CJ and Kim at the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” iconic sign.

Researching the 360° Photo Booth in Las Vegas

Earlier this week Kim and CJ took a quick 28-hour trip to Las Vegas. Why? Research.

Some things just can’t be determined by looking at photos and videos online. We wanted something fun and new to offer to our clients and decided that a 360° Photo Booth was what we wanted.

Why a 360° Photo Booth?

We wanted something that really harnessed digital media, social sharing, and high technology. A product that hit people where they really live – on their phones and on social media.

If you’ve not seen a 360° Photo Booth they’re super cool. You stand on a small platform that has a motorized arm that rotates around the platform and takes a short video. The software then adds effects, slows it down, reverses it, and creates a 6-12 second video that is then sent to a person’s phone.

There’s a big tradeshow of photoboothers (yes, that’s a word that’s used – I didn’t just make it up) with everything you can imagine that is photo booth related. The ironic thing about the “photo booth” business is that no one uses an actual booth anymore – they’re all open-air. Even more ironic about the 360° Photo Booth is that it takes video, not photos. But I guess a video is just a long, quick series of photos put together. While we do have a photo booth, our Magic Mirror, photo booths aren’t our main business – attractions are. But I digress.

The Trip

When we landed in Vegas we got our rental car and Kim mentioned that though she’s been to Las Vegas a lot, she’d never actually seen the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” iconic sign. So that was our first stop. Stopping somewhere just to take a picture is perhaps the most touristy thing we have ever done – and we regularly ride carriages, take bus tours and visit iconic landmarks when we travel – so that’s saying something.

The 360° Photo Booth we bought (stock photo used with permission)

Then we headed over to the dinner and the opening of the conventions exhibit hall. When the doors were opened, we were overwhelmed. It was huge. But we had a mission – learn all we could about what would be the very best 360° Photo Booth experience as we saw it for our client base. What we realized is that there were multiple things needed and we had to start with software – and man were there a lot of choices to choose from! We checked them all out. Good, bad, ok and… excellent. We went with the one we thought was excellent – nothing but the best for our clients.

The decision is made

Then we noticed something. The very first platform we saw, which seemed to be really good, was also the same platform that ALL of the software demo people were using. As the folks from the company we decided to use for software said “there’s a good reason for that”. We went and talked with the people from that company, then looked at literally every other 360° Photo Booth in the convention center. Nothing came close to the quality of the one the first one and we stood on, inspected and asked questions about the all. After discussing our choices overnight we went back the next morning and made our purchases. They’ll be here in a week and we’ll be offering the booth starting March 14th.

CJ and Kim in front of the 360 booth they bought.

We’re very glad we flew out to see the products in person – we’d seen a lot of options online, but nothing gives the same impression of seeing a product in action, handling and inspecting, and asking questions (and boy did I ask a lot of questions). Thank you to all of the vendors who took the time to explain the features of the various platforms and software. Some were certainly standouts and we may give some of them a whirl at future dates.

What we came for was done – now it’s fun-time!

We finished our “official” business earlier than we thought, so we then went around the exhibit hall where I (CJ) found some cool options for our Game Shows To Go that I’ll be ordering soon too. We also found some products that we’re going to consider down the line as we try to add at least one new attraction a year to keep things fresh for us and for our repeat clients.

CJ and Kim with Vegas Magician Mac King.

Finding ourselves in the situation of having plenty of time left over we went on to do something fun…

So… we headed over to the Excalibur to see Mac King’s afternoon magic show. You should see the Mac King Comedy Magic Show. Mac’s show is the longest-running one-man show in Las Vegas history and it’s timeless, hilarious and on top of that Mac is a super nice guy.

Now, about 48 hours after we left, I’m home and writing this blog post and playing around with the software we got so I can be well versed in it before we ever get to our first event with the new 360° Photo Booth.

Thanks for reading – I look forward to seeing you at an event soon. We’ll be using the booth at college events, corporate events, high school grad night parties, weddings, tradeshows, film events, churches, and more.

Below is a video of the 360° Photo Booth in action. Video provided by OrcaVue and used with permission.

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