Wax House: Jack the Ripper Virtual Reality
Jack the Ripper VR Haunted House
Hollywood Gothique Says:
Though not as spectacular as some VR attractions, the Jack the Ripper Haunted House is among the most entertaining we have ever experienced, thanks to the interactive mystery element that has guests seeking clues to the identify of the infamous serial killer. Highly Recommended.
South Bay Galleria Mall, 2nd Floor
1815 Hawthorne Boulevard
Redondo Beach, 90278
questroom.com/rooms/wax-house
2023 Update: After reopening for business post-2022.
Wax House: Jack the Ripper Archive
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Wax House: Jack the Ripper Virtual Reality Game – History
Wax House: Jack the Ripper began as a downloadable, stationary VR game titled Wax House: Legend of Jack the Ripper from The Hollow Zone. For Halloween 2018, a free-roaming version made its debut at Mountasia Family Fun Center in Santa Clarita, under the title Jack the Ripper Virtual Reality Haunted House.
This version improved upon the original by allowing players to walk from room to room and travel from floor to floor on an elevator instead of “teleporting” from one place to another. This enhanced the sense of being immersed in the virtual world as participants roamed the wax museum opening drawers and picking up objects in their search for evidence. However, the “haunted house” label was a bit misleading, since the experience was more about exploration than scares; the virtual world was filled with static displays befitting a museum, with only an occasional surprise appearance by a moving character.
The resulting thirty-minute free-roaming VR experience, in which groups of two to four explored a wax museum for clues to the identify of Jack the Ripper, was not as spectacular as The Void‘s virtual reality shows, the game play was more engaging – leaving guests free to explore the virtual space in their quest to solve the mystery. In addition to a VR headset and backpack, the attraction provided guests with a sort of hand tool, which manifested in the VR environment as a claw that could be used to open drawers and pick up objects.
In 2019, the attraction was rebranded as the Jack the Ripper Virtual Reality Escape Room and moved to the South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach, where it operated year round, not as a Halloween-season event. Though strictly speaking the goal was to solve the mystery, not to escape from the museum, the attraction did require the the sort of puzzle solving and group cooperation common in escape games. Now under the auspices of Questroom.com, a division of WLA Entertainment, Inc that offers numerous other escape rooms and VR games, the attraction still contains a mild scare or two, but the emphasis remains on game play.
In 2020, the Jack the Ripper Virtual Reality Escape Room went on hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic and remained so through Halloween 2021. The event returned, under its original title of Wax House: Jack the Ripper, in time for the Halloween 2022 season. However, as of 2023, it is no longer scheduled on the Questroom.com website.
