Escape the everyday with a day out that engages all the senses. Here's our pick of the best immersive experiences in the UK.
Abba Voyage, London
Opening in 2022 and currently booking until 2025, Abba Voyage is a virtual residency by the Swedish supergroup, with digital avatars of the four band members taking to the stage. Watching them "it's almost impossible to tell you're not watching human beings", said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. "By the time the show hits its finale with Thank You For The Music followed by Dancing Queen, any lingering sense that you're not actually in the presence of Abba has dissolved." The digital show "genuinely creates a sense of personality and connection", said Neil McCormick in The Telegraph. However, does it spell the end for live performance, he wonders. "One day, if we're not careful, all gigs will be like this."
Experiencing the UK's first live-action video game karting experience "honestly feels like you're inside a game of Mario Kart", said the Manchester Evening News. The players and karts are real, and you "whizz around an actual track", but that track changes constantly "as it's projected onto the floor along with the rest of the landscape that surrounds you". The absence of high-tech equipment is a bonus: "to truly be immersed in the virtual world without the need for an annoying headset or a screen is quite something". There are no helmets either but "the experience is incredibly safe", said The Irish Sun, "with built-in collision-reduction technology and other high tech safety features".
This "award-winning attraction", which is also coming soon to Manchester and Edinburgh, has been described as the "ultimate interactive gaming experience, where punters feel like they're part of an immersive world", said The Sun. Visitors have their own "multi-sensory Immersion Pod", where they don their VR kit to experience other worlds. Scenarios include The Island, with 16 experiences, including "a zombie apocalypse, desert, the open sea, jungle and more", all enhanced by "temperature, wind and rumble effects", which help to make the VR experience "as immersive as possible", said Radio Times.
In a homage to "Murder on the Orient Express", this immersive dinner show, departing from the fictitious Pedley Street Station, sees guests cast as "train passengers in the glamorous golden age of rail, with a mystery to be solved", said Time Out. Enjoy a "delicious four-course meal with a side of theatrical flair", said Secret London, on this upmarket night out, where you're encouraged to dress in period costume. "But don't let yourself be swept up in the luxury," said the website, because this is The Murdér Express and "danger could be lurking in every immaculate corner".
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that has a role in feeling pleasure, and Dopamine Land is a multisensory experience combining media, technology and play, designed to channel the imagination of your inner child, enabling you to shed adult-world stress. Featuring "colourful installations, visual effects and moving projections" Dopamine Land has a "series of unique and enchanting rooms", including a "pillow-fight room, a digital forest, and a ballpit" to explore, said Secret London. "There really is no better place to release your inner child," said Stylist, "whether you want to unplug from the world in the decompression room or immerse yourself in the limitless light space."
(Image credit: Van Gogh: the Immersive Experience)
Currently in London, Leicester and York, Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience has been touring the world, and has been seen by more than a million people. The show explores the painter's life and work. "A virtual-reality experience and 3D animated paintings are used to shed new light on his art," said the London Evening Standard. "The multisensory journey through these famous bodies of work" makes for an "entirely new way of experiencing art, bringing every stunning detail to life like never before", said Secret London.
Billed as an "amazement park", visitors "face a multilayered maze of immersive environments, secret passageways, hidden forests, temples, ice caves and mesmerising wonders", said The Sun. The fun begins with "actors pretending to be sales assistants" who start you on a journey leading to a "parallel dimension that is triggered by a radioactive tree", said the Bristol Post. There are over 40 spaces, all connected by a maze, "curated as a sensory experience that heightens sound, sight and hearing" with "lots of secret passages and puzzles to work out". Along the way there are "mind-altering light displays and visual effects that make you feel like you're walking through space".
Adrienne Wyper has been a freelance sub-editor and writer for The Week's website and magazine since 2015. As a travel and lifestyle journalist, she has also written and edited for other titles including BBC Countryfile, British Travel Journal, Coast, Country Living, Country Walking, Good Housekeeping, The Independent, The Lady and Woman’s Own.
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