Exclusive: Nick Moran on Phantom Peak's new Stratford venue

Phantom Peak's Canada Water venue. Photo: Alistair Veryard

Phantom Peak has been a mainstay of London's immersive landscape since first opening in August 2022. An open-world experience packed full of interesting characters, off-kilter technology and enough content every season to justify multiple visits, it's gained a cult following of fans, multiple awards, and most importantly of all, a string of eight consecutive 5-star reviews from Immersive Rumours.

With the conclusion of their upcoming season, The Great Undoing, Phantom Peak's Canada Water home will be no more, as the experience prepares to relocate to a new site at Westfield Stratford City, which is due to open in Summer 2026.

Ahead of The Great Undoing's opening, we sat down with Phantom Peak's Co-Founder and Creative Director, Nick Moran, to discuss the show's new Westfield Stratford City venue and what's in store for the townsfolk in Phantom Peak's final season at Canada Water.

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Immersive Rumours: Hi Nick! Thanks for speaking with us today. It’s a big week for Phantom Peak, with your new venue in Westfield Stratford City having just been announced, and the final season at Canada Water - The Great Undoing - opening on Friday. How are you feeling going into this week?

Nick Moran: Obviously, even though Phantom Peak is moving on to a bigger and better venue in an incredible location, closing a venue is always an emotional undertaking. It's been three and a half years of my life, and this is the final four weeks of this venue. A month from now, it’ll be done. I am, of course, billions of years old, and I'll be here when there is nothing left apart from dust, but even so, this small scratch upon my interminable existence does mean something to me in the grand scheme of things.

Immersive Rumours: Phantom Peak’s move to the new site has been in the works for a while now. Why does Westfield Stratford City feel like the right fit for the show?

Nick Moran: It’s the busiest shopping mall in Europe and has over 58 million visitors a year, which is an incredible number. Westfield Stratford doesn’t just work with anyone, and the great thing about them is that they're not just a faceless landowner. The team there came to Phantom Peak; they love the show, understand what Phantom Peak is and how exciting it is to have something like it within the walls of their mall, so it's a natural partnership.

They’re also just great, great guys who’ve been really helpful and generous to us. We’re not just another thing for them; we’re something they’re personally excited about, and the people involved at Westfield Stratford want us to flourish and be somewhere that we can be with for years to come.

Image: Render of the Town Hall

Immersive Rumours: Westfield has made a real effort to make Stratford City into an experience hub in recent years. They’ve already got the likes of Gravity Max and F1 Box there, and of course, Westfield London in White City is soon going to become home to a new experience from Wake The Tiger. What do you think this says about where London’s experience industry is in 2026?

Nick Moran: I think it's a recognition of how the sector is growing and maturing. For Wake The Tiger and Phantom Peak to be partnering with Westfield is a great signifier for the sector that we’re reaching maturity and reaching the mainstream. It’s a stamp of approval, and I think it shows that this is where the experience economy is moving. Leisure and retail aren’t separate anymore; they’re all intertwined. People want to go out, have fun, and then shop and eat. It’s all part of the same ecosystem of entertainment, and that’s what’s so exciting. With us, what I’m excited about is imprisoning people in a platypus town for four hours and making them have fun. Otherwise, I will kill them.

[Nick looks over to Phantom Peak’s Head of Marketing, Jonathan Taylor]

Nick Moran: Jonathan demands that I threaten the audience three times during this interview. One down, two to go...

Immersive Rumours: Alongside the announcement, you’ve shared a number of renders showing off the designs for the new Phantom Peak. Anyone already familiar with the Canada Water site will look at it and still recognise it as the same town, but structurally it’s a complete redesign.

Nick Moran: Yeah. It’s a complete redesign. In the current Phantom Peak venue, we only have the Old Town and the New Town. In the new Westfield Stratford venue, we’re going to have Old Town, New Town and Blacklake, which is the new lakeside area. 

