Hello everybody and welcome to Camp Kaiju Monster Movie Podcasts.
And we're talking about all our favorite monster movies, the good, the bad and the downright
campy at asking if they stand the test of time.
Camp Kaiju, Creature Features, Space Invaders, The Supernatural and everything in between.
All strange beasts are welcome here.
And I might add theme parks and horror festivals.
We're going to be diving into a little bit of Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights.
We're going to talk about the festival.
We're going to talk about some of the monster inspired rides, Jaws, Jurassic Park and others.
Before we do, before I bring them on to the show, I just got to thank our patrons, Jason,
Chris, Sean, our anonymous patron and Peggy.
Thanks for your support.
It makes special content like this possible.
Hello, kiddies.
Cryptkeeper here, master of ceremonies at Universal Studios, all new Halloween Horror Nights with
new haunted houses to die for.
You'll make some new themes, play a scarring role in a killer show and rots more.
Don't miss the last two weekends of terror.
Florida residents save.
Advance tickets, just $22 in Ticketmaster with a 2 liter Pepsi label.
Party with me at Universal's Halloween Horror Nights.
You'll dig it.
Oh, it's alive.
It's alive.
When this dead hand moves, the monster created by a man they called Mad is turned loose to
strike terror into the hearts of men.
to shock women into uncontrolled hysteria.
Elizabeth!
To prey upon the innocence of children.
This is the story you've heard about, talked about.
The spine-tingling, blood-chilling story that stunned your emotions.
Frankenstein!
Don't touch that!
Alright, let's have some fun talking Universal Studios,
the rich monster legacy of the studio, and now the theme parks.
Hey Jonathan and Joel.
Hey, doing well, how about you?
Good, good.
Yeah.
How are you? Why are you here on this show?
And what are we going to talk about?
Well, I'll start off by saying that we are childhood friends,
known each other since elementary school technically,
but mostly middle school on.
But Joel and I both have worked at the Universal Orlando theme parks
for right around 15 or so years each.
So we have a little bit of experience with what we got going on there.
Yeah, I started working at Universal in 2011,
which is actually where I met Jonathan, and we've been together since then.
And I was hired on to actually start seasonally for Halloween Horror Nights.
That's right. Yeah, okay. Cool, cool.
Yes, Jonathan, me and you have been friends since essentially elementary school.
Which is crazy. But Joel, I've known you for like half my life now too.
Yes, it's very weird to think that like Jonathan and I have been together for 13 years,
and that I was 19 when I met him.
And that is slowly getting closer to like being my life.
You met at the theme park. I actually don't know the story of how you met.
We both worked at the Shrek 4D attraction.
The what? The Shrek 4D. Oh, Shrek. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, Shrek 4D. I had been working there for about a year or two, maybe more.
I don't remember. And then Joel started.
She came in, started working, and then immediately left for Halloween Horror Nights.
So it was gone for a month and then came back.
And then the rest is history. If you want to add anything, feel free.
Do you know the actual story of? No, I don't.
Okay. I think it like once you hear it, you're like, oh, that makes so much sense.
So we were at like this. Universal does these like recertification classes
where attractions attendants will have to like do all of their tests
to make sure that they can like push the buttons correctly each year.
And so it's like a four hours. You have to go. You have to take the test.
You have to pass. And it's really boring, but it's also kind of fun
because the whole team is there and then you can go out afterwards.
And I had this crush on Jonathan and I was like, oh, man, we're all going to be at this recert.
So I should probably like stick it on him.
And so I walked up to him and I said, are you bored?
And he said no. And I fully anticipated him saying yes.
And I was like, OK, hold on. Thought you were going to say yes.
Let's try again. Are you bored? And he said, yep.
And I said, do you want to make out?
And he was like, can I take you to dinner first?
And so that's it. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So.
That's you know, I think I think we can end the show on that one.
That's I can't say she's the real month. I am the monster.
So let's start with Halloween Horror Nights.
How would you describe it to people who don't know?
I would say the first thing you're going to see on any sort of Halloween Horror Nights
like PR stuff is that they like to boast that we are the premier Halloween event in the country.
With that, it's a all immersive, completely transformed version of the theme park
where we have usually around eight to ten uniquely built for that year haunted houses
where you walk through from scene to scene following some of your most well-known IPs of the year,
as well as some original concept houses that our Universal Creative team comes up with.
And then on top of that, we have live performances depending on the year.
We'll have overall like they refer to them as scare zones, areas of the park where they're just monsters
and people dressed up running around scaring people usually has some sort of overarching theme.
But it really is just a place to go when the park after hours transforms into a little bit of a
horror horror movie that you're walking through.
That's so cool. Yeah. Yeah.
And I remember growing up in Orlando.
Halloween Horror Nights started in the 90s. Is it its 30th year now?
I think it's technically it's 33rd. It started in 1990 for one night only and it was called Fright Night.
Yes. And then the next year became Halloween Horror Nights and it was, I think, like three days after that.
Yeah, I think it was the 22nd, 23rd and 25th, if I remember correctly, but I could be wrong on that one.
And now it's a whole month. More than that.
So it starts this year starts team member preview, August 27th.
