"Spookers" - fringe LARP?

Community Larp discussion
#1

[quote]Situated in the old Kingseat Hospital, ‘Spookers’ is simply scary!! With the Set designed by Ian Ruxton and his team of freelance technicians with the support of Weta Workshop (Set designers for LOR and King Kong), Lighting and Sound effects designed by Oceania, and over 30 live actors running around the place dressed and acting as Zombies, its not a place for the faint of heart, or the under 16’s.

Having said all that, if horror is your thing, then be prepared to have a very good time indeed. The attention to detail is fabulous, although often missed when you’re being chased by a zombie!![/quote]
-Oceania, who did the sound and lights…

spookers.co.nz/

It’s a horror interactive walkthrough thing just out of Auckland. I’m keen to try it out, at least experience it first hand. Seems to be more of a “ride” than a LARP, but obviously touches on some of the same stuff we do:

  • Immersive environments where amazing things happen
  • Improvised (at least somewhat) action
  • Interactivity between players and setting
  • Play pretend

Their environmentsare absolutely stunning, but I can’t say the same for the costuming (at least not from the photos).

But still, they’re doing the things listed above, and professionally, so I reckon we should get a group together and check them out.

Their prices are here. I reckon the best value is to sign up for the Combo of “Spookers Haunted House” and “Freaky Forest of Fear” (MAN, these guys have got to get a decent writer) for $25 per person. That saves $5, and if we want to do “Cornevil” as well then it’s $17 totalling $42 (as opposed to the combo of all three for $40).

Not sure how many you need for a group, checking that out now. Er. Who’d be keen?

#2

Yeah, I’d go.
Ironic you brought this up, I saw an ad for it in the box of my Hell Pizza today…

#3

They have a billboard near my place. Is this how LARPing could enter the main stream?

#4

I’m told groups can be as small as 4. I pointed the owners toward this page and got this input:

[quote]Craig,
Beth here one of the owners, and the originator of the CornEvil and other haunted attractions. I read your forum, and you’re pretty tough on a 50 year old woman who is a general goody good, but now has 7 years experience operating haunted attractions in 4 locations. I know the story is a little lame but it was also very important for us to steer clear of any possible misconstruing from former patients or medical staff, hence the nuclear theme. You’re very welcome to try and write a new storyline, that won’t be offensive to the general public. It actually serves the purpose of giving an identifiable thread to the rooms and makes it easier to develop the floor plan, but is not intended to define the experience.
I don’t know what larping is but I have a couple of things that may have a bearing on how you approach Spookers.
If you come in costume or make up we will ask you to remove it or not let you go in. This is a safety issue, because both we and the public need to be able to identify the staff. In any emergency the staff are trained to deal with it so they need to be clearly identifiable.
The other issue is that if we have a complaint from a customer we will always know that it was one of our staff members and which one, rather than it possibly being a random customer.

You will not be able to interact and develop your own scenario, as it gets really busy and we need to keep people moving.
We have on occaision in our other smaller sites had up to 1,500 people a night.
I hope that answers your questions.
Regards,
Beth[/quote]

Not sure what she’s responding to for some of it! A shame we can’t go in and play with the operators, but they cite safety concerns so hey. I speculate that this may be able to be rented out, and we could use it for a one-off horror larp some time. But I wanna see first hand.

#5

Yes, only they get to dress up and role play, so unfortunately you’re out of luck there!

Having been someone who’s watched a lot of scary movies from a very young age (thanks to my mother also being a horror buff), when I heard about Cornevil it was a definite must-do for me. We made the mistake, though, of going on the last day it was open. Bad idea. For a start there were way too many people. You knew something was coming up because you could hear the people just in front of you shrieking, and there was no way of losing them with countless people behind. Also the actual maize was looking a bit tattered, so sometimes it was difficult to tell where the path actually went.

Some of the costumes were awesome, some not much so. But, probably because of my liking of horror movies, I wasn’t easily scared. In fact, I didn’t get one fright in the entire night. It was almost too expected. Needless to say though, the big brave boys who came with me and were apparently stating that I’d be scared out of my wits, but they’d “protect me” did anything but. They, particularly my partner (man, I never knew he was such a chicken. Honey, if you ever read this, I still love you :stuck_out_tongue: Mind, he never likes going to see horrors with me anyways, so I usually cross him out of anything horror-ish I happen across), did get their share of scares. When some guy with a real chain saw (albeit no chain) ran up, my partner ran in the other direction, almost screaming. I let the chain run across my body. An odd sensation that, made me laugh even. Next we knew some mummy guy came, gave JC (partner) a helluva fright. I stood there, laughing at him. The mummy guy decided to take a liking to me and stated that he was going to take me a way. JC said no you’re not, she’s mine. Mummy said not anymore. And JC said okay, and started walking away. I think JC left with a few bruises as a result that night…

The props though were awesome. And it probably would have been a lot better had we gone on a night where there weren’t so many people. Maze could’ve probably been a bit longer too to be better. But all in all, it’s good harmless fun and a must-do at least once. Hopefully I’ll have some money when you organise this group thing, as I’d love to tag along :stuck_out_tongue:

#6

Hi there,

Please do pass this on to the person higher than her. If not I will make sure it does!
This is not a question but I would like to complain about Spookers of those who stands in the front counter like the Manager Julia who needs to learn how to have a good attitude and not so rude. I was really disappointed but the customer services that you have I am really mad that I had an argument at the beginning before going in just because Julia served her own customer kicked him out because of his age and jumps on to our end and says we’ve got one who will not be going in when hello the person serving us has a mouth and can do this and plus the guy she kicked out already went out.

I got in because I had to be bloody nice to that Manager Julia and I believe she is the Manager. If she is the Manager she should act like one and not be so rude I should say. She was rude not serving her own customers, making us wait longer to go in after coming on a long ride to come to your spookers place and then has her attitude of knowing she was wrong and did not apologise but she wanted to be the big boss Manager who can kick anyone out who is rude when she is the one that was so rude.

She is so lucky she didn’t get a piece of us. Thats right i was so mad that she did not have good cusomter skills and she should work on it. This complaint should take into place because if it doesn’t I myself will take this to the top of whatever I have to do to complain about the front counters its a good entertainment place but people in the front counter should be a little bit nicer.Pitty that she is the Manager who is so rude and inconsiderate. I would like to pass this on if you would like your place to go on.

I would also like to complain about one dumb spooker person who squeezed my cousins neck we were so angry that we wanted to smash them. There should be no touching if their are abusive people.

Thank you.
Helen Scadden

#7

Helen, you realise that the people on this forum have nothing to do with Spookers, right? Some people are discussing Spookers here, but this isn’t the place it lodge a complaint.

Otherwise, congratulations on your first posting here. In places it was almost coherent. I can’t imagine what the staff of Spookers could have found objectionable about you.

#8

Oooh. Buuuuurn. :smiling_imp:

#9

Stands up solomnly and applauds, grinning the whole time

#10

What is a Spooker(s)?

#11

See the first post.

[quote=“Exquire”]http://www.spookers.co.nz/

It’s a horror interactive walkthrough thing just out of Auckland.[/quote]