Welcome to Extinct Attractions. This week, we’ll be looking back at a big part of Universal Studios Hollywood’s history that seems like it may be on the rocks moving forward.
Via Wikipedia
Before Universal Studios tried to bring back their classic monsters with the failed Dark Universe, they revived the monsters in 2004’s Van Helsing. The film starred Hugh Jackman as a monster hunter who interacts with classic Universal monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and Dr. Jekyll.
Stephen Sommers wrote and directed the film, and after having directed the wildly successful films The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, Universal was hoping that he could deliver again and make Van Helsing a franchise in its own right. But there was a slight snag because the movie was, simply, not good, and the box office results were ok, but not good enough to justify making another film.
Via The Studio Tour
However, Universal didn’t have a choice but to move forward with Van Helsing: Fortress Dracula, a walkthrough horror attraction, as it was set to open the same date as the movie, May 7, 2004. Interestingly, the attraction was located at the front of the park with not much around it, making it kind of an odd fit. Also, while the movie wasn’t a hit, the attraction merely used elements of the film, so guests weren’t left out of the story.
I never went on this attraction when I was a youngster because I was a pretty big fraidy cat (and I was seven when it opened) and realistically no kid should have been experiencing this attraction. It was kind of hard to see what was happening in the video because it wasn’t the highest quality, but I believe the idea was that you were walking in Van Helsing’s footsteps (at least I didn’t see him anywhere). Along the way, there were a bunch of vampires and other monsters all jumping out to try and get you as you would expect from a haunted house.
To me, the most exciting part was getting to go upstairs to a second level. Most haunted houses don’t have multiple stories, so when I saw the videographer going upstairs, I got really jealous because it is such a rare occurrence.
As a whole, the attraction had some good scares in it, but it could have used some more details outside of those scares. Some of the rooms had almost no decorations, with one room just having black walls. The one major exception was the lab room where an evil doctor was doing experiments. The actor in that room did a great job acting to the creepiness as you looked at all the weird things that he was working on.
Via The Studio Tour
But as expected, Van Helsing: Fortress Dracula did not last super long in the park because people forgot about the film pretty quickly. Still, it managed to stick around for nearly two and a half years, officially closing on November 4, 2006 to make way for Universal’s House of Horrors, which actually kept pretty much all of the sets intact.
Via Wikipedia
While House of Horrors was occupying the attraction area at Universal, The Walking Dead was taking over airways and bringing zombie media back into the mainstream. The show was a phenomenon, quickly becoming the highest-rated cable television show of all-time and just a massive success in every way.
Though Universal didn’t have any stake in the production of the show, they quickly made a deal with AMC to bring the show to life at Halloween Horror Nights events. Each year, they created a different attraction based around The Walking Dead before eventually realizing that it would make a lot more sense to simply create a permanent attraction based on the show.
Via Universal Studios Hollywood
Knowing that this attraction, aptly named The Walking Dead Attraction, would be there for the long haul, John Murdy, the head of Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights, worked with Greg Nicotero, one of the creative leads on the television show, to create a highly-detailed attraction. Though they couldn’t use the characters from the show because the actors owned their likenesses, they brought many of the classic elements and scenes from the show to life in the attraction.
With so much money going into making a highly detailed attraction, they decided to reduce spending when it came to actors in the maze. There were generally only 12 scareactors in the attraction, but with the potential for twice that during Horror Nights.
I’ll be honest, I was never the biggest fan of this attraction, mainly because of the dearth of scares, especially when compared to Horror Nights. That being said, I have to give a lot of credit to the details and animatronics that they put into it. They could have easily shortchanged the attraction, but they took the time to go in and theme it more extremely than any of the previous attractions that made their home in the spot.
With all of the resources that they put into The Walking Dead Attraction, it is a bit surprising that it did not stay open longer than the three and a half years that it did, with it closing this past year on March 4. Though they haven’t said why it closed, the common thought is that there are plans to continue to make that area of the Upper Lot more kid friendly, with new Secret Life of Pets attraction likely to open pretty much as soon as the park reopens. Though, I wouldn’t be shocked to see The Walking Dead Attraction get one last hurrah if Horror Nights gets the chance to run this year.
Well, that’s all for today, but here’s our topic for next week.
- This attraction was scheduled to close in Tokyo next week, but closed over one month early.
- This attraction was the last of the three of its kind to open.
- This attraction can still be seen domestically.
Thanks for reading and have a magical day!