Pelagos VR marketing director Colin Burke strikes a pose on one of the entertainment center’s treadmill-like game stations, which allows users to walk around in virtual reality. (Jack Jacobs photos)
A new virtual reality gaming center has hit play at Regency.
Pelagos VR opened last month in a storefront next to restaurant Sloop John B at the western Henrico mall’s Quioccasin Road-facing entrance.
The 5,000-square-foot venue offers a 33-foot-by-33-foot “free-roam” arena, a space dedicated to virtual escape rooms as well as four treadmill-like stations that offer a range of different games.
Game sessions at Pelagos start at $45. The escape room games run 45 minutes, while the other VR experiences last 25 minutes a session. The escape room space has room for six people at a time, while the arena space has room for five players at once.
Players in the arena space can play gun-combat and adventure games licensed from Switzerland-based TrueVR Systems. The virtual escape room games are licensed from Canada-based vrCave, which incorporates some video game elements into experiences similar to real-world escape rooms.
The four “omnidirectional” treadmill stations allow players outfitted with VR equipment to move around a virtual world using the endless surface of a treadmill. The stations are made by Austrian firm Cyberith Technologies.
The venue features a room where customers don VR equipment and get a briefing from a Pelagos employee about how the games work before the sessions starts. During active games, employees serve as spotters to make sure players don’t run into each other or fall over.
Pelagos is owned by Gene and Joan Burke. Their daughter Katy is the company’s creative director and son Colin is its marketing director.
Colin, Katy, Joan and Gene Burke. The family is behind the recently opened Pelagos VR entertainment venue in Regency.
The business pitches itself as a fully immersive virtual experience, and is aimed primarily at young adults.
“One of the big draws about our place is the power of play and the ability to immerse yourself in a whole other world, to give your imagination a boost,” said Katy, who formerly worked for local escape-room company Ravenchase Adventures. “Because I think that it’s very easy to play pretend as a child, and the older we get, the harder it is to enjoy ourselves and play. We wanted to build an environment and a place where people could feel safe relearning to do that.”
Pelago also has an on-site restaurant with seating for 50 people. In addition to beer and wine, the menu includes things like philly cheesesteak egg rolls, pretzel bites and mini corn dogs, as well as salads and charcuterie boards.
“We have a fun combo of glorified pub food and also fancier food too, charcuterie, stuff that’s healthy, because you’re working up a sweat here,” Katy said.
Pelagos is open 6-10 pm. Wednesday and Thursday, 3-11 p.m. on Friday, 10 a.m. to midnight on Saturday and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday. The venue is closed Monday and Tuesday.
Gene, who formerly worked for Capital One and recently retired as COO of Koalafi, estimated it cost under $1 million to launch Pelagos.
He said Pelagos, which is an ancient Greek word for “deep ocean,” is trying to tap into the increasing popularity and accessibility of virtual reality experiences. He estimated that a little over half of the venue’s visitors come in with some familiarity with at-home VR devices, but that the novelty of the concept also helps the business.
“VR is a little more known than it was a couple years ago,” he said. “It’s a natural attractor. People see it or hear about it, and they’re like, ‘that’s the coolest thing ever.’ There’s a lot of that, it sort of sells itself.”
Virtual reality equipment at Pelagos VR.
Pelagos is a mom-and-pop take on what Gene refers to as a “high-end” virtual reality center, and has likened his business to Sandbox VR, a franchised chain of VR venues that has a location in Northern Virginia and other places in the country.
Looking forward, Pelagos is interested in developing its own VR experiences and could explore franchising the concept.
“There’s a number of different potential growth strategies we will explore,” Gene said.
Pelagos is the latest experience-based tenant to come to Regency, where owners Rebkee Co. and Thalhimer Realty Partners have in recent years sought to reorient the mall away from a retail focus and toward a mixed-use format with activity-based tenants and residential units.
Other entertainment-focused tenants at Regency include trampoline venue Surge Adventure Park and Performance Pickleball.