Melbourne's CBD just got a Sandbox VR, and it opens today

Melbourne's CBD just got a genuine answer to "what do we actually do tonight," and it opens today.

Sandbox VR's newest Australian venue lands on Bourke Street today, joining its first local outpost on the Gold Coast. The setup includes a bar, a party room and four private rooms where groups of up to six suit up in headsets and haptic vests for full body immersion, rather than the stand in one spot style of VR most people have already tried.

That full body distinction matters more than it sounds. Most consumer VR still involves standing in roughly one spot waving a controller around. Sandbox VR's format tracks movement across a proper room sized space, which is the difference between playing a game and actually feeling like you are inside one.

It is also a genuinely social format rather than a solo headset experience, which is probably the smarter bet for a CBD venue. A private room booked out for six people doing a shared VR mission together is a lot closer to laser tag or an escape room than it is to gaming alone at home, and that is exactly the kind of activity groups actually go looking for on a random weeknight.

Melbourne's CBD has no shortage of bars and restaurants, but genuinely novel group activities are rarer, and this fills a specific gap: something that gets a group of six off their phones and actually doing something together for an hour, with a bar attached for afterwards.

A limited time presale offer knocked 25 per cent off bookings made before the opening, so early adopters got in cheaper than anyone booking from today onward, which is worth knowing if a repeat visit is on the cards.

Worth booking ahead given it is opening day, and Bourke Street does not need another reason to be busy on a Monday.