous space with the flexibility for significant modifications, including specialized electrical systems, enhanced HVAC for varying occupancy loads, and acoustic considerations for immersive experiences. Most importantly, they require locations that can support their operational model—premium demographics willing to pay admission fees, adequate parking for family visits that average 90 minutes, and proximity to complementary family-oriented tenants that benefit from Camp’s traffic generation.
Alternative Solutions for Markets Camp Won’t Enter
For properties seeking similar family entertainment anchors in markets where Camp isn’t expanding, several alternatives offer different approaches to experiential family retail:
KidZania represents the closest operational comparison to Camp, but at a much larger scale. Operating in 30 locations worldwide, KidZania creates child-sized cities where kids role-play adult professions from McDonald’s workers to airline pilots. Their facilities typically require 80,000+ square feet and represent significantly higher capital investments than Camp’s model. However, KidZania’s proven international success and franchise opportunities make them accessible to larger developments in major metropolitan markets. Their Dallas location demonstrates the concept’s viability in U.S. markets, though their size requirements limit them to the largest regional centers.
Build-A-Bear Workshop offers a different approach to experiential family retail through their “experience economy” stores. While smaller in footprint than Camp, Build-A-Bear locations increasingly incorporate experience elements including party spaces, personalization stations, and seasonal programming that extends dwell time beyond basic retail transactions. Their established franchise model and smaller space requirements make them accessible to properties that couldn’t support Camp’s operational complexity.
Legoland Discovery Centers provide another scaled-down version of major theme park experiences, typically requiring 30,000-40,000 square feet within mall environments. These indoor family attractions combine rides, build experiences, and retail in a format that generates significant traffic while requiring less operational complexity than Camp’s rotating content model. However, their larger footprint requirements and limited expansion markets create availability challenges.
The Giant Room and similar “innovation hubs” represent locally developed alternatives that combine retail with educational programming. These concepts typically feature open-ended play spaces, maker activities, and workshop programming that can be adapted to local markets without requiring major IP licensing deals. While lacking Camp’s theatrical production values, they offer more flexibility for regional developers and can be customized to local demographic needs.
For smaller markets or properties unable to attract major experiential retail brands, local entrepreneurs are increasingly developing Camp-inspired concepts that adapt the core principles—theatrical transitions, immersive environments, rotating content—to regional markets and budgets. These local alternatives often partner with regional children’s entertainment properties or develop original content that can be produced at lower cost than major IP licensing deals require.
Regional family entertainment operators like Scene75, Dave & Buster’s family locations, or local bowling/arcade combinations increasingly incorporate retail elements and themed experiences that blur the lines between entertainment and retail. While not direct Camp competitors, these operators often seek mall locations and can provide similar traffic generation benefits for properties seeking family-oriented anchors.
The key consideration for properties evaluating alternatives lies in matching operational complexity to local market conditions and available resources. Camp’s success stems from sophisticated execution across multiple complex systems—theatrical production, retail operations, IP licensing, staff training, and facilities management. Properties in markets where Camp won’t expand need to honestly assess whether local alternatives can deliver similar execution quality or whether simpler concepts might better serve their tenant mix objectives.