I cannot understand why this experience has not been more heavily promoted. It was one of my obscure finds after spending a great deal of time sifting through the multitude of 'WTF is going on in London tomorrow' sites I am subscribed to, and it was not high up on any of the lists.
It deserved to be.
Please forgive me. The experience was in July and I am only newly attempting to resurrect my blog as we hurtle through September, so my memory is not as precise as it ought be for a blog, but this attraction definitely deserves a mention.
First. You must know and appreciate War of the Worlds. The Jeff Wayne Radio edition.
Next, you must find a spouse, lover or friend to accompany you (because great things are best enjoyed company) and ideally to buy your ticket (because at £50 a pop, great things are best enjoyed as a gift)
Now you must arrive no later than 45 minutes before your allocation slot. Because the Spirit of Man bar features an impressively detailed looming Martian machine, atmospheric smoke and lighting, and some truly mesmerising scene-changing wall art/videos. It's London. The cocktails are pricey. Drink slowly.
The staff are all garbed in steampunk. I LOVE steampunk. So, it transpires, do many of todays patrons. Perhaps this event was advertised more heartily on theme sites than generic ones. Either way, the patrons are a good bunch and heartily embrace the interativity of cheering whenever 'new survivors' are announce. Conversations are easy to fall into around the bar. An unusual experience for London.
We are giving coloured wrist bands and told to wait by the door of the experience when the Martian war machine emits a smoke of the corresponding colour. A great idea barring a couple of minutes of nervous confusion when the machine emitted a sort of green-that-could-be-construed-as-blue smoke. We need not have concerned ourselves. It was green.
When it was blue we joined a group of 6 other people by the day and was greeted by one of the Steampunk outfitted (did I say that I LOVE steampunk?) staff members who outlined what to expect from the experience, what we should and shouldn't do, yadda yadda yadda. It didn't go on very long. He took us into the next dimly lit room where we all sat down on comfortable folding chairs and the music began.
You know the music.
"DUM DUM DUM......!"
An escape through a silhouetted forest of tangled branches is detailed on the screen to the full play-out of the song. Visually, this is not the high point of the experience. But if you like the music, you will enjoy it all the same. The sound-system does not let it down.
From this room we move on to meet Ogilvy (The astronomer) in a room populated with telescopes. You are encouraged to look through them. You see Mars (imagine that!) but are interrupted in your astronomical studies by the sound of something vast hurtling through the sky and landing with a ginormous crash close outside. The music starts up as you leave the room. The scary bit, which you always had to skip through when you were a child if you were listening to it alone at night. The lid unscrews....!
Outside (inside still, but... yknow... outside Ogilvy's study) Ogilvy approaches the curious cylinder as tentacles emerge from it, and attempts contact. He is set alight for his endeavors (real flames are used but no actors were harmed in the making of this program)
A soldier arrives to usher us quickly to safely. I'm usually politely at the back of these group affairs, but the use of real flame does spur me somewhere close to the middle. I consider myself at particular risk on account of the amount of hairspray this frizz-inducing heatwave is requiring me to utilize.
We hide out in the home of Mr Herbert (A journalist!) where his cheery housemaid seats us around a large table and attempts to keep morale high until soon thereafter something crashes nearby and the lights flicker then go out completely, plunging us into complete intensely unnerving darkness. Nothing happens for long enough for one to feel distinctly as though one is being snuck up upon.... lets not spoil it all. We leave quickly and find ourselves being kitted up with 'survival backpacks' (Virtual Reality. Its always interesting to hear how the operative intend to work the fact you have to wear a power-backpack and goggles the size of a games machine into a victorian plot)
Well, VR is just fun, isn't it?! I have yet to have had an experience that I visually confuse entirely with reality, but the 3D aspect is definitely there, where a 70 year old man stood in front of me a moment ago there is now a young victorian lady, and after a very cautious conga-line walk through a cluttered victorian dining room (which thankfully in reality is a blessedly empty large room) we all find ourselves in the middle of a battle between soldiers and Martian War Machines on London Bridge. The Machines are blasting at us. The tanks are blasting back. It's f*cking epic! And I am doubly thankful that VR has not yet hit its heyday in terms of believable reality yet.
The music is still playing, of course. Talking us through the story as it ever did, but this time to the accompaniment of VR, actors and visuals.
The Virtual Reality experience continues as we clamber into boats (at an extortionate fee. People will always capitalise from war of course) and escape past the Thunder Childs valiant efforts. Then things calm down to the tune of 'Forever Autumn'.
Is it all this dashing around on the river? I need to pee. Like, REALLY, need to pee. And as luck would have it, we are lead to our mid-experience pitstop, "The Red Weed bar". We are announced as new survivors and the room cheers, just as we do when the next ones arrive.
It's a pretty cosy room, with all four walls decorated floor to ceiling with red twining LED 'weeds'. There are toilets (Yay!) and two cocktails, both coming in at £10 each (Apparently the extortion came off the boats with us)
Of COURSE we buy one each. And have 20 minutes to drink it before being jostled out of the room and on with the adventure.
Back in the world of VR we are split up into confession booths, which unnerves me just a wee bit because I am exactly the bastard who gets left behind when groups are split up then expected to re-converge at some precise point.
We find the dead Parson. Hey, he's not dead! (spoiler alert!) He is delirious though.... and NOW he's dead.
The Artillery Man from London Bridge tries to chase us off but then invites us to contribute to his Brave New World before our journey is forced onwards and upwards, ultimately into air balloons which take us on just one last Virtual Reality aerial tour of rural London, where the machines have succumbed to our planets natural bacteria. Go Earth!
The sound track and the experience finishes on a joyful note... Or does it?
Okay okay, so the VR technology is a bit 'glitchy'. We just dont have it down yet. But this was not enough to impare the experience which - as an experience hunter - I can only describe as genuinely unique and a whole load of bloody fun. I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone. The only real downside I would say are the ticket prices which are possibly the only thing scarier than being in the middle of a 3D martian attack.
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