Dann and I had not been to Amsterdam together before and did have a few different boxes to tick. One thing we really enjoy going to are immersive experiences. Molly and Husky, two of our friends, recommended AMAZE to us – as they went last time they visited and really enjoyed it. So, of course, we booked it up! We did add on the cocktail to our tickets, which does make their signature cocktail half price, if you are interested in that sort of thing! We then arrived for our timeslot, put our items in the free-to-use lockers, and waited in the lounge for our times. We were given some AMAZE tokens, which indicate which group you are in. It’s worth noting we went on a Wednesday morning, so the group sizes were on the small side.
AMAZE has a lounge bar area, where you can easily grab a drink and wait, then you are all called to a corner where you are introduced to the game. This required all of us to get our picture taken before putting on headphones. A guide then explains the maze itself, which you can only hear through the headphones. Then, we took the headphones off and put them back on the wall – I sort of wish these headphones were used further in the experience, as a way for the maze to continue to talk to us! Instead, they only spoke to us a few other times, primarily in the first and second mysterious rooms.
There were no other guides in AMAZE, but everyone was told to move forward when the lights around doors turned orange. The first room was a large bridge, going into fog, that had lots of lights going through it while the maze explained that this was going to be an experience about our future, a reflection on ourselves, and lots of other interesting things. It welcomed us onto the bridge, then made us wait while it continued it’s intro. The whole thing was set up in a very interesting way! The first room continued this futuristic theme, showing laser lights, but only showing us things in the room when it wanted us to see them. This light show was fantastic and I really enjoyed it – it’s probably my favorite part of the room. For the rest of the immersive experience, there wasn’t really any more communication from the maze, which I do very much feel would bring this up to the next level!
Some of the other rooms included a mirror maze, with a bunch of panels that showed AI versions of the pictures we took of ourselves, flashing in different outfits. Another room had tons of music and bean bag chairs, acting like a party after we pushed ourselves past dozens of mannequins (some of which had our AI faces on them) which also had a lot of AI. I do feel that the use of AI in this experience (and in general) isn’t great. There were a bunch of other rooms though to focus on! One was full of panels, which allowed us to control different aspects of a room. At first, Dann and I were on a panel that let us control the colors of the lights on the floor in front of us, along with all of the patterns when they lit up or if they strobe. It’s so fun! After a while, it then said to switch, so we went to the next panel which controlled the wall lights. Another controlled the music. It was just a lot of fun!
Another large interactive room in AMAZE, right before the end, allowed you to place records and listen to them from two different stations, swing on a swing that went through a bunch of digital spaces from the jungle to colorful worlds that don’t make sense. There was also a DJ mixing set here, as music seemed like a big theme. Then, everyone went into a hurricane room, where music played, lights flashed, and small bits of confetti rained everywhere. It was a really fun end to AMAZE, before walking us through the gift shop and back out to the bar. There, we got our cocktails – with Dann picking the orange signature one with hot sauce and mango, and me picking the fruity signature, that tasted like sorbet. It’s just a fun little experience that’s worth going to.
You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!