FriendsFestive Blackpool is officially open! We headed on down to the Winter Gardens to bring you this FriendsFestive Blackpool Review.
Appearing for the first time in Blackpool, FriendsFestive brings a whole host of Friends themed activities including set tours of Monica and Joey & Chandler’s apartment, a Central Perk set and even screen-used props!
Yes, that’s correct, straight from the Warner Brothers archives were props used in the show including the Thanksgiving turkey worn by Courteney Cox on screen.
The prop is so valuable that a full-time security guard has been hired to look after it and make sure it isn’t touched or taken!
Winter Gardens is such a beautiful location for this wonderful event as it was themed with Christmas cheer and there were photo-ops aplenty as soon as you walked into the event.
Simply sign up on an app to get a QR code, scan your code at the photo points, a member of staff will take your photo and instantly that photo appears on your app account.
It’s not just photo ops, there are two green screen opportunities to get some incredible video content.
One involves you dancing around with a super-imposed turkey on your head and the second video is a recreation of Monica and Ross’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve dance.
These hilarious green screen opportunities edit a video together for you to download off the app and onto your phone (the photos too of course).
There is a seating area full of places to grab themed food including Ross’s sandwich, Joey’s pizza and more.
Themed cocktails are up for grabs and of course a coffee or two.
Sit on some comfy couches and watch Friends festive highlights on the big screen surrounded by fellow Friends fans.
The most fun (for us) experience of the photo ops were the holiday armadillo as an actor in full costume greeted us and we had our photo in the wonderfully themed Christmas grotto.
Sporting some wonderful Friends Numskull Christmas jumpers that were kindly gifted to us by Numskull themselves we were getting spotted left, right and centre with festive compliments.
With beautiful arm candy surrounded by Friends-themed things, life could not BE any better right now.
Absolutely snug as a bug in a rug in our comfy clothing I only thought we’d be in the event for around an hour or so.
Over two hours had passed and I was adamant about staying even longer.
Time really does fly when you’re having fun!
There’s so much to see and do but the highlight of the show is most certainly the set tours.
Step behind the curtain and walk around the apartments before stepping into a replica Central Perk.
Attention to detail is of the highest order and the sets are constructed much like they would have been at Warner Brothers during filming.
I had the privilege of visiting the real Central Perk set in Warner Brothers California and instantly the one difference that I spotted was the size difference compared to that of the original set.
The FriendsFestive set has to be bigger to accommodate the number of guests attending but take nothing away from the detail within the sets here, they were wonderfully festive and immersive.
Screen used props from the show certainly brought you closer than ever to the show we all know and love and the event as a whole had this wonderful pre-Christmas magic to it.
November is a little too early for me to be feeling Christmas spirit but with festive jumpers, festive atmosphere and FriendsFestive it was hard not to feel that holiday magic and get a little carried away in the festivities.
Once all of that excitement had concluded you enter the gift shop where there is exclusive merchandise available specific to the event.
If you want something here then this event is the only place you can grab these exclusive items but they have since added a Friendsfestive online store just in case you missed something.
The prices online are exactly the same as what they are at the event but with the postage and package added on (naturally).
FriendsFest will also be visiting London before the end of the year and if you can’t catch the Blackpool event you should absolutely check it out elsewhere.
If I had any niggles whatsoever about the event it would be the cameras used in the photo ops. Many of the photos needed editing / brightening up.
A few spotlights or flashbulbs would have certainly helped with this as the image quality was quite dull on some of the photo-ops but it’s nothing that a free mobile phone photo editor couldn’t sort out!
I want to express a huge thank you to The Luna Cinema, Viacom and Comedy Central UK for putting on one hell of an event and as always a huge thanks to Jo for putting up with me.
A huge thanks to the Warner Brothers archives for letting these priceless artefacts travel to Blackpool and finally a huge thanks to Numskull for making us festive jumper celebrities for that day!
Check out our FriendsFestive Blackpool VLOG below:
