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To go along with our recent episodes on vacationing, how I was saying, hey, what I want you to do is to get out, go do things with your friends and your family. That's exactly what we did this past weekend. My husband, daughter, and I, we went to the Beyond Van Gogh immersive experience. And although I was given a heads up from both my brother and my sister who live in completely different cities on completely different coasts, they both had been when the experience came to their cities.
And they were like, if it comes to you, definitely go check it out. So of course, I had no idea what it was. So I'm kind of asking them, like, hey, so can you tell me a little bit about it? And so although they gave me a little bit of information about it, I realized now that I've been there and done that, that they didn't even scratch the surface when they were telling me about the experience.
And not that I wanted them to spoil it for me. I honestly don't think there is a way that you can spoil this for someone because no matter how they describe it, it's not going to be the same when you actually see it for yourself. Let's go ahead and dive right into those things that you should probably know before you go. Yes, pun intended.
I know you like that one. So my first dilemma was which ticket to get. And I say that because you get your tickets online and on the website, they don't tell you a whole lot about what to expect in this experience. So they have multiple ticket levels.
I'll tell you this one thing for sure that I know. If you know that you are constantly running on Late Street, do not get the regular ticket and go ahead and spring for the more expensive ticket just to be on the safe side. And the difference is that one ticket has a larger window of time that you can arrive in than the regular tickets. The regular tickets, they have entry times that are staggered in 15 minute increments.
And so let's say you have an 11 o'clock ticket. If you show up between 11 and 11 15, you're golden. But if you miss that window, then what you're going to need is a space in that next window. Well, if they don't have any space in there, they're not going to let you go.
So just keep that in mind. If you know that you don't get places on time ever, don't think that this is going to be the day that it's going to start. Go ahead and pay the extra money. You'll be fine.
The tickets, they had multiple levels, multiple situations. They had military, child, group. I think group was maybe like eight people or more. And they also had this virtual reality option.
In the virtual reality option, I'm pretty sure that the cost of that ticket was more than what they were charging on site for it. They did allow you to add that on at the end. So I recommend just go ahead and get the regular ticket and then just kind of take a look and see. You still really don't know what it's like because it's virtual reality.
People have the glasses on and they're sitting in these chairs and kind of looking crazy. But you can add that on in the end. And also at the end, they have a gift shop. And they have everything under the sun in the gift shop.
They have t-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, posters, all sorts of stuff, keychains, just the list goes on. You can also purchase a poster online when you get your tickets. However, that one will be sent to your home at some point in the future. But you can actually get things.
I actually thought that they didn't really have a gift shop and that this poster was the only thing that you could get as some type of a souvenir of this. So I did order the poster. It has not arrived yet. However, you don't have to do that.
You can just wait until you get there. They've got lapel pins. They've got a little bit of everything that you can possibly imagine. Even stuffed animals.
They have stuffed animals. And I don't even know how that related to him. But I guess they had to get everybody in on the purchase. One last mention about tickets before we move on to the experience.
If you want to save money, here's what you do. Get a group of eight people together and go during the week. The weekday tickets are cheaper than the weekend tickets. And then the group tickets are even cheaper.
So if you do that, you're going to save some money. You're still going to have a great experience. And for people who get the group tickets, you can still purchase the add-on at the end if you choose to want to do the virtual reality. So definitely shoot for that.
And then the other thing is know your city where ours was. It was held at the convention center and they didn't charge for parking. But if you know that that's the type of stuff that they do in your city, in the area around where it's going to be held, then definitely keep that in mind when you get going so that you have money on hand to then pay for parking. So on to the show, on to the show.
So the exhibit in my mind is broken up into five parts. When you first walk in, there's like a serpentine of screens. And each screen has some history or excerpts from a letter or just things about Van Gogh's life and the types of situations that he had to work through. So you get multiple opportunities to kind of find out more about him and in a sense, it kind of helps you to understand him a little bit better.
Once you've gone through that room, then for us, there was this long hallway of nothingness. It was just a black hallway with some black lights. And then it opens up into this huge room. And in this room, there are images that are on the walls, it's on the floors.
There are some columns in the room where the images show up there as well. And these images are paintings of Van Gogh's. And some of them have moving parts to it. So some of it's going to catch you off the art when you see it.
Just keep that in mind. But and then there are voices that speak throughout. And in that one room, they tell you that it's about a 30, 45 minute looping video. So you kind of go in there.
There are benches, but there are few and far between. Some people were just sitting on the floor. And it even projects onto the floor as well. So it was really cute to see the little kids in there that were kind of like diving at the images on the ground.
But they weren't just still pictures. They were moving pictures. They had some animated type features to them. And they covered a wide range of his paintings.
So it wasn't just portraits. It wasn't just plants. It wasn't just countryside. It was a little bit of everything.
And they had music and stuff playing along. You can actually take pictures in this. Supposedly they say you can't do video. But I saw lots of people taking videos.
They just don't want you to use flash photography because that's going to mess up the experience. Because all of this is in dimly lit rooms and projected onto screens all around you. From there, you walk out of there. You go into the gift shop.
And then from the gift shop, off of that is the virtual reality. Thanks so much for joining me for today's episode. I do have one last tip for you though. If you tend to get cold easily, bring a sweater or a jacket.
With all of the technology that they have in place for this exhibit, they keep it icy cold. So either bring your own or make your way to the gift shop and purchase a sweatshirt. And then come back into the big room where they have that 40 minute looping video. And then that way you can enjoy it and not be sitting there shaking like, oh my gosh, it's so cold, I can't even enjoy this.
Okay, so there you have it. Those are my tips and tricks for you to enjoy the Beyond Bang Go immersive experience. And if you are in the Virginia Beach area, just know that this exhibit is going to be going on through September 2nd, but have no fear if you're not in the Virginia Beach area, it's okay. You don't even have to be in the United States.
This place is international, not this place, but this exhibit is going international. So you can just go to thebeyondvango.com website. That's V-E-Y-O-N-D-V-A-N-G-O-G-H.com. Go to the website, check it out, and look for a city near you.
Outside of that, I would love to know if you went, if you took pictures, by all means, please share. You know where to find me, Twitter and Instagram, at HeThat, that's at HeY-E-V-E-T-E, or just look for the hashtag, tweet trends.