Review of Evermore Park Continued: The Lore Season Finale

On my last review about Evermore Park, I said I wanted to go so bad one last time to finish my tarot card collection.  Dreams do come true!! I was able to get free tickets to the final day of the Lore story line on November 3, 2018 which I’m calling a season finale because it seems fitting.  They wrapped up a lot of the story lines in a big production and my experience was slightly different than the last two times because of that.

Lore Season Finale

I’ve learned my lesson from the first two times visiting Evermore Park that the quests for adults don’t really start until about 8 so my husband and I showed up at 7:30.  I asked the worker at the front where the passports were.  She said they were all out and that they were working on an app instead for the next season.  I hope that’s not true.  Make an app, by all means.  But an app doesn’t replace the passport any more than a video game replaces the entire park of Evermore.  This is essentially an analog video game and it needs analog support – tarot cards to collect, maps, quest cards to join the Hunter guild, actual nuggets of gold, trinkets to trade etc.  I had brought a notebook with me this time and I enjoyed putting my phone in my pocket, talking to people, and writing things down.  In fact, I noticed that most people did not have their phones out.  The only time I saw people using phones was to take pictures or videos or to look up cat videos to make Eppy the witch laugh or to use as a flashlight to see where they heck they were going on the incredibly dark paths.  No one was scrolling through Facebook while they were waiting in line to talk to a character.  They were talking to each other trying to come up with jokes or strategies or asking questions to the other people standing in line.  When was the last time you saw someone waiting in line not staring at their phone?  It was remarkable.  I don’t want to be dependent on an app while exploring the park.  Please bring back the passports or make a map!  If they made an Evermore notebook with a map and other information I would buy it so hard.  I’m not interested in their posters or unisex t-shirts (which, let’s face it, are just men’s t-shirts that have necks that are too high and sides that are too baggy for lots of women).  I’m glad I had brought my own notebook.  It was very helpful.

First item of business: get those last tarot cards.  This was my last chance.  If I’ve learned one thing, it’s ask the witches for help.  So we went straight to the town square and talked to Wyn Weaver the witch.  We asked her if she knew anyone that had cards.  She said Eppy, the other witch, did but you had to give her gold and they didn’t start handing out gold until 8.  There was a fire show starting so we stayed to watch it.  This time, it was a fire breather with a sword and a shield that he lit on fire.  It was different than the dancers we saw the first time but it was just as amazing.  It got over at 8 and who do we run into but Harriet the Ghost! Who has gold! We asked how we could get some and she said it was so early for gold.  She dug in her pockets and pulled out buttons, pins, lint, wrappers and finally found a piece of gold.  She said it was her only one.  I gave it to Eppy who gave me the Maiden tarot card.  Yay!!  She directed us to the bar maid to find leads on who else might have the last tarot card.

On the way there, my husband got a cookie and hot cocoa at one of the concession stands. That’s new this time as well.  Last time, the only concession stands were at the front of the park. It seems like there’s something new every time.  The tavern was very, very crowded.  My husband ate his snacks at the bar while I tried to squeeze in to get a word with the bar maid.  I pulled out my cards to to be ready to show her which ones I had.  While I was waiting, some very loud girls came in and said to the bar maid, “Give us a quest!”  The bar maid said curtly, “That’s not how it works.” The girls were taken aback and said, “This place sucks.” They left out the left door that leads to the entrance of the park, not the right where most people were going to see the rest of the town.  The bar maid looked visibly frustrated as she took a deep breath and braced herself against the bar.  She must get hundreds of frustrating questions every night and I felt bad for her.  Still, my sympathy was with the girls who had left.  If I was more outgoing, if I hadn’t researched anything online before I went, I might have said something similar.  I hate to think that I might have missed out on the magic of Evermore if someone had said that to me.  Maybe the girls were rude and deserved it.  But as I looked around the tavern, I saw another group of girls who looked nervous and lost.  They commented on my tarot cards and confided that they didn’t know what to do either.  They seemed reluctant to ask questions now in case they said the wrong thing as well and got a similar, terse response.  I gave them the only hints I had which was finding out about the darkness and trying to join the hunters since that was what I had done.  For some reason though, the hunters weren’t in the tavern and someone said they were in the town square.  It was a place to start at least.  I think that’s all people want.  The actors were now talking together behind the bar and my husband was done with his snacks, so we left.  Someone in the tavern had told us to look for the gatekeeper to ask about the tarot cards but he wasn’t there and the fairies didn’t know where he was, either.

