Probability Vacations

Blindfolded, I can't distinguish a mock-up beach with audio equipment, sand and sun lamps from a real beach. You blindfold me and simulate plane flight and realistic delays, and I would think it was real. The trick requires unprecedented attention to detail. But the illusion disappears if you told me beforehand that it will be a simulation.

Instead of telling me that it will be a simulation, tell me there is a chance that I will go on a real vacation. As a business, you make this offer to a thousand people. You send some of them on actual chartered flights to exotic places and lead them around blindfolded. The rest of them, also blindfolded, are given simulations.

That is, you lead them blindfolded around a large movie studio with the appropriate environmental conditions. The tour guides in both cases complete the experience by handing out objects and making beautiful, powerful descriptions. The blindfolds can be removed in windowless "hotels" for both real and fake vacationers, so that they can wash off the spittle of nature (such as ocean sprays, stalactite drips, ketchup).

Three benefits of Probability Vacations over real travel:

1) For some exotic vacations, the fake one might be cheaper. Many fake vacations would subsidize the few real ones, allowing middle-income people to participate. The idea was initially conceived for trips to the moon, but I forgot how to simulate the absence of gravity. I'm thinking fluids, spinning, or disabling the inner ear.

2) The tour guides can make up a more interesting vacation, since they can get away with fooling you. They could even throw in a plot and a story. If you read a book and find it better than the movie, doesn't that imply that your fake vacation can be better than a real vacation? That is, partial sensory deprivation can be liberating. As for me, my imagination outperforms Hollywood's execution.

3) Safety?