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There’s a Brexit Escape Room in Manchester and it’s scarily realistic
Leave or Remain?
Whichever side of the Brexit debate you’re on, the one thing I think we can all be united in is the fact that the whole process has been a complete unremitting disaster, which has not only divided the country, but also made us an international laughing stock. Merry Christmas!
With much of the debate just seeming to centre around people on both sides trying to shout or condescend their opinion into the brains of people with a differing view, a bit of a light-hearted escape from the whole thing sounded fun to me. An escape room, to be more precise.
Alternate Escapes, one of the residents at the new Pollard Yard, located on Pollard Street next to Wellington Mill – a hub for creative independent businesses housed in repurposed shipping containers, run by a company called Meanwhile Creative – offers themed escape room challenges. The current theme is The Battle of Brexit and there are new themes in the pipeline for 2020.
Ben Fowler, the man behind Alternate Escapes, explains: “The escape room is about giving people the chance to take a fairly exhausting, serious topic, and enjoy it in a far more light-hearted and satirical way”.
Before you start you have to pick a side: Remain or Leave. We picked Remain, and you have a quick introduction in a separate cabin to go over the rules.
The set up being that our host is our campaign manager, and he has surreptitiously gained access to our rivals HQ for a short time and in the true spirit of real life Brexit, our objective is to try and gather sensitive, confidential information to besmirch our rivals by seeding their grubby secrets out to the press.
It’s not really a case of escaping per se, but if you get all the secret documents, you succeed in destroying your rivals credibility, and ultimately win your chosen Brexit outcome. Or you fail, and they win.
It was at this moment I made a decision. When I was younger, if there was a big football game approaching, I’d often play the game virtually on Fifa beforehand, deciding that whatever the outcome on Fifa would be the outcome in real life in some sort of inexplicable cosmic quirk, with myself at the centre of the universe.
That’s what I decided would happen with Brexit, 100%, without question. Whatever happened in our Battle of Brexit escape room would manifest in real life.
Naturally, being an escape room, they haven’t made it easy. In order to get our hands on confidential documents we have to work out access to various cupboards, drawers, cabinets, lockers and rooms by following a series of cryptic clues dotted around, with our campaign manager watching over from our HQ and able to provide clues on a screen occasionally, for which you’re notified by a little gong sound.
One such gong during our session was to dissuade one of our team Danny from trying to hack into a tablet, which we weren’t quite ready to use at that stage as we hadn’t discovered the clue to do so yet.
While Danny didn’t quite manage to hack into the rival’s profile, he did somehow manage to log out of it completely and, impressively, hack in to the Alternate Escapes chap’s girlfriend’s personal profile, which we quickly were notified wasn’t part of our game, leaving us having to un-hack and re-hack back in when we were ready. It was some serious espionage.
I’ve done a couple of escape rooms before, with mixed success and experiences, and this one was well put together, good fun, and actually quite tough. It’s a simple-looking layout at first, but the complexity of it builds out as the game progresses.
We had waves of being pretty prolific, then hitting a roadblock, with each new discovery greeted with a collective cheer. With actual seconds to spare, we managed to get the last clue and succeed in getting all documents, meaning that we won.
Therefore, the cosmos has spoken, the outcome of Brexit will be Remain.
Then again, if the universe was as aligned around me as I like to think, England would have won every major football tournament since about 1998 based purely on my Fifa endeavours, so I won’t hold my breath.
To find out more info visit the website here.
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Huge ’80s vs ’90s music festival featuring Vengaboys, 911, Five and more coming to Manchester
The ultimate event for pop music nostalgia
All your favourite music acts from the ’80s and ’90s are set to make an epic comeback at a new music festival here in Manchester.
Now, there’s no disputing that the music born from these two decades is perhaps the best and most iconic the world has to offer – so the idea of an entire music festival built upon it sounds a little too good to be true, doesn’t it?
The ‘80s V ’90s Festival will be taking over the Bowlers Exhibition Centre where a number of iconic acts from the (you guessed it) 1980s and 1990s will be going head-to-head to put on the show of your lives.
Bowlers Manchester / Facebook
Nostalgic artists confirmed for the line up include the Vengaboys, Five, Limahal, Chesney Hawkes, 911, Lee Latchford Evans, Andi Peters, Samantha Fox and Gary Davies.
