Vegas couldn’t do anything basic if it tried, and with The Wizard of Oz at The Sphere, we sure as hell weren’t in Kansas anymore. 

The Wizard of Oz at Sphere premiered on Thursday, August 28, 2025 at the Sphere, the monstrous monument to media that sits deep in the desert. The Sphere is home to the world’s largest LED screen and now, through March 2026, the iconic Judy Garland film. The Wizard of Oz was released in 1939 in a nearly 1:1 film ratio (it was 1.37:1) and has been expanded for the sphere to a full 16K resolution built exclusively for the Sphere. Sphere Las Vegas Wizard of Oz tickets start at $119 which is steep for a movie, but this isn’t your local AMC we’re talking about. The 4D immersive experience runs 75 minutes and even comes with a squishy souvenir, if you’ve got the reflexes to catch it.

So, is it worth it? I weathered the storm tornado and can courageously say there’s no place like the Sphere. 
This may be strange to say about a movie that’s 86 years old, but there will be spoilers for the full The Wizard of Oz at Sphere Las Vegas immersive movie experience. If you want to go in blind, click your heels three times and check out Las Vegas’s John Wick experience instead.

The movie makes full use of the Sphere’s 16K resolution wraparound screen, and to do this the adaptation team used AI tools, and it shows in parts. Some expansions where characters leave the primary scene and continue their path behind the main action can get a little uncanny. At times, characters take strange steps or hairlines adjust without provocation, but it’s not necessarily distracting… in the beginning.

Here’s where the fun starts – the tornado. As the crux of the plot touches down in Kansas, seats begin to rumble. Now, this isn’t your grandma’s tornado (unless you’re Judy Garland’s grandkid?), and everything in Vegas is bigger and weirder than you can imagine. The seat rumbling is novel, sure, but what happens next was where the activation earned the term ‘experience’. As the tornado ramps up, more and more wind machines kick on. At the peak of the tornado with wind blowing in your face, your seat rumbling as you lift off and get swept away, The Sphere releases tissue paper leaves to bring the debris of Kansas farmland to its Las Vegas audience. It’s a small touch that does a big lift to bring you into the world of Oz. 

I will say, the sequence is longer than I remember it being in the original movie and at times the wind makes it hard to breathe. I genuinely felt like I was inside a wind turbine until the weather cleared and earnestly made me nervous. My memory of the tornado is so much shorter than what I felt in the Sphere- the tornado is all encompassing and inescapable. There is a sense of community in that everyone in the room is going through the same thing but it still felt so intense there was one moment where I wondered how much longer it would be because of how hard it became to inhale properly at one point. Here, at the cross section of breathtaking and bewildering, this 86 year old movie scared me.

After touching down in Munchkinland, the entire world erupts in an explosion of technicolor. The content expansion here works extremely well, and mechanical drone-powered butterflies broke free from Oz to emphasize the vibrancy in the color-drenched world. Dorothy and Toto look around Munchkinland and are met with the realization that they parked illegally, and now the Wicked Witch of the East is dead (ding dong). As her sister, the Wicket Witch of the West appeared, seats began to rumble which was a nice touch.

A not-so-nice touch that people are less excited about is the double cameo from billionaire James Dolan and head of Warner Brothers Discovery David Zaslav. Both of their faces appear superimposed over two munchkins in Munchkinland. James Dolan actually revealed this prior to opening night and even challenged movie goers to spot their two-second cameo. Visual Effects Specialist Ben Grossmann said that the two actors whose faces were replaced “were uncredited characters who were too blurry to be identified.” Largely, no one is happy about this nor impressed. 

There are more impressive parts of the movie that roll on, however. As Glinda departs in her bubble, the entire sphere is enveloped in pink and glitter. Dorothy heads out on her adventure and meets the Scarecrow in an expanded scene where Toto’s AI adventure in the background is a bit fuzzy in places.

As Scarecrow and Dorothy head off to see the wizard, Dorothy stops for an apple and encounters the seat-rumbling Wicket Witch of the West again. As she reaches for an apple and the trees begin throwing apples at her, soft foam squishy apples fall from the sky. The Sphere was smart to find a way to give movie goers a gift that wouldn’t hurt if it fell on their heads. The apples are branded with the Wizard of Oz at Sphere Las Vegas logo and are very kid-friendly. This was surprising, as no one was anticipating a souvenir but was well welcomed by the audience. 

Dorothy and Scarecrow meet up with the Tin Man and, as they continue, they find themselves deep in the forest. Famously, this forest is filled with lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) and with the AI expansion, we actually see a tiger creeping between trees. It’s around here where, as the adventuring party fills out, the AI can be more noticeable in facial features and hair. Specifically, I spotted a few times where Scarecrow was visible in scenes he was originally out of frame for and his smile would change. His mouth would be closed and move a bit to the sides or expand and shrink with slight movements. It’s not jarring, but it can be distracting, especially if you’re scanning the massive environment to take in everything The Sphere has to offer.

With a full roster of Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Toto in tow, the squad skips down the yellow brick road to the city of Oz. This is where the Wicked Witch of the West makes another rumble and the famous asbestos snow scene occurs in the poppy fields. Instead of raining asbestos down on unsuspecting tourists, The Sphere rains down a gentle foam. 

As the squad finally gets an audience with the wizard, spectators are treated to a bit of a fire show. To best honor the wizard’s whimsy, The Sphere accompanies his presence with pyro. Real fire is shot up to punctuate his declarations and, truly, this is The Wizard of Oz at The Sphere at its peak. The scale of having the heroes look up at the massive wizard head is incredible. His big-ass head takes up SO much of The Sphere it’s hard not to feel tiny in his presence – exactly what the flim flam Omaha man wanted.

The wizard sends the heroes on a fetch quest and the rumble of the Wicket Witch of the West finds them. Her flying monkeys came after the gang and real-world flying monkey drones came for our necks. Several flying monkey drones came up and across the audience, striking some real fear in certain attendees (not me though, I’m extremely brave and was not at all shocked to see a monkey flying at me during a movie and 100% didn’t grab my friend’s hand and burrow my head in their shoulder).

As the immersion melted us into our seats, Dorothy melted the Wicked Witch of the West and successfully gained audience with the wizard again. He heads back to the black and white world in his hot air balloon, her friends all get their respective trinkets, and Dorothy clicks her heels and heads home. 

As we headed home, we realized the movie was about twenty or so minutes shorter than the original. Scenes and certain sections of songs were cut to accommodate a faster turnaround in The Sphere. 

We left, foam apples in hand, wondering what we just saw.

The Wizard of Oz at Sphere is a true spectacle in every sense of the sentiment. The scale alone is an unforgettable experience, but feeling your seat convulse at the presence of the Wicked Witch of the West and feeling the fire from the Wizard bring it up to an even higher level. There is, however, that sinking feeling of knowing animators weren’t employed when they could have truly elevated the experience’s art. After the sensory overload subsided, I do feel that this was an amazing experience, however the steep ticket price and the flagrant use of AI are hard factors to swallow. 

Are you off to see the wizard? Let us know how you feel in the comments!

Want more options of what to do in Las Vegas? Check out some opportunities to play with real-ass robots right here.