Touch down at Arctic Basecamp

ClientLEGOLAND Billund & Merlin Entertainments
Services
Live
IndustryThemed Entertainment & Attractions
ProjectLEGOLAND Billund Arctic Basecamp
LocationBillund, Denmark

We worked with LEGOLAND to create a magical Arctic experience to feed imaginations and inspire LEGO creativity.

Prepare for a Polar Expedition

At LEGOLAND Billund Park, in Denmark, Merlin Entertainments wanted to create an interactive digital Arctic experience. As a long-time creative partner, they knew 2Heads would deliver. The result? Arctic Basecamp, a 360-degree immersive world for both adults and children to enjoy.

01 The Brief

Think like an Explorer

At the heart of Arctic Basecamp is a powerful state of mind: exploration. Merlin wanted visitors to choose their own adventure and play their way, so every touchpoint would be crafted to invite discovery, taking visitors on a journey they make their own.

Entering the Arctic Basecamp, guests meet three Hero explorers and are invited to assist on their missions across land, sea and air. The content is formed around these hero characters and a supporting cast that contributes to world-building – and some surprise guests, too.

Whether they are deep divers delving into the detail, or shallow waders drawn to immediate interactions, this is a world to which guests want to return again and again, creating lasting memories with all the family, so emotive experience is punctuated with opportunities to play, devise, solve, craft and find new endings to the experience.

02 The Challenge

Bringing the Arctic to Life

Arctic Basecamp isn’t just an experience. It’s a fully realised world, with characters, back stories and immersive design…

A place of creative innovation, the Arctic Basecamp is a world where the emotive experience and opportunity to craft different solutions (and endings to the experience’s story), makes guests want to return and play again, creating lasting memories that actively involve all the family.

The narrative we crafted allows guests to choose their preferred story while ensuring the experience isn’t prescriptive. It was important that the experience worked for all visitors; both the deep-divers who want to delve into detail and the shallow-waders who are drawn to immediate interactions.

The experience begins in the basecamp itself where guests meet three explorers on Arctic missions across air, land and sea, and are invited to assist on their missions. The content is formed around these hero characters, a supporting cast that contributes to world-building, plus some surprise guests!

03The Process

Storytelling

Each Hero has a multi-language station that starts with the last video entry from their explorer vlog, animated and scripted to inject the much-loved LEGO humour into The Researcher on Land, The Pilot in the skies and The Explorer in the sea.

Sound

The Basecamp has its own radio station, which is affected by the North Pole’s magnetism, so moments of static switch between various radio broadcasts. Musical jingles and podcast-style episodes build on the background of the explorers, with trivia about the Arctic wildlife, conditions and weather updates.

Lighting Control

These weather updates link to events such as an incoming storm and the Aurora Borealis, which are reflected in the Control Room and cave lighting. ‘CCTV cameras’ stream scenes from the explorers’ worlds, creating the sense of a bustling research centre full of intrigue.

Brickbuild Table

At the centre of the Control Room is the Brick Build experience, where guests can design and construct LEGO vehicles to navigate a digital landscape. Using advanced machine learning, the technology tracks these creations in 3D, enabling guests to fly helicopters, ride snowmobiles, and navigate boats across the screen.

Content

Next, our adventurers head into the ice caves, where they meet an incredible Yeti character. Funny, engaging and adorable, the Yeti breaks the fourth wall from behind his ice screen, shining his torch around the caves and changing the music.

As guests walk onto the interactive ice floor, the snow melts away revealing a bustling sea world, with orcas swimming up through the watery depths to nudge the ice.

Production

By placing their hands on the ice wall and ‘windows’, the ice melts, revealing our LEGO mammoth, sabre-tooth tiger and other animals, creating an adventure of exploration for our excited guests.

04 Solution

Tech that Tells Stories

Behind the magic is a precise, innovative and stress-tested system of interactive screens, computer-vision animations and advanced machine learning, creating a seamless line between the real world and the Arctic one.

From the interactive ice floor that melts beneath your feet, and the frosty windows that guests can draw into with their fingers, to the 3D tracking of LEGO vehicles constructed by budding engineers, turning them into helicopters, snowmobiles and boats, technology is at the heart of the experience – but it’s the last thing on guests’ minds as they plunge into this immersive world.

The results
The data says: xxxxx visitors; xxxx five-star reviews; xxxxx revenue?

The guests said:
A day full of memories. Our visit to Arctic Basecamp was a fantastic experience for the whole family. It was wonderful to see how both our children were engaged and curious throughout the day. The new area of LEGOLAND combines creativity, learning and interactive experiences in a way that makes it fun and educational for children of all ages.

The client said:
Arctic Basecamp at LEGOLAND Billund is an awesome example of collaboration! The MMM Creative team engaged 2Heads on this immersive ‘phygital’ hands-on LEGO brick play experience, which opened Spring 2024. It was a great opportunity to develop and build on learnings from past projects and collaborate with our external partners to bring the concept to life. 2Heads were part of our extended project team and worked closely with us on narrative and concept development, alongside our LEGO brand partners, to seamlessly integrate digital and tech into a traditional brick play experience creating something larger than life and much more than guests can do with the wonderful LEGO brick at home. Always ready to play, build and dive in the 2Heads team have been a great partner on this project!
Rosie Brailsford | Senior Creative Lead | Merlin Entertainment