How do I trigger 3ds max animations at a specific time?

I’m a real noob at Unreal…, I am hoping to create an Oculus VR experience, Something like the ‘surge’ demo from the oculus site. The player is static (apart from being able to turn your head with the headset) with lights and animations going on around him. I have animations (simple spinning boxes and falling and breaking boxes) imported from 3ds max, When I run game these start straight away and run on a loop just fine.
But what I want is a 90 second experience where the box falls and breaks at, say 15 seconds. Then the spinning cubes start at say 25 seconds and so on. I would like this to all start with one tap of the space bar at the begining.
Is this something that can be done in blueprint, or if I try and do it in matinee will I still be able to use a VR headset to look around the scene in a matinee sequence?
Any help of what rabbit hole I should go down is muchly appreciated.