And then I think the 29th is the official opening day and it goes until November 4th now.
That's so much. I mean, a bit over two months. That's crazy.
I will say that that's not usual up until about two years ago.
It was really only the length of October and then maybe a couple of days at the end of September.
And depending on if the weekend finished out November, sometimes in November.
But last year and the year before, they started delving just a little bit further in September and then a little bit further in September.
This is the first year that we've had the entirety of September as part of the event.
And that's just because we have so many people travel from all over the country to come that we really need to expand the space to just allow for everyone who wants to experience it, the opportunity to experience it.
Is it just so for those who who are listening who don't know Universal Studios Orlando is comprised of several different theme parks.
You have Universal Studios, just like the main park.
Does it have a special name or is it just yes, it's Universal Studios, Florida, technically.
And then there's also Islands of Adventure and then City Walk and then Universal's Volcano Bay Water Theme Park, which is all part of the Universal Orlando Resort and then soon to be Universal's Epic Universe.
Epic Universe, which I want to talk to. I want to talk about later.
But continuing with Halloween Horror Nights, so it's just Universal Studios, Florida, that just one theme park.
Most years there have been years in the past. I want to say it was 2004 or 2005 where they did have crossover into Islands of Adventure.
And actually, there was a year where they built a corn making cornfield maze that you could walk through to go from one park to the other and a little cut through area.
So you didn't actually have to leave the park to reenter the other one. But for the majority of the life of Halloween Horror Nights, it has been exclusively Universal Studios, Florida.
Cool. So, yeah, growing up, I was scared of this thing called Universal.
There are Halloween Horror Nights, like some of their marketing and their I mean, I was a kid.
We were all kids scared of it. And I didn't go and I've still only been once just because I moved out of Orlando. But the one time I went was in college and it was so much fun.
I think that year they had a house themed around the new Thing movie and an American Werewolf in London 2013.
That sounds right. That was the yeah, that was the fall before I moved.
Yeah, I worked as a house attendant that year in the cabin in the Woods house.
And that was also the year that they remade the movie The Thing. And so that's why we had The Thing as a house and I worked in the queue so many times they were playing the trailer that I could recite the trailer like verbatim.
And Jonathan was like, you got to stop, please.
I can't do it now. I'm sorry. I wish I could pull that out.
Oh, that's that. That's what I was gonna ask. You got to do it now.
Man. Yeah, what's your what are your favorite memories like working the park or sorry, working Halloween Horror Nights? Any any cool stories or anything worth sharing?
When I was younger, I lived in New Hampshire for a while.
And I feel like a lot of people can relate to like having like a haunted hayride or like, oh, the community setters putting on a haunted house and it's like trash bags leading you into a room.
Right. Yeah.
And so when I moved to Orlando, I was 12. And I remember that year was the year that we had the Halloween Horror Nights icon, the director.
And the like trailers would start in the middle of the summer for Halloween Horror Nights.
And I remember seeing the trailer for the director and being so freaked out. And I was like, what is this nightmare town that I just lived in, like just moved to.
But then I went to school and all my friends were like, oh, are you going to HHN? Are you going to Halloween Horror Nights?
And I was like, absolutely not. That guy's gonna be there.
And my parents actually didn't allow me. They were like, no, you're not going there. Like you can buy alcohol there. You're going to cry. You're scared of everything.
And they're like, you can make that decision when you're 18. And so I remember always wanting to go so bad because I have the greatest fear of missing out.
And I didn't actually go until I turned 18, which was I think like 2010, which was 20 years of fear.
And yeah, I loved it. Like I instantly fell in love with it. But also I was like a theater nerd.
And so like going through those sound stages and seeing the sets that they built and like the costumes, I was like, oh, OK, this is my zhuzh.
This is my realm. And I could like get into the details when I wasn't crying hysterically because it was so scary.
I mean, I've I've been attending Halloween Horror Nights since 2006.
I worked for the company since 2008. So the first year that my parents would let me go was 2006 because that was the age that my older sister was when she finally got them to convince her to go.
So it was a well, he can't go until he's 16 because I wasn't allowed to go until I was 16.
But then she my older sister took me to Halloween Horror Nights for my first go.
And we had a wonderful time both just hiding under each other's arms, going through the houses.
And by houses, I mean, I think the first year we only went through one house together because we were both so afraid of what was going on in there.
And and then from the next year, my older sister was working for the company and she actually she brought me to the team member preview because back then you could bring a plus one to the team member preview because the company was a little bit smaller back then.
There wasn't as many theme parks full of people working.
So we were we did a little bit better that that second round and then I started working for the company. And when you are an employee, at least back then you could go to Halloween Horror Nights an unlimited number of nights.
So it was very, very frequent that I would work on the weekend, get off at five, go grab some food, and then spend two to three hours walking around Halloween Horror Nights going through all the houses.
I would say on average for me from back then until probably the last two or three years, I would say I went to Halloween Horror Nights an average of 10 times a year.
So a lot has changed with the houses, but it really is a pretty unique experience for me to have seen not even just the progression of the event through one year, but seeing it through over a decade of transition from really relying on original icons to pushing IPs that they have that we partner with other companies to do.
