In this special episode of Can of Worms, producer Elle Cowley and opinion desk writer KC Ellen Cushman join our regular hosts to discuss the troubled history of Utah’s Disneyland, Evermore. Inspired by Jenny Nicholson’s video, Evermore: The Theme Park That Wasn’t, our guest hosts dove deep down the theme park rabbit hole. From problems behind the scenes to a confusing park experience, our hosts enter the complicated world of Evermore Park. KC Ellen and Elle talked to fans and ex-employees to answer the question: why do people love Evermore? Tune in to find out what our hosts uncovered!

Transcript:

(Renaissance intro music plays)

Elle Cowley: Hello, hello and welcome to a very special edition of Can of Worms! My name is producer Elle, and I’m kind of going to act as the host today which is kind of cool. I have this very special guest here to talk about a topic near and dear to our hearts, KC Ellen, who works on the Opinion Desk with me. 

KC Ellen Cushman: Hi. 

Elle: We’re also joined in the studio with Cambria and Olli our normal hosts. They’re gonna come along for the ride with us today. 

(Intro music fades out)

Cambria Thorley: Hello, hello. We’re still here!

 Elle: KC Ellen, let’s kind of talk about how we came to this topic because I think this story in itself is rather interesting. 

(laughing)

Elle: Do you want to? 

KC Ellen: Yeah, I mean, I think we were just having a conversation… or I kind of posed the question to a group of us from the Opinion Desk on if anyone had seen this video about this park in Utah called Evermore ‘cause there’s this video on YouTube. It’s like four hours long. And I had watched all of it on one Saturday afternoon, and Elle was the only person who had also seen the video!

Cambria: What? What video are we talking about?

Elle: It’s called… What is it? It’s Jenny Nicholson’s “Evermore the Theme Park That Wasn’t”. It is four hours long.

Cambria: Four-four hours of what? It’s just about the park?

KC Ellen: It’s a history of.

Elle: Um, but like I wanted to ask you two because you guys have not been down this rabbit hole for the last couple of months, do you guys know what Evermore is? 

Oliver Jones: I don’t know if I can give a great explanation but I know that it’s out in the Provo area, Utah County.

KC Ellen: It’s in a place. Listen, Utah is like four cities to me and none of them are where Evermore is. It’s like Salt Lake and Logan and Provo and St. George. That’s all I know.

Oliver: But Evermore is not in one of those cities? 

KC Ellen: No. 

Oliver: Okay. 

KC Ellen: It’s in between Salt Lake and Provo, generally.

Cambria: You could say- you could have said any city and I would have just believed you.

KC Ellen: It’s in Pleasant Grove, Utah.

Oliver: Pleasant Grove, Utah. Gotcha.

KC Ellen: Thank god for Google

Cambria: It’s like a little fantasy theme park, right? 

Elle: Yeah, it’s like-

(unintelligible)

Oliver: Yeah it’s like a larp- a larp-ville. 

Elle: How it’s advertised is, it is a year-round Renaissance Fair. You go into this park, and you can talk to a bunch of people in character and buy from a bunch of Renaissance Faire vendors, and you can throw axes and shoot bows and go on quests, and join guilds. Like there’s a bunch of different guilds for you to join allegedly. 

Cambria: Cool.

Elle: And that sounds great, right? Like, even if you’re not a huge fantasy person, like that sounds fun for an afternoon. 

Oliver: Yes, yes. 

Cambria: What kind of guild is there? This is the archery guild or this is the sword guild or is it like this is the turkey guild and this is we like turkeys here-

KC Ellen: They’re like the hunters. That’s the only one that comes to mind. I know that some of them change seasonally, 

Cambria: Ok wait, so there’s different kinds of guilds that you just are a part of when you go there you get like-

Elle: The thing that they advertise is that you can go into the park and you can go on a series of quests given to you by the character actors in the park. And then you can join the guild. So you can go and you’re given a task like “oh you have to find six heart-shaped rocks throughout the park or you have to go talk to this person and beat them in a battle of wits.” or something. 

Cambria: Okay, I was-

Elle: Oh you need three bull’s eyes at the archery range, and then once you do that you become part of the guild.

Cambria: That sounds hard.

Elle: But as we quickly found out as we were researching, this is like nothing like what the actual park is. 

KC Ellen: I mean, it does seem that sometimes when you go there are guild opportunities. 

Cambria: But not every time?