Throughout the event, guests will be able to meet and greet the artists, so make sure you get an old school poster ready to sign for those real ’80s and ’90s vibes.
And this line up isn’t the only blast from the past in store for the event – there will also be a number of vendors in attendance who will be selling retro garms and goods.
@vengaboys / Instagram
Sound good?
Well, luckily for you tickets are on sale now! To buy your own, head here.
The festival will be taking place at the Bowlers Exhibition Centre on Saturday January 29th, 2022 between 2pm – 11pm. All guests must provide valid ID proving they are over the age of eighteen.
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You can now spend the night at a haunted museum sleeping in a bodybag
This experience is not for the faint-hearted…
Calling all horror fans: You can now spend the night sleeping in a bodybag in an actual haunted museum.
Held at the Haunted Museum and Spirit Shop Stoke in Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent, the popular Ghost Hunters of Stoke team will be giving keen ghost-hunters the opportunity to partake in their very own ghost hunt.
They are offering visitors guided tours, tarot card readings, a seance and spirit board sessions and haunted sleepovers – with the chance to sleep in an actual bodybag, too.
Ghost Hunters of Stoke on Trent / Facebook
The museum boasts ghostly artefacts from all over the world, including a poltergeist mirror containing the spirit of a ‘little girl and a shadow person’ and a replica of the famous Annabelle Doll.
Business owners and long-time ghost hunters Craig Longson and Jason Dean wanted to create somewhere that could put Stoke-on-Trent on the map as a paranormal destination.
Craig told Stoke on Trent Live: “I’ve always wanted to open something like this… We took on the building five weeks ago, and a lot of hard work has gone into turning it into what you see now. We want to give people the wow factor.
“Whether you’re part of an investigations team, or a member of the public, there will always be team members on hand to help. We’ve got the most advanced equipment from all across the world, so we can give everyone the ultimate experience, all under one roof.”
Ghost Hunters of Stoke on Trent / Facebook
Lead investigator Justine Farley also added: “With the space that we’ve got, we’ve got the opportunity to change things up quite regularly, if we want to. As we get new artefacts, we can move things around and add new things. Our team have also got such unique ideas so we can keep things fresh.”
And for any skeptics out there, the ghost hunters themselves claim to have witnessed genuine paranormal activity in the building. Craig said: “Occasionally… It depends what happens. If you’re in a pitch black room and you see something or feel something.”
Justine added: “We’ve all felt that shiver from the top of your head, all the way down to your toes. When we’ve witnessed things like the pram moving on our live video, it made us all go completely cold. It’s a heavy pram, with metal wheels. Witnessing something like that is just amazing.”
You can find out more about The Haunted Museum and Spirit Shop on Facebook, and also keep up to date with the latest investigations from Ghost Hunters of Stoke-on-Trent on Facebook and YouTube.
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The Cube Live Experience is coming to the Arndale if you’re up to the challenge
Know anyone who could take this on?
A live experience version of the hit ITV gameshow The Cube is set to land at Manchester’s Arndale, new plans have revealed today.
First airing back in 2009, The Cube sees contestants complete a variety of physically and mentally challenging tasks from within a 4m × 4m × 4m perspex cube in order to win a top prize of £250,000.
The show has proven to be a huge hit among viewers at home and now, they will get the chance to compete in the famed cube themselves.
Urban Playground
Urban Playground, the entertainment complex nestled within the Arndale, has announced that The Cube Live Experience will be coming to the shopping centre for guests to partake in their very own gameshow.
The Cube Live will feature a whole array of the most popular games and challenges from the original TV series, and will allow teams of up to four to compete as both single and two players.
According to Urban Playground, participants will have to ‘overcome extreme nerves and intense pressure’ to take on the ‘deceptively simple’ tasks.
Urban Playground
The Cube Live will also come with its very own Cube Bar for participants to enjoy a celebratory drink after their challenge (or one to soften the blow of being defeated by a Cube, in some instances.)
While it is known that The Cube Live Experience will definitely be located in the Arndale, further details surrounding the exact location and opening date are yet to be revealed.
But to be the first to hear news and updates on the opening date and ticket sales, register your interest here.
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