Room Escape Artist

Immersive Fort Tokyo is an immersive theatre theme park full of attractions where guests can be surrounded by, and sometimes participate in drama, fun, and adventure as it unfolds. As Immersive Theatre is highly experiential, many of the descriptions here are circumspect to avoid spoilers.  

Since Immersive Fort contains a huge amount of content, this is Part 2 of our series on the experiences we had there over two visits. This part features the park’s headlining ticketed attractions and a bit about the park’s first seasonal event. If you haven’t read Part 1, which gives a general overview of the park and covers the non-ticketed content, I recommend starting there first.

I speak and understand basic Japanese (~ N4 / CEFR A2), while my partner is effectively English-only, and I will use these perspectives to comment on the English-language experience. 

Admission Cost – 6,800 Yen (about $43 in January 2025) for a 1-day Pass. Premium Passes are available which include this cost and one ticketed attraction at a discounted rate which depends on the chosen attraction.

The Sherlock – Baker Street Murder Case

Cost – 3,500 Yen (~$22), 3,000 Yen (~$19) in a Premium Pass combo.

The Sherlock is an officially licensed Sherlock Holmes experience where a murder mystery plays out in a simplified version of London. Guests have the freedom to move as they please throughout the “city” to observe the events that unfold. London’s denizens will go about their business, traveling from location to location, generally oblivious to guests’ presence, aside from dodging them in transit and some rare interactions. The active area is quite large and events occur concurrently in more than one location for the majority of the show. 

Guests who have experienced Sleep No More will immediately be comfortable with the format of The Sherlock, though here a bandanna is used as a mask on the lower half of the face, rather than a molded mask on the upper half. There were no one-on-one moments as far as I could see, and there is no looping, save for return visits. 

Most guests will choose a character to follow early on and then experience the story largely from that character’s perspective, which I think is the most straightforward way to experience this kind of theatre. On a return visit, a different character can then be chosen to experience parts of the story previously unseen. Alternatively, a party can individually choose different characters and then have fun filling in each others blanks once the day at the Fort has ended and spoiling someone going to a later show is no longer a concern. 

English Accommodations – When we checked in, we were directed to a desk just outside the pre-show chamber. There, we were each issued a smartphone on a sturdy lanyard and some earbuds. The Sherlock has dubbing tracks associated with each area of the set. As far as we could tell, only “major” conversations were dubbed, minor characters’ chatter and small bits were not dubbed, and naturally only one conversation or event per area is supported at a time. 

Tip – There are numbers on the wall to designate each area, and the audio track, as indicated by the number displayed on each guest’s phone screen, should automatically update as guests move throughout London.  In practice, though, this location tracking was spotty. So, my advice is to wear the smartphone with the screen facing out. Staff members will notice when a phone is showing the wrong number and come over to fix it. There is no special code or anything required to do this, so I also recommend observing how the staff changes the track, after which players can then be proactive and not dependent on the staff having a good sightline on their phone.

Alice In Borderland: Immersive Death Game

Cost – Included with admission

There is no additional cost for this attraction, but guests must obtain a ticket through the online system on the day of their visit. Tickets are limited to one per person each day, though each timeslot can accommodate many people so getting a ticket was no problem, even on a busy day. The first session starts shortly after the park opens for the day and then runs hourly for the first few hours of day. At some point, sessions do become unavailable, so some amount of punctuality is advised.

Guests have entered the world of Netflix’s Alice in Borderland Season 1, and of course, that means a death game! In this case, it features a “collar bomb” shock collar that all players must wear. This attraction is brilliantly designed to send players, wearing their obvious and cool-looking collars, out into the rest of the park where other guests can take notice and/ or interest.

The gameplay here, involving exploration and social interaction, was light, but I thought they did a decent job of capturing the feel of the show’s world, considering the scale this event operates on. I even felt like I formed a small bond with the people I worked with that lasted throughout the duration of the game.

English Accommodations – The game website is in English, and there are English subtitles for the main character on a big TV. The required social interactions were simple enough that players were able to get by with gestures if necessary.  

Tip – Immersive Death Game is a bit awkward, though manageable, as a solo player. Having at least one companion will make things smoother.

Tokyo Revengers: Immersive Escape

Cost – 3,500 Yen, 3,000 in a Premium Pass combo

Guests are attending a party in 2005 Odiaba when suddenly they find themselves embroiled in a conflict between two rival gangs which is fated to burn down the building with everyone inside. Guests will need to solve puzzles while drama unfolds around them so that everyone can escape unharmed and change the future.

Tokyo Revengers: Immersive Escape has the most gameplay of the current Immersive Fort experiences, but the puzzling here is very light, and the focus remains on characters and story. As guests explore and work on the puzzles, all the characters are doing their own things, interacting with guests and each other as events continue to play out. Sometimes our puzzling was interrupted, but in a way that felt organic. There is split content where not everyone will see everything every time, so there is some possibility for repeat players to experience novel content.

