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Megaland (detail) (Photo: Supplied)
Megaland (detail) (Photo: Supplied)

BusinessJuly 19, 2022

Someone spent lockdown creating a massive inflatable obstacle course for grown-ups

Megaland (detail) (Photo: Supplied)
Megaland (detail) (Photo: Supplied)

He’s spent every cent he has – and more – realising his dream. Now Megaland is here, will it pay off?

Three years ago, Corey Ealand was at a children’s birthday party when he watched his young son slip off his shoes, climb onto a blow-up bouncy castle and begin having the time of his life with all the other kids who were there.

Standing there listening to the squeals of delight, watching his son beaming from ear to ear, a thought came to him: “I went, ‘I want to be on there with him,’” says Ealand. But he wasn’t allowed. This good time was just for kids. “Adults [don’t get to] go on the bouncy castles,” he says.

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’
Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

So he decided to do something about it. Ealand, a builder and drone pilot based in Auckland, began researching how he could create an inflatable obstacle course that could handle the kind of power and weight provided by the adults he wanted to be able to use it.

As Covid arrived and lockdowns began, Ealand’s work dried up and he found himself with more free time than he’d ever had before. So he kept busy by working on his obstacle course, the dream getting bigger and bigger as he covered walls in print-outs and photos. What he ended up with was his ultimate bouncy castle.

Megaland
Corey Ealand’s finished obstacle course for adults is called Megaland. (Photo: Supplied)

He wanted it to feel to epic in scale, like the bouncy castle at the birthday party would have felt to his toddler son. It hasn’t been easy, and Ealand believes it’s never been done in Aotearoa before: “You can’t just go buy one off the shelf,” he says. “It’s taken thousands and thousands of hours.”

As Auckland’s longest lockdown began in August 2021, Ealand started having second thoughts. He thought, “I’m not working and I’m spending all my money. What’s going on? All the events are not going ahead. This might not be the best business to be getting into right now.” The words “mid-life crisis” crossed his mind.

But every time he showed the concept to friends and family, they approved. “Everyone loved it. Everyone loved the idea,” he says. “We got really good feedback and that’s what got me through Covid.”

MEGALAND
Punters enjoy Megaland’s big slide during a trial day. (Photo: Supplied)

Scale was still an issue. An early prototype that included a 12-metre slide was dismissed for being too small. “It felt too kiddish when you’re an adult on there,” he says. “Going bigger has definitely made it feel like an adults’ course.”

Now, the finished product is bigger than he ever believed it could be. Megaland takes a full day to set up, and covers close to half a rugby field. End-to-end it’s 300 metres long, and can take up to 15 minutes for punters to get through. It can handle the weight of up to 500 people, but he’s keeping it capped at 50-60 at a time so there’s room to enjoy it properly.

And there’s lots to enjoy. Megaland includes themed zones, a rugby field, a maze, a mini maze, a ball pit, six slides, climbing walls, covered areas, trees, hoops and much more. In honour of his inspiration, Ealand included a two-storey bouncy castle for adults in the middle of the course. (Kids will be allowed to use it, with adult supervision.)

Megaland
Megaland takes up half a rugby field. (Photo: Supplied)

Megaland recently launched with a trial day at Mt Smart Stadium’s Lilyworld. How’d it go? “Amazing,” says Ealand. “It was very cool.” He hopes to have a more permanent location locked in for the next school holidays, when the weather’s more settled, and is looking to lock in contracts to take it around summer music festivals.

He’s coy about who made Megaland for him, saying that finding a manufacturer was one of the build’s hardest aspects. He’s also secretive on its final cost, admitting only that the shipping fee was $30,000. Ealand says he has a business partner because “it’s a lot more money than I can afford”.

Megaland
The ‘Aotearoa’ section of Megaland includes sheep, trees and a rugby field. (Photo: Supplied)

Will he make any of it back? “I have no idea. At the end of the day it’s just fun,” says Ealand, who points to the smiles on the faces of everyone who experienced it during his trial day as proof that Megaland will be popular.

Finally, adults have a reason to enjoy some bouncy castle mayhem too. “Everyone who got off it, even people who don’t like bouncy castles, were beaming from ear to ear,” he says. “That’s worth more than the money factor at the end of the day.”

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Tech overdose
Take control of your tech before it takes control of you. (Photo: Getty / Treatment: Tina Tiller)

BusinessJuly 19, 2022

Are our TV sets spying on us? ‘It’s pretty scary … you should be worried’

Tech overdose
Take control of your tech before it takes control of you. (Photo: Getty / Treatment: Tina Tiller)

Modern homes are full of AI-driven tech and apps programmed by algorithms. Do you know how to use it safely? We asked an expert for some advice.

