Review: The Alice Cocktail Experience

Experiences targeted toward Millennials are very different from the social gatherings of earlier generations that didn't have social media. Millennials' tastes are usually rooted in nostalgia, resulting in events created for adults that can look quite similar to ones made for children. That's where we get things like The Alice Cocktail Experience, an Alice in Wonderland-themed character dining escape room without the dining or escaping parts. I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into after reading numerous reviews and decided to try it out to celebrate my unbirthday/blogiversary even though I knew it was overpriced. It also gave me an excuse to wear my old Alice costume from the 2010 live-action Tim Burton remake.

This experience is happening in venues all around the world, so if you live close to a big city, there might be one near you. In fact, you may be reading this post just to see if it's worth it. If you decide to go in the hopes of a delicious meal or to get tipsy, you should probably save your money. The experience provides three small sugary cocktails and one or two grocery store quality cookies. However, if you are looking to have some escapism fun, you'll get about as much out of it as you put in. The room itself was the most impressive thing about the experience. It was pretty small, but every inch was covered in Wonderland-themed decor from playing cards to clocks to Cheshire Cat imagery. I was the only attendee to dress up, which took away from the experience a bit since everyone else looked more like they were dressed for grocery shipping instead of attending a mad tea party. The actors' costumes were pretty cheap as well, but they put on a good performance, encouraging as much audience participation as possible.

The scripted parts of the show really hearkened to the odd experience of being an adult Millennial. It seemed that the actors were being paid to throw around as many F-bombs as possible just to get a rise out of the audience like the obligatory adult content on shows from premium networks like Showtime and HBO that never add anything to the story. The first swear resulted in uproarious laughter from most of the attendees and slowly fizzled out after that. After some silly dialogue and a sweet "welcome" cocktail that was covered in whipped cream, the Mad Hatter, March Hare, and White Rabbit passed around three riddles for the guests to solve in order to unlock ingredients for the second cocktail. One of the riddles involved talking to a Cheshire Cat face that was built into some foliage on the wall with a booming voice that came through a hidden speaker. That was about as high tech as the show got. After that, the actress for the March Hare changed into the Evil Queen and held a silly trial to find out who ate her tarts. (It was me, but they told me to pin it on someone else, so I never got punished.) The final challenge was to paint whatever we thought the queen's favorite thing is onto some white foam on a cocktail. I painted my (Alice's) head.

The thing that appealed the most to me personally about this event was the Disney-style character interactions. The Mad Hatter really nailed that part. She had a lot of energy and did a fantastic job making everyone feel like part of the show. The actress who played the March Hare and Queen of Hearts was funny, but a little shy. The only one that wasn't putting in much effort was the White Rabbit, who didn't have much of a costume aside from a bunny ear headband and mainly tended to the bar. I can see how this event might be a good way to meet new people, but I didn't have much luck with that since we were constantly being pushed to solve the riddles and get through the cocktails. There were two empty seats at my table, and they told me they might have to fill them if they ran out of room, but that never happened. The intimate setting made it easy to hear the attendees when they were interacting with the characters, which could have been an issue if the room were bigger, so that was a plus.

Overall, this is one of those events where you have to make your own fun. If you're not that into the show and don't interact with the characters, chances are you won't have a very good time. However, if you go there with the right mindset, it could be buckets of fun. There was an odd dichotomy between the adult language and the childish performers, but the show has some "family friendly" tickets available that should resolve this issue. That version provide "mocktails" instead of cocktails, which the cast members graciously provided me with anyway when I told them I don't like alcohol. They were extremely conscientious of everyone's food and drink preferences despite how little food and drinks the event provided. I definitely had more fun because I dressed up, so I recommend more people do the same. There was a "Little Mermaid" version of this event advertised on Facebook a while back, but it sadly got canceled due to covid. I think I would have enjoyed that one even more! Have you ever attended an event like this? Let me know in the comments!