The character fidelity to the source material was astounding. Improbable hairstyles, tattoos, voices, posture, and more were all spot on. One character is notoriously huge and he indeed towered over everyone there. This is one of the most successful “step into the world of” licensed experiences I have seen. The experience does lean heavily on this, so the experience’s enjoyment level for us varied quite a bit based on how well the cast landed, which was intertwined with our affinity for the source material. Also noteworthy was the fact that despite there being a large group in each performance, we had direct interactions with every major character, all of which felt organic.

English Accommodations – Each group of guests is given a tablet on entry, which can be set to English. This will communicate puzzle information and plot bits during the gameplay portion in English. It will also provide an English synopsis of major plot points. These synopses become available prior to the scenes they describe, including the first which is available immediately. My personal recommendation is not to read them until after the scene occurs to avoid spoilers. For the puzzles, there were always one set of English clues among the several sets of Japanese ones. One could say English speakers get a built-in bonus puzzle of “find the English clues.”

Tip – If you’re considering this experience, check out the Tokyo Revengers anime and see how the world and characters resonate. The first season is available on multiple streaming platforms, and my best guess is that Tokyo Revengers: Immersive Escape occurs around episode 11. If you find yourself attached to the world or characters at all, I definitely recommend Tokyo Revengers: Immersive Escape. That connection ups the enjoyment of this experience exponentially.

Cultural Note – The name of the protagonist gang in Tokyo Revengers contains the “manji” character, which is a mirror image of the appropriated swastika symbol, and thus the symbol appears on some gang paraphernalia in this experience. It carries no hate-related connotation in Japanese culture, and the author of the source work is not controversial to the best of my research.

Tales of Edo Oiran

Cost – 9,000 Yen (~$57.50), 8,000 Yen (~$51) in a Premium Pass combo

Tales of Edo Oiran whisks guests back in time to a red light district in Edo Period (early 17th to mid 19th century) Japan. As one might imagine for an experience set in a red light district, this attraction is limited to guests 18 years of age or older. Immersive Fort asks that guests not discuss the experience, but I will say a few general things. 

First, for a broad sense of production quality, watch the promotional video on Tales’ attraction page. As best I can tell, the costumes, set, and props are the same as they were for my experience. Second, as to format, this experience was more linear than The Sherlock but still contained moments where the group was split, giving guests a reason to return and see what they missed the first time.  And lastly, in my opinion, Tales of Edo Oiran is the crown jewel of Immersive Fort Tokyo. It was my favorite experience there, and ranks near the top of my personal list of worldwide immersive theatre experiences.

English Accommodations – Non-Japanese speakers are given a document at entry which provides some cultural background as well as information about the characters and events during the experience which includes spoilers. Otherwise, this is an entirely Japanese-language experience. Non-speakers are given a designating sticker to allow the actors to be as accommodating as possible with their physical and tonal performances, but this was the event where I felt I missed the most due to lack of language, even with my basic ability. That said, we thought that the broad strokes story was very followable and if, after this description, you’re still interested at all, Tales of Edo Oiran has my strongest recommendation as an experience not to be missed.

Tips – As this experience only has 30 tickets available per showing, I would recommend purchasing these tickets as far in advance as possible. My personal advice is to only read the cultural information, and skip the character descriptions and synopsis to avoid spoilers. 

Seasonal Event – Halloween 2024

In the fall of 2024, Immersive Fort ran their first seasonal event from mid-September through the end of November: Immersive Halloween. Fortevita was decorated with various autumn and Halloween accoutrements to give the entire town a feeling of fall. During the Halloween event, some of the standard party events in Golden Square were swapped out for a Halloween Masquerade with masked performers and different music (yes, including “Masquerade” from The Phantom of the Opera) as well as a costume party. During this event, guests were encouraged to come in costume, and there were a fair number who did so on the day we were there. 

Halloween Panic Night

As the afternoon turned into evening, the Infection Explosion event occurred, and at the end, the sky turned dimmer — and redder — as a zombie horde was unleashed upon Fortevita. For the rest of the night, the town’s streets were like a scare zone from Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights. Various zombies menaced anyone not keeping to the very outside of the dark streets, and there were roving highlight monsters such as a huge bloated zombie and a zombie with a head in a jar that moved.

Immersive Fort loves its parties, and Halloween Panic Night was no exception as each night saw multiple instances of Party Z, including a soundtrack and dance created specifically for the event. Personally I found it a little atmospherically jarring to have the zombies go from scary-mode to party-mode and back again, but most guests seemed to have a lot of fun with it. Then, at the end of the night, the climactic final battle event put a bow on the seasonal side story, and the streets of Fortevita were safe again… until the next night. 

A Bastion of Worlds

Immersive Fort Tokyo is an incredible park, full of diverse, interesting, well-produced immersive experiences, driven by a huge cast of artists, performers, and staff.  Single installations of this stature can be found in select cities across the world, but to my knowledge, there is no place packed with more than two full days of high-quality immersive attractions and events, even before any replayability is considered. I hope that the park is doing exactly as well as it seemed to be on our visits, so that this special place for immersive theatre can survive and thrive, and I can go back again and again.