Montréal is, for all entertainment intents and fun purposes, a giant playground – not to mention a world leader in video gaming design and innovation. So it’s only appropriate that the city will be making room in its sandbox for the super-popular global phenomenon Pokémon GO and hosting a Pokémon GO Safari Zone festival, one of a select few major real-world events taking place around the world in 2019, brought to the city in collaboration between gaming giant Niantic, Tourisme Montréal and Parc Jean-Drapeau.
What to expect
Parc Jean-Drapeau — also home to some of Montréal’s most stunning event spaces, the Biosphère, the Aquatic Complex, the Stewart Museum, the Lévis Tower, the sites for Osheaga, îleSoniq, HEAVY MONTRÉAL and ’77 Montréal, many kilometres of tree-lined walking and biking paths, and so much more — serves as a wonderful location for discovery at any time of the year, and is a picture-perfect setting for the tens of thousands of Trainers who will join for the adventure. Trainers can look forward to discovering even more Pokémon while they’re exploring Parc Jean-Drapeau with friends.
Montréal gets its game face on
The next Pokémon GO Safari Zone festival, from September 20 to 22, will see tens of thousands of fans of the mobile game head to Parc Jean-Drapeau on Île Sainte-Hélène just a few minutes by metro from downtown Montréal. And those tens of thousands of Pokémon chasers will also experience Montréal’s stellar hotels and gourmet restaurants, generating several million dollars in spin-off for the city.
The real-world Pokémon GO events have been hosted around the world with successful events in countries such as the United States, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. The Pokémon GO Safari Zone Montréal event is a first for Canada and is expected to draw Pokémon GO players from all over the world.
For the uninitiated…
Pokémon GO took the world by storm when it was released in 2016, and today has been downloaded over a billion times and is played by millions of people around the world. An augmented reality (AR) game, players, also known as Trainers in Pokémon GO, will traverse the real world and use their mobile phones to locate, catch, battle, trade and “train” virtual Pokémon. Trainers can also visit virtual Pokéstops and Gyms at real world locations around the world to collect in-game items for their next adventure or battle Legendary Pokémon.
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