Review of Evermore Park - Books: A true story

There’s a new theme park in Utah and it’s called Evermore Park. The website answers the question “What is Evermore?” on their website like this:

This entirely new Park is designed as an old-world, gothic-styled European village. Nestled among beautiful botanical gardens, visiting explorers will be transported to a place of discovery, imagination and wonder. Evermore comes to life through theatrical performance, movie quality costuming, state of the art effects, and cutting-edge technologies. Evermore® is located right off Exit 275 in Pleasant Grove, Utah.

The tall gates of Evermore open Fall 2018; then… the magic truly begins.

Which sounds cool, but very vague right? I’ve been in the reddit group, I’ve read all the news articles I could find (see bottom of post for links) and I still didn’t really know what it was before I went. So I am going to walk you through my experiences at the park. I had the opportunity to go twice. If you want to visit the park, first of all you better hurry as the Lore story line ends this Saturday, November 3rd, 2018 (but it opens again at the end of November with a new Christmas story). Second of all, this post will also probably contain spoilers if you want to experience the park for yourself. I say probably because the nature of the park is open-ended and your experience will be similar to mine but not exactly the same depending on the characters you talk to and the choices you make. If you don’t want to be spoiled then the closest thing I can compare it to is a role playing video game like Zelda come to life (but I’ve only ever played Zelda so….if there’s a better comparison out there, I wouldn’t know).

1st Visit: Kid Quests

When we walked through the park gates at Evermore, a woman hands my two oldest boys (who are 11 and 9) a paper with an iSpy game, a maze, a place to draw their favorite character, and a list of mini quests to go on. We follow the path towards the town square which is lined with straw bales to guide you and tons of jack-o-lanterns. The buildings we pass look awesome like an old village from a fairy tale. We walk in a tavern with a fireplace, tables with chess boards on them, and characters dressed like hunters (think Strider from Fellowship of the Ring). Anyone can wear costumes here (I am dressed up in my Gryffindor robes) but the characters that work there have a medallion around their neck so you’re not confused. Some of the cosplayers here are very good and they had to have some way for you to tell who actually works there.

The kids are having fun looking for their iSpy items and they are really excited when they find the rainbow pumpkin. There’s an animatronic monster eating a guy next to the path that my oldest is mesmerized by and my toddler squeals then laughs at the shaking cornstalks where a “monster” is also hiding by the bridge. We walk through the catacombs which scare my kids even though the haunted characters aren’t out yet. It’s literally a dark, winding, hallway and nothing else. But testing your bravery in the catacombs is one of the kid quests and they go through the mausoleum willingly (which is basically the same thing in the same building but upstairs instead of down). There’s a fully dressed knight when we get outside the mausoleum and the only tip I have to go on is “talk to the characters” so I go up to the knight and I’m trying to see if he has a medallion on. As I’m staring at him the only thing I can think to say to him is “Do you work here?” which doesn’t seem right. And I can’t find the medallion. And then my staring gets awkward. His response to my gawking is to bow politely and stride off. That makes me laugh. But now I’m even more intimidated with what to say to the characters (if I find one).

We get to the town square which is full of tents, a lovely enchanting floral scent, and a pumpkin tunnel maze for little kids. We ask a witch where to find one of our iSpy things – a dragon. The witch tells us its at the other end of the square. We find a woman holding a pet dragon and she tells us that it’s sick and she needs a spell from the witch to help it feel better so we go back to the witch and she tells us the spell. It’s a long word but my boys remember it well and repeat it to the dragon lady. She thanks us and the dragon breathes on a dragon scale for us to make it magic then gives one to each of my boys. It’s dark now and I turn on my phone to see what the dragon scale is. It’s a dried flower. My boys think it’s awesome.

We finished the scavenger hunt (which included seeing some real parrots and hawks in the greenhouse) and I vaguely remember that the lady who gave it to us at the front said there was a prize for finishing it and we should tell the…apothecary? I can’t remember now. It’s been about an hour since we got here. So we ask the witches again. They’ve been very helpful so far. There’s no apothecary, but the witch asks what we need. The boys show the witch their completed tasks and she gives them a bag of treasure. Inside their black velvet bags are two Evermore coins, two plastic diamonds, and an old fashioned metal key. They are ecstatic. I’m a little jealous, not gonna lie.

