Entertainment / Wallace and Gromit
Wallace & Gromit’s Cracking Christmas Experience opens in Bristol
The Friary Building in Quakers Friars has been given the full Wallace & Gromit makeover this festive season.
Wallace & Gromit: A Cracking Christmas Experience is the second consecutive collaboration between Aardman and Cabot Circus, following Lorna Harrington and Dave Bain’s 11.5m mural on Quakers Lane in association with Upfest.
Visitors are first welcomed into a pop-up cafe from the Bristol Loaf, in which there are activity sheets, colouring in and opportunities to take a souvenir photo against a green screen – later to be populated with your favourite Aardman double act.
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Groups are then ushered to a room full of beautifully rendered gadgets, central to which is the huge Christmas-O-Matic – a contraption which, we are soon informed, needs your help to fix.
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Any visitors expecting Wallace & Gromit themselves to turn up should be pre-warned that they don’t, although their presence is still keenly felt. Instead, we are hosted by a pair of bubbly engineers, who enthusiastically steer us towards getting Christmas back on track.
The half-hour experience combines the high production values you’d expect from Aardman with some gently interactive elements – well-pitched for young children.
And with so many Santa’s Grottos costing a pretty penny, this is a fun and wholly alternative festive experience that won’t break the bank.
Wallace & Gromit: A Cracking Christmas Experience takes place until December 24. Tickets cost £9 for peak times and £7.50 for off-peak times, and are on sale now via www.eventbrite.com.
Main photo: Martin Booth
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