Preview: The Walking Dead Attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood
We’re still bummed that there’s a Starbucks where the Universal House of Horrors used to be. But change is something that happens all the time with our beloved theme parks, and in this case it’s not so bad. Because right next to that java hole, the good folks at Universal Studios have been working feverishly on The Walking Dead Attraction, a new permanent maze haunt for the hit AMC show.
Now you don’t have to wait till October to enjoy a taste of Halloween Horror Nights because creative director John Murdy has once again worked his mojo to give you zombie thrills all year round.
Dread Central was invited out to get an early walkthrough of the attraction, which opens in mere weeks. Our group members don hard hats, and Murdy guides us through several construction areas, where workers are racing around the clock to have the every last detail finished in time. The first stop is the line queue, which looks every bit as impressive as the maze itself. It’s a loving recreation of the hospital Rick wakes up at in the pilot, complete with crashed helicopter on the roof and the iconic “DON’T OPEN, DEAD INSIDE” doors. Animatronic zombie hands are being set up to wiggle out towards people as they wait in line.
Related Story: Dread Central Checks In to Zombie Boot Camp at Universal
What makes this permanent attraction different from the usual Halloween Horror Nights mazes are the level of animatronics and size of the sets we’re shown. The “bicycle zombie” torso from the pilot is set up with sensors, so that it follows people as they walk by. The prison has been recreated as a two-story cell block, where zombies drip slime on you as you pass underneath. Actors take on the role of both walkers and survivors who battle it out mere feet in front of you. Elaborate video displays and projections are set up in windows to give you the feeling of total chaos all around. And familiar set-pieces are brought to life through great attention to the set design and look of the show, with KNB even providing the original molds for the undead.
“We really had to figure out a new way of doing makeup for this,” Murdy says, “because at Horror Nights, we would do prosthetics, which are foam latex appliances that we would glue to a performer’s face. That works if you’re doing a temporary event like Horror Nights, [but] even by the end of it the performers’ faces are red… it’s a lot to ask, gluing something to your face and taking it off every single day. We also knew that we wanted mouth movement, which you don’t get typically in a mask… So what we ultimately did is we created a silicon mask, which gets a much higher level of details. You can see every pore and every vein under their skin; it looks amazing. It adheres to their face much more like skin… and we created a separate core that’s inside the masks that allows them to move the mouths. We also have eyes built into the masks, and we get that ‘dead eye’ look… You get that look that you have on ‘The Walking Dead’ but with masks.”
The hardest thing for the designers has been keeping up with the show, where plot details are kept highly under wraps. After two years of planning to center thus attraction around the Wolves (the villains from two seasons), Murdy had to do some last-minute improvising. “When we got to this current season, three episodes in the Wolves attacked Alexandria and just got wiped out,” he says, “and were like, ‘Oh no, this is bad. This is the whole story of the attraction.’” Now the attraction has been updated to include Negan’s feared group, The Saviors… whose familiar whistling vocals will be heard stalking you throughout the event.
As the show continues, Murdy assures us that they will be able to update the attraction in specific parts to keep things fresh: “We left things loose so if we needed to change certain story elements, we could.”
The Walking Dead Attraction opens on July 4th, and you can purchase tickets at Universal Studios Hollywood’s official website.
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