Tickets are now on sale for what is likely going to be one of the best introductions to virtual reality on the planet — Star Wars: Secrets Of The Empire.
The Star Wars VR attraction will open at Disney Springs in Florida on Dec. 16 and Downtown Disney in California on Jan. 5. But take a deep breath because this might sting…tickets cost around $30 each. If you want to take a family of four (ages 10+) on a trip together to infiltrate the Empire…there’s no discount. That’ll be around $120.
The experience is built by Utah-based VR startup The VOID in partnership with Disney’s ILMxLab. Since the attraction is offered outside Disney’s famed parks you just need to buy a ticket to Star Wars: Secrets Of The Empire — no ticket to Disneyland or Disney World required. If you and three others want to go together you’ll need to buy tickets for the same time slot at thevoid.com.
For those unfamiliar, The VOID uses best-in-class VR headsets, backpack computers and tracking technology to create a virtual world that lets you walk around freely without any wires holding you back. In Secrets Of The Empire, you’ll believe you are disguised as a Stormtrooper working with three others to infiltrate an Empire base. The VOID blew me away with its Ghostbusters-themed virtual world this summer, and the startup pitches its entertainment experience as “hyper-reality” since it enhances immersion with physical props as well as environmental effects like heat and wind. The new experience even includes hand-tracking to enhance immersion and interact with the environment around you, which should improve immersion even further from what was offered in Ghostbusters.
Check out the new trailer below, which teases some of what you can expect inside Secrets Of The Empire.
I’m told that from start to finish a visit to Secrets Of The Empire ballparks around half an hour in length. I’ve reached out for clarification but that likely includes instructional time and actually putting on and taking off the gear, so yout actual time being fully immersed in the Star Wars universe might be a subset of that half hour.
This will likely leave Star Wars fans doing some tough math trying to decide if such a short experience is worth so much money. Secrets Of The Empire might not run anywhere near the length of a movie, but for some fans fully immersing yourself in the Star Wars universe might also represent the perfect companion to seeing The Last Jedi.
