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neon’s Avatar: The Experience wins at Singapore Tourism Awards 2023

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neon Zone 4-Into Adventure_Animatronic Banshee

Attraction at Gardens by the Bay received the award for Outstanding Attraction Experience

Avatar: The Experience received the Outstanding Attraction Experience award at the Singapore Tourism Awards 2023, in the Experience Excellence category.

The Singapore Tourism Awards honour people and organisations in the industry for providing exceptional experiences and showing business excellence. This award, presented by the Singapore Tourism Board, aims to increase the competitiveness of the Singapore tourism industry by encouraging businesses and individuals to develop standout experiences. Winners are chosen from 90 finalists.

neon Zone 3-Make A Connection_Na’vi Sculpt

All attractions open for business in 2022 were eligible for the Outstanding Attraction Experience award, which honours an attraction that has captured the hearts of tourists and become a local favourite with Singaporeans. The winners were announced on 15 May 2023 and Avatar: The Experience beat some strong competition, with the other nominees including Mandai Wildlife Reserve and Universal Studios Singapore, Resorts World at Sentosa.

Avatar: The Experience

This immersive walkthrough experience at Gardens by the Bay in Singapore is a collaboration between neon, Disney Location-Based Experiences, and James Cameron and Jon Landau’s Lightstorm Entertainment, and is based on the global blockbuster film Avatar.

Within the location’s iconic Cloud Forest, visitors can explore the alien world of Pandora and discover its bioluminescent environments, mystical creatures, flora, and the culture of its indigenous people, the Na’vi.

Avatar-the-Experience-Singapore-neon

The pandemic highlighted how crucial it is to avoid high-touch surfaces and practise good hand hygiene in general. Contactless technology has been integrated into business activities that formerly relied primarily on direct physical contact and employee participation. Digital interactives that track gestures and detect motion use proximity sensors and cameras. Additionally, digital takeaways (photos) are collected and shared using contactless technology like QR codes.

Avatar: The Experience is a contactless event, from ticket purchases to the experience elements.

Blurring the boundaries between worlds

A technological revolution has begun as a result of the pandemic. Digital and physical (phygital) life has merged into our way of living. People want multisensory, meaningful connections when it comes to entertainment. It is insufficient just to simply watch. Now, attractions are including new tech such as augmented reality, mixed reality, extended reality and virtual reality to immerse guests in a cinematic world.

Avatar-the-Experience-Singapore-neon

The boundaries between the artificial and the natural are blurred in Avatar: The Experience. The actual world of the Cloud Forest is transformed. Cutting-edge digital media, lifelike creature replicas (sculptures and animatronics) placed in custom environments, bioluminescent lighting, and themed music are added to alter reality. The audience is engaged by specially trained docents and puppeteers, bringing visitors and fans even closer to the world of Pandora than before.

The concept of a deep appreciation of the world’s beauty, encompassing biodiversity, wildlife, and human civilization, is at the heart of James Cameron’s Avatar, and “Don’t forget to connect, care, and conserve” are the three C’s communicated to visitors by the docents and puppeteers of Avatar: The Experience. These values also align with Gardens by the Bay’s guiding idea of environmental sustainability.

A sustainable design

The attraction is designed to be a mobile, tourable and accessible experience. Even the animatronic banshee was designed and manufactured to be compact and portable.

The tourable approach replaces conventional turnkey exhibitions that generate a lot of waste. It ensures that big boxes and packaging are saved and reused when the experience moves to its next destination.

In-depth planning is necessary to streamline the creation of a tourable model. In order to consolidate shipments and ship from a single place, vendors and collaborators are found locally and regionally. This has been shown to be economical as well as environmentally responsible in lowering the overall carbon footprint.

neon also recently announced that Jurassic World: The Exhibition won the Best Visitor Experience 2022 category at the Access All Areas Conference & Awards.

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charlotte coates

Charlotte Coates

Charlotte Coates is blooloop's editor. She is from Brighton, UK and previously worked as a librarian. She has a strong interest in arts, culture and information and graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in English Literature. Charlotte can usually be found either with her head in a book or planning her next travel adventure.

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