KC Ellen: Generally, I think a common thing that in Jenny Nicholson’s video she found with the park and also that we found with a park on our fun adventure was… that there’s not a lot of consistency with what the park offers. And if it is, it’s consistent that it’s not great. 

Elle: We’re kind of getting ahead of ourselves and we need to kind of take it back a couple steps to understand Evermore you kind of have to understand where it’s coming from you know, so this park has been in development-I can’t even say it’s a finished part because it’s not since 2014 It debuted at our Salt Lake City Comic Con FanX, and it promised like a lot.

KC Ellen: Yeah, you get on a ghost ship and then you can ride a boat up to this ghost ship and then you can get out and explore and then get back on the boat when you’re done exploring and then continue on the ride.

Cambria: What? That’s really cool. 

KC Ellen: It was advertised as like Disneyland in Pleasant Grove Utah. 

Elle: But that sounds super cool right? 

Cambria: That’s awesome. I would love to get on the ghost ship. 

Elle: But like you think about it for more than maybe two seconds and oh my god this sounds like a five-year-old just threw 100 things together that they thought were cool and made a ride right like there’s no way that this could actually like be real…And you would be so right! 

Oliver: Oh…

Elle: Because it’s not real, sorry to lead you guys on. The actual state of the park at this point- I think KC Ellen can speak to this too because we went together as part of this episode. It’s like half dirt 

KC Ellen: It’s dirt. I described it as dirt. 

Oliver: Really?

Cambria: Okay, It’s been around since 2014?

Oliver: Did you guys go?

KC Ellen: 2014-yeah, we went but no, they basically debuted the idea for the park in 2014. And they’re like, it’s going to open in like half a year, or about a year, something like that. And people were kind of perplexed, especially theme park fans, because they were looking at the fact that they had not even broken ground, and they were like, you’re gonna have a theme park? A Disneyland-style theme park with like, a few acre parking area and all these like these cool, cool rides and some cool bathrooms, I guess. And they essentially were like, you can’t do that in a year. You can do that in half a year. That’s not possible.

Oliver: Could I ask the question? Who was behind this all like who debuted at Comic-Con?

KC Ellen: A man named Brett [correction: Ken Bretschnieder]. I will look it up. He is a tech guy he built you know, like when you go online, and you have that little lock next year like HTTP, that means the website is secure. Basically, he made one of those companies. Yeah, he made one of the companies that makes a little lock. So he does like his company makes the locks like the security stuff for like Tumblr and Twitter and websites like that to make sure that your information isn’t being stolen.

Oliver: Oh!

KC Ellen: And so he’s very, very rich. And Evermore is like his dream project. 

Oliver: Oh! 

Elle: He’s a bit of an entrepreneur. He has another project. The Grid.

KC Ellen: The Grid- The Grid is also in Pleasant Grove, Utah. It’s a place with an indoor go-kart-like area. And it’s kind of cool because it has electric go-karts, so that they can do it indoors. And it’s also kind of better for the earth. That venture also had some advertising that made it sound very, very cool.

General Manager for The Grid: The Grid is more than just a go-kart track. It’s really an immersive karting experience. So our goal is to provide people with more than your general like your average night out, right, you come into the grid and even stepping into the lobby, you’re expecting a dingy old karting track and you get this grand space that’s finished in his 20s Deco style really kind of luxurious and the new experience doesn’t stop there. As soon as you get in the cart, and actually get on our track. You’re kind of transported into another world. So immersive, adrenaline is our goal.

KC Ellen: And it is just an indoor go-kart place. 

Oliver: That’s a pretty cool and indoor go-karting place? And the track goes up and down. 

Cambria: It goes up and down? 

Oliver: Yeah, so like the track will go up and down like-

Cambria: Whoa, like a little hill moment or like actually up and down 

Oliver: like the track goes up and then like-

Cambria: This is a podcast…

Elle: He’s doing some hand motions.

Cambria: Okay, so just did a dynamic track like a Mario Kart race. 

Oliver: Yeah, sure like Rainbow Road. 

KC Ellen: Yeah, but it was advertised as more than that. It was advertised as like Blade Runner. And it’s not, it’s just a concrete room with karts.

Oliver Jones: And birthday parties. 

Cambria: So it’s, it’s not like embellished is not made pretty? 

