By David Johnson
The best stories and films aim to immerse the audience in worlds totally unlike our own. With sufficient production quality, this can be achieved to a great extent, but never completely. The medium of film is constrained by the screen that separates the viewer and the art. 1D Studios, a company that helps design sets for films, offers a solution — an immersive experience based on the classic tale Alice in Wonderland called Down the Rabbit Hole.
We arrived at 1D Studios on a Saturday afternoon, where we were welcomed by the staff, and after hanging up our coats, we first stood in the waiting room. Vines of flowers hung from the ceiling with a painted landscape backdrop; the entire room embodied springtime. Throughout the experience, I was incredibly impressed by how detailed and elaborate the set design was — this is, after all, their area of expertise.
We then walked into an elevator, which contained a narrating voice detailing our descent through the rabbit hole into the fantasy world of Alice in Wonderland. The door then automatically opened, where we began stumbling our way through the meticulously crafted maze; a pathway that at times left us puzzled and clueless as to what came next — much like Alice herself.
Each room throughout the experience represents a specific scene from Alice in Wonderland. Along the way, we passed by actors playing the Mad Hatter and White Rabbit, among others, all of whom played their roles with a passion that made them feel incredibly real. The set design is consistently immaculate, rife with allusions to the source material and following artistic colour schemes that matched changes in mood. From a mad scientist’s lab to a room full of strangely shaped clocks, each step taken was worth a whole cinematic scene.
At one point, we entered a living room with anthropomorphic family-style portraits lining the walls. For the first few seconds, I confusedly paused while searching for an exit, only to realize what I thought to be a mirror actually led into a perfectly duplicate of the living room. Every detail, down to the creases in blankets on the armchair, was mirrored.
Finally, the last leg of our journey was the house of mirrors. I had not been in one of these illusionary mazes for years, so it was a surreal experience of looking for gaps between reflections of myself to keep moving forward. This was a perfect way to end the otherworldly experience of Down the Rabbit Hole.
Ready to tumble into a whimsical wonderland? Down the Rabbit Hole by 1D Studios is your ticket to a surreal adventure through a stunningly crafted set that feels straight out of a fantasy film and has you feeling like its protagonist. Open until April 27th, single tickets are just $15.99, with fun deals for groups of 3, 5, or 7—so grab your crew and get curious!
For more information, visit the 1D Studios’ website at 1dstudios.com.
Photos courtesy 1D Studios
