WINTERGEDDON RETURNS TO AUCKLAND
- 14-16th June
- Auckland Showgrounds
- Fri: 6-9pm, Sat: 9am-6pm, Sun: 9am-5pm
Posted September 10, 2020
This year’s Auckland Armageddon event has faced numerous challenges on the rocky road to completion, with Covid-19 having an obvious effect on the entire events industry (one of many, many businesses and beyond effected) and has led to a number of changes for the upcoming event, which we wanted to fill you in on.
Following Jacinda Ardern’s announcement today that Auckland will remain in Level 2 for another 14 days from this Wednesday night, with a potential move to Level 1 from October 7th if the situation continues to improve, we have decided that we will push forward with the Auckland Armageddon Expo over Labour Weekend October 23-26. This of course is dependent on Auckland moving to Level 1 from the specified date, however we fully expect this to happen on that timeline, and that gives us a few weeks space and thus we plan to rock on and deliver our planned 25th Anniversary event.
That said, covid has had an additional impact on the event beyond dates and there are a few things we need to update, some negative but many new positives…
The biggest impact for the event will be the absence of the larger gaming industry exhibits along with gaming previews and console reveals. This was unavoidable as internationally there are no large-scale gaming events so no code being created for them to promote and display. While we will not have the industry as a whole present for 2020, when things return to ‘normal’ (or whatever will pass as normal in the future) we are confident to see their return. This does also mean that we will not have any advance previews of the new gaming consoles in ANY way.
Additionally, we will be without any international exhibitors (for obvious reasons), while there were hopes of a Trans-Tasman bubble, that’s is obviously not going to happen this year.
Now, faced with these two challenges to the event, we have tried to make this a positive - reworking areas, bringing in new events and making the expo more, rather than less. In working towards this, we have added the following to this year’s 25th anniversary expo that we hope you will enjoy...
SUPPORT LOCAL! The event will feature our usual array of collectible, gaming, comics and cool merchandise displays and stores from across NZ, with this year’s event 100% Kiwi stores – after such trying times for local businesses and artists, we want to really encourage attendees to support local!
GAMING! With the removal of promotions of specific brands, this has allowed us to create extensive interactive large-scale gaming zones based around a pure entertainment aesthetic, these include Just Dance, Fall Guys, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Multiple eSports arenas covering League of Legends, Valorant and Racing, plus a huge Gaming Zone featuring a fighting game stage and a massive mixture of racing, console and PC gaming.
These areas are all designed for maximum entertainment value, with lots of large scale screens and gaming zones.
AMUSEMENTS! A first for the event, we will be premiering the Armageddon Carnivale - a journey into a new realm, with actors, music, visuals and performances to boggle and entertain in an Interactive Immersive theatre experience. Adding to our usual event amusements we have also included an Ice Skating rink (artificial), laser tag and a all new Nerf arena.
LEGO AND MODELS! For the first-time event, the event will have a number of model dioramas as well as an entire hall (the outer hall 6) dedicated to the Auckland Brick Show, with amazing LEGO displays filling the hall. This is a free event within the expo.
VIRTUAL GUESTS! With the loss of international stars we have been able to beam in remotely the single biggest celebrity line-up that we have ever had, with stars from across the world attending virtual panels, interacting with attendees directly. These include guests from Star Wars, The Avengers, Stargate SG1 & Atlantis, Doctor Who, The Flash, Black Lightning, Arrow, Smallville, Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Transparent, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Antman, Firefly, The Mummy, The Magicians, Star Trek Discovery, What We Do In The Shadows TV & Movie, Babylon 5, Dragonball Z, RWBY, Altered Carbon, Charmed, Clone War, Gaming, Reign, YouTube, Shadow Hunters and more!
IN-PERSON GUESTS! We have secured SEVEN physical guests, hosting panels and doing autograph and photo sessions in the Logan Campbell Lobby. These include guests from What We Do In The Shadows, Wellington Paranormal, Arrow, Pans Labyrinth, Outlander and Agent Carter.
STAGES! With 65+ virtual guests and 6 physical stars, there will be four event stages this year. Stage One, the Logan Campbell stage (3000 seats), Stage Two (500 seats located in hall one), Stage Three (250 seats located upstairs, also for the event VIP panels) and Stage Four (100 seat cosplay and live panel stage).
FIREWORKS! Exclusive to Friday night attendees, this is a deluxe display erupting in front of the events grandstand.
MUSIC! We will have a full day of live musical acts performing outside opposite the event grandstand on the Saturday of the Expo.
Again, we thank all of our fans for your support over the last few months, and in fact over the last 25 years! People and community are what makes this event the most incredible experience it can be, and we hope to wow you all at #AUCKGEDDON at our silver anniversary event!
We will be holding a livestreamed Q&A this Friday at Noon to answer any questions you Armageddon fans might have.
