Author Topic: Amazing West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?  (Read 2523 times)

Offline chocolateshake

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Has anyone seen the coverage of the amazing West World offsite at SXSW? It's like what they had at comic-con last year times 10. Any hope they will bring it to comic-con this year?
« Last Edit: March 14, 2018, 05:24:54 PM by chocolateshake »

Offline mark

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Re: Amazon West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #1 on: March 14, 2018, 01:50:19 PM »
Sounds incredible, but probably more than they could pull off in San Diego? The same agency was part of the Blade Runner 2049 and the Expanse escape room experiences at SDCC last year (we didn't do the escape room but the Blade Runner offsite was really well done) so maybe there's hope for something similar but smaller in scale?

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Offline Angology

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Re: Amazon West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #2 on: March 14, 2018, 03:27:17 PM »
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Has anyone seen the coverage of the amazing West World offsite at SXSW? It's like what they had at comic-con last year times 10. Any hope they will bring it to comic-con this year?
I actually went to it-it was amazing. I am not sure if San Diego has a place for it. It was set up about 30 minutes from town, and there was already a ghost town that is used for other events there, so there was not a lot to build up. Being California, there is a good possibility that something might exist (but it would probably be something closer to LA for movie purposes).

Here's my favorite pic from the experience. I need to go through the other pictures I took and organize them and post them.

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Offline darlenealderson

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Re: Amazon West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #3 on: March 14, 2018, 04:52:20 PM »
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Sounds incredible, but probably more than they could pull off in San Diego? The same agency was part of the Blade Runner 2049 and the Expanse escape room experiences at SDCC last year (we didn't do the escape room but the Blade Runner offsite was really well done) so maybe there's hope for something similar but smaller in scale?

The escape room was super fun!

Offline mark

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Re: Amazon West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #4 on: March 14, 2018, 05:05:36 PM »
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Offline chocolateshake

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Re: Amazon West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #5 on: March 14, 2018, 05:34:24 PM »
I fixed the title. I guess I'm so used to typing Amazon that it came out even though I intended to type Amazing.

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I actually went to it-it was amazing. I am not sure if San Diego has a place for it.

There's a place very close to the convention center. It's called San Diego. ;) The original town of San Diego is not that far from the convention center. If you have ever taken the trolley or the comic-con buses to the hotels in Fashion Valley then you have gone right by it. It's the original western town that was San Diego. It's a state park and is fully commercialized as a tourist attraction. It definitely has a Spanish flair to the architecture so would not be a good stand in for Sweetwater but there was that Spanish town later on in the series. It would be perfect for that.

Cost maybe prohibitive since there are ongoing businesses in all the buildings and thus renting them out for a multi-day event would cost a lot. But there is a large restaurant there in a period Spanish architecture building with compound that would be perfect for a set piece.

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« Last Edit: March 14, 2018, 05:38:02 PM by chocolateshake »

Offline Angology

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Re: Amazon West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #6 on: March 15, 2018, 07:45:49 AM »
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I fixed the title. I guess I'm so used to typing Amazon that it came out even though I intended to type Amazing.

There's a place very close to the convention center. It's called San Diego. ;) The original town of San Diego is not that far from the convention center. If you have ever taken the trolley or the comic-con buses to the hotels in Fashion Valley then you have gone right by it. It's the original western town that was San Diego. It's a state park and is fully commercialized as a tourist attraction. It definitely has a Spanish flair to the architecture so would not be a good stand in for Sweetwater but there was that Spanish town later on in the series. It would be perfect for that.

Cost maybe prohibitive since there are ongoing businesses in all the buildings and thus renting them out for a multi-day event would cost a lot. But there is a large restaurant there in a period Spanish architecture building with compound that would be perfect for a set piece.

