A visit to the Airbnb X-Mansion, from those who survived the experience

In May, housing rental behemoth Airbnb announced a new promotion called Icons, a series of “extraordinary experiences” including overnights in museums, mingling with celebrities, and recreations of fictional locations like Carl’s house from Pixar’s Up. If you are a fan of the X-Men, one of these locations might have activated your portable Cerebro unit. The Step into X-Men ’97 experience advertised that you could “Live like the X-Men as you stay in a 2D animated re-creation of Marvel Animation’s X-Mansion in Westchester, New York. You’ll discover your mutant abilities and even train in the Danger Room.”

Seeing photos of the location on social media, complete with its Instagram lighting and 2-D cel-shaded paint, made me wonder if it was even real. I immediately had so many questions: Was this just a stunt by Airbnb to distract us from their disruption of the housing market? Could anyone actually visit this place? Was there a bathroom? Lucky for me and anyone else out there with lingering questions, CXFer Mark Turetsky knew two friends with the inside scoop: Nerd Safari’s Ellie and Simon Rice were two of the lucky folks chosen to visit the X-Men ‘97 “Mansion” and took a few minutes to tell me all about it.

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Adam: Ellie, Simon, tell me about yourselves. How did you become X-Men fans?

Simon: When I was a kid, my dad worked in a convenience store in a small village that stocked a handful of comics, including X-Men. After school, I would “borrow” the latest issues, curl up in a corner and escape into a fantasy world of mutants and superheroes! Seeing these stories represented in animation during the ‘90s was mind-blowing, and I felt they really captured the stories, personalities, and moral compass of the comics.

Ellie: I became an X-Men fan by way of Simon! We watched the animated series regularly when we first got together, I really loved the stories, despite never having read the comics! Then we loved the movies, and when we had kids, they loved them too!

Adam: Were you big fans of the X-Men ‘97 show? What did you think of the entire season now that it’s over?

Simon: I absolutely loved it. Hearing the blend of classic and new voice actors, and seeing the characters faithfully represented but with a little polish to update them for the 2020s, was just incredible! And the stories were as deep, emotional, funny and immersive as ever!

Ellie: Same! It was a weird feeling to have it pick up where it left off so long ago! Heartbreaking in places, but so great to see more of the characters we love.

Adam: How did you hear about AirBnB’s X-Men ‘97 house and how did you get a reservation?

Simon: It just popped up on my AirBnB app one day! They previously allowed people to stay over, and I saw a listing for that experience that was no longer active, but a newer listing for a daytime experience. We had to fill out an application (where we pretty much just gushed about the comics and the animated show in the same way we just did) and within about a week they sent us a link to book. We were over the moon to get the opportunity!

Ellie: We weren’t sure it was real at first, I think I saw it on social media and couldn’t quite believe it when I saw that it was a real place you could actually book on AirBnb, and hosted by Jubilee.

Adam: Where the heck is it? I’m imagining a scenario where AirBnB gives you secret coordinates. Did you have to travel a far distance from where you live?

Simon: The way it works is that you meet at Bedford Hills train station in Westchester County, NY, where a van with the X-Men logo will come to meet you. They take care of your parking and then whisk you away into the countryside about 20 minutes north. We were very lucky in that this was only around 30 minutes drive from our home, but there were people who had driven for 5 hours from Maryland and flown in from Phoenix AZ.

Adam: How big was the actual “mansion”? A full size home? Scaled down?

Simon: It was a legit mansion! We actually found a Zillow listing for it, and it cost tens of millions of dollars, so this was definitely not a cheap pop-up experience. And, being a traditional mansion, it featured things like large rooms, high ceilings and a spiral staircase. The building itself was impressive, especially as it was decorated with thick black lines to make it look like it had just popped out of a comic book or animated show.

Adam: Tell me about your “stay” – did you actually sleep over like in a real AirBnB or was this more of a tour?

