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What do you get if you mix the London Dungeons, Derren Brown's Ghost train and a £70 (average) price per person ticket? Glad you asked.... You get a 2hour, 20 odd scene story rendition of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, an excellent story with a premise of these metal alien human killing robot machines, as seen in Woking. As a fan of the story seeing the arena show and music maybe 3 times now, it was refreshing to see the concept transformed into an interactive experience promising VR, simulators and live actors. But why do I compare to the Ghost train and dungeons? Well because many of the scenes were a bit like something I had experienced in the London dungeons before and the attraction relied on using the bulky VR headsets 4 times throughout the attraction including the finale, and as with VR the technology can be very hit and miss. With a £70 pp price tag this isn't your average MAP holder group attraction, I'm sure they would be complaining about the price alone, but that does mean the groups are smaller around 12 say and are generally engaged with the story rather than focusing on what they can complain about to report back to the 1000's of followers on the MAP group. Oh and one last thing before I go into spoiler mode, @Martin Doyle and @Mattgwise would be proud to know that they give you robber style masks to cover around your eye's, for what I can only assume is to block out vision to the unthemed ceilings or perhaps a Covid protocol for VR. If you do go let me know your thoughts, ok in spoiler mode... (I still don't know how to add spoilers so sorry) THINGS I LIKED: A really well themed bar greeted you on what looks to be an office block building in the heart of the city of London (Ledinhall Street) The artillery man scene was excellent as a peppers ghost effect somehow transformed a live actor into a ball of fire. Excellent use of mini planetarium style cinemas to project a scene in 360. Props, we used a telescope with projections to look at the planets and see the red mist come in. A slide Isolation booths + VR, now this really did up the scare factor, you started in isolated booths, pretending to be a confessional in a church, the alien then comes and sets fire to the church and starts to probe people, heighten by the litter picker effect of staff prodding you and the scream's around making you know what is coming... I really think Thorpe could do something like this to make DBGT a better attraction. Engaged cast, really passionate about their roles. THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE SO MUCH: Some scenes were carbon copies of what you would get at the Dungeons for example sitting around a table in the pitch black etc... they could of been a bit more creative. An over reliance on VR including the finale which was a balloon ride / motion simulator, by this point I was getting a bit sick of faffing around with a headset and would of preferred a live action finale. Ended within obligatory green screen photo, that will be another £25 please.... Price, not worth £70+ So overall is was a bit of an upmarket London dungeons with new technology, hopefully Merlin will go, test it and incorporate it into their concepts or even do one better and buy the place, hopefully making it a bit more affordable. Tickets and images are available here: https://thewaroftheworldsimmersive.com/ Overall: 7/10

Went to Thorpe today and got to experience the new Swarm stuff in person. The area soundtrack is strange, the spoken parts are pretty bland, sometimes it overexplains stuff a bit, and again the whole thing is so unrealistic to the actual situation depicted in the ride. Which is fine, if the area is also themed in an unrealistic and outlandish way. This works for WWTP Radio, the hosts are constantly cracking jokes and it's all a bit nonchalant given the town is being hit by multiple tidal waves, but not only are there actual jokes in the WWTP Radio audio, but the area isn't exactly a serious area, whereas The Swarm is literally themed to the end of the world. I'm seeing crashed vehicles and a destroyed church, yet I'm hearing a completely calm sounding reverend being interviewed by a newsreader who keeps casually mentioning that the entire country is under attack? It doesn't really work. The song choices also don't really work, unsurprisingly. I can't tell if it's some kind of attempt at humour to be playing 'Highway to Hell' on this fake radio station as the world is literally ending around us, but again, it doesn't work when the rest of the area and even the audio is entirely serious up until then. The station audio is something else entirely though, it's actually really good. You can hear a clip of it here: I really wish the area audio was closer to this than what we got.