Lose yourself in these new immersive Las Vegas experiences

I flapped my arms wildly, trying to stay level as I soared above Midtown Manhattan. I was a bird, lying prone with my arms extended into “wings” with sensors that simulated actual flight.

My virtual reality headset transported me to New York City, where I weaved around tall buildings. I saw a green expanse ahead and made it my focal point. Surely, Central Park was where a bird, even a virtual one, belonged. I raised one arm without thinking — and immediately started spinning, faster and faster. The park, the buildings, the park, the buildings, it all went by in a blur.

I knew I had to lift my other arm, er, wing, to even out, but I was too disoriented in the fake world to move my body in the real one. I called out to the attendant to make it stop by removing the headset.

So this is the sad fate of city pigeons, I thought.

This was Birdly, one of the attractions in “The Lab” at AREA15, a playground of immersive experiences in Las Vegas. Other augmented reality attractions in this one room at AREA15 have people throwing invisible balls in a game of dodgeball, launching into space to repair an astro-robot, and driving in a Grand Prix.

You’ve heard of the Sphere, the world’s largest spherical structure with the highest-resolution screen of all time. But that’s not the only place in Las Vegas where you can become fully surrounded in sound and light. Several new attractions are both immersive and interactive: sweeping you away to rushing waterfalls, suiting you up in Velcro for a human-scale game of darts, augmenting your vision so you can bliss out in a light-streaked dance club, or sticking a VR headset on your face and sending you someplace else entirely.

Las Vegas itself is arguably one big artificially constructed immersive experience. It’s a circus of neon lights and strong air conditioning in the middle of the desert, where casino complexes begin as windowless black boxes, blank spaces onto which are projected hope, desire, money and all the other things for which people go to Vegas. Gambling has long lured people deeper inside the maze, blissfully unaware of the outside world. But as younger generations gamble less, Vegas is finding other ways to hold them in spendy thrall, cut off from the blinding daylight of the here and now.

“People want to escape reality and just kind of turn off all the friction and anxiety from the real world,” said Noel Bowman, owner of three Vegas locations of Minus5 ice bar, where the thermostat is set in the negative and customers don fur coats while sipping cocktails out of ice cube tumblers.

While some immersive experiences are all about the physical space you’re in — the 90 tons of ice at Minus5 will give you the shivers — many more have high-definition video, surround sound and virtual reality to do the heavy lifting.

ARTE Museum, a popular attraction in several Asian cities, opened its first U.S. location in Las Vegas a year ago. The 30,000-square-foot space brings dramatic images of nature into every room.

I was delighted by the “Live Sketchbook” exhibit, for which I picked out a coloring sheet of a woodland creature, shaded it in with a rainbow of crayons, then set it on a scanner. A moment later, my deer was frolicking back and forth through a forest projected on the walls around me. In another room, I sat at a table with a real cup of tea that had virtual flower petals floating on the surface. They swished around every time I moved the cup.

What they’re going for is a “multisensory journey of a high-quality visual feast that seamlessly integrates reality with fantasy,” said Sean Lee, CEO of d’strict, the parent company of ARTE Museum.

Lee says experiences like these, that are “both familiar and uncanny,” are “surging in popularity” as people seek both escape and connection.

But escape is easy to achieve in Las Vegas, and artful digital projections aren’t a requirement. I had just as transporting an experience relaxing under a fringed umbrella at the Fontainebleau resort’s Miami-inspired pool deck, or watching muscular dancers strut right onto my table in the over-the-top Australian male revue “Thunder From Down Under” as I did trying to survive my first flight as a bird over Central Park.

One of my favorite activities was Play Playground at the Luxor Hotel & Casino. This one took computer games, like the word game Spelling Bee, into the analog. My friends and I had to quickly move foam blocks around to form new words against a timer. In another area, we crawled through squishy gym mats to find our way out of a maze. And we wore a full-body Velcro suit and tried (and failed) to launch our bodies at a giant target.

As more immersive experiences debut in Vegas, each has to get more innovative to compete for attention. The next frontier: food and drink.

Bowman, who is a partner in the Twin Cities’ New Bohemia and Seventh Street Truck Park, recently launched a side project next to his Minus5 ice bar in the LINQ Promenade. Dreambox 360 is just an empty room, but it transforms into a trippy nightclub, a jump-scare horror movie, an Arctic ghost ship or a personalized birthday party with the help of curated projections, blasts of winds and spritzes of rain — and a boost from mind-altering refreshments.

“I call it 5-D,” Bowman said. “The fifth dimension is taste.”

From trippy to breathtaking, we visited some of Vegas’ newest immersive experiences.

A huge complex of artsy attractions just off the Strip, Area15 is a high-energy, high-sensory trip that could consume several hours. A pass will get you access to several experiences. Our favorites were Wink World, a silly yet mesmerizing fluorescent art show; Museum Fiasco, a dance party with dazzling strips of light and special glasses that make them sparkle; and the Lab, a room full of games using VR, lasers and other tricks. A surreal escape room of sorts, the artist-designed Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart has a loose plot that begins in a grocery store and ends in another dimension (area15.com).

A massive digital art show from a Korean design company exalts the power of nature with stunning video projections and an evocative soundscape. Many of the rooms are interactive, such as “Live Sketchbook,” which creates a cartoon forest out of coloring sheets (lasvegas.artemuseum.com).

Imagine playing video games, like the Atari-style “Cosmo Breaker,” but your body is the controller. The gameroom’s newest attraction, “Teatime in Wonderland” mixes food and drink with projected images inspired by “Alice in Wonderland.” It’s at the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace (electricplayhouse.com).

Don a fur coat and gloves and have a drink in this bar that brings a little North Pole (or Minnesota?) to Vegas. Even the glasses are made of ice. There are three locations on the Strip: LINQ Promenade, Mandalay Bay and the Venetian (minus5experience.com). Add on a visit to Dreambox 360 in the LINQ location, a black-box venue showing spooky or trippy immersive shorts paired with drinks (dreambox360.com).

A theater production that happens all around you in a multi-room set, with both human and animated characters. Outside of showtimes you can visit the space, which looks like a whimsical haunted house, to see some of the special effects with the help of an iPad. At the Luxor (particleink.com/lv).

Be a human dart on a giant bull’s-eye, play life-size Operation, or just thrash around in an adult-scale ball pit at this playground for grown-ups (Luxor, playplayground.com).

Even if you don’t have concert tickets, you can still visit the impressive Sphere to watch “V-U2: An Immersive Concert Film” or Darren Aronofsky’s “Postcard From Earth” on the highest-definition screen in the world (thesphere.com).