Well, here we are, in the middle of that great vacation and sweating time we refer to as summer. Families are packing up for the road, heading to the backyard, and every other imaginable way to escape from their lives for just a day or two. What’s interesting is culturally we’ve found ourselves at a point that travel is becoming too expensive to make it worthwhile. We’re burned out on the latest hotel fads and hiking across the wilderness doesn’t seem as fun when we don’t have 3G reception.

So what gives? Is it the recession, is it spending, or is it just burnout? We talk a lot about updates and sensory adjustments, but perhaps all we really need is a new experience. It’s something that’s been creeping around for years, the idea that experiential events are outpacing luxury and the next new thing. It exists everywhere, from the iPhone reinventing itself as a visual communication experience to the switch from a “vacation” meaning an escape to becoming a hands on dive into a different way of life; be it fictitious or real.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened this past month, to a line of over 5,000 people anxious to get through the gates to experience the world of the boy wizard for their own. Videogames that realistically embrace and let people experience a new life are becoming standard with motion controls, and role-play staycations for families who are turning backyards into castles and undiscovered planets.

More and more hotels are transitioning out of the in and out comfort style to unique experiences once only seen at Disney resorts. Hotel Ritz Paris and luxury resorts are slowly paving the way to the new normal of the boutique hotel. From Barbie suites that let you relive the Barbie dream house to futuristic minimal spaces that mimic worlds like Tron; we’re quickly falling for experience over comfort.

And there’s no reason we shouldn’t be, after all not to beat a dead horse; but we are indeed in a recession. If you’re traveling or spending money on a vacation, it better be worth it. Take Forks, Washington for example. Tiny town, not much going on; except it’s where Twilight is set. The book and film saga has turned the town into a living experience of the films, offering tours, points of interest and even menu’s based on the books.

The elevation of experience is a slippery slope however, just as we adjusted to 24/7 grocery stores and then debated why everything wasn’t holding the same hours; we’re possibly destined to wonder why everything isn’t an experience. And as multisensory nomads, we naturally drift from one new thing to the next.

So as you pack up and prepare that summer escape, is it comfortable beds and a poolside view that your heads wrapped around, or is it a chance to live another life, perhaps another world that you’re heading for? Whatever the case, keep your sunscreen on hand and your senses ready for what the world has to offer, and to reinvent.