I had watched all the champion contest videos online, and in some of them I saw other guild cards similar to the hunter one we got last time.  I didn’t know that you could join other groups besides the knights and hunters! With no more leads to go on, I decided to start there and see if we could join another group.  I knew that the acolytes were a group that hung out by the fountain (because we talked to them very briefly last time) so we headed there.  We found someone named Merit Sarchine (I’m terrible with names and spelling but that’s what my notes say so we will go with it. Apologies if I butchered that character’s name which I’m 99% sure I have).  The best opening I use with characters, now that I’ve gone 3 times, is asking their name and what they do like you would if you were really meeting someone for the first time.  This has gotten me the most information so far.  Obviously, the most information they know would be about themselves so it makes sense.  Merit said he was part of the Acolytes of the St. Michael order.  I asked what they did and he said they fight the darkness.  I was surprised because these guys wear ragged robes and skulls as masks and are kind of creepy. He was holding his mask so I pointed to it and asked why he had a creepy mask then.  He explained it was for protection against the darkness.  Without prompting, he told me how he had been rescued by the druids and only recently was back helping his order.  I’m pretty sure he was summarizing parts of the plot that had happened while I wasn’t there which I think is awesome.  It makes it feel like you haven’t missed anything even if you can’t come very often.  I asked if I could help him and he told me to bring gold as good faith for joining the order.  One last question. I pulled out my tarot cards and asked if he knew anything about them.  He told me they were coveted by the Champions of Evermore, but he didn’t know where any were.

My cousins had showed up by now and we met them while we were waiting to talk to Harriet for more gold.  I explained what we were doing and they wanted to get gold, too.  Harriet has you perform to get gold so my husband said he was going to sing Lucky by Britney Spears.  I was shocked.  The last time he sang that was over 10 years ago at a family dinner and his family has been begging him ever since to do it again but he always refuses.  Heck yes I got my camera out. I even got some footage of Harriet smiling for a second before she put on her polite, attentive face again.  She said she felt bad for poor Lucky, whoever she was.  My husband got a lot of applause.  I sang a camp song about underwear.  The important thing is, we both got gold.  We separated from my cousins here because they had never been and they wanted to tour the whole park.  We told them to meet us at the fountain.

If we gave Merit the Acolyte three pieces of gold, he promised us privileged information.  We only needed one more piece so we decided to talk to the knights.  If you had already become a knight, he would give you gold if you got him an anti-hex charm from the fairies.  The fairies told us anything could be an anti-hex charm if the witch Wyn Weaver cast a spell on it.  So we each grabbed a rock and took it to the witch.  We watched as Wyn asked people why she should make an anti-hex charm for Sir Duffy Doyle since she likes hexing him.  Some people lied and said it wasn’t for Duffy (she didn’t believe them and their conversations were long).  Some people simply begged or refused to leave until she helped them (these conversations were also long).  I said, “What if I promise to make fun of his hat?” She looked at me for a second and said, “All right.” And she traded each of our rocks for a new one. We gave it to Sir Duffy and I said that she would only give it to me if I said his tea kettle hat was stupid.  He did a double take at me.  I immediately said I was sorry.  He asked if he knighted me and I said yes.  He said that rule number 6 of being a knight was always being loyal.  He muttered something about his hat not being stupid and talked to some other people.  I’m so sorry Sir Duffy!! I hope you forgive me!  I didn’t really think your hat was stupid.  He’s definitely my favorite character in the park.  I wish I had said that the witch told me to tell him his hat was stupid but I would never do that because I love his hat!! Oh well.