Every component that you love and expect is there. Nothing is gone, but everything is better. That’s the goal. For example, there’s going to be a large Church of the Cosmic Platypus. That’s something we always wanted but couldn’t do in the Canada Water site. People love the Miramaze. I don’t know why, but people love it. Therefore, there’s going to be a Miramaze that’s twice the size.

Not many people get the privilege of having a second go to get it all right. This is what we want the town to be, and it’s built around what we’ve learnt works, all of our learning from things that didn’t work, and these are the things we want to double down on. 

We want to have more exploration, more spaces, more verticality, and more of a sense of wonder and discovery. All these things are being put together, all under one roof. That’s one of the key things we’re getting to do that’s really exciting. We’re getting to fix all the little things and build on the big things we know people love as well.

It’s the opportunity to build on every single thing that we’ve seen people fall in love with and make it better. It’s been an opportunity to ask ourselves, ‘How do we take what we’ve learnt over the last four years and turn that into the best experience an experiential customer could have anywhere in the world?’ We want to be world-class and make sure no stone is left unturned.

Image: Render of The Undertakers

Immersive Rumours: With all this change, people will be relieved to hear that the show’s ongoing storyline is going to continue at Westfield Stratford City and that the core experience of Phantom Peak will remain the same, right?

Nick Moran: Yeah. The move isn’t going to alter much. Perhaps the closing ceremony will shift times here and there, and opening times might change a little, but it’ll all be minor tweaking at the edges. It’ll be 99.9% the same experience. The goal is to take what works and build on it, rather than fundamentally changing the experience.

Immersive Rumours: One new element that you’ll be building on is the addition of a bar that’s open to the public 7 days a week. How do you anticipate having that new gateway into the show’s world will play out?

Nick Moran: Being able to have an experiential bar area open seven days a week is a chance for the average person to come and get a sense of what it is and maybe think about coming down when they've got the gang or their family together. Often, people say that they really like the idea of Phantom Peak, but they want to get a taste of it before coming. The experiential bar elements of the new site are going to be the equivalent of a tiny piece of paper with the perfume on in an upmarket department store.

It's going to be still within the world of Phantom Peak and have the same feel and vibe as the full experience, but it allows people to get a little taster, and for those who love the show and want to be in the world of Phantom Peak and meet their mates for a drink, it lets them be a part of that world every day of the week. They don’t have to be at a show; they can dip into the world at their own leisure. It's about extending the world of Phantom Peak, allowing more people to sample it, and at the same time, creating extensions of the world for the people who love it already.

Image: Render of The Thirsty Frontier Saloon

Immersive Rumours: We’re also getting a new three-tier VIP experience at the new venue. What can you tell us about that?

Nick Moran: Yeah. One of the things you can see in some of the concept images is the train carriage by the Town Square. This’ll be the VIP way of arriving at Phantom Peak. It’ll be an experience that’s led by Rexford and allows you to experience entering the town via train in a different way from everyone else. It’s a mix of being a fun activity and also a cocktail experience at the same time.

Previously, we’ve flirted with the idea of VIP experiences, but never really done it properly. We couldn’t make a really good VIP experience at the current Phantom Peak, apart from it just being getting a drink on arrival, and we wanted to make sure that it wasn’t something we were just slapping on top and calling a ‘VIP experience’. We wanted to do something measurable, worthwhile, different and ultimately better. It should feel experiential, exciting and unique, and arriving into Phantom Peak by train, I think, is something that’s really exciting.

There’s also going to be different classes on board the train, too. We’re going to have First Class, Second Class, and you can also book in Postal Class, where you’re technically just a package. It’s also your choice on how you book it, but it’s something that genuinely offers people value, makes people feel welcome, and makes them feel like an important person. Or a very important package if you’re post. The ‘P’ can be many things..

Image: Render of the Town Square

Immersive Rumours: When The Great Undoing was first teased, many seasons ago, there was some worry from fans of Phantom Peak that it may have signalled the end of the show. With this move to Westfield Stratford, it seems like a pretty clear signal that the opposite is happening and Phantom Peak is here to stay.

Nick Moran: The only way Phantom Peak stops is if I die, and I can’t die; therefore, it’ll continue. It’ll still be here when you die, four seasons a year, forever.

