21. February 2025
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Beyond King Tut: The Immersive Experience (New York City)

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

Beyond King Tut: The Immersive Experience (New York City)

From 47 USD
Beyond King Tut: The Immersive Experience (New York City)
4.4

Rating

 4.4/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Great and unique presentation
  • Amazing 360 degrees theater

Flyctory.com Cons

  • Traffic connection not ideal
  • Service issues

Being in a room full of projections of pictures painted by Monet of Van Gogh became a global attraction. It is absolutely impressive, you don’t need too much technical equipment and you also don’t need to carry museum exhibits in large scale with you when you move to one place to another (or just install another outlet at another place). The exhibition Beyond King Tut: The Immersive Experience follows a similar concept. The exhibition created in collaboration with National Geographic takes you to Ancient Egypt, to the time of pharaoh King Tut / Tutankhamun (also Tutankhamen for Egypt lovers) and his life. I visited a just opened outlet of this experience in New York City in late October 2022.

 

Beyond King Tut NYC / Pier 36 – Location & Admission

The exhibition is located at Pier 36, an exhibition place close to Manhattan Bridge at the East River. The public ferry stop Corlears Hook is not too far away – otherwise, the walk from East Broadway subway stop is signed well. The area also works as a starting point for some Statue of Liberty cruise services.

If you pre-book a times entry for an adult, the price for a standard is 47 USD, including fees. If you want to have the Premium Flex version (time slot enlaged to two hours before / after selected arrival time, the price rises to 57 USD. The VIP ticket (79.50 USD) includes the VR Experience (see below) and a merchandise package. You may also find deals on Groupon. We visited the place with the New York Sightseeing Pass, which includes the visit. The exhibition is opening daily, 10:00 to 20:00 hrs. Fridays and Saturdays, doors close one hour later (last admission: one hour before closing each). I would at least plan for one hour. At the time of writing, Beyond King Tut is expected to close after 1st January 2023.

 

Beyond King Tut NYC – The Visit

You enter a “tent” as the first stage of your visit of the Beyond King Tut exhibition. The video explains you the story f the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. These few minutes also deal as some sort of introduction, you explore the exhibition at own pace thereafter. You learn a lot about the cultural background of the pharaoh, the excavation, bur also already about the way the Egyptians used to believe about the travel of the dead after life. There are practically no physical exhibits, but screens, which make you feel there would be exhibits. Unfortunately, some other visitors used blocks on which parts of the information has been projected (e.g. the development of the mummy) as seating.

As you see, even though the exhibition does not use too many different technical elements, Beyond King Tut feels to be perfectly presented. The room above allows kids to play an Egyptian board game, which is a nice distraction.

The heart of the exhibition (and finally also the area where you spent most of the time in) is a replica of an Egyptian ship, which you might use to sit on. The sail of the ship, all four artificial walls around it and the floor are used as exhibition space. The looping presentation starts with some impressions of Cairo and Egypt nowadays. Later, you learn about how the pharaoh has been treated after death and how he going on a journey thereafter through the netherworld. Especially when this part of the show is involving the floor around you, this is absolutely breathtaking.

 

Beyond King Tut NYC – Services

If you take a VIP ticket (or if you pay 20 USD and there are sufficient capacities), you may take a VR ride into the actual tomb of Tutankhamun. I cannot rate that part of the visit. At the end of your visit, you of course get into a souvenir shop. Unfortunately, many of the items there did not have a price tag, which I felt to be very difficult and confusing.

 

Beyond King Tut NYC – My View

Thanks to the organizers and technical providers of this exhibition – and thanks to National Geographic – for this outstanding exhibition. My wife and I loved the picturesque presentation of the topic. The story of the Egypt at these days definitely stays in your mind. Unfortunately, there were some service issues, i.e. no security at points where other visitors may spoil your visit. I struggle a bit to imagine that they run at full capacity, though. Nonetheless, I feel that Beyond King Tut: The Immersive Experience in New York absolutely deserves my recommendation – even though the price is (too?) high.

 

Travel Postings – New York

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