Crouched discreetly at the mouth of Uptown, Delaporte Manor will soon be welcoming guests into an original horror experience unlike anything you’ll find this Halloween season. Part escape experience, part haunted house, all immersive theatrics; Delaporte Manor is the brainchild of Andrew Preble, Owner of “Escape My Room,” the premier escape room proprietor in New Orleans. Building upon a fascination with crafting interactive stories of a puzzling and horrifying nature, Andrew and his team have been diligently constructing something truly sinister in the shell of their Camp Street Manor House, one that he hopes will fascinate and terrify in equal measure.
“I have a theater background, but some of my earliest memories are making a haunted house in the woods of my neighborhood throughout Middle School,” recalls Andrew. “Over a decade ago, I became fascinated with escape rooms because they are essentially video games in the real world and a space where all the guests’ choices matter. Haunted houses, on the other hand, are usually passive and largely focused on guests’ reactions. With Delaporte Manor, we are building an experience that features all the malevolence of a haunted house combined with the agency of an escape room as visitors traverse through our living, breathing nightmare.”
Taking his cues from the expansive immersive haunt scene of Los Angeles, most notably the infamous “Delusion” experience, Andrew’s team has renovated and expanded the sizable footprint of “Escape My Room” from one floor to two, adding eight new rooms for guests to explore. While scares will be aplenty, Andrew is well aware that the Venn diagram of haunt fans and escape room fans is in no way a circle and hopes to use the strengths of both storytelling formats for maximum fright.
“A lot of haunts are unable to create engrossing puzzle design, and many escape rooms see scaring as a lesser art form,” says Andrew. “We’re creating the best of both worlds here, sending small groups into this fully realized environment where everything is in story, every person you interact with is part of the tapestry, and the only way out is through.”
The experience’s story, an original creation of Andrew and his Team, follows the lineage of the titular Delaporte family, one of the oldest in New Orleans. Over the generations, residents of the Delaporte Manor included scoundrels, criminals, and collectors of occult items from around the world. Guests entering for their tour of the manor will be witness to a doll show by one of the young Delaporte children. However, the presentation does not go as planned, and the child curses her guests to become living dolls themselves. As parties of eight are led into the grand hall of the house, it becomes clear that they are now prisoners of the doll house and must uncover the secret passageways and horrifying past of Delaporte Manor or be damned and tormented by the child forever.
“When we were writing the script for this experience, we wanted to focus on a story that would play on people’s expectations, leaning away from traditional jump scares and focusing on something unique,” says Andrew. “Our scares are more prop-led and creative, less obvious than your usual conga line style haunt. Sometimes, what might or might not lurk in the silence of a dark room is the scariest thing of all, and we take full advantage of that throughout the night.”
A decidedly PG-13 presentation, the Delaporte Manor team has been able to utilize every color of the macabre rainbow, from terror to camp to comedy. While the idea of being shrunk down to doll size with a giant child terrorizing you is objectively horrifying, it is also equally silly, which is, of course, the point. Something doesn’t have to be gushing blood to be unsettling, and as Andrew is first to opine, often creep and comedy are best when they are simpatico.
“My favorite scary experiences are the kind that don’t take themselves too seriously,” says Andrew. “Even “The Exorcist” has parts that are outlandish and hilarious. That’s my preferred flavor of horror, when high theatricality and ridiculousness are perfectly married together.”
Promising to be a perfect gateway experience for haunters seeking high immersion, escape room aficionados looking for a little extra creep, and even kids braving their first haunted house, Delaporte Manor is a unique blend of drama and dread, ready to allow eager guests into its inner sanctum for frights and delights aplenty.
See y’all in the moonlight!
Delaporte Manor opens its doors for guests on select nights, beginning September 26th through November 8th.