KC Ellen: It was advertised that it would have some very, like cool aesthetic features and interesting lighting. And it could change essentially, that the decorations could change, you could choose the course that you wanted to do. And you could do like a medieval one. And you could do a Blade Runner-esque one that was how it was advertised and it is just a concrete room. 

Elle: This same sort of like oh, the idea feels half-finished like The Grid fields half-finished. Same thing and Evermore. So when we went because we did go-

Cambria: Did you guys dress up? 

Elle: I put elf ears on.

Cambria: Oh 

Elle: There’s a lot of pictures of me with elf ears on just out and about. 

KC Ellen: I thought about dressing up and then I realized it was winter and I valued warmth and comfort. 

Elle: It was a lot of dirt. There were a lot of boarded-up buildings that we couldn’t go in. It was a lot of like-and then the other thing that we noticed when we were going was there were no character actors around. 

Cambria: Oh…

Oliver: Isn’t the whole thing?

KC Ellen: Yeah.

Oliver: So what is there to do?

KC Ellen: You could walk around the dirt.

Elle: We could push buttons. 

Oliver: Was it really just dirt? 

(Evermore trip audio)

Elle: Well I think- so we’re looking at like, there’s a lot of dirt.

(Laughing)

Elle: I’m noticing a lot of dirt and I’m not seeing any characters walking around. 

KC Ellen: There was buttons on the decor and the one the only button we were successfully able to find we pushed it and it made it spooky noise 

Cambria: Okay, wait describe this button because when you say button I’m just envisioning like a big red button.

Elle: Quite literally it was like an elevator button with like blue glowy-

Cambria: Oh, like magic. Like it’s meant to be like ooh, spooky magic button. Gotcha. 

KC Ellen: And it made a spooky magic noise and that’s what there was to do. 

Cambria: Did you like win something?

KC Ellen: No, it made a noise. 

Cambria: Okay.

(Laughing)

Oliver: So that was the highlight of the day. 

KC Ellen: No, the highlight of the day was the dragon. They had a dragon decoration. It was just a wireframe with some stretchy cloth over it, and it kind of lit up cute. That was definitely the highlight. The rest of the park? Mostly dirt. There was a hobbit hole.

Oliver: Ooh-

Cambria: Were able to go in the hobbit hole? 

KC Ellen: Yes, that was I think the only-Well, it was one of only two or three. I think there were three [places to walk in to].

Oliver: Was the food good? 

Elle: It was mid.

KC Ellen: Oh, yeah, it was unfortunate. 

Oliver: That’s a shame.

KC Ellen: They also were out of most of the food.

Elle: Just like the issues that we saw are like not even half of what is wrong with this park. For this episode, I reached out to a couple different people who used to work at the park. And I was able to talk to one of the former makeup artists.

Elle: How’s your day going? 

Alyssa Holbrook: It’s going great. I just got out of class. And now I’m just chilling for the day. 

Elle: Back when they had an SFX studio, not in house, but I think like across the road. And she had a lot of very interesting things to say about her workplace. 

Alyssa: My name is Alyssa Holbrook, I worked at Evermore as one of the makeup artists, there were about five makeup artists there it was from 2019 to 2021. Now I live in Los Angeles working as a freelance full time film makeup artist. 

Elle: So what made you want to work at Evermore? 

Alyssa: So I actually heard about it a lot at the school that I went to in LA and you know, everyone was talking about how cool the makeups were and how they had an actual, like shop there where they were making prosthetics and, you know, making all this cool behind the scenes stuff. And that’s what I was really into. And I was like, oh, man, that’s in Utah. Like, are you kidding me? Because usually that stuff is not in Utah. You know, that’s like in Los Angeles, or Florida. Yeah, I just was really, like, looking forward to potentially having a job there. Because I have a couple of connections and stuff. So yeah, I mean, I kind of just was the squeaky wheel to get hired, you know, the one of the makeup artists, my boss, we’re friends now. And she’s so funny, because she just jokes. We joke all the time about how I was really annoying about it, because I really wanted this job. 

Elle: She said specifically in the makeup team, that a lot of people’s hours were cut very randomly. Without warning, even though they were told they would be full-time. She couldn’t speak for everyone. But…

Elle: How consistent was your schedule? Was it very set in stone? Or would you kind of just work whenever they called you in? Like, what did that look like for you? 