And then kind of delving into a little bit of a mixture of both and seeing seeing what works there.
Yeah.
That's so cool. I mean you guys clearly love working at Universal Studios.
What are you doing there now.
Do you have like one stage.
I'll start because Joel's more impressive than I am. I currently work in city walk. I work at Universal's great movie escape, which is a relatively new escape room style interactive adventure that we have in city walk.
We have a themed walk through puzzle adventures. One of them is themed to Back to the Future, and the other one is themed to Jurassic World. So kind of in that same vein I get to hang out with dinosaurs, pretty much on a daily basis.
But I am I am one of the leaders there that make sure that everyone has everything that they're supposed to do throughout the day and make sure that none of the dinos get out.
Cool. I'm currently the manager of entrance operations for Universal's Epic Universe.
Oh for Epic Universe. Yeah. Okay. What are you doing now but for the official opening.
Yeah, so this is new, by the way, I don't know if john told you that she she just got this promotion maybe a month ago.
Oh, congrats. Thank you. Yeah.
So I, I work on site now, which is mostly construction. So when I go to work, I have to have full PPE so I'm in like steel toes hard hat safety vest when I'm not in the office.
And so I'm really just like building the foundation for our standard operating procedures and our checklists and training and making sure that when we do open our park everything is set up for success so that other leaders who are coming on to be front of house and leading
these teams are already stepping into something where they have their own leadership and resources to do that.
Okay, that's really nice. Yeah, and one thing that's really cool about Universal is, it's one overarching company but there's so many different facets in it you can transition from spot to spot from department to department from attraction to attraction
and we both started in attractions at Shrek. I left Shrek and was working at Spider-Man for a while. I commissioned and opened the King Kong ride in 2016, the one that was based off of Peter Jackson's King Kong.
So I got to delve with that and then I've been at movie escape to all worked at the dress park Discovery Center. She hatched baby raptors for for a stretch of time.
I worked in guest services. I was a HHN Halloween Hornets RIP tour guide for a while.
I was in sales I was in turnstiles. Now, now I'm over at the new park and it's very very cool to watch that be built from the ground up.
But with that, because she's got fancy information there is some things that she's not allowed to talk about. So, if you later on if we talk about Epic Universe I might have to take the reins on that, because I know very, I don't know any of the secret stuff that
will get anyone fired.
Well we could segue into that now, and let me just preface.
I guess, yeah, I mean I'll ask you guys about it but the big news in, in, I guess I don't know I've been following this news closely about the expansion of Universal Studios into Epic Universe.
And there are lots of other themed lands within that, that you can expand upon but what I'm most jazzed about is the one solely themed around the classic Universal Monsters.
Which, as a kid like I was watching these movies before I can even remember watching them.
They're just, I just, I cannot believe my dreams are actually coming true, and like I can go into Frankenstein's castle, and there's going to be some kind of simulator ride in there.
I've been following up with what I can I know I know information is limited but yeah, I'd love to hear more about that from you guys.
Yeah, I think that dark universe is definitely a fan favorite, I think that, you know, we have this video out with Mark Woodbury and he is saying we, you know, we wanted to, we knew we wanted to make something amazing.
So we went to the fans, and we asked, what do you want. And they said we want more of your visceral storytelling.
And I think it's really cool that we actually went to the people that we care about most right our guests and our fans and our team, really, and we said okay we're going to kind of like give you this right because I think I think like you right and like Jonathan
and like there are so many classic monster lovers and scary movie fans and I mean that's something that Universal Studios is literally known for right like we started back in the 20s and, you know, that's how Max Factor got so big and we have all these iconic
stories, and we're part of that, but we're kind of reserved right for the theme parks and now I think it's cool that we get to bridge the gap. And so with dark universe, and with epic universe and going through portals and really being transformed into this immersive
experience. I think it's really going to be visually stunning and I think it's going to make people feel truly part of something different. I think we've done immersive before, and I'll tell you like walking through it all.
Is wild. It's wild. I can't like I can't express how intricately detailed everything is.
I can't like words cannot describe like the the the firing of my neurons when I think about this and I can anticipate going to the dark universe one day. Because I last time I was in Orlando I just flew through the airport and I went to the universal store.
And I went into the gift shop and I just like, I had to buy this Frankenstein t shirt I had like buy this actually was last year's Halloween Horror Nights.
It was a glass souvenir mug, and it had depictions of the Phantom of the Opera, the invisible man Jacqueline hide and the hunchback of Notre Dame, I was like that's so sick.
I've got that so yeah, I'm.
Yeah, I so the main attraction that's going to be there.
That's been announced is monsters unchanged or unchanged. Sorry.
And so pretty much Victoria Frankenstein is the granddaughter of Victor Frankenstein and she wants to unleash these monsters and it's a dark ride.
And the technology that they use is insane. Listen, I always talk to Jonathan about how AI is like going to take over the world and robots are going to kill us.
And this is, it's coming to life like every day that there's all these really great like nods to to this land this dark universe and, you know, the Burning Blade tavern is going to be there and you can go to the Lacey's and get the
to the Lacey's and get some quick eats if you want.
Just to just to throw out there the the Burning Blade tavern is going to be the facade of a lighthouse on fire or a window actively on fire.