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A Ring security camera points down our driveway and films every visitor who comes to our door, catching everything from couriers to stray cats, then sends notifications and footage to my phone. A Nest smoke alarm tells us off using a stern American accent if we leave the shower door open and moisture fills the hallway. A wifi-connected TV entertains us at night, and smart speakers soundtrack our days. The kids have one in each of their bedrooms.

The tech that fills our home, like many modern homes, doesn’t end there. A borrowed robot vacuum cleaner mops the kitchen floors and scrubs the carpets, interrupting our conversations if it thinks it hears its name (“Yuki”). Phones, laptops, gaming consoles and iPads full of algorithm-driven apps litter our house, begging to be picked up with a chorus of notification pings, day and night. My son, who is 12, just got his first iPhone.

This is fine, right?

Erm, no. “It’s all pretty scary,” says Alex Bartley Catt. “You should be worried … I don’t think I’m going to calm your nerves at all.” I’d called the managing director of Spacetime, an Aotearoa tech company that helps businesses get the best out of AI, to find out if using all this tech at home is safe. I did so after spending the past week reading a collection of headlines like this, and this, and this. Here’s the worst one I could find: “Smart device warning: Homes ‘exposed’ to 12,000 attacks per week.”

What the hell is happening? Is any digital device safe to use any more? Should I consider adopting an Amish way of life and dump it all in the bin?

Bartley Catt gets asked this question a lot. Digital safety is often the first thing he’s queried about when he tells people what he does for a living. “People are worried about privacy,” he says. Mention the phrase “artificial intelligence” and they freak out. “There’s the Terminator, the end of the world, the singularity, all wrapped up in it.” People want him to tell them if Jeffrey Bezos is listening to their conversations through an Alexa smart speaker, or if their smart TV livestreams their living room antics to foreign tech hubs.

His response doesn’t allay any of those fears. Yes, your smart devices will be listening in, if you let them. Bartley Catt uses our Samsung TV as an example. “TVs that are made today have a microphone. They’ll be listening to TV shows you’re watching to see if you’re being delivered certain ads in those TV shows and if certain product ranges are mentioned. Those TVs are definitely listening.” (I asked Samsung for a response and didn’t receive a reply, but here’s the tech giant’s global privacy policy, which states “we may collect … additional information about the network, channels, and programs that you view …”.)



The problem, Bartley Catt says, is that no one checks their privacy settings. With each new app or smart device added to homes or phones, pages of intricate details are often agreed to with a quick swipe of a finger. “No on reads the terms of service. No one understands the settings,” says Bartley Catt. He’s right: I see those things as an annoyance, a box to tick to get it over with. “We put too much trust in technology manufacturers.” That means unrelated apps may have access to internet browsing histories and location services, and use those details to then sell your data to marketers.

Suddenly, you might be getting intricately personalised ads that are hard to resist. “They’re doing a whole lot of things to profile your personality and build a psychographic understanding of who you are and the people you know.”

Alex Bartley Catt
Alex Bartley Catt says it’s worth diving into settings to understand what apps and devices have access to (Photo: Supplied)

At its worst, that means you’re stuck in a mega-marketing circle of hell. Walk past a shop, and you might receive an ad for something for sale inside that store, just like this bonkers scene in Minority Report. Talk to someone else with location services enabled and you might get served ads based on what your friend is into. “It gets as deep as, if you’re lying down in bed with your phone, you’ll be delivered different ads than if you’re sitting up with your phone,” Bartley Catt says. “The level of specificity they have and the ways they can market to you … is insane.”

The good news is that this can all change today. Bartley Catt recommends settling in for a fun evening of privacy management. That means diving into the settings of every single device and app, and making sure it can only access what you want it to. “You’ve got to go really deep to figure out what they’re really doing with that information and how it will impact your life,” he says. “It is hard, it’s time-consuming. It will inevitably make your life a little bit less connected.”

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’
Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

If it stops you from buying a four-slice toaster when you live alone, it might be worth it. But, if that’s still not enough, you can go back to basics. Dump the phone, get rid of all your voice-activated tech, and return to a more primitive way of life. “Maybe you’ve got a dumb phone rather than a smart phone,” says Bartley Catt. “Maybe you buy a specific kind of computer that has really deep security settings.”

He admits he hasn’t done this, and is about as bad as you and me at giving tech companies access to his personal data. “You would find me on Facebook, you’ll find me on most of the social media channels,” he says. “I actually love Google. It makes life easier, right?”

Balance, and understanding that tech companies always have the upper hand, is key. “If you’ve got an awareness about how advertising affects you and how it might make you to do certain things then maybe you can go some way to being mindful of it and not having it affect you so much,” says Bartley Catt. “It’s [about] being careful what you search for and what digital footprint you leave online.” Good luck out there.

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