As semi-regular visitors to well established London femdom event Pedestal we’ve often asked ourselves why there isn’t a similar event in the north of England. Running now for over 20 years it’s proven to be a hugely successful female domination evening (and long into the following morning) held once every two months. Pedestal has acted as a wonderful socialising and networking opportunity for us over the years, but sometimes you want to go to a play event and, well, play! Not to say that you can’t play there. You absolutely can. We just have different priorities in mind when we attend.
During a rare visit to Fetlife.com (we both used to be much more personally active on there a decade ago) I spotted an event listing for a brand new Femdom event in Leeds called QueenDomme. Even more surprisingly one of the hosts is someone we know personally. Despite knowing one of the organisers this will be a very honest and transparent review.
What is QueenDomme?
According to the event listing QueenDomme “is Leeds’ first regular “open-to-all” femdom event, specifically created for female presenting dominants and those who worship them”.
I had a read through all of the rules (I’ll go through these next) and location details. It’s hosted at swingers club Pandora’s, which is located in Armley, a short journey from Leeds city centre (a taxi from Leeds railway station will cost you around £6 - estimated). The entrance fee was £10 for the event and you’re required to have a membership card for Pandora’s, which is an additional £10 and lasts for 1 year. So £20 for your first visit then £10 each time after that. They took cash or cards and tickets were purchased on the door. Understood? Good.
The event run time was listed as from 8pm to midnight.
We’ve been aware of Pandora since it opened as it’s hosted some other kink events before but we haven’t been until now. Having attended many events at different venues in Leeds this was going to be a new experience, one we were both excited for. Would it match up to our hopes and expectations? Let's get into it.
Event Rules
We’re very familiar with the rules at different FemDom events, though each event has its own. Reading through the rules presented our first question.
The listing page states “Queendomme is generally relaxed protocol, but we expect maximum respect towards all Dommes in attendance. This is a femdom event, so act accordingly” but then goes on to say “All owned subs are expected to be kept on a lead at all times in social areas. This will denote that you as a sub are unavailable for general play”, which we would classify as high protocol. Still, we weren’t deterred.
The full rules are broken down as follows:
- Safe words
- Dommes first
- Seating and furniture
- Wristband and Collar System: Owned and unattached subs
- Only speak when spoken to
Much of these rules are similar to those at Pedestal, though some that apply only to the Goddess room at Pedestal apply throughout the venue here. Red is the house safe word, only dommes are allowed to sit on the furniture (subs may stand or kneel on the floor), wrist bands are available once you get into the venue to identify if you’re available for play or not and submissives are expected to only speak when spoken to. A D/s heaven!
Finally, the usual stuff. No phones and, most importantly, don’t be a dick (we added that one ourselves)!
Dress Code
Exactly what you’d expect from a kink event:
“The event dress code is kinky and fetish attire only. Lingerie, leather, latex, PVC, uniforms or similar. If you can't accommodate this then nudity or suits will be the only exception. This is a relaxed protocol event generally, but we want to maintain an air of fetishism and D/s identity.”
Mistress K opted from a corset, wetlook leggings and red glossy Dr Martens. Slave D played it safe with a black suit. Chastity cage choice was a white Hera hexlock device with Mistress K attaching the black hexlock pendant key to her necklace.
The Venue
Pandora is huge! We heard it was large inside but this is a big understatement. We didn’t count up all of the rooms on the evening so I’ve just had to do some research. According to what I can find there are at least 18 play rooms upstairs (I don’t know if this includes the dungeon room, all of the private and open play rooms), a spa sauna area (visible through large glass windows inside the ground floor main room), locker room, the main room with a bar and floor level stage, a big room off to the side of the stage full of sofas and much more. Seriously, if you manage to use every room during a single visit you deserve some kind of medal. Consider that a challenge.
There’s a big selection of different play spaces. The main room has plenty of sofas, a ton of floor space for games (I’ll cover this later) or play of all kinds. From memory most of the play rooms have curtains so that you can turn the space into a private one (or make it more public if you wish by leaving them open). There’s a bi specific room, the dungeon has a few pieces of bondage equipment to get tied into and there’s a locker room on the ground floor for changing and storing your bag (if you wish to).
All of the rooms we went into had cleaning kits to wipe surfaces down after using them. The rooms we viewed all looked to be clean (no, we didn’t take our black light to check HOW clean. Sorry!)
The venue is BYOB (bring your own booze/beer), which is fantastic. If you want to bring alcohol free (which I did as I was going to be working the following day) or a bottle of your finest champagne you can do that. Soft drinks were available to buy at the bar.
