I visited
Evermore Park for the Aurora season on Saturday, December 15 and Monday, December 17. If you are planning a trip to Evermore here are some tips that I hope will help, without spoiling anything important:
When to go:The Evermore experience is divided into different seasons that last for a matter of weeks. There are also weeks where it will be closed entirely for construction. Each season brings new decorations, characters, and stories. Additionally, the plot of the story happening in the park will progress during each season. I want to see if I can visit every season from now, and it might be fund to go on multiple days in the same season that are separated by enough time for the plot to progress.
According to Google Maps, Saturdays are the most busy day, followed by Fridays, and the rest of the days are significantly less crowded. This is corroborated by my experience: on Saturday, every character in the park usually had a crowd of 10 to 20 people trying to talk to them. On Monday, there were enough people around that you wouldn't feel lonely but there were way more chances to talk to the characters, which is fun.
If you go on an off-day, you should still get to experience all the buildings and character roles that are present on the weekend. According to a park employee, there might be some special stuff, like live music, that only happens on the weekends, but that didn't seem to be the case for my visits.
When you get a ticket, you have to choose a particular time of day to go. For Aurora, it was either night (4:30pm to 9pm) or midday (11am to 3pm). For the Aurora festival in December, going at night makes a lot more sense because then you can see all the pretty lights. So that's what I did.
The closing time for the park is confusing. It either closes at 9pm, 9:30pm, or 10pm depending on where you are getting the information. For me, it closed at 9:30pm on Saturday and 9pm on Monday.
What to wear:Don't worry, Tom! The majority of visitors there were just wearing normal street clothes.
I wore a cartoony hat for a video game character. It helped people remember me; a bunch of employees were happy when they saw me on Monday because they remembered me from Saturday. Several people said they liked my hat. It also allowed me to do a little role-playing when people asked me about myself. So that was a low-effort, low-cost way to have more fun.
I'd say don't wear an elaborate full-body costume because people will think you're a character from the park.
Dress warmly if you are going in the winter, but there are many other ways to stay warm. I counted four buildings you could go inside for different experiences (not counting bathrooms). They were selling hot apple cider and hot cocoa. There were plenty of open fire pits around the park with stone benches.
What to bring:Bring a thin-tipped sharpie pen so you can easily write on a piece of paper that you will probably obtain. (I tried using a normal pen but that doesn't work so well when your writing surface is stone.)
Food:If you show up really hungry, you can buy soup in a bread bowl at Evermore. And I think they had a meat pie thing. They also had hot drinks and plenty of sweets. The "Eversmore" desert was pretty unique and worth trying. They had cookies and some interesting-looking desert apples.
Under construction:I counted 21 buildings on the park grounds, and 11 of them were off limits, usually due to being under construction. There were also some unfinished big open spaces. So I expect the Evermore experience to just get bigger and more impressive over time!