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I had a feeling there might be something like that around. I figured someone here would know. :)
The ghost town they used in Austin is empty buildings, so that made it a bit easier. I wonder if businesses would want to abandon their stores while there are so many visitors in town? Are they established stores, or more like booths? Either way, it does sound pretty perfect. Although, it might be a timing issue. The season will probably be over by the time SDCC rolls around, and who knows when the next season might be. I figure that's why there was no Mr. Robot presence at SXSW-the next season is just too far off. I was hoping they would do the eCorp thing here in Austin, but no such luck.

Fingers crossed that they do the Westworld experience in San Diego. I would love for some of you to experience it. It was amazing!
Ang

Offline Mel

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Re: Amazon West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #7 on: March 15, 2018, 10:04:09 AM »
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I had a feeling there might be something like that around. I figured someone here would know. :)
The ghost town they used in Austin is empty buildings, so that made it a bit easier. I wonder if businesses would want to abandon their stores while there are so many visitors in town? Are they established stores, or more like booths? Either way, it does sound pretty perfect. Although, it might be a timing issue. The season will probably be over by the time SDCC rolls around, and who knows when the next season might be. I figure that's why there was no Mr. Robot presence at SXSW-the next season is just too far off. I was hoping they would do the eCorp thing here in Austin, but no such luck.

Fingers crossed that they do the Westworld experience in San Diego. I would love for some of you to experience it. It was amazing!

Old Town is a State Park, so most of the buildings are pretty empty and meant for you to walk through and see what they were like back then. There's a jail, wells fargo, blacksmith and such and then some of them do have shops in them like candy shop, candle shop, coffee and tea shop. I think they could definitely pull it off b/c the whole place is set up like a functioning small town just like Westworld with people (not synths) paid to walk around in period costumes, but there's the matter of it being a State Park, that probably would throw a hitch into the possibilities, though it's managed by a company paid by the state to run it, so who knows!
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Offline chocolateshake

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Re: Amazon West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #8 on: March 15, 2018, 10:15:10 AM »
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Are they established stores, or more like booths?

They are established businesses. I think Old Town state park is the most visited state park in California. For example the period hotel there is still a working hotel after all this time. The bank building is the Wells Fargo museum. There are a ton of restaurants and mostly gift shops fill up the rest. Even if HBO just rented out one of the bigger restaurants as the main set piece and used the outside space at Old Town without people going into the buildings, it has that western town open space with wooden sidewalks, then I think it would be pretty amazing. Old town already has actors about re-enacting things. They could just sign those people up for additional shifts.

I don't think it's unusual to have events there. People put on concerts there. Parks can be rented out. Companies up in San Francisco rent out Alcatraz all the time for corporate events.

Offline chocolateshake

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Re: Amazing West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #9 on: March 15, 2018, 12:38:30 PM »
Another option for a site is there's a large train museum about 30 mins east of San Diego. It's so large that they have working rail lines where you can pay to be an engineer and  operate a train. The original building for the train stop is still there in addition to other buildings. Closer in, 15-20 mins, there is another original train stop building with a steam locomotive, freight car and caboose parked outside. Either one would make a decent set piece for the opening scene in West World.

Offline chaosdreamer

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Re: Amazing West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #10 on: March 15, 2018, 02:10:32 PM »
::shudder:: How creepy would it be if they used the Whaley House...

Offline Angology

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Re: Amazing West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #11 on: March 15, 2018, 02:13:04 PM »
I do have to mention that there was quite a bit of rough language used by the actors. It was 21+ only for SXSW, so I don't know if they would try to tone it down if they were in a less isolated location. The nature of the show is adult in nature, so I would think that might be a consideration with holding it in a more populated area. It was only a language thing (and some violence), so that would be easy to tone down.
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Offline debster

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Re: Amazing West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #12 on: March 15, 2018, 04:54:44 PM »
[member=364]Angology[/member]  How quickly did you have to act to get a reservation slot? At SDCC, people were camping out at the Bayfront in order to get a spot, and then at NYCC, they had a different sign up location everyday that you had to figure out by coordinates and a map of the city (if you got lucky and guessed near the right area, you'd be okay - people were running through the streets to get there), so I'm curious what the process was like. I know there were limited spots each day (maybe 100 or 150?) so maybe it's not a real comparison if this one had a lot more slots available - but I'd love to know what your reservation experience was if you don't mind sharing.

