Aurora at Evermore Park: Part 2 – New Year’s Eve Party and Decoding Secret Messages

I’ve been to Evermore Park a total of 8 times, 5 of them just in the Aurora season. A big part of the experience for me is actually sitting down and blogging about what I did. It took me a while to figure out why. As I was leaving the park the last time I was there, I noticed the sign at the front that says “Enter the story.” And I realized blogging about Evermore Park is important to me because I’m not there to figure out the story of every single character there. I’m there to write my own story. So here’s the second recap of the Aurora season at Evermore Park. You can read part 1 here.

New Year’s Eve

I convinced my aunt to go to the New Year’s Eve party at Evermore Park and get the VIP tickets which came with food, exclusive quests, and access to special areas. She had seen a post of mine on Facebook with me and my son singing with the dwarves and she said she wanted to come.

Singing with Dwarves

Click here if the movie below isn’t working.

We got there early and were one of the first people to get our picture taken and into the VIP area. We had to walk all the way to the end of the park to get into the VIP area. Paths that I was used to taking as shortcuts were fenced off and we did even more walking at “Exercise-More” than I usually do (thankfully they opened a gate at the front of the park by the end of the night to increase access to the VIP area but I wish they had done it sooner!).

The first thing we did was eat food at the Burrows, which is where the dwarves live. My aunt was unsure if the food was just decoration or edible because it was gorgeously presented.

They had champagne cupcakes with rose frosting, ginger truffles with glitter, macaroons, egg nog pudding, and shortbread cookies with edible flower petals. They also had a cheese and charcuterie tray. The food was excellent. To my delight, there was tons of food that I could eat on my low FODMAP diet. I wish there had been water to drink, though. There were drinks to buy but because of my diet, I can only drink water. Also, you had to leave the VIP area to even get a drink. They had drinking fountains, but because of the fenced off area it was hard to get to.

After stuffing our face with lots of cookies and cupcakes and delicious meats, we went to the mausoleum to start our quests. We saw the Lady General Drifa storm off when a world-walker (the Evermore term for people who don’t work there) asked about her brother. The poor guy who asked the question looked as awkward as I felt. Since the other guy in the room went after her, there was no one to talk to so we left.

We decided to leave the VIP area and do some questing in the town square. As we were exiting, my aunt noticed the coloring table and she said she wanted to color. “What?!” I said. “We have questing to do!” She reluctantly followed me. I feel bad about that now. We could have stopped and colored. If she ever decides to come with me again, I’ll make sure we color. :)

We met the rat catcher in the town square. He wanted ideas of humane ways to catch rats to feed them to the animals that live there. Someone used my notebook and pen to draw a sticky rat trap which the rat catcher thought was very clever. He gave us both gold since the guy who came up with the idea used my notebook. Then we went to the bird and reptile show at 10 pm. After the bird show, we watched the fire dancers.

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After the fire dancers, we went to the town square again to talk to Wickham since it was an item on our scavenger hunt paper. I eavesdropped on a conversation between him and some advanced world-walkers. Wickham talked about working with portals. When one opens it expands and needs to recharge. Something about Pooka and a general. And Jakool?? Something something happening at the Fallen Alter. This all sounds very important. When their conversation was over, they all looked at me holding my little notebook. I felt like a spy who had been caught red-handed. But they commented how much I must know with my notebook. I laughed and explained that I didn’t understand a word they just said, but I wrote it all down. Wickham kindly gave me a recap of what happened since the Lore season. He knew the Fae King. The Fae King was a character from Lore that everyone helped save from a curse of darkness but he still looks scary so they are trying to return him to his normal form. The Light Elves are healers and are using silver to try and help the Fae King.

One of our quests was to explain something from our world to a resident of Evermore. Since it was freezing that night (in the low 20s I believe), we wanted to find a character inside a building. We decided to talk to the executioner’s apprentice named Sedric. But as he’s waiting for us to explain something, we couldn’t think of anything. After a very long and awkward pause, he kindly prompted us by asking what we did. I said I teach piano but he already knew about pianos. My aunt mentioned cars but our jumbled explanation of gas and pistons and wheels “didn’t make any sense whatsoever.” I told him that all I do is put a key in, turn it on and put gas in it when it runs out. “So magic then!” Pretty much. Magic is how we explained computers and the internet, too. I’m pretty sure he didn’t learn anything about our world, but it was a hilarious conversation.

