General Industry

Spike Island Launches New Adventure Experience

By Dave Simpson
Spike Island Launches New Adventure Experience

Spike Island has launched a new adventure experience with 15 scenes across the island.

Details

Using their mobile phones, visitors can relive historical moments from Saint Mochuda's monastery in 600AD, to An Taoiseach Eamon DeValera's visit, right through to the infamous prison riot of the 1980s. The Spike Island experience covers an area of over 100 acres.

The new experience has been created by the immersive experience team from Irish startup Imvizar in collaboration with TV producer Marie Toft.

Visitors to the Island will use augmented reality technology to transform the Island in a family-friendly adventure, full of twists and turns. It uses the same technology as the Pokémon Go game, which entertains users via characters which they can only see via their phone.

The adventure will take around 90 minutes to enjoy and will involve life-sized re-enactments of the island history.

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Imvizar's application uses a visual positioning tool, which means the user holds up their phone at one of the 15 stops and helps them visualise history like never before.

The experience is available via the Imvizar app via the App and Play Store now.

Statements

John Crotty, Spike Island's general manager said, "This is such an exciting day for us. Our visitors will get the opportunity to relive the stories of the Island like never before. However, this is not just exciting for Spike, but Cobh and Cork also. Attracting a world-class experience such as this to our region will further enhance our tourism offering and provide an economic boost for the region."

Michael Guerin, founder and CEO, Imvizar said, "It has been a pleasure to work with one of Europe's leading tourist attractions to bring their story to life. It is an ideal location for this kind of immersive experience which gives visitors the opportunity to explore and discover the island on their own terms and connect with the human stories behind the headlines."

Marie Toft, CEO of Emotionise AI and producer of the Spike Island experience, said, "Finding the emotional hook and engaging people emotionally is what I specialise in. The wealth of history, endeavour and tragedy that has taken place on Spike Island over a thousand years gave me huge opportunities.

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"It was a privilege to give voice to all of the characters, especially the prisoners, most of whom lived and died tragically. I live in Crosshaven and I see Spike Island every day so it was wonderful to be part of the team to bring it all to life."

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