Alyssa: It was set in stone, but it was kind of rough. Because, you know, sometimes they would just say like, we can’t afford to like, have you this week. And it was just like, oh, okay, cool. Like, it got to be. It was consistent until it wasn’t.I felt that I could make this my full-time job. And then suddenly, it was like, we can’t give you any hours. And that was kind of awful. Because of course, I mean, I was very young. And before 2020, everything was significantly cheaper than it is now. But this was my main source of income. So it was pretty rough to have that be like very wishy-washy. It was kind of like okay, yeah, so it was consistent the first few months, and then it became very inconsistent. So basically I found myself like pleading to get hours and that kind of stuff. 

Elle: Was that commonplace? Do you know if that was commonplace among like, everyone, everyone was having to beg for hours? Or was that specifically a makeup department issue? 

Alyssa: It was definitely the makeup department. I mean, I don’t really know from actors, because I feel like with actors, it’s like they had a set character that they’re supposed to play in the park. So it wasn’t, you know, they would hire other people like they would have actors come into the shop and do makeup work when it’s like, why can’t you just have the makeup artists do that like it was, but it was because you know, they couldn’t get us past a certain amount of hours not getting in trouble or something. So they would have other people come in and you know, the makeup artists and see the other people coming in and go, Hey, that’s not really fair. So it was a big drama thing with the studio. It was definitely really hard to deal with all that. I would say the park had a lot less drama, you know, comparatively, but yeah, I would say I’d say overall is typically the makeup department that was dealing with the inconsistency, so.

KC Ellen: And this is also something that Jenny Nicholson put in her video that had us really intrigued about the park, there also just seemed to be, I don’t know, very poor treatment of the employees there. It’s this man actually I did look up. His name is Ken Bretschneider. And Ken Bretschneider. It’s his dream project. And then he gets these employees to really get excited about it. And especially for people who are interested in theater, this is a theater experience. You can work in or get employment in and maybe build your career and you get these young adults to buy in. And then you bring them in and you give them really poor job security and you make them do things that aren’t in their job description. And it’s just really unfortunate.

Cambria: Feels bad. 

Oliver: Yeah.

Elle: We should point out that when we went there were workers there-they all looked 15-16. 

Oliver: Wow. 

Elle: Every single one looked 15 or 16. 

KC Ellen: Yeah, and there were no character actors. These weren’t people acting in a theater capacity by any means, they were working in food. They were selling food, and they were all 15-16 and as I stated they had run out of a lot of the food there. So I walked up and there was this 16-year-old girl who was like, I’m so sorry, we only have one burger left, and I took the last burger. And they all seemed very stressed. And it was and it was so cold, and it was really crowded in that building, specifically with the burgers, because it was one of the only buildings that was open and warm. 

Cambria: Wow, wow.

Elle: We ended up paying what you paid 13 to get in?

KC Ellen:  I paid $13 For my entrance ticket for what I thought would be an experience where I would get to interact with at least two to three character actors, and there were none. 

Elle: Then it was like 10 or $15 for food, minimum.

KC Ellen: Yeah, yeah.

Elle: So it was like a 20 to $30 experience and the food wasn’t great. The food wasn’t even great. And the thing is what it is, because as we learned later, we went in the off-season, which the park is still open for some reason, but the character actors are just absent. When it’s at like peak season, it’s like 30 or so bucks to get in for like a day. 

Cambria: Huh?

Elle: And, you know, yeah, our experience is probably not the best experience. But like, I don’t know, if I would pay an extra $20 to talk to some random people at a park. 

KC Ellen: Yeah, I guess I also, I thought that it was a little bit of a bad business practice. To not make it clear, we advertised when I bought tickets that I was not paying for the full experience. It wasn’t anywhere on their website. It wasn’t anywhere that like we saw easily accessible for us to see that information. When I bought my ticket. They didn’t say hey, just so you know, it’s the offseason, there was no communication about that. And so I did spend money expecting the full experience. So like, I can’t say that our experience was reflective of what Evermore is all year, or what it is on their on season. But I can say that if the communications issues are reflective of Evermore, which just seems to be based on even employee experiences, and that is a problem. 

Elle: Yeah, the communication between management and staff was terrible. 

Cambria: It does seem consistent between all the Go Karts stuff where it’s like you’re like the advertising does not. It’s not telling you what you’re getting 

Elle: Exactly. 

Cambria: Interesting. 

Elle: I did look at the website because I pre-bought my tickets. I didn’t advertise that there was going to be a full staff there on the website for winter. They said winter festivities interact with characters, join guilds, go on quests and then we got there and it was like.