Next on our quest list was finding the historian. We passed a crowd and I wanted to stop and watch but my aunt wasn’t interested. They recorded the exchange on facebook. They were asking the Queen why it’s so cold. She said it’s because the relationships in town are cold and we need to help spread warmth among them.

We found the historian by a fire pit. Her name was Gudrun. She liked the hand warmers I had put on the top of my shoes. She told me that there are no years in Evermore, only seasons. The portals confuse time and it makes keeping records difficult. She also doesn’t get along with the executioner (this seems like a random fact but I’ve read enough books to pick up on foreshadowing when I see it. This random fact might be important later).

We finally got to talk to Briggy the Imp in the tavern. We kept running into her all night but she stalked off before we could talk to her. We asked if she would take a picture with us. She asked what we would give her in exchange. I said, “All I have is kleenex.” She said I must be poor. I said yep! And then we got a hilarious picture of her.

Time had flown by so fast that we didn’t realize it was almost midnight. We grabbed a sparkler and ran for the fountain where every one was gathered to watch the fireworks. It was an awesome fireworks show.

As we were leaving, we saw the goblin that we had wanted to talk to all night. Every time we saw him we were on the wrong side of the fence. He was on the other side of the fence this time as well, but because a bunch of people were following him we were able to run and catch up to him. We followed the goblin to old town where the tents were. There was a DJ and loud music. The goblin even asked us if we wanted to dance. We jumped around a bit and that helped warm us up, but neither of us knew how to dance.

Dancing with a Goblin

If the video doesn’t work, click here.

On our way out, I remembered that the invite to the New Year’s Eve party said that a character would give us a New Year’s Resolution. We went to the tavern to find someone to give us a resolution and who did we see but Sedric the executioner’s apprentice! He said our resolution should be “to learn about cars since you two don’t seem to know what the hell is going on in your world.” HAHA!!! We both laughed pretty hard at that. We were also impressed that he had remembered us.

We both got a jingle bell near the exit for finishing our scavenger hunt.

My aunt said it was the nerdiest thing she’s ever done but it was the best New Year’s Eve she has ever had. Same here :)

Decoding Secret Messages

Since I had taken my middle son on an outing with me to Evermore Park, my oldest son wanted to go, too. He wasn’t interested in ice skating but luckily we went on the weekend where they had a brand new quest to go on: decoding secret messages that had popped up around town. I was crazy excited for it!!

Our first stop was at the concessions stand because they had exclusive new food this weekend and we came hungry just to try it. I got the pastrami rolls and my son got the potato bacon soup in a bread bowl. They were both delicious.

The second we were done eating, we wanted to find and decode those messages. We went around the park and took photos of all the messages we could find. There was one in the tavern, one in the burrows, one in the ruins, and one in the catacombs.

There was a decoder wheel in the mausoleum. We started decoding our message based on where the wheel was at already but it was gibberish and Jakull, the general in the mausoleum, said you had to move it on your own to the correct symbol. It was so big we didn’t even realize it could move! Cool!

Since we couldn’t figure out the messages with the symbols we decided to try decoding the messages with numbers.

Someone had told us there was a number decoder wheel in the tent in Old Town. We were able to figure out the number code for the tavern after some experimenting. We noticed that the letter E was black and we used that as they key to our cipher. (I won’t post the solutions to the coded messages in this post. I plan to go to the finale on February 2 and I will post the solutions then so I don’t spoil anyone.) UPDATE: Evermore itself posted a video and it has all the solutions to these messages! Click here if you want to watch it. And the word compromised that they speculate about?! I said that!!!!! This is so crazy!!!

We were still stumped on the messages with the symbols, so we went back to the mausoleum. And then my son noticed something. The message in the burrows was a clue and he showed me how it made one symbol on the wheel. We flipped the letter E to that symbol and we were able to decode one of the messages with the symbols. Jakull asked us how we knew to flip the wheel there. We showed him the clue and he asked how we knew to line the letter E up with that symbol. We said that the letter E looked like the key because it was the only black letter.

As we were solving the last message, it got the attention the Syndicate, who are a group of people who come all the time and work together. They were so impressed with my son figuring out the symbol that they called him a genius. He beamed with pride. Then, with everyone watching, my son also figured out the last code. The clue at the bottom of the message in the ruins said “The End of Silence in the Beginning” but the I in beginning was a symbol instead. All the adults noticed that of course, but we were all matching that symbol to I. My son insisted that we match that symbol to E. Turns out he was right. At first, my son got two of the letters mixed up and Jakull told us to be careful and make sure we looked at the symbols correctly since a lot of them look the same. This was when I got the feeling that Jakull actually did know the answer but he wasn’t going to tell anyone. Whenever you asked him about the messages, he would say he didn’t know anything about them.

