Welcome to Extinct Attractions. This week, I’ll be shaking things up a little bit and taking a look at a Universal Studios Hollywood attraction that embraced the Universal spirit of showing guests how movies are made.
Grinchmas is coming to a close at Universal Studios in both Hollywood and Orlando, complete with waits of over seven hours to meet the Grinch himself. In Florida, they even needed to close the queue down because it had reached full capacity. I don’t know about you, but there is nothing I would wait seven hours for, especially to meet a character, but to each their own.
Via YouTube
In previous years, the Whos took over part of the Studio Tour with a full song and dance number to celebrate the season at Universal Studios Hollywood, where the set of Whoville had been moved after filming. One of the coolest aspects of the park is that so many elements of film and television sets make their way into Studio Tour or the park itself, helping live up to the original purpose of the park, to show guests how movies are made.
From the earliest days of the Studio Tour, special effects have played a role in some of the experiences along the tour. Guests used to disembark from the tram in various places to dive deeper into some experiences, with one of those being a special effects demonstration that over the years developed into three separate attractions that were loosely lumped together as the World of Cinemagic until 2001. They then closed and were completely overhauled into today’s attraction, the Special Effects Stages.
Via The Studio Tour
Opening in January 2002 on the Lower Lot and sharing a building with Backdraft, the Special Effects Stages kept that “s” in the name because it continued that usage of three stages in one by moving guests through three separate rooms within a soundstage, each of which focused on a different type of special effect. It’s rare to see attractions ask guests to stand up and move around throughout the course of the attraction, so I thought the choice here was really interesting to help it stand out right from the outset.
The first room that guests entered was the Virtual Studio, where guests learned about old school and new age special effects. Utilizing some volunteers, the demonstrations began with a look at rear-view projection where one of the volunteers screamed at a giant cat projected through a window while the other held a giant cat paw that pretended to scratch at the first volunteer. From there, they jumped into CGI effects, showcasing how they could digitally input people into films by adding our volunteers into a scene from The Mummy. But then tragedy struck when one of the volunteers was suddenly “fried” to bits in a puff of smoke, so to avoid any further tragedy our host and her assistant quickly ushered us into the next room.
The next room of the show was the Creature Factory, where there were tons of different monsters and villains scattered around the stage. This portion of the show was pretty much lifted directly from the Horror Makeup Show at Universal Studios Florida, with almost every element of this ten minute segment originating there (though it was not quite as funny as its Floridian counterpart). The segment begins with a clip show of classic Universal monsters before moving into the classic gag where our intrepid hosts pretend to cut off the arm of a volunteer, complete with gushing blood from the fake knife. Our lovely volunteer who had “died” in the first room was then returned to us but more tragedy was on the agenda when a child volunteer was brought on stage to help demonstrate how mocap works on a giant, scary werewolf. After the seemingly harmless demo, the werewolf came to life and chased the host around the stage, ultimately ending her life and leading the assistant to hurriedly move us into the next room. (That werewolf scene scared me so much as a kid that I basically refused to ever see the show again because I didn’t want to be eaten.)
Via The Studio Tour
As guests entered the final room, the Sound Lab, the assistant grabbed about ten brave volunteers to help get everyone set up to control a Foley item. As he explained, Foley effects are sound effects that populate a movie, making sounds like punches, scattering glass and a myriad of other things really pop within a film. To help demonstrate, the volunteers were going to create all the sounds to match clips from King Kong, Evan Almighty and Peter Pan (the 2003 Universal live-action version). Each volunteer used some type of gadget or their voice to create the sound effects though one volunteer did so poorly that he was forced into a special sound room for a second try. As we all watched the clip with the added sound, suddenly the werewolf appeared in silhouette form again and claimed another victim.
But luckily, all's well that ends well as the original host and our “recently deceased” volunteer emerged from backstage to show that it was just movie magic all along. Overall, the show was a lot of fun and did a great job teaching people how movies are made in an entertaining way. By touching on such a wide variety of topics, guests really got the chance to dive into the movie magic and learn and try something new.
Via TripAdvisor
But by March of 2010, Universal Studios Hollywood was looking for a home from Transformers: The Ride 3D and earmarked the Special Effects Stages and Backdraft location as the best spot. But the Special Effects Stages’ time in the park was nowhere near complete, though you’ll have to wait a few more weeks to see how and where its journey continued.
Via Reddit
As always, don’t forget to check out my interactive maps of the Disney Parks throughout the years where you can watch or learn more about all the attractions from every Disney park around the world.
Thanks for reading and have a tramtastic day!