Escape into FANTASY
Visitors play a role in Utah’s immersive Evermore park
PLEASANT GROVE, Utah — The future of theme parks might just be in a Salt Lake City suburb. This is where you will find Evermore, where one of its star attractions is not a state-ofthe-art coaster nor a thrill ride populated with scenes from a recent superhero movie. Instead, it is a tavern called the Crooked Lantern. To get to the Crooked Lantern, one of the oddest and liveliest bars west of the Mississippi, you must dodge the druids near the town border, walk past the aviary without being distracted by the woman with a baby dragon and hang a left at the gaggle of buzzing faeries. Whether you are a regular or entering the Crooked Lantern for the first time, expect to receive a friendly and loud greeting, likely from the bartender Suds McBride. Crowds are attracted to Suds, who walks atop the bar and likes to tell guests about the time he was swallowed whole by a fish — the 4- or 5-foot monster that lies dead, intestines out, in the back of the bar. On this particular Friday night, Suds had an announcement: “My tavern is not for getting drunk and forgetting everything,” he shouted. “My tavern is a place for good memories!” Just don’t tell that to the hunters — they’re the stoic ones in all-black, ready to warn you of your impending doom. Your journey through Evermore, where the emphasis is on play and human interaction, has only just begun. Imagine a Renaissance fair, if it consisted of permanent buildings built across a dozen acres and possessed a Disneyland-like attention to detail. Or a game of Dungeons & Dragons, only there are no dice and maps. Or picture walking down Disneyland’s Main Street U.S.A., but instead of Mickey Mouse posing for photo ops, he asks for help finding Minnie and suggests you go talk to Goofy — only to talk to Goofy you first must discover a way to earn his trust. To set foot in Evermore, a quirky old-English town with crooked roads, dizzying catacombs and a bustling population of fantastical creatures, is to not just enter a theater but to become one of its central characters. There are no rides — at least not yet. Instead, there are game-like quests to seek out and lots of role play. It’s the sort of alternate reality envisioned by video games and teased — or warned — by TV’s “Westworld,” and it’s going to forever change how we view theme parks. That’s because the tenets at the core of Evermore are already reverberating across the theme park industry. Evermore taps into a hunger for non-screen-based, experience-focused entertainment, and it arrives at a time when escape rooms continue to dot the country. And we’re seeing a rise in interactive theater, such as the
site-specific production “Sleep No More,” which helped spawn an immersive entertainment movement. In downtown Los Angeles, there’s the recently opened Two Bit Circus, where beyond tech-savvy carnival games lie “story rooms,” such as Space Squad in Space, in which you play the role of an intergalactic peacemaker. “The classic amusement park experience is relatively passive,” said Two Bit Circus founder Brent Bushnell. “You have some active participation, but at the end of the day you sit in a seat and you’re entertained. With immersive theater, the moment you are one-on-one with an actor under a staircase — and you were the only one pulled into that space and they are responding to what you do — that hasn’t happened before. “That’s powerful,” he said. “All of a sudden you have been recognized. They called you by your name. That is awesome. Yes, I love theme parks, but the moment you have that magical experi- ence, entertainment has been changed for you.” Evermore is the dream of Ken Bretschneider, a techindustry innovator who cofounded the virtual reality company The Void. The latter’s “Star Wars” adventures can be found at Downtown Disney and the Glendale Galleria, among other locales. While Evermore is far from completion, Bretschneider opened the park for October to let guests take part in a Halloween-themed narrative that shifted not just nightly but hourly. More than 20,000 visitors showed up during the first three weeks. Later this month Evermore, which will operate seasonally, debuts a Dickensian-inspired holiday program. By then, Bretschneider hopes to have completed the park’s train. And still to come is a massive mansionlike structure that can serve as a castle or haunted palace, depending on the need, filled with hidden passages and secret stairwells. The shy can simply enjoy the park’s entertainment — folksy bands, fire-wielders, fortune tellers or archery ranges. But all of that also is intertwined into Evermore’s story. You could spend a night learning about the ways of the hunters, but for them to open up to you it helps to prove you have skill with a bow. If you pass that test, they may send you deep into the crypts — in a cemetery filled with very-real antique gravestones purchased in Europe — to retrieve a requested item, which in turn could lead you to a witch’s house.
‘My tavern is not for getting drunk and forgetting everything. My tavern is a place for good memories!’ SUDS MCBRIDE Crooked Lantern bartender