We gave our three pieces of gold to Merit and he told us the secret information.  It was this: that gold and magic are close together and have to do with the portals.  Wickham and the dragon trainer knew more details.  I realized as we were walking to see the dragon trainer that he hadn’t given us the second task to join his order.  We decided to get the information from the dragon lady first and then tell him the info and ask for the other task at the same time.  The dragon lady told us about how gold creates a connection to magic and dragons hoard it because of this.

We told this info to Merit.  He told us about the Fae King’s power being cut off, some of the druids breaking away, that the Fae King brought the darkness and we needed to find out from Wyn Weaver what her intentions were with the portal for our second task.  She seemed confused by this question and said she closed the portal last night but would leave the other ones alone.  Our last task was checking the progress of Thurgood for making the cure.  He said the elements are more effective when they work together.  Someone asked if Finley was still infected and he said yes.  When they asked how to help, he said to strengthen the forces fighting the darkness.  When we told this to Merit, he gave us the secret hand symbol for the acolytes and invited us to join in a ceremony to help fight the darkness later that night around 10:30.  Pretty cool, but sadly no tarot card.  I liked that his tasks were about information gathering so I could learn more about the story and what was going on.

I decided to go back to the tavern to see if I could get a lead on the last tarot card.  It wasn’t crazy busy now and I pulled out my cards to show the bar maid.  She looked at them carefully and asked if I had seen the gatekeeper.  I said no.  I had forgotten about him! He was finally there at the gate.  We gave him our last piece of gold and he gave me the last tarot card – the Con Man.  Huzzah!!!  My cousin had met up with us at this point and the gatekeeper asked her to give a trinket bag to Harriet the Ghost and tell her he would make his decision at 11 pm.  Luckily, Harriet walked by right then and we found out that they were in love.

With nothing left to do, we decided to join the last guild which was the druids.  To join, you are supposed to get a new name from the Fae King which I had already done last time.  He gave us a guild card but there was nothing more to do.

We went back to the fountain because it was getting close to the time of the ceremony with the acolytes.  While we were waiting at the fountain, Briggy the Imp came by.  She demanded gold from us.  I told her we had spent all our gold and she said she didn’t believe me.  I pulled out my gloves and said that was all I had in my pockets.  She motioned for me to give them to her.  I laughed and said she couldn’t have them.  She asked why I offered them if I wasn’t going to give them.  I said I hadn’t offered them, I was just showing that I didn’t have gold.  She responded that she didn’t want gold, she wanted gloves.  So I gave them to her.  The look of stunned silence on her face was worth it.  She really did take them and didn’t give them back. Haha!  I wasn’t too sad.  They had only cost $1 anyway.

For the ceremony, they handed out gold to everyone and told them to make a symbol and repeat a chant.  The chant was complicated and I ended up saying “wkdjflksjdlfs-MA!”  They had given my husband a pile of gold to hand out to people but he couldn’t find enough people to give it to. He gave most of it back but held on to one piece to get a tarot card for himself from the witch.

They told us there was something going on in the town center where the Fae King was.  We got to see the champions convince the druids that the Fae King was infected with darkness and to get rid of it instead of serve it.  The champions joined as well as other characters from around the park.  They had a ceremony where everyone in the audience passed up their gold to banish the darkness and the champions held a stick.  The leader of the ceremony had a horned mask and his accent sounded just like Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Someone in the audience on the other side was blowing bubbles. They succeeded in banishing the darkness from the Fae King and he spoke in a normal voice instead of his creepy one.  He said something about how he felt different now that the darkness was gone.  Someone in the crowd shouted, “Can we get new names?”  HAHA! This is what makes this more than a play you are watching.  The audience influences and changes what the actors say because the Fae King responded that he now remembered that he had been so rude to all of us and he would now call all of us Bibbles.  Oh my gosh I love it.

Video of the Evermore Lore Final Ceremony

If the video isn’t working below, click here for my recording of the Evermore Lore Finale.

They told us there was something happening in old town now when the ceremony was over. When we got there, all we could see were people waiting to watch the fire dance.  We were on our way to ax throwing since it looked like there wouldn’t be a line now when I heard a bag of coins make noise from a nearby goblin.

I stopped in my tracks. “What’s that jangly noise I hear?”

The goblin looked guilty and said, “Nothing.”