Play Stations (not the console!)
Something interesting that we read on the event page (and another follow up page on the organising team's FetLife account) was the mention of play stations. A house domme would be available at different areas designated for certain play including impact play, sensation play and foot worship. Anyone who wanted to get a taster would be welcome to go to each station and try it out with the domme or a dominant would go and be supervised by a house domme if they wanted to learn. Good clean fun and an education to boot. Not bad for a Wednesday night.
I’ll be honest and say I didn’t pay too much attention to this going on. There was play going on all over the place, so I’m not quite sure what was supposed to be happening and where. I didn’t see any signs up for the different stations, but as I say we didn’t go looking for them either.
My Experience of QueenDomme - Mistress K
As Slave D mentioned, we do know one of the organisers and were able to talk to her during the night about the event and hoping to create a space for Dommes and female presenting Dominants to create a community, a safe event space and even take over the world!! Wait, I don’t think I was supposed to reveal that last part.
The venue is astronomical in size, which was like a kinky fun house (but no gunge, or prizes to be won except for floggings, canings and peggings, oh my…!). Witnessing the folks at the event making use of the many rooms - caged “dolls”, subs being trampled on, body writing, impact play and glory holes galore - was a delight to see. One might expect with a first event that there might be some hesitation or shyness as people explored the event - but no such hesitations here in Leeds! I think that says something really positive about the atmosphere that the organisers created to put people immediately at ease.
Being on a midweek, there are pros and cons. It was a great way to break up the monotony of the working week and have something to look forward to, after a hard day at the Dom-office. Also ending at midnight means you can’t get into too much late night mischief so you can be relatively fresh (but maybe a little bruised) for work the next day, but time does fly when you’re enjoying yourself (or your sub), so it can also feel like the night is over before it’s begun.
On the other side of that, we’ve definitely seen at other events that the later the event runs, the more alcohol that might be imbibed and how the rules/etiquette goes out the window. It’s been a real shame at an event to be sitting and have someone start licking your shoes without discussion or consent, which says more about the people instead of the event. So maybe ending early means that people stay “focused” to the explicit rule sets laid out for QueenDomme.
I personally loved the effort that people put into their outfits, and how well everyone followed the rules. One thing that I was also really pleased to see was that the event was trans inclusive and affirmative. It shouldn’t be a surprise at all, but again, indicates the safety of the feeling of the event.
This was our first non-Pedestal event in an embarrassingly long time, and Pedestal is normally more of a social/networking event for us, so we were both really excited having the opportunity to try a new event that was so close to home.
I’ll admit to having some hesitations before going, not because of anything about the event or its marketing, but rather the delights of not feeling “enough” at an event of this kind. And that’s in spite of the constant reassurance (and adoration) from Slave D! I don’t say this to encourage any flattery of me (although I’ll happily accept it), but after seeing some comments from others at the events (like switches or subs who tried out a more Dominant aspect of their personalities that night), I thought it was important to share. It was great to see the comments after the event of how much people enjoyed the event, however they identify.
As an opening event, I felt it was a great success and from some of the comments we heard during the night and afterwards, it seems we’re not alone in that view! I had a great night, and not just because Slave D was locked and leashed, although that was an added bonus. I’m genuinely excited to go back to the next QueenDomme night whenever that might be and see how the event continues to grow and hopefully flourishes and thrives in Leeds.
My Experience of QueenDomme - Slave D
Not knowing what our intentions were for the evening, we packed minimal kit into a backpack and jumped in a taxi at around 8:30pm, arriving at the venue at roughly 8:40pm. This, unfortunately, was not the start we hoped for as we joined a queue outside in the cold. Some of the people in the queue had prepared for this better than others. It didn’t move quickly, which we eventually found out was due to the added processing time for each new club membership sign up.
Around 15-20 mins later we got inside to the front of the queue, quickly filled in our details on the back of a sign up form, paid our money (our own money, not a free or discounted guest list entry) and walked through the door to the main room.
The main room of Pandora is big. Lots of sofas, seating, the bar and a floor level stage area. Mistress K locked my collar in place, attached a leash and I pulled drinks for us both from my bag.
My first impression was a very positive one. Everyone had made an effort dress wise (plenty of latex, fetish wear and men in underwear - following the dress code exactly. You love to see it) and only dommes were sitting on the sofas, many of which had a sub (or a few in some cases) kneeling on the floor in front or beside them.