The Kid Quests paper and the treasure we got when we finished including the blue “dragon Scale”

The witch asks the oldest if he needs any curses. He asks what kind of curses and she suggests a few. The one he picks is bad dreams. She says to get the curse, we need to get a real gold candlestick from the antique lady next door. She hands us a candlestick that she wants us to trade. My oldest waits in line to talk to the antique lady (all the characters have lines to talk to them that are usually about 10-20 minutes long) and says to her that she stole the candlestick from the witch, mixing up the story for a minute. The antique lady says she didn’t steel it and he remembers the correct story. The antique lady said she didn’t have a gold candlestick but gave us a gold coin instead. We take it back to the witch, who looks at the coin and says “Interesting” (which makes me wonder how much of this is improv) and she gives us a “cursed” piece of taffy. The first thing he does is offer it to his brother. Haha! We meet up with their dad who has been chasing the toddler around the pumpkin maze. My oldest offers the candy to his dad. He unwraps it but starts to look at us suspiciously since we are all very eager and trying not to giggle. He asks if there’s something wrong with it and we all say at the same time “No!” He eats it and we all burst out laughing and tell him about the curse. It was so much fun.

We were told there was trick or treating throughout Evermore but it was more like a handful of characters that had buckets full of hard salt water taffy. It’s probably been sitting out a little too long but it was still edible.

It’s getting late and just as we are about to leave, some fire dancers take the stage at the end of the town square. It’s an amazing show with fire on sticks that they then swap out for ropes with fireballs on the ends. The haunted, scary characters have come out since it’s dark now but my husband still wants to go to the tavern. I’m not sure if that place is haunted yet or not (it doesn’t look like it) so he goes through the tavern again alone and I take the other dirt road with the kids to the entrance. As we are walking we meet a guy on a real horse and he stops to talk to us. Feeling brave, I ask where he’s going and he says “To Evermore, of course!” I still don’t think I’ve got the hang of this. We pet his horse and then he asks if we are on any quests. I say no and ask if he has any. He says that he doesn’t. We leave but now I’m intensely curious about quests and what that means. I really want to go on one. And luckily, I get the chance :)

2nd Visit: Lore Quests

I asked some of my friends to come with me a few weeks after my first visit. Even in those few weeks, a lot changed. Evermore posted on their website about a contest where you can become the champion of Evermore by collecting all four tarot cards and posting a video while holding them on social media. If you win the contest you will get free tickets for yourself and one other person to the park on November 3rd, an exclusive Champion’s Quest, Evermore Shwag, and a Behind The Scenes Creature Shop tour for Aurora (the Christmas season story). Challenge accepted. My friends and I set our hearts on getting at least one tarot card. I saw a lot of complaints about people feeling lost and I’m glad they added this Champion Quest to have some more structure.

Website screenshot of the Lore Contest from Evermore.com

The first change I noticed from the last visit was the glowing necklaces the characters wore. This made it much easier to tell who worked there. The park gets very dark and it was hard to see the medallion necklaces the last time we were there. In fact, it gets a little too dark at night. There are colorful lights that give it a great atmosphere but they tend to shine in your eyes and the paths are very difficult to see. There are no lights shining directly on the paths and I found myself staring at my feet and walking very carefully so I wouldn’t trip in some places.

Another change I noticed was the story. I wanted to be prepared on my second visit with a starting point and something to say to the characters so I asked for advice on reddit where I got a few tips on starting questions. I gave the tips from my reddit post to my cousin who went a few days before me and she said they were old and didn’t lead anywhere. My cousin gave me some vague hints about finding out about the Fae King so we started there. I think people give vague tips because exploring and finding things out is half the fun but also because nothing is truly set and everyone’s experience is going to be a little different.

The last change I noticed was a new, nifty passport we got at the entrance that had a place to take notes and get stamps for doing archery and ax throwing as well as a mini, unlabeled map.

The map spread inside the Evermore Passport

The first thing we did was join the Fae King (which is a 16+ foot tall talking animatronic skeleton with black robes) and he had us make a sacrifice by putting our heads in the stocks and showing him proof. So we went to the town square and took goofy pictures of us with our heads in the stocks. He made us kneel and swear to join him and asked what our skills were. I said I played the piano so he gave me the new name Right Time. Haha!!

Then we went to the tavern and started asking about the Fae King. We had to ask lots of probing questions. When the guy in the tavern said the Fae King came with the darkness, my friend asked what the darkness was etc etc. We got directed to other characters that knew more but we could only find the scientist name Thurgood and he told us he was working on a cure but he didn’t need help. We chatted with the squire named Sir Duffy Doyle (best name ever) and he told us how to become a squire like him but he said you didn’t get anything when you did so we moved on, intent on getting that tarot card.

