Walk through the shark tunnel at Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies and you can now keep walking, into the birth of the universe.
Cosmos opened on September 15 in Gatlinburg. It is a mixed reality experience built by AStation, and it is the fourth and final world in the Enterverse library to land at the aquarium’s Venture Realm this year.
Guests wear Apple Vision Pro headsets and walk untethered. Stars ignite, planets form, and the route ends at the edge of a black hole, with the aquarium’s actual animals visible alongside the digital ones.
Cosmos is the boldest, biggest swing we’ve ever taken. The images seem infinite. Watching guests’ jaws drop as the galaxies come to life is exactly why we do this.
Chris Chen, Chief Executive Officer, AStation
What is already there
Venture Realm opened on June 11 and has added a world a month since.
Dinosaur Park arrived June 1, a prehistoric forest with a Tyrannosaurus rex in it. The aquarium’s early promotion leaned on the image of live penguins in the same visual field as a T. rex, which is either the best or the worst sentence in destination entertainment depending on your disposition.
Shan Hai Jing followed on July 1, built from the mythical realms of ancient Chinese legend.
Wonders came August 1, with the Forbidden City and the Roman Colosseum.
With Cosmos live, all four are running, and a visitor can move through the complete library in one trip.
Why is this in an aquarium?
The honest answer is that it is a licensing deal, and Gatlinburg is the test market.
AStation is a mixed reality company with outlets in Asia, and its Enterverse platform is pitched as the only large-scale outdoor mixed reality system of its kind. Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies is the only place outside Asia where any of it can be experienced, and the company says global licensing is now underway.
So this is less an aquarium exhibit than an aquarium hosting a technology rollout. That is worth stating plainly rather than dressing up. It sits alongside the animals; it is not about them.
What it is not
There is no conservation claim attached to Cosmos, and to the company’s credit nobody has tried to manufacture one. No species is featured, no field program is funded by ticket sales as far as has been announced, and no research is involved.
What it does is put a reason to visit in front of an audience that may not come for fish, during a season when a Smoky Mountains tourist town needs reasons. Whether that subsidizes the animal side of the operation is the interesting question, and it is not one the announcement answers.
Ripley’s has been building out its aquariums on the attractions side for years, including Sloth Valley at its Myrtle Beach site, which at least came with animals in it.
Ripley’s World Entertainment is based in Orlando, Florida. Details on the Enterverse platform are on AStation’s site.
