As I walked through the Oculus with my family a few weeks ago, we happened upon Winter Whirl, a snowy-themed roller rink offering 45-minute “holiday skating experiences” at $30 a pop.

The rink was flanked by glimmering faux evergreens, and a big shiny “snowman” stood in the center. I guess the ambiance was what justified billing this as an experience.

But the space for the actual activity, roller skating, was comically small. I watched participants struggle to gain momentum, needing most available space and attention in order to avoid collisions. Many just stood still in their skates and posed for photos under the Oculus’s spectacular structure.

New York City is brimming with neatly packaged “immersive experiences” — pop-ups and permanent fixtures that offer participants heavily produced environments designed for deep engagement.

There’s Inter_ (an “interactive art experience” in SoHo), Summit One Vanderbilt (an observation deck with “multisensory art immersion”), Color Factory (vibrant backdrops in various hues, plus a massive ball pit), Pink Pier (a restaurant and lounge where most things are pink), “Gold in Motion” (Gustav Klimt’s “art come to life in forms like you’ve never seen…”), Harry Potter: The Exhibition (a “fully interactive journey for fans to explore”), Bubble Planet (an “immersive experience [where] bubbles are reimagined bigger than ever”), Sloomoo Institute (a 12,000 square foot slime-themed “experiential space”), Camp (a next-level toy store with playspaces and performances), Museum of Ice Cream (serving up “unlimited ice cream and unlimited play”), Malibu Barbie Cafe (a limited-edition restaurant to coincide with the movie’s opening), Pepsi 125 Diner (a limited-edition restaurant to coincide with the brand’s 125th anniversary) and so many more.

The experiences use a variety of mediums such as videos, projectors, lights, sets and sometimes even theatrical casts to create multisensory environments. Tickets tend to be in the $30-$50 range. The Instagram-friendly intent is more than apparent, but enthusiasts don’t seem bothered that promotion is folded into the experience. In fact, websites like SecretNYC and Bucketlisters cater to the demand.

But in New York, a cultural capital that one could argue is already an immersive experience itself, why do we need more? And are these experiences cynical marketing gimmicks (remember Scotland’s Willy Wonka debacle?), or do they add value to the city’s culture? What is with this “experiences” trend?

For starters, there’s a profit incentive. Many experiences are designed to market a product or to sell admission. And although “experiential marketing” has been around for a while, social media-friendly immersive experiences have given marketers a whole new bag of tricks: Enter, feel free to snap photos, don’t forget to tag us!

But experiences also cater to a real desire to experience the physical world.

“People are tired of the 2-D experience of screens,” said Amy Starecheski, a cultural anthropologist who is the director of Columbia University’s Oral History master of arts program. “We want to be in our bodies and in places” — a welcome reprieve from the isolation of TVs and phones.

Of course, $50 is a fairly expensive way to be in a place, which is a point that plenty of consumers have made in the mixed reviews you’ll find online.

Starecheski emphasized that the demand for immersion isn’t limited to commercial entertainment. Many artists, museums and galleries in the nonprofit sector are embracing people’s desire for 3-D, multisensory experiences.

“People feel like if they’re going to go out, they want to have experiences that they can only have by being there,” Starecheski said, meaning that if it weren’t interactive and immersive, you could feasibly view it on your phone.

Starecheski said immersive experiences can be culturally valuable if they’re accessible to broad audiences and foster social interaction.

Starecheski cited James Turrell’s “Meeting” (MoMA PS1), which offers participants with an unobstructed view of the sky; Delcy Morelos’s “El Abrazo” (Dia: Chelsea), an encompassing “earthen monolith” installation made of clay, soil, hay and other materials; and the VR/AR storytelling at Tribeca Fest as powerful experiences.

Immersive experiences are “different from a traditional art museum, where you’re viewing, say, paintings, not interacting with other participants, all facing the wall and not using all of your senses,” Starecheski said.

For the city’s museums, experiences may not only be culturally valuable, but could also provide a needed boost to business. The number of visitors to New York’s biggest museums has dropped significantly. Compared to 2019, attendance at the Met declined 34% in 2022, while attendance at the Guggenheim and Whitney declined 42% and 19% respectively, according to The Art Newspaper’s Visitor Figures survey.

Experiences can also foster social cohesion in an increasingly fractured society. Setha Low, author of “Why Public Space Matters” and distinguished professor of psychology, anthropology, earth and environmental sciences at CUNY’s Graduate Center, said this is perhaps the ultimate sign of a successful public space.

She recalled visiting “Immersive Van Gogh,” a sensation in New York back in 2021, and enjoying how it sparked interaction and connection with kids in her family.

But these experiences are not always financially accessible. Taking my family of five to see Klimt’s paintings projected onto the walls of the historic Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, now the Hall des Lumiéres, would cost me $141.

Low said that if the less “connecting” elements of this trend were to take over — say, if most of them were prohibitively expensive, or if participants tended to isolate themselves with phones or other devices during the experience – that would not support the interacting and mixing of diverse groups of people that experts hope to create with cultural and public spaces.

She offered the Vessel as an example of immersive-experience gone wrong. It isn’t accessible to visitors with disabilities, and is set up for marketing — Hudson Yards claimed the rights to all photos, audio, and video depicting or relating to the site.

In March, an installation called Make it Rain appeared where the Oculus’ Winter Whirl once stood. It was a “Cash Cloud experience,” where visitors could take social media-friendly photos and have a chance to be showered in money and a promotion for Ibotta, a cash-back shopping app.

So there’s art, there’s marketing and there’s the commercialized space in between. Starecheski noted the irony of people showing up for an immersive 3-D, multisensory experience and immediately converting it back into a 2-D Instagram photo.

But that’s the world we’re living in: a world where we are seemingly always marketed to and asked to become marketers.

It’s a confusing, experience-layered world. For many, walking through the eye-popping Oculus may be enough of an “experience.”