Wow.
Yeah.
Holy crap.
Of like that have been released by Universal of a more in depth look because if you're this excited and you haven't seen them you need to see them.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
Jonathan I didn't mean to cut you off earlier. You're good. You're going to say anything. No, I was.
We already got it.
Okay.
We got back to it eventually we got to it eventually so two of my favorite things at Universal Studios rides and rides and shows combined was the the old Monster Cafe.
Universal Studios and so universal never had a ride per se dedicated to any of these classic monsters they had the Beetlejuice graveyard review. Yeah, where you can see the Wolfman and and and everyone's singing along with Beetlejuice which is a lot of fun.
Yeah, yeah the horror makeup show. Yeah, hidden gem of the park. If ever anyone is ever in Orlando, and you're going to Universal Studios Florida.
Hit up the horror makeup show. It's so good. It's hilarious. And it actually has like legitimate information in there. So, it's a nice little delve of let's let's get the people in with the laughs, but also teach them a little bit about the history of core
makeup through the years through universal it's, it's really awesome and it's nice because they've updated it throughout the years to reflect what the current state of monster movie technology is.
I remember when I first started they were talking about the Hugh Jackman Van Helsing movie. Yep. Now the main pull is there, they're talking about the Wolfman from Del Toro.
Well no not even anymore. It was the Wolfman from Del Toro and then it moved on to the newest Mummy movie. Oh yeah yeah yeah that's true. Oh, I haven't seen it since then, but I remember the Wolfman.
And it was Van Helsing for the longest time.
But like when you, because like I always grew up. I went to Universal Studios a lot.
We always had friends or family who worked there.
And yeah I always wanted to go to the horror makeup show, even to this day, I have many of those jokes from that script memorized.
It's like a movie I watched so many times, I still say things like.
There's a great joke in this in this in the in the show where.
Just yeah just to I guess briefly spell it out for the for our listeners.
You'd have two characters on stage. One character was like the makeup artist for this, the gory special effects. And the other one was the funny character.
And.
And then what would happen.
So it would be a situation where you would go in everyone would be sitting in the theater, you would be presented with Mark.
Yeah, yeah, but one of the characters like hey I'm here to talk to you about monster movies and makeup and stuff, but we have a special guest, and they would bring in this fictional makeup artist who then would would come through and talk and walk you through some of the special effects as they go through.
One of the things that's really great about it is it's an interactive experience. So they take volunteers from the crowd to show how some effects work.
They do like the classic cut out in the knife trick. They have a fun little bout where they go and talk about how to make fake blood and they have a little fake heart that they use to fill with fake blood and then they spray the entire audience with it.
And then they have this like quote unquote secret project that one of them is working on and there's a big fun little reveal at the end there. That's a fun little scare.
And now I remember the joke. So the the bumbling comedic character, he messes something up and the the straight character he comes the straight man he comes in and says you know who did this who did this to my lab.
And they the comedic character points to a kid in the audience and says, you know she did it or whatever.
As a kid I was always so nervous that he would point at me and say he did it.
But then the the joke is, you know, of course the kid denies it and the comedic character says kids lie.
Yeah, classic classic and as a teacher.
I think about that line all the time.
It's like.
There were a lot of like classic one lighters from that show. And Jonathan and I were looking through this book that I got him a while ago it's like a universal studios monsters.
I have the same one.
Oh, yeah.
And there's like a picture of long Cheney in there. And I remember the joke that they make from the show where they're like, well, his brother, Dick.
And like nobody gets that joke in the audience. And every time I laughed so hard.
Oh, my gosh.
I like the joke with Lon Chaney because in the they show a montage of universals like greatest hits.
Yeah, and.
Awesome. Just imagination fuel for a kid. But there was always a scene of Lon Chaney.
His hunchback of Notre Dame makeup.
And in real life, Lon Chaney put like a white contact lens over one of his eyes. But the joke in the horror show is that he injected bleach into his eye.
It's not so much a joke. It's just like.
Something to get the audience going. Oh, really?
But then they explain he didn't really do that.
There's always a big gasp. They'll be like, you know, he injected bleach into his eye and people will be like, whoa.
And they're like, I just.
So good. Yeah, I was gonna say, if 100% people overlook it because the facade is very good blending it.
Check out the horror makeup show.
And I was going to say, being as familiar with universal as we have over the decades now, it's to me one of the last original shows like that I grew up with.
Jaws is gone. Back to the future is gone.
So many others, but the horror makeup show is still there.
I think that's really cool.
He's still there. He is still there as far I'd say as far as Steven Spielberg is a creative consultant for universal.
I imagine we'll still have the right.
It's funny, too, because talking about that horror makeup is like original universal.
It really is like a look into the past of what the parks started as because back when it first opened, most of the rights, the ideas you ride the movie, see the stars, all of that.
The fun program they have there. But it really was almost every attraction explaining to you how the movies were made.
We had the Alfred Hitchcock experience where you would go through and they would show you a thing about the birds and they would talk about that.
And then you would go into a bunch of different exhibits where they would show you how they did specific shots in different movies like they had a setup of the motel from Psycho and showed you like, oh, and then the shots where it was supposed to be raining.
