Horror Hunter Rating
[wp-review id=”15547″]
Event Summary
The Zombie Mall Experience was the very first feature length, immersive combat scare attraction in the world. Based inside an entire abandoned shopping mall, it opened in in 2012 and became world famous overnight. Customers battled the undead as part of an unfolding storyline that revealed the origins of the virus that would go on to destroy the world.
Event Review
We visited Zed Events back in 2012 long before Horror Hunters was created. At the time it was groundbreaking immersive storytelling. What is better suited to a zombie apocalypse than an actual shopping mall.
Quickly snapped up by the media (helped along by a tweet from THE Simon Pegg) Zed Events exploded into the mainstream. They can be credited as being one of the reasons there are zombie events everywhere you look nowadays.
The event dropped you into a zombie apocalypse set in a mall, after signing away your life on waiver forms the police arrived and you were taken into a briefing, geared up and started your story.
The organisers of Zed Events were originally Airsoft game organisers (a combat game similar to paintball) this was apparent in their storytelling as scenes felt clunky and many of the actors felt like airsoft gamers turned zombie apocalypse soldiers. This wasnt to say the event was fun…
Armed with a pump action shotgun we were tasked at discovering objectives and fighting the zombie hoards. This is where the event and location excelled, the huge size of the mall and the amount of zombies made the quiet moments almost as unsettling as the action packed shotgun combat.
The event evolved over the next 6 years, eventually closing in 2018. Zed Events Mall definitely shaped the current zombie experience phenomenon and will always have a cult following.