We went back to the tavern but we couldn’t learn anything new. I even asked a lady near the entrance how to become the champion and she didn’t know what I was talking about. We decided that our frustration could use a cookie. As we were eating our cookies by the fire, a man on an old fashioned bicycle came up to us and told us there was a legend that one of us “world-walkers” (generic for Muggle I guess LOL) would become the champion. I perked up because that sounded like a lead for the tarot cards. We asked what we could do to become the champion and he suggested joining the hunters in the tavern.

Evermore card given to us by the hunter in the tavern.

Oh and this is where it got fun. It might be because it was about 8:30 now when the “Cursed” version of the story starts to come out or because we got a good lead. I don’t know. We found a surly guy in the corner of the tavern and asked if he was a hunter. He said yes and we said we wanted to join him. He asked what skills we had and we told him we were moms and had skills of wrangling and finding things. We were very enthusiastic. He asked what we knew about the darkness and all our previous research became useful. He told us to get 3 bullseyes at the archery range. Well, we would do our best. It’s an actual archery range and it was really hard. My fingers hurt after. We told the guy at the range that we wanted to be hunters and he said we were supposed to have a card. We went back and complained to the guy in the tavern that he hadn’t given us a card. We did archery for a second time and got our card stamped. My friend got a special gold stamp (the rest of us got a black stamp) because she hit really close to the bulls eye. People behind us sounded worried that they had to hit a bulls eye and the guy running the archery range said that technically we did but if we just hit the target it would be good enough. Haha! We went back to the tavern with our stamps. My friend was like, “Did you see my stamp? Cuz it’s gold. I got a gold stamp. You should let us be hunters because I got a stamp. And it’s gold. Look at my gold stamp.” We were having a blast at this point.

He gave us a second mission to test our bravery where we had to get a black stone from the haunted mausoleum. We only got one stone because they ran out. They sent us to talk to one person who didn’t know what we were talking about and we overheard that the witches had some but they didn’t and they sent us somewhere else and they didn’t have any either. Frustrated, we went back to the witch looking for help. She told us to talk to the bar maid. We went back to the tavern and talked to the bar man figuring he was close enough. We told him our story and he snuck us some stones. We very excitedly showed them to the surly man in the tavern. The surlier he got, the more bubbly we became. He gave us the task of getting a special reading from the fortune teller in the town square by showing her our stamped card. The fortune teller said she had to test our heart by reading our cards we picked. Mine was a key that said I was straightforward (haha) but one of my friends picked a snake. The fortune teller was kind of iffy about that. But then she noticed that my friend had accidentally picked two cards and said we could ignore that snake one. She told us the password to give to the guy in the tavern. We told it to him with flair. He gave each of us a hunter tarot card. We squeed in delight. I think this is where my Zelda instincts kicked in because I said, “Now that we are hunters, how do we help dispel the darkness?” He told us to give gold to Finley Nettleton. I asked how to get gold and he said in the town square.

Front and back of the second Evermore Lore Tarot Card we Got

Eavesdropping was useful because during our waiting in line and passing people on our quests, I had taken notes on how to get gold. They gave you gold if you became a squire. We went back to see the delightful Sir Duffy Doyle again. He gave us three tasks, two of which we had already done. Skill at ax throwing. Check. (Well, we sucked at it but we tried.) Test of bravery. Check. The last was a test of wit by making the witch laugh. We stood in a group until someone else told an actual good joke (ours were rubbish) and counted that as good enough. We kneeled and they knighted us and gave us a tiny rock of gold. I immediately asked the squire where to find Finley (I kept wanting to say his last name was Nettlebottom). He told me he was on the bridge by the mill. We went straight for Finley and I said, “The hunter told us to give you gold to help you.” I pulled out my tiny rock of gold and put it in his outstretched palm. So did my friends. He was touched by our kindness and to our delight, he gave us another tarot card.

We were so excited to have gotten two tarot cards that we immediately wanted more quests and went straight to the tavern. The hunter didn’t have any more quests for us though. We walked around talking to characters trying to find a new lead but it was getting late. The park was almost closed and we were tired anyway. My fitbit says we did at least 4 miles of walking. We left exhausted but happy and couldn’t stop talking about how much fun we had.

The swag we came home with from Evermore Park. Two tarot cards, the hunter quest card, and the passport.

If you want to learn more about this park, here are a few news articles about the opening of Evermore:

I want so badly to go back to the park and get those last two tarot cards, but I’m out of time and money. However, I am very happy with my two tarot cards and I’m so excited to see who becomes the Champion and all the details about it.

Dreams do come true!! I got to go to the season finale! Read all about it here.