6 immersive experiences that bend reality

In an immersive experience, the boundaries blur — once you enter this themed space, your senses get overtaken and you are no longer a witness but a participant. Lose yourself in art, games, food and other pleasures at these six innovative endeavors.

Activate

Integrating physical and digital gaming, Activate lets you choose your own adventure. Start by selecting an interactive room, then pick one of the room's games and a difficulty level. Stay in one room and play the same game on repeat, try every space and every game, or go back and forth — it is up to you. Each game is no more than three minutes long and calls for different actions, from jumping to climbing to problem-solving. Activate has more than 40 locations in the United States and Canada, with spots opening soon in the United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates.

Arte Museum

Using projectors, massive screens, colorful lights and booming sound systems, the Arte Museum transports visitors to gardens, jungles and forests — real and imagined — around the world. The Arte Museum's overarching theme is "Eternal Nature," and digital waterfalls, virtual waves and aurora borealis projections can be found at its eight locations in Asia and the U.S. In Las Vegas, visitors in the live sketchbook room draw animals, scan them and then watch as they almost immediately come to life on the walls. "It's a lovely communal moment, and one that ignites the inner artist in each of us," the Los Angeles Times said.

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Artechouse

Art and technology collide at Artechouse. There are three spaces — Houston, New York City and Washington, D.C. — and each has its own programing that changes with the seasons. One aspect across the locations is constant: All of the art is made digitally with cutting-edge tools. In D.C., "Isekai: Blooming Parallel Worlds," is an annual anime-inspired ode to cherry blossoms. "While it mostly offers intense audiovisual sensation and eye-popping backdrops for selfies, 'Isekai' does pack some educational content," The Washington Post said, like explaining the history of cherry blossoms in the Capitol.

Flyover

Sit down, buckle up and get ready to soar over some of the world's most beautiful scenery. Flyover is an immersive attraction where riders sit in front of a gigantic spherical screen in seats that turn, dip and swoop, so it feels like being in flight. Special effects like wind, mist and scents intensify the experience. There are Flyovers in Las Vegas, Reykjavik, Vancouver and Chicago, the newest location. With shots of Lake Michigan, Wrigley Field, Tribune Tower and other area icons, the film is "dizzying and inspiring," the Chicago Tribune said, and enough to "restore one's faith in this city's beauty, resilience and fortitude."

The Murdér Express 

Billing itself as "where gastronomy meets entertainment," London's Murdér Express takes dinner theater to the extreme. It starts with guests boarding a train in the fictional Pedley Street Station and quickly escalates to someone getting murdered and the rest of the group needing to figure out whodunit. The food is "impressive," Secret London said, and the set design "super cool," with "commitment to detail" everywhere. Screens next to the tables showing country scenery make it feel like you really are heading somewhere, and the audience participation elements cause "side-splitting sputters of laughter."

Omega Mart

This is anything but your typical grocery store. At Meow Wolf's mind-bending Omega Mart in Las Vegas, visitors first enter a mock market filled with absurdist products only found here, like bottles of Plausible Deniability laundry detergent (if an item is not bolted down, it is available for purchase). This leads to "not-so-hidden portals into the large-scale exhibitions beyond," the Los Angeles Times said, which are "wildly colorful" and "all-enveloping." Different narratives are told along the way, "allowing guests to place themselves in a mystical story" that keeps them guessing.