Cambria: So it wasn’t like a lack of information. It was full like it was just a full misdirect. 

Elle: Yeah. 

KC Ellen: And I imagine that that was their website from the start of their winter season, which ended half a month before we came. But we still came during winter. It was February? March? February? Yeah, it was kind of late February. That is winter in Utah. Yeah, right. There’s no reason for us to not expect the winter season when that’s what’s advertised on their website.

Cambria: It was winter for a lot longer this year, too. 

Elle: I think we went to the park with a pretty open mind to like we didn’t go into behaviors. Like it wasn’t one of those days where I wake up and decide to be a hater. It was more like, I’ll go and see and then decide if I would like to just be a hater, you know?

KC Ellen: Yeah, I think when I went, I do feel that I went in thinking the guy who owns the park is probably not a great boss, and probably engages in some poor labor practices. But I truly hope that the park experience is enjoyable for customers when they’re paying for it. And I hope it will be enjoyable for us. And it wasn’t the worst time I’ve ever had. 

Elle: Like, that’s Yeah, I think that’s kind of my thought on it is it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever done. 

Cambria: It’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.

Oliver: There was that one button!

KC Ellen: For me it was just that the experience was fun because I was out doing something with a friend rather than because of Evermore. 

Elle: I agree. I think we left the park. And there’s audio of us just like audibly very confused. 

(Outside of Evermore)

Elle: Alright, so we just left. We were there for what an hour and a half, maybe? 

KC Ellen: Yeah. 

Elle: And we came late. We didn’t come exactly when it opened. But I think the overwhelming feeling was like, there is nothing, nothing to do. I don’t know if you felt the same way. But we like wandered. There was like- I talked to two different park employees. And both of them were like, we’ll go touch the buttons. And then we looked for the buttons. And there were no buttons. 

KC Ellen: Yeah, I would also say like, even if there are things to do, it’s very unclear, right. So, there was like some buildings that were clearly closed. And then there were some that seemed like they might be open, but we weren’t sure. So we didn’t feel comfortable going in them. There were a lot of people who seemed like guests who are dressed up that could have been actors, but we weren’t sure. And then there were people who seemed like actors, but could have been guests, and we weren’t sure. And they were supposed to have a green necklace to distinguish them. And I’m sorry, I did not see any green necklaces. 

Elle: Like going around the park. We put the microphone away at some point because we were like, oh, maybe people just aren’t talking to us because we’ve got this microphone. Maybe they’re not comfortable. So I like put the microphone in my backpack and still nobody would come up and talk to us. 

Oliver: But there was no one to come up and talk to you right?

Elle: There was people that we thought might have been employees because they were dressed up, but-

KC Ellen: But it was unclear because it is a LARP park. And from what I have seen about the park, not necessarily like, from what I’ve seen about the park, it seems that character actors wear necklaces to indicate that they are characters. They’re like glowing necklaces. I saw not a single glowing necklace.I did see someone in a suit of armor.

Elle: Right? Oh, I see. I see some characters walk in there like on their like up on this thatch roof house.

KC Ellen: Indeed. How did you see- Oh, those are indeed characters. He has a sword and armor.

Elle: That’s crazy. 

KC Ellen: The person behind him is just wearing a sweatshirt. So maybe he’s not, maybe he’s just LARPING?

Elle: No, no, but you can go on quests that the characters give you. So it might just be like a quest? Yeah, a bit of a quest going on?I don’t know. 

KC Ellen: I wanna go to the Hobbit Hole.

(Laughing)

Elle:Okay.

(Back in Studio)

KC Ellen: Yeah, but even when we were alone in a room with them, they did not approach us. So I have to wonder if they actually work because if they were an employee, they were not. They were not doing their job. Which is to some degree customer service. 

Elle: And like not to throw this person on the bus because maybe they were just trying to have a nice time at this empty Park. But like, it was very confusing for us as like first-time goers. And I think that’s kind of the overwhelming feeling that we had coming out of the park. We were sitting with a microphone at my car, like just kind of leaning on the car and talking. It was just like, I think we exited the experience feeling even more confused about the park than before. 

KC Ellen: Yeah, well, because we went because we watched a four-hour video. We had still had questions and we went thinking this might answer some questions, we might gain some better insight. And we left just being more perplexed. 

Cambria: So you’re saying that the treasure was the friendship you made along the way? 