Offline perc2100

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Re: Amazing West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #13 on: March 16, 2018, 11:10:52 AM »
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I do have to mention that there was quite a bit of rough language used by the actors. It was 21+ only for SXSW, so I don't know if they would try to tone it down if they were in a less isolated location. The nature of the show is adult in nature, so I would think that might be a consideration with holding it in a more populated area. It was only a language thing (and some violence), so that would be easy to tone down.
I would guess Old Town is probably out, given the popularity of the park: it would need to be out of commission probably 2 full weeks, or at least a week and a halfish (for set-up, Con, tear-down).  They could maybe set it up in the parking lot across the seat with cheaper set-type buildings on a smaller scale (sort of like QT's DJANGO set-up but on a slightly larger scale).
Maybe there's someplace in Balboa Park they could use?
There are some ghost towns in the county (Julian, for example, has an old jail, cemetery, and tons of functional 'old' businesses and houses); Stonewall is an old mining community.  I don't think any of them are really functional or workable (it would be just as easy to build a little 'town' somewhere closer than to drive out to BFE and build a little town).

Offline Angology

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Re: Amazing West World offsite at SXSW, any hope for it at comic-con?
« Reply #14 on: March 16, 2018, 11:36:29 AM »
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[member=364]Angology[/member]  How quickly did you have to act to get a reservation slot? At SDCC, people were camping out at the Bayfront in order to get a spot, and then at NYCC, they had a different sign up location everyday that you had to figure out by coordinates and a map of the city (if you got lucky and guessed near the right area, you'd be okay - people were running through the streets to get there), so I'm curious what the process was like. I know there were limited spots each day (maybe 100 or 150?) so maybe it's not a real comparison if this one had a lot more slots available - but I'd love to know what your reservation experience was if you don't mind sharing.
Here is the history:
Apparently there was a secret URL in the Superbowl ad where you make initial reservations. I wish I had seen that. Did anyone catch that?

Then, there was a tweet on Feb 21 that reservations were open. Those apparently went quickly.

Then, on Thursday, March 8, they opened up reservations for Friday at around 9am. It was through their special website, but an Eventrbrite ticket. We wanted Sunday, so we waited to see what would open up on Friday. At 9am they opened reservations for Saturday. So, we knew the pattern was set and knew reservations would open up on Saturday for Sunday (we had other SXSW plans on Saturday). Both days, the tickets went ridiculously fast (kind of like parties or activations for SDCC.) So, we were ready Saturday morning. DH had a page monitor on the signup page, and when it went off, we quickly refreshed. What you saw was a list of times in 15 minute intervals and a drop down if there was availability (options were 0,1,2) I just kept clicking as times had availability and DH was doing the same. The "2" options quickly disappeared, and I clicked on a 1, hoping that DH would do the same (he was in the other room). I finally got through, and entered my data. I was logged in to Eventbrite, but it didn't seem to help, but autofill did help big time. Then, there were a bunch of odd questions to answer (example: If there was a button that when pressed, could make everything right in the world, what would you do (I am paraphrasing-I don't remember the exact verbiage). There were multiple choice options. I guess once you got to that screen, you had it locked in, but I went as quickly as possible. I hit submit, and success! DH was not so lucky.

I don't know if he was stuck on getting 2 slots, but as it turns out, if he had gotten a time near mine, the one that got there first could have just waited for the other person. You went to a bar downtown at your scheduled time, and checked in and picked up your hat. Then, when your shuttle was announced, you boarded and headed out. Once you got there, you were really just free to explore.

FYI-it was a thirty minute drive out to the location. It was somewhere around Manor, TX.
Ang