“Is it coins?” I said.

“Maybe.”

“How do I get one?”

The world-walker who was talking to the goblin said he trades coins for metal gears from the antique lady.  Oooh I want a coin.  The antique lady says she wants a dragon scale.  The dragon lady didn’t have her dragon, but instead she had a dragon egg.  My first reaction was, “Ooooh is that a dragon egg?”  She said yes and told us all about it.  After a while, I started to forget a little that none of this was real.  I asked if I could have a dragon scale.  She asked me what for.  I said I liked collecting things from Evermore (which is true. What until you see my trinket bag).  That satisfied her suspicions and she gave me one.  The antique lady turned so the dragon lady couldn’t see (I guess they don’t like each other) and she gave me a key for the dragon scale.  My cousin wanted to keep the dragon scale as well and she sang a song for it and the antique lady let her keep both.  As we were going to talk to the goblin, he told us something was happening at the square and we should go see. (By the way, I really appreciated the characters taking the time direct us to important events around the park.  It helped us be involved and not miss anything).

A crowd gathered around a satyr.  I think.  I wasn’t familiar with this story line but everyone was happy he was found (I guess he was lost?) and he said something about there being something else out there that we should be worried about.  The only reason I could see anything at all was because someone was recording with their cell phone with their light on (which is normally annoying but in this case I was grateful for them).  Someone holding a lantern would have been extremely helpful.  This felt like a cliff hanger for the Christmas season.  Pretty cool.

We went back to the goblin who told us that he was all out of coins.  Aw dang.  We showed him the key we had traded for and he encouraged us to keep it as a souvenir.  (I did end up getting a coin.  We found one in the dirt on the way out).

It was almost park closing by now.  We passed Harriet the Ghost and Riley the gatekeeper standing next to each other on the way out.  My cousin stopped to ask if anything had happened between them.  They said it was about too.  Squee!!! I got out my phone and recorded the whole exchange.  It was so dark, though, that it’s more like an audio recording.  He got down on one knee and told her he loved her.  She gave him a poison apple to eat so he could die and join her.  He munched on one of the caramel apples from the concessions stands that looked just like the poison apple from Snow White.  She told him to hurry. He said it was a lot of caramel to go through.  He ate half and said he felt different.  Perhaps he was half dead.  Can they touch? Yes they can! So he kissed her.  They said they didn’t know what they would do now. My cousin said, “Kiss her!”  To which the gatekeeper responded, “I just did!”  They left.  We turned to go into the tavern but the lady said the park was closed.  Awwwww.

Riley Proposes to Harriet

If the video below isn’t working, click this link.

We watched the Fae King again on the way out.  People were asking for new names now that he wasn’t evil.  Someone said they were good at sleeping so he called them Cloud.  Someone else said they weren’t good at anything.  The Fae King said,  “That’s not true! That’s a lie.  You’re good at things. You know what you are good at? Lying.  I’ll call you Fibber.”  I wondered if the actor playing the Fae King was expecting people to keep asking for names now.  He seemed delighted and surprised when anyone asked.  Just another lovely side effect of the improv nature of everything I suppose.  A guy commented that the Fae King looked much better now.  The Fae King said he thought he still looked scary, actually.  That’s true, the guy said, but he did sound better.  Then he asked what his name was.  The Fae King’s real name is Caderyn.  I loved that there was a happy ending to the story and that it came about from all the guilds working together.  What a great message.

As we were walking towards the car, I could swear I heard tons of cheering coming from the tavern.  What did I miss? And now, as I’m writing this post, I’m kicking myself that I didn’t get a new name from the Fae King when he wasn’t evil and I didn’t record anything of him talking in his new, not-creepy voice to compare with my other creepy voice video.  I did see a videographer following the Champions around as they went on their exclusive quest and also recording the final ceremony.  If they post it online, I will definitely update this post with links.

I’m really excited to go to the Christmas season story which they are calling Aurora.  Would you guys be interested in another detailed write up about Aurora when it starts in a few weeks? Let me know! Leave a comment or contact me on Instagram where I spend most of my time.

UPDATE: I wrote about my first visit to Aurora here.