Moin, Moin, Hummel Hummel, Mores Mores

My players are running the shadows of vienna while emergence begins to unfold (2 months to go until Queen Elizabeth).

They found a free sprite inside an "collapsing" resonance well, one of their main adversaries is a toxic with his Ghost-in-the-Machine (inhabitating a drone body) sidekick and their Johnson/Fixer outed himself as a faded Otaku.

Add to this a 17-year old girl with an overprotective free sprite ("Mister Bubble", yes it's cheesy) who entrusted her as a ward to the teams technomancer and the (to them unknown) fact that they are prophesized to play a major role in the local emergence, and you have my situation as a GM. I actually want to insert something adventurous between the actual run and the upcoming Hong-Kong Event, but i have no idea what or how.

Until it struck me that it should be something VR related, where the TM can play his mojo but the Sam and the Ki-Mage aren't too crippled. I normally would refrain to consider it as an option for my campaign, but how can i hook them up to an UV Host without them noticing and how do i avoid an "It was all a dream"-dissapointment?

Or does somebody have a better idea?

It depends on how your players normally use the matrix. If they aren't prone to normally using VR, it'll take a bit more finesse. A lot of meets take place in the Matrix, so it's possible to hook them there, but they still have the option of going AR. Generally speaking, they can make more actions faster in VR than in AR, but if they have no intention of going in VR at all, or doing much besides talking, again, makes it difficult. And you don't want to do the whole "Mwah hahahaha , you have been forcibly captured and jacked into the matrix I am an Evil GENIUS!" bit. No one likes that.

I would suggest instead of roping them, sell them a bit more on VR in the next few games leading up to that. If youve got a hacker character that goes VR a lot, emphasize the level of detail and clarity, how it looks and feels to be in this totally immersive enviroment, and how much quicker he can more and act inside the machine. Emphasis on how it feels different, faster, better, especially if he's running hot sim. That will liekly get him/her more into VR, and likely draw in the other players too.