Within minutes of our arrival into the main room our hosts for the evening kicked off some sub games using big inflatable dice. I highly suspect some cheating was going on (come on, it wasn’t subtle and we loved them for it) when the dice kept landing on 6 which was the Domme’s choice of implement and then a second role (coincidentally - or not as we saw - normally a 6!), which turned into the number of impacts the volunteer subs received from a paddle, flogger or cane. I think any subs in attendance could volunteer for the games and the number of people who got involved was decent. They all looked to be enjoying themselves and most of the people in the main room gathered around to watch.
Mistress K was offered a Ferrero Rocher from a submissive kneeling on the floor as we watched the games unfold. Oh ambassador, you shouldn’t have (but she took it with a smile).
As the second game started (a dildo race where the volunteer subs had to take a dildo in their mouths then crawl at speed around the room to the finish line) just as we left the main room to take a look upstairs. This is where Pandora really impressed us.
The venue is set out over 3 floors. The main room was perfect for socialising, some play in different areas (though they didn’t distract or interfere with any conversations we were having with people) and there seemed to be lots of people making use of the locker room.
The 2nd floor was home to a number of play rooms (both open and closed) and the dungeon room. The corridor on the middle floor had a few sofas (lovely to see one domme sat on one of these sofas with her knee high boots up on top of her slave, who was on all fours on the floor), a spiral staircase (wouldn’t recommend that, particularly if you’re wearing heels) and a standard staircase to the top floor.
The top floor had more private rooms (one larger than the others - great for a scene involving multiple people) and another room full of sofas for relaxation or servitude play. The top floor is exclusively for the use of couples (a sign at the bottom of the stairs indicates that, though I’m not 100% sure if that’s just for swingers events or all events held there).
From what we observed there was lots of play going in, which was fantastic to see. We’ve heard feedback from some friends on the local (and national scene for that matter) stating that there’s less play going on at some events that they attend now compared to when we frequented events a some years ago. That certainly wasn’t the case here. There was play going on in all of the rooms that we walked past with a number of rooms still empty - we also could hear some very enthusiastic play going on, which was wonderful as a soundtrack walking around. This is very promising as it shows that there’s plenty of room for the event to grow into with space available for you to flog, peg or worship to your heart's content.
It was great to see a few caged cocks and talk with a few others about chastity play too. If you see us there again in the future please don’t hesitate to come over, say hello and ask chastity questions if you have any. We’re always happy to help.
I’m also guessing here, but due to the nature of the club I suspect you’ll be able to do a lot more here than other events. Fancy bending your submissive over and pegging them in one of the play rooms? The only limiting factor is what you bring with you to do that. I recommend double checking this before attending or we can ask and add more information to this review with an update when we know more.
We left at around 11:15pm with many of those in attendance still very much occupied around the venue.
Final Thoughts
QueenDomme was a dream come true; a femdom event a short taxi journey away from home. The venue is great and has massive potential for future growth (I highly suspect that there will be more QueenDomme events coming) with a good team of people running it.
As with all events, our first questions are always “did we have fun?” and “did we feel safe?”. The answer to both of these is emphatically yes. We had a brilliant time, met some lovely people (some we already know, others we met for the first time) and managed to do some tease and denial play in one of the private rooms on the top floor.
So what about the downsides to QueenDomme? The queue to get in wasn’t ideal, particularly when the event runs for 4 hours. Standing outside in the cold for a part of that wasn’t great. As more people get membership cards for the club I’m certain that the waiting times will drop, or a dual queue system (1 for existing members and 1 for people who need to buy a membership) could help in the future.
Hosting the event on a Wednesday night might make this a challenging event to attend. Pedestal runs on a Thursday night and attracts a large crowd, but it’s held in London with a much larger local population. For anyone looking to travel into Leeds for QueenDomme there are plenty of hotels a short distance away from the club in the city centre, but it might prove to be too much effort and expense for some with the short 4 hour event time. If you do travel in for it, my advice would be to get there early to make the most use of your time.
What does the future hold for QueenDomme? Honestly, I don’t know. This review has been posted before we reach out to the organisers to ask more about their plans and discuss any feedback we have for them. We really hope that it becomes a regular event in our diary (monthly if possible), but that will probably come down to the availability of the venue and demand.
If travelling down to London for Pedestal or similar events in the south of England is either too expensive (travel and hotel costs alone can be pricey) or difficult due to it being on a Thursday then this event could certainly be a more accessible alternative.
If you’re new to the scene there were plenty of experienced domme’s around to learn from and ask questions. I’m not sure if the house dommes had any badges or wore something to identify them but they were visible in the main room for most of the night.
We had a great time at QueenDomme and will be back in the future. Congratulations to the organisers. And so it begins…
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