Phantom Peak is a four-hour immersion into a fully imagined world, and this October their spooky instalment, Hallowed Peak, has returned with tickets priced at £35 per person.
Just five minutes walk away from Canada Water underground station is a whole new world: a Western-inspired town called Phantom Peak, complete with real townsfolk and storylines.
The adventure is described rather elusively on the Phantom Peak website as an “open-world immersive experience”, which left much to the imagination.
With a 400-person capacity, the 30,000-square-foot inside and outside venue catapults participants into branching storylines and quests, which you can tackle alone or with friends.
The night entailed four jam-packed full hours of immersive acting within a completely imagined world, and it was unlike anything we had ever encountered.
The team at Phantom Peak work hard to ensure each season has a large range of different storylines to follow. ‘Hallowed Peak’ returned on the 19th September as a halloween special, with extended opening hours.
Unlike other immersive experiences in London, Phantom Peak centres on an audience-led approach, where every group in the venue is rushing around on their own unique and mysterious journey.
After a warm welcome by the town mayor, hundreds of us participants were all led into the main town square. Here, we were given a briefing of what our night entailed in the chaotic ‘opening ceremony’.
We then were instructed to scan a QR code, which gave us our missions for the four hour evening. You could choose from two options: adventure or mystery. In the end, we managed to do two missions within the time slot and got to try both options.
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The premise of the missions is to go from station to station, following the map and clues along the way to solve your mission.
The ‘town’ consisted of different levels and shops with actors stepping in as shopkeepers. One of our favourite ‘stations’ was the Mirror Maze, a dark maze you crawled through whilst dodging and ducking ropes, ball pits and mirrors.
Our first mission was to help capture wanted criminals and our second was to help fix the mayor’s robot assistant and stop the carnage of the town’s villain, Beetlemilk. After some initial confusion, we got stuck in to our quests running inside and outside all evening.
The missions are centred around gaining clues from each station and inputting these into your phone. For some stations, we had to solve a riddle in a shop and for others we had to converse with the actors, who all did a brilliant job in antagonising us.
We spoke to a regular Phantom Peak-goer, who attends every new opening. She said: “When you get really experienced, you can end up completing 5 to 10 missions per evening.”
Slightly embarrassed by our two completions, she reassured us that during your first time you spend most of the time discovering each corner of the games ‘arena’ and chatting to the actors, so one or two missions is normal.
This was true, and the thing that surprised us the most was the level of detail and thought that had gone into each and every character and station.
The experience is designed to be re-played and returned to, with each new visit offering a new discovery or storyline. I can confidently say, no two groups would have had the same experience at Hallowed Peak.
As someone who is easily frightened, I was skeptical about whether my nerves could handle the evening. Yet, despite being a Halloween celebration, Hallowed Peak is more spooky than it is scary. As the team at Phantom Peak put it: “Think of it as a mystery that a group of meddling kids with a dog might solve, rather than a scream-fest.”
The experience is open to all ages. However, to fully participate, I’d recommend it for adults and children over ten. That said, there were a few younger kids as well, and I’m sure they still enjoyed the games and atmosphere, even if they didn’t fully grasp the clues!
Inside the main town square, there’s plenty of options for mid-experience snacking and drinking. Offering cocktails and a range of local beer, the pub is part of the experience too, so you can chat to actors whilst waiting for your pint to be poured.
If you’re peckish, you can choose from a range of fast-food options at their restaurant, Robochef, who also happens to be a character in the experience. Think burgers, hot dogs and loaded fries. Or, for those with a sweet tooth, there’s a crepe and a hot chocolate stall.
At a price tag of £35, the evening offers a new and exciting option for a night out in South London. After four full hours of interactive chats and adventures, I left the experience thinking what a cool job it must be to dream up such weird and wacky storylines.
Location: Phantom Peak, Surrey Quays Rd, London SE16 7PJ
Length: Approximately 4 hours
Price: From £35
Book tickets: https://www.phantompeak.com/tickets/?tx_inline_iframe=%2Fdate-selection&tx_sessionDataId=87f436da-d952-48a4-9ee9-917046483130
