A 300,000-square-foot Halo theme park is set to start touring the United States this summer, Microsoft announced Tuesday.

Halo: Outpost Discovery will take over convention centers in five major cities as it tours from coast to coast, delivering an expansive look at the fictional universe of the popular first-person shooter franchise through VR experiences, video games, escape rooms, laser tag, a museum, a life-sized vehicles, a Halo ring, and more.

The tour kicks off on July 5 in Orlando, then making its way through Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston and finally Anaheim in late August.

Microsoft’s 343 Industries, which oversees the Halo franchise, teamed up with Herschend Live, which runs a number of location-based entertainment and live events including the Harlem Globetrotters and Dollywood, to create the experience.

“We had been exploring the location-based entertainment space and what it would mean to bring Halo more into the physical realm,” Kiki Wolfkill, studio head for halo transmedia and entertainment at 343 Industries, said. “Herschend brought with them the idea of a touring versus a permanent installation and that really fit with the ideas that we were interested in expressing.”

The studio wanted to figure out a way to bring the entire Halo universe to life — including the characters, stories, and gameplay — and put it in a place for their community to come together to celebrate their love of the Halo fiction, she said.

Wolfkill said that 343 had been wanting to do something like this for a long time, but struggled to find the right partner.

“We really wanted to focus on getting this conceptualized and built and out to fans so we could evolve what the experience could be,” she said.

This isn’t the first time 343 has worked to pull the universe into the real world. There was a Halo Lens activation at E3 in 2015, and then Halo Fest in 2016. Both of those, along with the museum that has long lived inside the studio, helped to inspire the ideas that came together for this touring experience.

“We brought a whole breadth of activities beyond playing the game,” Wolfkill said. “There will be experiences that are physical and interactive and a virtual reality experience very much seeded in the Halo ethos. It’s really all of those things.

“We wanted to have that combination of a theme park and a festival atmosphere.”

Howard Smith, president of Herschend Live, said that his company was attracted to the idea of helping to create and run this experience because they were already looking for an opportunity to create a fan festival and see video games as a growing segment.

Each stop along the tour is built around a weekend, Smith said.

“Anchoring the entire weekend is the Halo: Outpost Discovery attractions that include over ten different experiences in a hands-on interactive way,” he said. “There will also be a marketplace that will feature a number of different vendors which will be gamer-centric.”

The full list of experiences, along with the official descriptions are below.

“These are very large environments and we expect there will be quite a few fans,” Smith said. “we are expecting thousands of attendees and designed programs to accommodate very large traffic.”

Tickets for the experience will be sold in single and three day pass options as well as a VIP option. The VIP tickets will grant ticketholders early access to the floor and a number of free gifts.

The first year schedule is July 5-7 in Orlando, July 19-21 in Philadelphia, Aug. 2-4 in Chicago, Aug. 16-18 in Houston, and Aug. 30-Sept. 1 in Anaheim.

Wolfkill stressed that both companies see this as just the first year in an annual event.

“We look at this first year as a chance to learn and get better,” she said.

Halo: Outpost Discovery Experiences