The syndicate said they wanted to follow “the genius,” meaning my son, to the tent to get our prize. As we were leaving, Jakull came up to us and asked our names. We told him and he said he would have to remember this. I said, “Why? Are we the first ones to solve it?” And he said yes. Oh my gosh!! How cool!! I couldn’t have done it without my very clever son. I was impressed with his code breaking skills. He was the one who figured out the clues and I just showed him how to use the decoder wheels.

When we got to the tent, we told the lady the secret messages and asked for our prize. She didn’t know what to do. She had to check with someone that we had actually solved it. We had only been there 2 1/2 hours. I wondered while we were waiting if they had expected it to take longer than that. I had promised my son a coin if we finished the quest of decoding the messages so I bought him one while we waited but he kept saying he was hungry, so we left before we had gotten our prize. We had cupcakes and gingerbread cookies. They were so good. The prize ended up being a coupon which was nice but I had already bought everything I wanted for the night. I could use it later. Or hoard it like I do with all the other stuff I get here. I’ll probably hoard it.

After we got our prize, we went the the Burrows to make lanterns for Suds the tavern keeper to cheer him up. We decorated a paper bag so it was more like luminaries than lanterns but it was still a lot of fun.

My son was tired and wanted to go home at this point. I didn’t want to go home yet so I convinced him to rest at the tavern and play chess with me. While we were playing chess, the executioner tried to cheer Suds up since during the Lore season the girl he loved got locked on the other side of the portal. So the executioner was trying to set him up on a date. I only overheard things but I think it made it even funnier. The best moment was when Elinore introduced herself and said she tied bows. There was a long awkward pause and I could just imagine the look on his face being something like, That’s a real job? Seriously? but finally the executioner said, “How creative!! She can…..tie something up in your life! What a connection!” Haha! There was a huge uproar of laughter from the crowd.

I like the scenes around town. It makes it feel like a play but an interactive one. Some of the people the executioner was setting Suds up with were actually world-walkers that didn’t know exactly what they had volunteered for.

During our game of chess, the town drunk came by and put a wager on our game. He said whoever won could keep the gold piece. I was pretty excited when I won. My son usually beats me. But I gave him the gold piece for his Evermore treasure collection.

I wanted to do a few scavenger hunt things and one was to teach someone something from our world. I was delighted when my son picked Sedric, the executioner’s apprentice. My son is learning about atoms and molecules in school and he wanted to explain it. He said, “Atoms are tiny things that make up everything else.” Sedric said, “I saw this here cup made by a blacksmith and he wasn’t named Adam.” Haha! My son was patient and explained elements and molecules until he said he understood it. I said, “Did he do a better job explaining atoms than I did cars?” Sedric said, “That was you was it?” and he laughed. “Yes indeed he did.”

During our conversation with the executioner’s apprentice, a boy came up to him and gave him a coin. In exchange, Sedric gave him some blue salt. That’s intriguing. I asked the boy where he got the coin and he said he overheard in town that if you said “Bellahomy” to the dwarves they would give you a coin. Sounds like a quest to me. In fact, we went on this quest the next day when I went with my friends but when I asked the dwarves about “Bellahomy” they said they had never heard of it. They know that people share information online and often what works one day won’t work the next. Luckily, we had talked to someone in town and we knew what the phrase was for that day but that’s another story (which I’ll write about it in part 3;).

I wanted to find out about this blue salt quest, but my son was tired so we decided to leave. On our way out, we walked by the luminaries that they had set up. My son wanted to find his but when I turned around and saw that they had lined all the paths in the park, I realized there must be hundreds of them. “Uh….that will probably take too long.” We walked by Greebly the goblin. He’s the goblin with the presents on his back. He was kicking over the luminaries and some girls were asking him to stop. “You were kicking it over! I saw!” Greebly said, “I was not! I was….adjusting it. Yeah!” I love this place.

Check back soon for part 3. Girls night! And we almost got engaged to a dwarf plus more!

Featured Image: Copyright Evermore.com – this is a picture of an ice sculpture in the park. All other photos and videos are taken by me.

If you want to read more about Evermore Park, you can read my other recap posts here (in chronological order):

• Lore Part 1
• Lore Part 2
• Aurora Part 1
• *This Post: Aurora Part 2
• Aurora Part 3