KC Ellen: Yes. 

Cambria: Wow. So maybe that’s the magic of evermore. 

Elle: Yeah. 

Cambria: Makes it such a bad experience that whoever you’re going with you bond. 

Elle: Here’s the thing is that there are diehards for this part. There are people that will defend this park until the day they die. Well, then I talked to the superfan. His name is Bob McFadden. And I’m so sorry if I mispronounced that. 

Bob McFadden: My name is Bob. I became obsessed with Evermore just over a year ago, on February 17 2022. My work had a work event during this off period of time. And I had the time of my life was completely enthralled with the story and the characters and the ability that I had to like, to interact with this world that wasn’t real, but was somehow tangible. Like I’m in a town that I can see with my eyes. And there are people that I can hear directly with my ears with no audio in between. The idea completely captured my mind and heart. And I’ve tried to learn something about Evermore every day since!

Elle: And I talked to him after we’d already gone to the park and like immediately he was like- 

Bob: My biggest problem with Evermore right now is their approach to this off-season. They call it Winter Fest or Spring Fest this time last year it was $5 to get in. This time, it’s $10 for the same experience.

Elle: He has a YouTube channel where he documents moments of character interaction that he thinks is meaningful. 

Bob: I don’t know that I was captured by the specific story that Evermore is telling as much as the way that they’re telling it. It’s true that like there are a lot of immersive experiences, you can go to other theme parks and have the same thing where you’re in an environment and you can even see characters at Disney and stuff. But I don’t think that anything that I’ve ever experienced has done it quite to the same degree where you really can have an impact on the story. And there is a deeper mystery for you to investigate. I think the closest thing that at least I’m aware of now is the galactic star cruiser down in Disney. They’re doing something very similar. But the price point for me in my life is completely unattainable. You’re going to be dropping a couple $1,000 to go down there and experience it for a day or two. Meanwhile, we’re super lucky to live in Utah where a short drive away you can have a fantasy-themed version of the same thing and be able to dive into that on a regular basis. I went every single weekend in 2022 After I had this extremely exciting discovery. 

Elle: He’s not like alone in the way he feels about the park. There’s like a whole dedicated Facebook page. That’s how I found all of my interviews. There are people that are diehards. Go to this park every weekend like there’s a discord for it. That they talk in regularly. There are fan podcasts out there. dedicated specifically to this park. Wow. Yeah, these people love this park. Yeah, it’s got like, it’s got Season Pass holders that go there every single weekend, you know?

KC Ellen: And walk around the dirt. 

Elle: Yeah, I mean, the other person that I talked to, and I guess this is the other demographic for the park was, I talked to this mom, I talked to them and their kids and like their kids loved going and seeing all the fairies and seeing the like Dragon people and like, you know, that sort of thing. So I understand that there’s a sort of fan base for it. But I guess that our experience doesn’t add up. 

KC Ellen: Our experience did not provoke fan behavior.

Cambria: What a great way to put it. 

KC Ellen: I love dragons and fairies and witches. I love it. I can get behind medieval stuff. 

Cambria Yeah, like when the way you presented I was like, this sounds cool. 

KC Ellen: I’m no LARPer. But I’m not. I would go to a LARP Park and join a guild for a day with my friends. 

Elle: Yeah, exactly. Right?

KC Ellen: And I wanted it to be fun. I wanted it to be super cool. And I just from my experience was wondering why other people think it’s cool, and why they don’t just LARP in a park with their buddies where they can pay $0.

Elle: I’m sure they do that on top of going Nevermore. But like, you know, why would you pay extra money for this experience? And like it’s not to-because I think that there are parts of the park that are like fantastic. They had these like, like a tavern setup. That was really cool. They had these big dragon heads on the walls. 

KC Ellen: The dragon heads were cool. They’re like, you know how like country people have their deer heads? Oh, it’s like freakin dragons. That’s so cool. I’d have one of those in my house.

Cambria: 100% easily, I’m gonna make one. 

Elle: Well, I guess in conclusion KC Ellen. Like, I think what our conclusion was, was like, we should be as consumers, number one supporting, you know, things that treat their employees fairly. But number two, spending money on things that are a full concept and like a fully baked idea. You know what I mean? 

(Outside Evermore Audio)

Elle: Yeah, it was very much like, oh, the park is empty. Like, where is everyone? And one of the employees told me that there was like, 200 people in the park. Could have fooled me, because I didn’t see any of them. 

