Trying to get across a bridge with alligators trying to eat you, finding your way through a cave with spiders crawling all around you, and finding a sceptre to save Jumanji are all part of the Jumanji Reverse the Curse experience you get at The Void.
The Void was founded in 2015 by Craig Watson while partnering with Tesla. They have since opened twelve locations in the US, and one each in Canada, Malaysia, and the United Emirates. They opened three new locations over the summer including the one at Tysons Center. They claim to be the future of entertainment and the “most immersive virtual reality destination…ever.”
“The difference between The Void and other virtual reality is that in traditional virtual reality experiences you are sitting down and looking at the world around you, whereas in The Void it is fully immersive you are part of the dimensions,” explained Rochelle Miller, the General Manager of The Void in Tysons.
“There are times in the experience where you can literally get lost and not know if it’s real or not,” described Miller.
To achieve this effect, users physically walk through an interactive maze of props during the experience. Props, sound cues, puffs of air, fragrances and vibrations make it feel like you are somewhere else.
“With all of those sensory effects, it blurs the line between the real and non-real,” commented Miller.
The experiences are based on movies, but users try to defeat the villain. It’s like you are in your own movie and you determine the outcome. One of the coolest aspects is that users interact with other real people as they move through the experience.
In some experiences, teammates are assigned different roles whereas in others, everyone has the same role. When seeing the world through the Virtual Reality headsets, teammates appear as characters from the movie. During the Star Wars experience, if a teammate waves at you, it would look like a stormtrooper waving at you.
In the Jumanji Reverse the Curse experience users have three lives when they start. A character loses a life if they go the wrong way, lose a fight with a villain, get eaten by alligators, or fail to conduct other challenges. When a character dies in the game, it looks like they are in a dark room with a visual button that says “continue.” Users look at the button for a few seconds and then they are back where they used to be.
“It was really fun, I would definitely recommend it to others,’’ shared seventh grader Brook H. Brook had the chance to experience The Void at a location in Disney World.