Immersive Rumours: It’s upsetting to know that the show will outlive me, as there will be new trail cards that I won’t have..

Nick Moran: But yes, this is a long-term lease. It’s a permanent home for us. Phantom Peak grew about 20% in attendance last year, which, in this economy, is pretty incredible. We expect to keep growing, keep attracting new customers, keep bringing more people into the world of Phantom Peak who feel a part of it, and keep people coming back. The goal is for a Phantom Peak life cycle to be a decade with 10 years of stories. We could continue forever; there’s nothing to stop us carrying on, but I think 10 years is really the thought right now.

Part of the reason we’ve searched so long for a permanent home, somewhere that we feel can support us for years to come - and we believe we’ve found that home in Westfield Stratford City -  is because we believe in the future. We believe in the experience economy, we believe in location-based entertainment, and we believe in immersive and experiential entertainment. We believe that’s what people want to spend their money on, and that Phantom Peak is the best value ticket in London. We’re proud of that, and we want to keep growing and offering people a lovely time, because that’s what the privilege of the job is. Being able to do something that makes people happy is a privilege, not a right.

Tourists at Phantom Peak's Canada Water venue. Photo: Alistair Veryard

Immersive Rumours: Ahead of the new venue opening, of course, we’ve got The Great Undoing, the final season at Canada Water. Can you walk us through how this season is going to work and how it differs from a regular, full-length season?

Nick Moran: Yeah. The Great Undoing is slightly different from a normal season because, unfortunately, we have a little bit less time than we would like, so it’s a season within a season. We’ve got four new trails alongside seven trails from Wintermas that are being smashed together. Each of those four trails is specifically about The Great Undoing, which is the end of Phantom Peak as people know it.

It ties up quite a lot of things that have been going on for quite a while and offers, we think, quite a satisfying conclusion, but non-conclusion to where we've gotten to. We’re proud of what those stories tell and what those stories are about. For all of the things that have been teased for a long time, including the various characters who have come back, we’re really drawing a line under this venue that’s neat and satisfying and offers a lot of comfort to the fans.

It’s easy to think of Phantom Peak as just a series of stories and gags, but in my mind, because these characters have existed long before the show did, they're all individual people with lives, and it’s about trying to give them the send-off they deserve just as much as anything else. 

No matter what happens in the future within the next venue and beyond, it’s about everyone feeling like we respected the amount of love given to those 15 characters across the last few years, and everyone has their earned moment, even if it’s short, in the sun.

It’s a very bittersweet feeling, and something we have struggled to articulate, but I think we’ve got the balance right between joy and sentimentality within the closing ceremony and allowed the trails to have room to breathe and be stories that’ll make people think, ‘I feel like that was meaningful.’

Lovehart at Phantom Peak's Canada Water venue. Photo: Alistair Veryard

Immersive Rumours: One final question for you, Nick... The new venue in Stratford is going to have a boat ride, right?

Nick Moran: Yes. It’s going to have six.

Immersive Rumours: Six boat rides?! Wowadoozle.

Nick Moran: And what's amazing is they’re vertical boat rides. It's technology that no one has ever seen. There's a massive waterfall in the centre of town, and the boats go along, and then they ratchet onto the waterfalls - there’s a series of cogs and mechanisms built into it - and people get taken up. The whole time, there are four different speakers on every side of the boat, and there's just the sound of me screaming as loud as I can the whole time. It's a volume that’s unsafe, like genuinely unsafe. I got the EU to tell me what the safe standards were and then added 11 decibels, which is a lot of decibels. It's going to be an extremely upsetting, horrific time, and I hope we sell no tickets.

[Editor’s Note: Phantom Peak has no plans for a boat ride]

Perigate and tourists at Phantom Peak's Canada Water venue. Photo: Alistair Veryard

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Phantom Peak's The Great Undoing runs at their Canada Water venue from 30th January to 28th February 2026. Their new venue in Westfield Stratford City will open in Summer 2026. For more information and to book tickets for The Great Undoing, visit phantompeak.com