Illuminarium Experiences announced Monday it will open its first Illuminarium in July 2021 with the debut “spectacle” WILD: Safari Experience, followed by SPACEWALK in early 2022. What Now Atlanta previously predicted a May opening for the Atlanta BeltLine-adjacent venue.
Illuminarium Experiences will then open in other cities throughout the year including in Las Vegas and Miami, with plans for 40 or more venues in major cities across the globe within the next five years.
“At maturity, Illuminarium Experiences intends to be one of the world’s most innovative and prodigious location-based entertainment companies, with the distinct mission of democratizing the world’s most amazing experiences,” according to Monday’s announcement. “What museums are to art, cinemas to movies, and concert halls to music, the Illuminarium is to experiential entertainment.”
Illuminarium’s immersive venues aim to transport its visitors to places “they only dream of experiencing by placing them ‘inside’ the narrative,” whether on a safari, at the bottom of the ocean, in the celestial universe, on top of the world’s highest peaks, surrounded by a once-in-a-lifetime musical performance or visual art exhibition, or being with the world’s most iconic personalities.
Illuminarium combines and amplifies techniques used in traditional motion picture production and virtual reality (VR) that allow visitors to experience real-world, filmed content (like a safari) and authentic, re-created worlds (like the planet Mars) in an immersive environment, all without wearable hardware. Think VR, without the glasses.
In an Illuminairum, visitors are completely surrounded by a 360×360 canvas, 350 feet in length, over 20 feet in height, with laser projection, spatial beamforming audio (where natural and musical scores change with the listener’s location), in-floor haptics, scent, and lidar-based interactive technologies.
Partners of the Illuminariums include Panasonic for 4K laser projection, Holoplot for its sound, Disguise for media playback systems, and Electrosonic for total system integration.
Opening in Atlanta this July, WILD: Safari Experience will introduce the first-of-its-kind Illuminarium entertainment experience through the beauty and splendor of Africa’s most exotic animals in their natural habitats. The spectacle will transport visitors to Africa through cinematic content shot by Radical Media, using custom camera arrays that provide a 240-degree native field of view (versus the average 210-degree human field of view), on location to showcase majestic animals in their native habitats across South Africa, Botswana, Kenya and Tanzania. Complementing the exotic sights of a safari, visitors will also be immersed in its authentic sounds and scents, all without leaving Atlanta’s BeltLine.
WILD will be followed by SPACEWALK, a mind-blowing journey through our Solar System, where the Illuminarium audience will experience what it’s like to walk on the surface of the Moon and Mars! From the familiar Rocky Planets of the Solar System’s inner regions, to the Gas Giants dominating the outer regions, to the distant and remote ice worlds and comets of the Kuiper belt, and finally to the celestial beauty of the stellar Nebula beyond — SPACEWALK is a visually rich, immersive spectacle that transports visitors across space and time.
“In Illuminarium Experiences, we have created a global experiential brand that will produce unprecedented entertainment spectacles to transport consumers to many of the most coveted places and experiences on Earth, and beyond,” Alan Greenberg, CEO, Illuminarium Experiences, said in the announcement. “Through the extraordinary storytelling of Radical Media, the theatrical and architectural design of Rockwell Group, and the operational expertise of Legends we have a team of best-in-class partners proudly democratizing the world’s most amazing places, people, and experiences through highly engaging, socially conscious and educational immersive digital spectacles.”
In the evenings, Illuminarium will welcome guests for cocktails and eats surrounded by an ever-changing atmosphere. “Through state-of-the-art projection and audio systems, guests will be invited to gather in a different far-flung and fantastic setting every night of the week.”
