Let me read for you! Skip introduction 2:57
My first taster of an immersive experience was the ‘Gunpowder Plot’. I had bought it for my brother Jack as a Christmas present.
‘I hope there aren’t actors,’ Jack said. I kept my mouth shut because there were definitely going to be actors.
We went through a door and found ourselves in a cell in the Tower of London with a very depressed man in rags.
‘Oh no, they caught you too!’ the man said. ‘There’s not a catholic who can hide.’ (I didn’t dare look at Jack at this point). ‘I’ve been locked in this cell for 54 days, nothing to eat, rats running around my feet…’ he whined. Suddenly, another man came running in with a burst of energy.
‘I have a plan to escape! Come with me!’
We were taken through tunnels and into strange rooms. Using our VR glasses we escaped The Tower, and rowed away on The Thames with a view of London in the 17th century…when housing was affordable.
The final scene we were with Guy Fawkes himself. We had to decide if we wanted to help him blow up the House of Parliment …Probably shouldn’t, was my take. We watched a fist fight, and then something else happened which meant that nothing exploded. Spoiler alert.
Well, I thought the experience was thrilling. Even Jack, who hates actors, enjoyed himself. I told everyone, ‘You must go to the Gunpowder Plot!!!’…But then it closed down.
A few years later, I was on the tube when I spotted an advert for the Vikings’ immersive experience. I imagined myself crossing the sea in a Viking boat, and running around battlefields with actors resembling Thor. I begged Roman to come with me.
‘It will be riverting,’ I said.
So, on Sunday, in the heat wave, we made our way across the city to Canada Water. I couldn’t help to notice how many football shirts I saw on the way. I asked Roman if there was a big match on today.
‘It’s the final day of the league.’
‘Oh…. are Liverpool playing?’ (that’s his team).
‘Yes.’
‘Didn’t you want to watch it?’
‘We’ve got Vikings!’ he said, with all the fake enthusiasm he could muster.
Canada Water may sound like a place in London where moose roam, and maple syrup is sold in gimmicky ways…but it’s not. It just sort of appeared. It has flats, a pond with a goose in it, a coffee shop, and a warehouse with ‘The Vikings Experience’ plastered across the side. That’s about it.
We were greeted by a bouncer and three staff members. Two guys helped us put our headsets on. A minute later, a woman came over and corrected them.
‘I have told them that the band goes round the back,’ she muttered as she put mine in place.
We listened to the introduction as we waited to be let in. As I was listening, a staff member started talking to me.
‘Norway….’
I took my headset off. ‘S-Sorry?’
He started again. ‘Norway, Sweden and Denmark are running a race, first one to the finish wins…’
He laughed, so Roman and I laughed. We put our headsets back on. Everything was beginning to feel weird.
We entered the experience through a red velvet curtain. I expected to meet a Viking who would order us to a battle. Instead, it was an empty room with a few benches and plastic rocks.
One of the staff members stood before us and read from a script about Queen Kraka.
‘Her mum was a shieldmaiden, she was very beautiful,’ he said.
Okay.
He left us with a photo slideshow about Vikings. Roman was side-eyeing me. So far, it wasn’t the riveting experience I had promised.
The slideshow ended, and the door opened to ‘Viking land’. There was a glowing tree that, to be fair, looked quite exciting. We were instructed to sit under the tree and put on VR glasses. Finally, I thought, the immersive part could begin…
I was in the woods surrounded by pixilated men tied to trees. I watched a wolf kill them one by one. Next, I was in a cornfield with a blonde woman. It was our main woman, Kraka. A Viking ship appeared with a gorgeous cartoon man. The voice-over explained that the Viking warrior king, Ragnar Lothbrok, saw Kraka…and wanted a go. (Not in those words, but you get my point). But before he could seduce her, he needed to see if she was intelligent, so he set her a riddle.
“You must arrive neither dressed nor naked, neither hungry nor full, neither alone nor in company”.
And because he was over 6ft and rich, she made the effort to solve his riddle. She arrived in a fishing net, biting an onion, with her dog. I didn’t see what Kraka looked like in this state, because I was now her. All I could see was Ragnar Lothbrok smiling at me for an awkward amount of time.
And then the VR ended.
We had a 30-minute wait until we were allowed into the next room. In the meantime, we could walk among the plastic woodlands, learn about battles on an interactive map. We could also tie some knots…or ask digital AI Kraka a question…like Siri in a wig.
‘What do you eat, Kraka?’ I asked. She’d twitched and flickered as she scanned Google for her response,and replied in a wispy voice.
‘We Vikings eat hearty stews of meat and vegetables, fish, grains…’ After three minutes of question time, we left AI Kraka and found a plastic tree stump to sit on.
It wasn’t terrible, like the Wonka experience in Glasgow. (A guy named Bill promised the people of Glasgow a ‘Wonka Experience’, but gave them an empty warehouse with a couple of plastic gummy bears and a shoddy rainbow. People had spent £35 and promised their kids a chocolate river, and all they got was half a cup of lemonade and a handful of jellybeans. They were so angry that the police had to come).
So, yeah, it wasn’t that bad, but it was far from the riveting fun I had promised Roman. Where was the battlefield? Where was Thor? Where was the boat ride?
It was time to go to the final part of the experience, but first an introduction from a staff member.
‘When the Vikings crossed the North Atlantic, they thought the sea mist was the breath of giants trying to blind sailors. Today, we know this mist is just sea fog. So, we ask you to step into this box, where you can experience what it would have felt like to be a Vikings in that fog…’
So a bunch of strangers stood in a blue-lit glass box.
A long pause, and ….
…..Ssphh……
A cloud of water mist puffed out. I looked around to see if there was anything more to come. The two people behind me were giggling their arses off.
The final stop was a room made up of screens, where we could sit in a Viking boat. Promising. The film started. Kraka was back. We watched her…very slowly…marry Ragnar. They had kids. The cheap visual effects made their faces look melted. Twenty minutes had gone by, my butt was starting to hurt. Ragnar went to battle. Ragnar died. Kraka kept wailing. Roman peeped at the football scores as Kraka’s big face floated around us. Still wailing. I had a strong feelingthat this was the last time we were going to do an immersive experience….
THE QUACK 