We just made rain come down from the awning that they were under.
And that was all we needed to make it look like it was raining.
They had a whole little rig showing you how they did the drop in vertigo and how they had like a person laying there.
And they pulled the camera away from them real fast to make it look like they were falling away in front of a green screen.
We used to have an experience a long time ago, the Hercules and Xena experience based off of the Hercules and Xena television series.
And they would talk about how they had the rigging for any of the practical effects for the monsters from there.
And you would see like the underworking of the thing that would move around under there and they would explain to you how it worked and how they had somebody off to the side while they were shooting, moving this figure here and it would translate over to there.
So pretty much every attraction that we had early on was some sort of, and this is how we make movies.
And at this point, really, the horror makeup show is the last one that does.
It's it's almost like what I would love to do if I if and when I visit L.A., I want to take a studio tour of universal of the back lot.
And I was reading, Jonathan, this book that I mentioned called Adventures in Amity, Tales from the Jaws Ride.
Yeah, the actual whole book about not just the history of the Jaws Ride and the people who worked it, but in the early chapters, it's how the universal studios theme park came to be in.
It started developing in the late 80s. They had this idea for this park in Florida, and it was just going to be.
A replica of the studio tour in Hollywood.
But then Disney opened at the time, MGM Studios.
Now it's Hollywood Studios, Hollywood Studios.
And that changed the game. And then Universal went, oh, it's not just enough to like trolley people around in our little cart telling them about movies.
We have to like have some rides. So that developed the whole idea of ride the movies.
It's a really it's a really neat book about something extremely niche because then it does get into the Jaws Ride and there's interviews with boat captains and there's interviews with the engineers, the marketing people, like every facet of production.
Interviewed for this book.
And it's it's interesting because even as like an employee of Universal, the Jaws Ride had a like status to it because first of all, it was one of the rides where the ride attendants had to like act and perform for people.
And it wasn't like a separate entertainment group. So automatically, everyone who worked at the Jaws Ride had some level of charisma.
So they were all the people who are having the fun parties and you know, the people that you wanted to hang out with. So they had that going for them.
And then it was just like a classic movie that everybody enjoyed. It was a really unique style of attraction.
And it just it was one of those rides that like people go like, oh, did you ever get to work at the Jaws Ride?
And that's kind of like not necessarily like a badge of honor, but it's like a Boy Scout badge like, hey, I work to shift at the Jaws.
Wow.
Also, like from a family theme park standpoint, right? Like you could take the whole family on that ride pretty much.
So you could you could convince your child like, no, no, no, it's just like an easy boat ride.
And then they're terrified when that shark comes out of the water. So like the dad, he's always like, God, I got to sit out this ride because this kid, he can convince that kid.
And then they have their first like, oh, shit experience. Yeah, because it's right. It's not a roller coaster. It's not there's no heights involved.
That's always my barrier. I don't do roller coasters. But yeah, you're right. Just sit in a boat.
But then even as an adult, when I went on the Jaws ride.
I went, holy crap.
This is an intense ride. Yeah.
And it's actually the one that we had was the second iteration of that ride.
That ride originally was supposed to have the ending from the first Jaws movie as it's Crescendo where the shark explodes.
Yeah, with the the tanks. But it's just the effect was too hard to maintain.
So they decided, yeah, we're just going to switch over to the ending of the one where he bites the cable.
Jaws 2. Yeah. And underrated sequel, I might add.
But maybe we'll cover that on Cam Kaiju one day. Yeah.
No, it was fun. Speaking of heights, the Jurassic Park ride where you go up and it's a like a I don't know.
How would you describe it? Like a log ride, but it's not a log ride.
Yeah, it's like a like a wider log. Yeah.
Yeah, it's it's in the same genre. It's not it's not a film.
So because it's not like the circle. So it's more like a log ride.
But it's it's interesting because it is hard to explain because the whole first half of the ride is just a nice little tour around the, you know, quote unquote, Jurassic Park.
You get to see the Brachiosaurus. You get to see the Stegosaurus.
And then when it's time for Hadrosaur Cove. You're knocked off course.
And then you have and find your way out, eventually making your way to where you see our fun tall Tiffany, the animatronic T-Rex that tries to eat you before you do a nice little fall into the water.
I think it's I think it's don't quote me. I think it's like a hundred and twenty five feet drop at a fifty five degree angle underneath T-Rex, which is always very fun.
I am literally having anxiety thinking about the several times I have been on that ride when I was a kid.
I I went on it. It's I don't know.
It was the most intense thing I've ever experienced.
But then I decided, you know, I'm going to overcome my fears. I'm going to I'm going to go on this ride every time.
I eventually stopped because I got older and I got wiser and I said, I don't need to do.
Who am I proving my bravery to? But yeah, that that is no joke. That right.
I like you. It's eighty five feet. I didn't want to lie.
I think it might be closer to that from like the water to the top of the T-Rex.
That might be what you're thinking about. The last coaster is one hundred and fifty four. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That I like the Jurassic Park River adventure because it's a water ride that if you know what you're doing
and you can get into the right row, you you can get on it without getting completely soaked.
