Dopamine Land - Brisbane — Attraction in Brisbane City

I went in with low expectations. And I was still disappointed. I went late night, so no kids, but other adults just storm through so it’s impossible to get any immersion even if it was an immersive experience.

Dopamine Land is a poor name, you don’t get any dopamine kicks.

These “pop up” style exhibitions always seem to be half thought out, and left to fully break down until they are recycled out.

The music room, well, it seemed like only one pad worked (out of about 20), the kick drum, but the response time was so bad you couldn’t even make a consistent beat with it. Go see what Will.i.am / Mercedes did with their audio car.

The writing room could have used some interesting pens, like super chunky permanent markers, but no, it’s just a $5 pack of textas from Kmart.

The artificial forest would have been made better by more seating and a few fakes plants and maybe a water feature.

The dangling light room was tiny. This was the main room I thought would have been good, but it’s too small and the giant black entry just kills the vibe, a couple more mirrors (preferably not warped like the rest of them) on a closed door would have been 10000% better. I’ve seen these rooms in “pop up” installations done better before, like every one was better than this one. I’d suggest moving its sibling room elsewhere (because it was decent) and make this room double sized, and move the entries to the far edge of the walls so it can be in one out the other, like a tunnel.

Pillow fight room… well, button didn’t do anything and the room was just, bad.

The ball pit room was a decent vibe, but I didn’t really want to get in there after seeing how poorly maintained the previous rooms were. I’d hope it would get cleaned but I wasn’t confident. But, it was jam packed full of people from earlier runs anyway who probably wanted to stay and get their moneys worth.

The whole setup looked like it cost maybe $5-10k to set up. For the most part, it looked cheap and slapped together.

As I said, I had low expectations to start with, but this was lower than expected. Too many people, zero immersion (other than the initial “reset” room) and poorly thought out concepts.

Something like this could really be amazing. It has so much potential, but Dopamine Land doesn’t appear to even try.

Also, the canned responses to negative reviews adds to the “doesn’t even try” vibe. From a marketing perspective, if you want to actually appear as though you take the feedback on board, don’t repeat the same...

Very underwhelming. I have a son with Autism, who loves sensory places, and I thought he would love this place. It begins with guests going into a room, and someone speaking very loudly through a speaker for a few minutes. Though my son stayed calm due to wearing headphones 🎧, someone else with noise sensitivity would not be able to sit through it. The noise absolutely made me uncomfortable myself, as I have bad anxiety. It went on and on, not very relaxing. Maybe record someone whispering with a soothing voice. Everyone walks in with their shoes, so not very hygienic, considering some rooms have floor seating and cushions to lie on, to experience lights etc. Then there is a ball pit and balloon room, with the shoes again, not very hygienic. It gets overcrowded in the rooms as there is no set time for a number of people to be in a room. Not very helpful if you are bringing more kids. Again maybe a timer would help per room. When you get to the end of the corridor you then have to start over by going through their reception and into the same noisy room with the person talking on the speaker. They do say you can go back without exiting but it's not very organised, especially with someone who cannot read small letters, or maybe little kids running ahead of their parents looking for the next room. My son wanted to leave as soon as we got to the last door. The staff need more training if they were to ever get clients with autism or other sensitivities. Overall I would definitely not recommend this place for now, for anyone with a child with mild to severe autism as it may cause them anxiety. Maybe in future they will make...

There are 10 rooms in total and it is said to last 50 mins; we were out of it in about half an hour.

A few comments:

The room with lights-on-strings was pretty but the strings were far too low to the ground and several lights had already broken off (there was even a strand where the bottom light was broken - a clear hazard). Although there was a sign saying not to grab or swing the strings, that obviously depends on parents supervising their children or adults behaving themselves.

We enjoyed playing in the balloon-filled room but there was a sign on the outside asking ppl not to let the balloons come out - an impossibility when ppl were constantly entering and exiting - and a stream of balloons entering the hallway.

The room with squares to jump on and the ball pit was fine; while the pillow fight room genuinely looked like a massive incident waiting to happen.

The room for people to leave messages was notable for the way it managed to decrease all of our dopamine levels, due to the amount of obscenities that the kids kept pointing to.

Basically, it all felt very cheap which is ironic given the cost ($76 for a family of 4 + $8 upfront for a photo - that we took ourselves and had printed out).

Having been to many other sensory/light places in Japan (Team Labs, in multiple cities) and Singapore (Future World) (for comparable prices!), we would not recommend this experience. It may be to others' liking but it was not to ours and I consider it to be...