Simon: Sadly, they no longer offer overnight stays (at least for now), so we were there for a little over three hours. During that time, we (eight people broken into three groups) made “mutant potions” in Beast’s lab, learned about our mutant powers from Cerebro in the War Room, aced a test in the Classroom (that involved a scavenger hunt through mutant bedrooms) and finally trained our abilities in the Danger Room. While the space itself was impressive, the staff were even more so, and stayed in character the whole time. This really added to the immersive nature of the experience.

Adam: What were your favorite rooms? It sounds like the space was pretty interactive, but was there anything you weren’t allowed to touch?

Simon: The space was extremely interactive. We did notice one group being asked not to put on the X-Men uniforms in the Ready Room (that seemed pretty obvious to leave alone) but aside from that people were free to interact with the space. In particular, every drawer of every cabinet was packed with candy, and we were encouraged to go nuts taking whatever we wanted. For me, probably my favorite room was Wolverine’s bedroom. From his weights bench, to his destroyed alarm clock covered in claw marks, to the photo of Scott and Jean next to his bed for him to look at longingly, it was such a faithful recreation.

Ellie: The candy in Wolverine’s room was Canadian, Coffee Crisps and Wunderbars. Jubilee’s room had lots of sour candy, Beast had pop rocks. In the classroom I peeked in the drawers of Professor X’s desk and it was all old people hard candies. I loved that attention to detail.

Adam: I didn’t see any bathrooms in the promotional pictures – was there an X-restroom?

Simon: I actually didn’t notice or ask about this!

Ellie: It was a real house that guests had stayed overnight in, so yes, there were bathrooms. I think we were so excited we didn’t spot it. But there was a shared bathroom between Wolverine’s room and a generic student room, and Jubilee had an en-suite. The bathrooms weren’t themed, just basic bathrooms.

Adam: Did AirBnB charge you for your visit or was this 100% a promotional thing?

Simon: Yes, there was a nominal charge of $39 for the experience, but that seemed ridiculously low for the value we got from the experience, and the awesome swag that we walked out with.

Adam: Did visiting the X-Men 97 house live up to your expectations as X-Men fans?

Simon: It lived up to it, and more. I genuinely felt emotional as we left and I realized that I wouldn’t be able to go back to school for day two the next day. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see Beast or Morph wandering down the hallways, it was that immersive.

Adam: I saw you both dressed up for the occasion. Are either/both of you cosplayers? How did you decide what to wear?

Simon: Yes! We just wore costume shirts, as we were concerned that there might be very active sections of the mansion. While there definitely were sports-like activities, it would have been possible to do those in full (but comfortable) cosplay. Maybe next time I’ll dress up in a comics-accurate Gambit costume.

Ellie: We are both cosplayers. Only casually, and currently only once or twice a year, depending on our schedule and which cons we’re going to. Last year we went to FlameCon and NYCC in NYC, and also to Galacticon in Denver, as well as the NY Ren Faire. This year we’re skipping NYCC, but we did dress up for FlameCon again, and plan to go back to the Ren Faire.

Adam: If you could visit another pop-up experience like this for another fictional location, what would it be?

Simon: Oh wow, I’d love to see them flip the X-Mansion experience on its head (or expand it) and focus on some villains. How about a sentinel factory complete with Master Mold, or the Morlocks lair, or Magneto’s base? Or even Genosha?

Ellie: Anything Star Trek. I’d love to walk the Promenade of DS-9!

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So there we have it. Not only was the X-Men ‘97 mansion a real mansion, but it was filled with candy and activities for the lucky few. It’s unknown what’s next for the mansion. AirBnB has stopped taking reservations for this particular promotion on their website, but who knows what recreated fictional environment they’ll come up with next. Whether it’s Asteroid M or the Weapon X facility, hopefully we’ll be able to cover it. My thanks to Simon and Ellie for sharing their experience and their photos with us. If you’d like an even more in-depth look at their visit, you can pop over to the YouTube channel, Nerd Safari.