REVIEW : Great Zombie Escape Byfield 2014 I must admit, I was a little hesitant to even contemplate going to a zombie run in Australia. Theres been plenty of false starts by various companies, none of which have actually happened, or the end result could really be called a proper zombie run. And, Ive been spoilt by attending the Spookers Run For Your Freakin Life in New Zealand, set on a haunted themepark, twice. But as preparations progressed, it looked like this local event was a-goer, so I had to get in on the action. Set at Getaways at Byfield, the 5km zombie-infested track nestled in the rainforest was thankfully quite shady on the hot, steamy 37 degree day. Signage to the event was great, parking cost the industry standard $10 and was easy, quick and close to registration. Unfortunately, the registration was a single queue, and ended up being about a half hour wait to get through. Once inside, the festival area was beautifully shaded with large trees, with enough of food/drink options and portaloos to keep everyone happy. Entrants entered as either human, zombie, or both. We did human first, then zombie, thinking that we could start in a fairly clean and tidy costume, then bloody it up for my zombie turn. After a Vinnies visit, our costume ended up being school kids. Speaking of costumes, there was not that many humans who went with a costume, but there were plenty of awesome zombie ones around. THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE : If you come out in the woods today, youll get a big surprise Humans were given a flag waist belt and two yellow straps to attach. They were also given a dignity belt, a piece of caution tape to be tied anywhere. Im not exactly sure what the dignity belt thing was about, but it made for plenty of humorous and dirty jokes throughout the day. The start time was delayed about half and hour due to the slow registration, with zombies still filtering in requiring further makeup, instruction and course placement. Finally we were gathered behind a 5 level hay bale pile with zombies beginning to lurch and stumble around on the other side. We were let loose in about 50 people waves, about 30 seconds apart, to prevent absolute chaos on the hay. I promptly caught my foot on a hay bale string while leaping down the far side, so started my race with a spectacular tumble (youll see it on the video coming soon). No damage done, but the panic and chaos was intensified as I picked myself up to see zombies tearing at every passer by for their flags. Obstacles were fairly sparse, and fairly simple. Early on, we crawled through a rat tunnel, tangled through a rope maze, and traversed a tyre hop. That was about it for obstacles, other than zombies, and felt it would be great to just have some tree trunks to leap over, maybe a balance beam to play with, small walls to get over, just something to break up the course a little. Zombies were a mixed bag, but of course, thats what youre going to get when the zombies are the paying public and not fully organised and trained actors. Some were absolutely great, in awesome costumes, screaming, snarling and leaping at every human they could. Some would leap from behind trees and tall grass. Unfortunately, there were others who were maybe a bit too self conscious, or maybe not into the whole idea, that just couldnt get into character. The other issue I found was that many zombies were a little too zealous at stealing peoples flags as soon as they could, leaving lots of humans with none fairly early on in the race. Once the humans had lost their flags, they also lost their fear of zombies, lessening the experience for all. That being said, from all accounts, everyone had a fantastic time, and my minor complaints here are perhaps the most damning things anyone could come up with. It was awesome! The human race ended with a 30m slip-and-slide, that was kept nice and wet and slippery, and was such a great way to end a 5km trot on a hot day - instant cooldown. I should also mention, that there was more than enough water stations along the course, and no-one should have gone thirsty for very long, even on such a hot day. THE ZOMBIE EXPERIENCE : Zombies were taken to a separate area where they could make their final preparations. Volunteers were providing and applying white face paint and painting dark rings around eyes. There was also buckets of fake blood available for you to apply however you wished. Once you were all zombied up a volunteer would collect groups a take you out on course. Theyd show you the areas to cover at different stages of the race, go over the rules, and even elect of few of the scariest looking zombies as skitters, zombies that were allowed to move fast and chase humans, but had to scream at the top of their lungs while doing so. I have to say, we REALLY got into the zombie thing. There was nothing more satisfying than making humans scream and scatter. I didnt even try to take a single flag, and just had too much fun simply terrorizing every passerby I could. So much so, that after the main wave had passed all our allotted positions, a bunch of us started stumbling from the finish line back down the track to keep scaring the humans as they came through. Being a zombie was definitely the highlight of the day! The organisers did a fantastic job. The instruction sessions were informative and hilarious. It was great to see the property owners getting around also, enjoying the craziness of it all. The t-shirts are very high quality, and the medals solid and unique. These guys have plenty of very exciting future plans, some not that far off being officially announced (think dusk/night urban version of this in Rocky), so well definitely be keeping you up to date on those announcements as they come. I think we can safely say Australia has finally experienced its first successful zombie run. And it happened right here in CQ!! Next job, edit the GoPro videos - to tide you over, here our slip-and-slide selfie at the end of our human run : youtu.be/BaGUVmG5grY And in case you missed them - the photo reel : https://facebook/media/set/?set=oa.385771358244607&type=1
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 01:35:50 +0000
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