Boggy Creek Airboat Adventures is using virtual reality to help folks get back to nature.
The Kissimmee attraction can now be walked through via the metaverse, where at-home viewers – represented by avatars – can virtually sit in an airboat, walk through the butterfly enclosure, take in educational talks and, if equipped with a VR headset, play a gem-mining game.
Nick Romeo, director of marketing, sales and events, said they are dubbing it a metadventure, a mashup of Metaverse and adventure. The activity is accessed through the attraction website – bcairboats.com – via laptop or cell phone.
“You get to take an airboat ride. Then you’ll go into our butterfly enclosure. … There’s a little sign, you click on it and my marketing manager is in there and he talks about the butterflies,” Romeo said.
“I also have somebody in our education area who’s my curator of education. And if you click on that, she’ll talk to you about native snakes and that kind of stuff,” he said. “It’s not only a game, it also has an educational aspect.”
The game centers on the gem-mine area, where participants can win tickets for the actual gem mine activity and discounts on a real-life trip to the attraction. The experience launched in late March.
“We had a team that came in to photograph the whole park, and they took all the images and then they built it in the back end of the system, and it literally looks like our park,” Romeo said.
“If you go into our butterfly habitat in the metaverse with the headset on and you look up through our butterfly encounter and walk, the shade of the sun actually even occurs,” he said. “You actually see the leaves on the trees move.”
The VR is designed to entice customers and is the attraction’s second phase. It was already in use to introduce businesses to Boggy Creek.
Tour companies “are amazed that they can see the whole park,” Romeo said. “I can talk to them and walk through it. … They can stay in England, and know exactly what I’m doing.”
Virtual guests sit in an airboat then watch a “real”/non-metaverse video about the airboat experience.
“It gives a little bit more of them feeling that they’re there,” Romeo said.
A third phase of VR will include a registration book and drawings for free tickets, Romeo said.
Boggy Creek Airboat Adventures, which is marking its 30th anniversary this year, features airboat rides, an enclosed butterfly garden, an alligator gator pond, a 70-foot gem and fossil mining sluice and the Native American Living History Museum.
“Everything in our park is native, and a lot of people outside of the United States or even inside the U.S., really, want to see real Florida,” Romeo said. “We have nothing exotic in our property. It’s all native plants, native animals.”
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