Transport for London has let somebody take a Routemaster, pull it through a fictional portal and park it in a scrap-built waste-processing district on the first floor of Westfield. You can walk through it from 15 October.
The bus is inside Absurd City, an 80,000 square foot immersive attraction from Wake The Tiger that opens in Shepherd’s Bush next month and will be the largest of its kind in Europe. The partnership with TfL is real, brokered through IMG Licensing, and the bus is the current model reimagined rather than a prop built to look like one.
Luke Mitchell, who co-founded Wake The Tiger and is its chief creative officer, puts the thinking like this: rather than simply putting a London bus into Absurd City, they wanted to ask what happens when you drag it through the portal and let the world get hold of it.
What the rest of it is
Five districts across two floors, reached through a portal into a domed city in the parallel world of Meridia. Bloom Street is a hyperactive high street run by something called REX. Reclamia, where the bus ends up, is the waste district where junk gets rebuilt into contraptions. Imaginopolis is for the artists, NEON // NEXUS for the hackers, and Elite HQ is the gated bit for the rich.
It is self-guided and non-linear, which means there is no route and no queue-and-shuffle. The venue says two to three hours, though its own school-trip page tells teachers to allow at least three, and on that evidence three is the number to plan for.
This is Wake The Tiger’s second permanent site. The first, The Dream Factory in Bristol, opened in a former warehouse in July 2022 and has had more than half a million visitors from over seventy countries. The company was started by the people behind Boomtown Fair, which explains a great deal about how the thing looks.
The practical bits nobody puts in the listing
There is no minimum age, but under-13s need an adult with them and anyone 13 or over can go in alone. It is wheelchair accessible with alternative routes through most areas and manual chairs to borrow, but pushchairs and mobility scooters are not allowed in at all, which is a real constraint if you are bringing a toddler. Calm Sessions for neurodivergent and SEND visitors are planned, but not until 2027.
It is on the first floor of the shopping centre next to Marks and Spencer, so Shepherd’s Bush or White City on the Central line, or Wood Lane. There are lockers rather than a cloakroom, and no luggage storage, so do the shopping afterwards rather than before.
The bar, which the press material calls Wunderground and the venue’s own FAQs call something else entirely, can be used without a ticket to the attraction. There is also an 18-plus After Hours programme on selected Fridays, 7pm to midnight, with arrival any time up to 9.30pm.
The London x London Take: London does not need another immersive experience and we would ordinarily say so. What makes this one worth the trip east is that it is genuinely enormous, it is built rather than projected, and the people behind it come from festival production rather than from the events-industry pipeline that gave us a decade of rooms with a beanbag and a Van Gogh on the wall. The Routemaster is a gimmick and a good one. Go in the first fortnight before the school holidays find it, allow three hours rather than two, and use the bar afterwards, which you can do without paying to get in.
Need to know
- What: Absurd City, an 80,000 sq ft immersive experience from Wake The Tiger
- Where: First floor of Westfield London, next to Marks and Spencer, Ariel Way, W12
- When: Opens Thursday 15 October. Allow around three hours
- Ages: No minimum. Under-13s must be with an adult. After Hours is 18 plus
- Access: Wheelchair accessible with alternative routes, manual chairs to borrow. No pushchairs or mobility scooters. Calm Sessions from 2027
- Tickets: london.wakethetiger.com
- Nearest station: Shepherd’s Bush or White City
More in the area in our guide to things to do in west London, and more of the genre in our round-up of London’s immersive experiences.