(Back in Studio)

KC Ellen: I definitely agree. I think we kind of discussed on our own, like after we went there, that there are other things to do in Utah that are really cool. Right, we discussed Lagoon and then we looked at prices and realized how much more expensive it is for families, right? But then there are things like Thanksgiving Point where you can take your kids to the Children’s Museum, and I’ve been to the Children’s Museum as an adult. And it’s a fully functioning concept!

Elle: It’s cool! It’s so cool. It’s like a little city in there!! And like you can buy you can buy a day pass to all of the things that Thanksgiving Point for like 35-40 dollars! It was not it’s not that expensive, ya know? And like, comparing it to something like evermore which is like, you know, a weird location. It’s in like, it’s like out I think it’s further out?

KC Ellen: It’s near Thanksgiving point, but it’s kind of on the other side of the freeway. 

Elle: Yeah, right. It’s silly I think that we forgot to mention this, but like, this park is between two office buildings. 

KC Ellen: Oh, yeah, it is. It’s an office park.

Oliver: That’s cool. 

Elle: Yeah, but no, you like look, you know, you’re like wow, I’m so immersed in what’s going on. And then like, look over and there’s this massive office building next to you. And you’re like, what? I think the conclusion is there are better things to spend your money on. 

KC Ellen Yeah.

Elle: You know?

KC Ellen: There are better things to spend your money on. And also, I think, in particular, there is a lot of information. The employee we talked to from Jenny Nicholson’s video where she interviewed a bunch of employees and there were definitely some very serious allegations of problems there. Yeah, that kind of thing when they’re like, We know that there are bad things to employees in this park. Don’t give the guy your money, who runs it because he’s just going to use that money to mistreat employees and also not provide you an experience that you are paying for? 

Elle: Yeah, I could understand maybe overlooking this if the Park offered some sort of like, you know, maybe not me personally, but I can understand it having some sort of dedicated fan base if it was like this crazy immersive experience. Yeah, like Disneyland has Disney adults that go there. Like every weekend? It’s silly. I think that’s our takeaway.

KC Ellen: Yeah, the whole idea is silly. That execution is silly. The people who like it a little bit silly but in a fun nerdy way.

Cambria: Moral of the story is play D&D? 

KC Ellen: Yeah, moral the story is like hang out with your friends and play D&D. 

Elle: Yeah, hang out with your friends, play D&D- 

KC Ellen: Build community and don’t give Ken Bretschnider your money.

Elle: Go to a park with your silly little homemade armor on and battle it out that way. Because that’s more fun than going to Evermore probably.

Cambria: Probably will be less dirt there too. 

Elle: Bob’s gonna hate me after this episode I’m just sure.

KC Ellen: It’s a good thing my student media email is going to be zoinked soon.

Cambria: Yeah!

Oliver: Oh man…

Elle: After hearing this story guys, how are you feeling?

Oliver: I kinda want to go.

Cambria: Yeah the way that you described the experience it’s like “Oh ok!”, but also the way that I’m like is I’d rather just play D&D because it seems like the best part of this experience was you two hanging out and being like “this is crazy”.

Elle: Yeah.

Cambria: So I’m like I could recreate this experience.

KC Ellen: Yeah, just go hang out with your friends!

Cambria: I could recreate this experience much easier. I have swords at home!

Elle: I think that wraps up this episode of Can of Worms. This one is a bit of an outlier in the equation of normal episodes, but I hope it is a good listen, you know?

Oliver: That was very interesting.

Cambria: Yeah! Thanks for putting that together!

Oliver: I feel bad that I want to go after the slander? I don’t know, I want to see those dragon heads. 

KC Ellen: To be fair, that’s how we felt. We watched a four hour video talking about how bad the park was and we went like “but…we should go”.

Cambria: Maybe that’s the allure.

KC Ellen: That it’s so bad you have to know more?

Cambria: Yeah! Well that’s kinda the idea of like cursed places it’s surely not that bad…

KC Ellen: Oh it’s haunted so I must attend!

Cambria: Exactly! Wow, what a great plug for the next episode that Ollie and I are currently working on!

Elle: So true!

Cambria: Tune in next time for our spooky ghost episode!

(Music fades in; voices fade out)

Producer: [email protected] // @elle_cowley_

Host: [email protected] // @cushman_kcellen

Host: [email protected]

Host: [email protected] // @cambria_thorley