So I don't necessarily prefer going on water rides when I'm playing in the park with people because I'm not trying to walk around all day completely drenched.
But I'll convince people to go on Jurassic Park because that one I'm like, all right, cool.
You guys sit here and then I'm going to sit right behind you.
And don't worry, there's no specific reason why I'm going to sit here and you're going to sit there.
I remember as a kid holding onto the bar for dear life, I could feel my my body lifting into the air with the speed we were going.
Yeah, it's crazy. It's a great time. Not safe. No, super safe.
Of course it is. Not to. Yeah. Yeah. Right. No joke. Yeah.
It's one of those things that the theme parks have gotten really good about figuring out how to hold on to people in ways that they are not like not like coddled
so that you can feel that thrill while maintaining the safety like the velocity coaster like we mentioned earlier.
It's the restraint comes down from over your shoulders, but it's just a lap bar that like pretty much sits on the top of your lap.
So it feels like you have nothing but this little lap bar holding onto you on a roller coaster that has multiple magnetic launches.
It inverts multiple times. One time they refer to it as the Mosasaurus roll because it's a full barrel roll that goes over water.
And you like pause upside down for a moment before you contain continue the barrel roll.
And you have just a lap bar holding it. Wow.
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You know what I loved? I loved the old disaster ride.
But then it got turned into, well, disaster, right?
Yeah, it was originally Earthquake.
Then disaster featuring Frank Kincaid played by Christopher Walken.
And then it got replaced that and Beetlejuice's Graveyard review.
That footprint got turned into what is currently Fast and Furious ride.
The disaster and earthquake were also two of those rides that were they were going to show you how to make movies.
They pulled volunteers to do different effects.
I remember if you look up the disaster ride, I believe the main video that will pop up on YouTube that shows a little play through is one of the last runs of disaster.
Which if you look into the green ball pit, you may see a familiar face in the main goodbye to disaster video that you can see.
Yeah, my sister called me one night and was like, OK, so I was watching YouTube with the kids and we were watching ride throughs of Universal Studios attractions.
And we were looking at a disaster one and we think that this is Jonathan. Is that Jonathan?
And they sent me the video and I was like, yeah, it definitely is.
All right, listeners, I'm going to include a link to that in the show notes.
We'll find it. I'll send it to you.
Yeah, please do. I threw up on the back to the future ride when I was a kid.
Actually, I was in the in line before the ride.
OK, yes. Good old anxiety grow up.
Because that I used to I love that ride as I grew older. But as a kid, there's a dinosaur in that one, too.
The the way you're in this DeLorean, but the way it moves is also very it's it was very intense as well.
Yeah, the the simulator style rides are really good at convincing you that you're doing more than you are.
And if you have any sort of like motion sickness, your inner ear does not like that.
So like the the back to the future ride, which is now the Simpsons, right? It's a very similar ride system, but just Simpsons themed instead of back to the future theme.
But you're in a stationary like like you said, like almost it looks it was designed to look like the DeLorean back then.
But it's like three rows of seats and it lifts you up about maybe 15 feet in the air.
Puts you in front of a screen and then just jostles you all around as the screen is playing video in front of you.
So, yeah, that definitely is one of those ones that if you have motion sickness, maybe maybe skip that one because it's trying to trick your equilibrium three to four different ways.
It's very convincing. Yeah. Yeah.
If you ever want to relive the fun, I imagine you are already aware you can either find it probably on YouTube.
But if you have the special edition DVD set of back to the future, the video of the old back to the future ride is on like the special feature section of that disc.
Like I said, I'm pretty sure you could probably find it on YouTube as well.
So all you need is a nice little like swivel chair and somebody somebody who likes you a lot to shake the chair for you while you're watching the video.
And there you go. You can just relive that that that old attraction.
From the comfort of your own home. Exactly.
What do you think of the the old twister ride?
I don't technically think that's a ride. Listen, yes, it's an attraction.
There's a difference between attraction and ride, but it was really a walk through of the ride.
But it was really a walk through of a pre show that inside of the queue had like props and air quoting props from the movie.
And then you would go into a room with a fence in front of you, like almost like a like a tiered room.
And inside the center, they would just reenact a tornado of a tornado scene.
And so they would make a tornado in the middle of the room and have a cow on cables fly across and a truck moves.
And then they'd be like, thank you so much for writing Twister.
Ride it out. And you're like, oh, OK.
And then you dropped off.
Yeah.
There were a couple of cool things about the ride, quote unquote ride.
What we'll refer to as an attraction from this point on.
But the cool things about that attraction was you're standing on what's supposed to look like a porch as you're looking out onto this scene.
And throughout the entire presentation, you're watching, you know, things get blown one way or the other.
That's fire involved. There's a lightning strike that splits a tree in half.
But as you're going through the entire thing, you're actually standing on a movable platform that slowly imperceptibly raising the entire length of the time that you're watching.
And at the end, when there's like this big crescendo as the tornado that they have created in front of you explodes into flames, they drop you maybe like two to three inches.
And I forgot about that, too. Yeah.
The other thing that I really liked about that attraction, and this is kind of a little bit more in the weeds of theme park nerd dump is like the reset.
