Trend Watch: Immersive Role-Play Gaming on Vacation

On your next family vacation, how about using an enchanted wand to slay a dragon? Or uncovering clues to track down an international spy? Or joining Captain Jack Sparrow’s crew on a pirate raid?

Taking a cue from the enormous popularity of video games, top family travel destinations are offering high-tech interactive gaming experiences that immerse visitors in a storyline along with their favorite characters. Here are four places your family can experience this growing trend and get in on the game.

Walt Disney World, Florida

A forerunner in high-tech immersive experiences, Disney World is adding new games as fast, it seems, as Imagineers can dream them up. Perhaps the best thing about these Disney World experiences is that they are included in the cost of a theme park ticket.

In Epcot’ s World Showcase, Agent P’s World Showcase Adventure features characters from the popular Disney Channel series “Phineas and Ferb,” inviting you to pick up a F.O.N.E. (Field Operative Notification Equipment) and join Agent P to thwart the diabolical designs of Dr. Doofenshmirtz.

Visitors to the Magic Kingdom can play the scavenger hunt-like Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom, where the wizard Merlin is looking for volunteer apprentices to grab a pack of spell cards to defeat Disney villains and keep the theme park safe for unsuspecting families.

Inspired by the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, A Pirate’s Adventure: Treasures of the Seven Seas is a brand new, interactive quest in the Magic Kingdom’s Adventureland. The interactive quest transforms you into one of Captain Jack’s pirate recruits, armed with magic talismans and treasure maps for pirate raids against Captain Barbossa, the Royal Navy, and more of Captain Jack’s enemies.

(MORE: Planning a trip to Disney World? Start planning here.)

Disney Cruise Line