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Forget sitting on the couch doom-scrolling on your phone. If you’re going to be looking at a screen, Cape Town’s newest virtual-reality attraction wants you on your feet, ducking, dodging and working up a sweat.
What is The Park?
The Park Cape Town opened in August 2026 on Kloof Street, bringing a fully immersive VR experience to the City Bowl. VR isn’t exactly new, but what sets The Park apart is that it is Cape Town’s first ‘free-roam’ VR experience. That means players move around a large physical arena, rather than standing in one spot while exploring a virtual world, with wireless headsets and controllers translating their movements into the game.
So how do you not run into a wall? I hear you ask. Good question. At The Park, the digital world is mapped onto the real world, with digital ‘walls’ and no-go zones showing you where you can and can’t move.
It’s all colourfully, wonderfully disorientating. The empty room you walked into suddenly becomes a futuristic saloon, an interplanetary battlefield or a decidedly creepy horror show. Those humanoid friends you walked in with? Suddenly they have become carnival entertainers, intergalactic soldiers or offbeat robots.
And you’ll want to bring your friends, because this virtual experience is made all the more fun by real-life connection. I took my teenage son and some friends for a trial, and they alternated between howling with laughter at those who couldn’t ‘walk the plank’ high above London (OK OK, it was me who couldn’t stomach the virtual vertigo) and shooting each other with laser pistols on a distant planet. The Park is designed around multiplayer games, and it’s best when you share it with friends.
What’s the Backstory?
The technology comes from The Park Playground, a Belgian immersive-entertainment company launched in 2018. The concept has since expanded internationally, with venues across Europe and beyond, centred on what the company calls ‘phygital entertainment’: shared experiences that blur the line between physical and digital play.
How does it work?
The Cape Town studio sessions last about 90 minutes. You’ll start with The Plank – which puts your fear of heights to the test (I failed) – then tackle a Carnival mini-game, and finally choose one of the main adventures.
There are currently six main adventures on offer. RoboClash sends your team into battle against a robot army, while NanoClash Focus VR pits two teams against each other in a futuristic shoot-out. In The Break-in VR, you’re part of a Special Forces unit racing to foil a criminal gang, and Mission Planet X heads off-world in search of a mysterious crystal.
Prefer puzzles to laser guns? Mask of the Pharaoh VR is an escape-style adventure centred on rescuing a professor trapped in an ancient pyramid. It’s like an escape room on steroids. Then there’s Don’t Scream VR. The name rather gives away the objective: expect ghosts, rats, spiders and plenty of opportunities to embarrass yourself in front of your mates. No prior gaming experience is required.
Who will enjoy it?
What’s best about The Park is that it’s not aimed at hardcore gamers. While Fortnite fans will probably feel quickly at home, it’s clearly pitched at everyone from gamers to families. With two gaming arenas (each about 15 m x 15 m), the venue can handle everything from couples and families to birthday parties and corporate groups. There’s a fully stocked bar on site, and catering can be arranged with NY Slice up the road.