So when you have shows like that, they have to go through the process of, you know, they just moved a truck over there and threw a cow over there.
And split a tree in half. There is a process that everything goes back to its original point.
Twisters reset was, I believe, award winning and how quickly it happened.
It was something to behold to see all of everything like this full truck.
There was a whole marquee that was like the motel sign that gets thrown behind a building.
And that one just flies back in and settles.
Usually whenever things like that happen, it happens at a very, very slow pace and like moves very nice and safely.
And this one, they're like, no, this is an area that no one's going to be in.
So we're moving it at full show speed, but backwards.
So it was a really, really cool process to watch happen as the tree that split in half on banana peels back into a full tree.
So those are the two main things that I think that I really liked about this attraction.
That I think that made that. That's cool.
I brought it up kind of like because I was always a little underwhelmed by that.
Yeah, right. Ride, not a ride. Yeah.
But maybe if they had let us see them put them back together. Exactly.
Yeah. Like I said, it's one of those like it was fine as an experience as a guest.
But seeing it on the back end, there are a lot of really cool things about that attraction that would have been nice
if other people knew. Yeah.
The last ride or attraction that I want to bring up is the the new King Kong rides, not new anymore.
How old is that thing now? So I commissioned and opened that one.
So we opened it up in 2016 and I worked there for about seven years.
So it was funny beforehand. I was talking with Joel and we had mentioned that we're like, do we need to do studying for this?
And then I was like, maybe, maybe not. But like we really have a pretty solid understanding of a lot of this.
And I was like, there was a point in time when I was at King Kong ride that I came to realize that I was the most knowledgeable person
about that ride in the entire world because I was the only person who was actively working at that ride from when it opened until I like I said,
I was there for seven years and the majority of the people who were there when it opened worked there for maybe a year and a half, two years.
So like kind of watching it from the construction phase, like I actively witnessed them assembling the animatronic King Kong that they have at the end
and then actively working it for seven years straight, seeing all of the things from every facet of it, learning more and more about it each day.
I'm like, I think we'll be fine on information. So I don't I don't think we need to do any sort of studying of the history of Universal.
But you know that that that ride was a really is a really cool ride.
There's a couple of features that they currently aren't utilizing, but we can talk a little bit more about that as you kind of focus on what anything in particular you want to know about it.
No, I just wanted to see what you had to offer. I didn't know you were there from the ground up.
So yeah, I know we we at Universal, we do a process referred to as commissioning.
Anytime we open a new ride, there's a point in time where the ride goes from being a construction site to being a ride testing site.
And there's usually a little bit of overlap there, so they pull people who work the attractions to help with that transition.
So in that way, the construction workers who are used to working around construction sites, but are not used to working around ride operations can be safe while we're starting to do those testing.
So yeah, I was able to witness the very first time that the ride vehicles were driving through, which the coolest thing about that ride is it is a trackless ride vehicle.
So it is a 40 foot long 17 ton self driving truck inside of a building made of concrete and rebar.
Wow.
There's there's no track that tells it where it's ready to go. It's just the four tires that know where it's going.
There's a I want to say about six different redundancies that make sure that it knows where it's going.
So it's completely safe and will stop if it goes more than a couple of inches one way or the other out of its preferred path.
But like the that is a very, very large vehicle, and it's hard to really put into perspective the size of it because when you're entering into the ride vehicle, you're on a platform that's about five feet up.
So this 13 foot tall vehicle really only looks like it's like maybe the size of a door.
And then there's a section of the ride that you're driving outside.
Sometimes if you have the opportunity to be in a certain section of the of the queue of the line for the ride, the vehicle drives past you.
You can really get to appreciate the size of it.
Or if you're lucky enough to get evacuated off of the ride, which if you're ever at a theme park and the ride stops, cross your fingers because being evacuated off of a theme park ride is one of the coolest things you can do as as somebody who is visiting a theme park and fan of theme parks.
It'll take a little bit of extra time from your day, but it's going to be an experience that you actively cannot pay for.
So like there's no other way to get that experience.
I was evacuated from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
That's a good one.
Journey.
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe not at least once, maybe twice.
Yeah.
That's yeah, we were just like hanging suspended in the air.
Yeah, I was like, well, here we are.
Yeah, no, it's a lot of people, you know, whenever they're on a ride, if it stops, they're like, oh, no, no, cross your fingers that it takes a little bit longer than you want it to because that means somebody is going to walk you out the fun way.
And you're going to see something that very few people ever have the chance to see.
Yeah.
Back to King Kong.
I'd only been on that once, actually.
Yeah.
Then I moved.
Yeah.
Too bad.
Had I Oh, man, I'm like in an alternate reality where I had stayed in Orlando.
I feel like at this point, I would be working at Universal Studios.
Yeah, I always wanted.
I always wanted to audition for going back to the disaster ride.
The tour guide who goes through takes everyone through the ride.
Yeah, I never got a call back.
Yeah, wasn't meant to be, I guess.
Yes, not. But hey, we are moving on.
We are.
Yeah.
There's a lot of things that people don't know about attractions and, you know, back onto King Kong there.
Anytime there's a new ride that replaces an old rider has a history with another attraction, they leave little Easter eggs hidden throughout.
