How much does a visit to Westworld cost?

Unsurprisingly, maintaining a world of complex robots has high operational costs

Going to Westworld looks like a lot of fun. Morally reprehensible perhaps, but who says they’re mutually exclusive?

Theorising about the show’s potentially meta, non-linear narrative is all well and good, but each episode also leaves me simply thinking: ‘Damn would I enjoy spending a week in Sweetwater’. I wouldn’t even need a complex and dangerous quest, just knocking back some whiskey and watching over a herd would be fine.

But how much does the experience cost?

Understandably, it’s not cheap. The start-up and maintenance costs for the park must be enormous, so much so that guests must pay $40,000 a day.

We know this from episode three, when the sadistic (depending on your view of the Hosts’ consciousness or lack thereof) Ben is sat around the fire bored with William and Delores and declares: “I didn’t pay 40k a day for this!”

Now we can’t really adjust for inflation, but in this video (around 0:40 mark) co-creator Jonathan Nolan states that the show is set in the 21st century, so it’s more near-future than it initially seems.

You’d likely want to spend longer than a single day in the park, so a full week in Westworld will set you back $280,000. That’s more than commercial space flight is expected to cost, but then, space doesn’t have saloon shootouts.

Despite the astronomic cost of visiting Westworld, you can’t expect to be completely safe there, as at least 11 visitors have died in the park.

Parks like Westworld may still be a long way from becoming reality, even with big developments in AR and AI, but hey, one expert thinks having sex with robots will be “the norm” by 2070.