I bring this up because we actually used to have an older King Kong ride called Confrontation in Universal Studios.
That one was based off of the 70s King Kong, but that was replaced by the Mummy ride.
In the Mummy roller coaster, there's a scene where you have a room completely full of like gold and treasure.
And if you're sitting in the ride vehicle, if you look to your left, you'll see a small.
And when I say small, it's probably in reality like three, three feet tall.
But compared to the rest of the treasure, golden statue of King Kong as a reference to the fact that that building used to house the King Kong ride.
With that at the new King Kong ride, Skull Island, Rain of Kong, at the loading platform where you get onto the ride vehicle on the far side of the platform,
there's some like rock work that is decorated and like carved to look like these giant skeleton creatures.
But one of them in the middle has the like little neck piece and the headdress of the Mummy from the 1999 Mummy franchise.
Cool. And that we just recorded an episode reviewing that movie.
Yeah. Rangers 99 Mummy. Yeah. And I think that that will be the preceding episode to this interview episode.
Oh, nice. Was there anything else you guys wanted to talk about? Any burning topics or questions?
I mean, no, honestly, I thought that you were going to talk to me a lot more about Halloween Horror Nights.
And I did do research because I was like, I got to know my dates. I got to.
OK, OK. Tell us more about. No, it's OK. It's OK. It's not.
Dude, tell. So I think I don't know, because like I was so I did RIP tours for a while.
I did it for a year, so I did every single night that year, which I think was like 43 nights.
And just to explain, RIP tours is the Halloween Horror Nights specific VIP tour.
Yeah. So people would pay a lot of money to get me as their tour guide and they wouldn't have to wait in line.
I would take them to each of the houses and I would give them like.
A spiel at the beginning of the house to like set up the house and then take them through it.
And then. A lot of like huge Halloween Horror Nights fans will book tours
and then like want to talk to you about the history of Halloween Horror Nights.
So going through training for that, you're learning a lot about classic universal monsters.
You're learning a lot about what IPs are going to be there this year.
You go into the houses beforehand and they teach you about like how they made the sets and why this is there and what this brings from the story and
like techniques that they use to scare people. So like they have a lot of SIF in the houses, which is an abbreviation for stuff in face.
So like when you're walking through a house and there's something like netting that you have to like push through, that's the SIF or like fishing wire so that it feels like something's crawling on you.
Right. Like that's also SIF. So I just thought you would ask me more about that.
But I will tell you that when I was a tour guide that year, we had The Shining as a house.
And I don't know if you know this about me, but The Shining is one of like the most terrifying movies in my opinion.
I don't know what that says about me. It's scary in my brain, maybe. I think so. Yeah. Yeah.
And the year that I was a tour guide for training, our last day of training, we had to close. And so we were sent home from training because there was a hurricane.
And so The Shining was the only house that I did not get to walk through before actually going on tour. And I was so scared.
And because I had been at the front gate for a while and I was a senior coordinator for guest services, so like I knew that whole VIP tours team, all the trainers requested me as their tour guide for team member preview night.
They're like, Joey's going to give us a great tour and she's going to like let us be crazy and we're going to quiz her.
And so they requested me and I was very nervous. I was like, guys, I haven't been through The Shining. I'm so scared.
So here's my spiel. And I like gave them the spiel. And so Jonathan actually taught me when I go through the houses, I wear earplugs because I will get very overwhelmed quickly and just scream the whole time and cry.
So when I wear earplugs, it subdues the noise so I can actually appreciate what's going on around me. Yeah. But I started walking through the house and I got to about the second room as like, fuck this, like somebody else has to go in front of me.
I'm not doing this. Like, I can't do it. And so one of my team members like got in front of me. And then by the fourth room, they were like, no, you have you have to be first.
Like, we're too drunk for this. And it's terrifying. But that night I walked into a scarifters boo hole and they were like, you have to turn around and go the other way.
I was like, I've never been in this house before. So but I do think that it was a very accurate house to the movie. Yeah.
Yeah, that one would have also scared me a lot. So sifts. Yeah. What's it saying for scary stuff in face. Yeah. Yeah. So like they'll literally have just like little strings, like little black strings that you can't see.
But then that way as you're walking through will like rub across your face to make it feel like, oh my gosh, you know, something on you. And it just like, is that a little extra bit that they create that more tactile feel because it's hard to create a tactile interaction with the
characters and with the scenery just in a safe fashion. So finding ways to add that touch aspect to people in the houses. SIF is pretty much, you know, the best way that they have to do that. You'll see a lot of times also when you're going from room to room, instead of it just being like an open door that goes into one room, there will be some sort of themed like curtain.
So let's say it's you're going into the bedroom scene of a thing. So it'll be like the curtain to a window that you have to push the curtain out of the way to get into the next room. Or if you're going into like a slaughterhouse, it'll be like those clear plastic curtains that you have to push out of the way to get in the next room.
So it creates that part where you're physically interacting with the house on top of the visual and auditory aspect. And they really do like a smell too. Psychotic characters in, you bet there's going to be a toilet scene and it's going to reek.
Yeah. The year that I did Horror Nights, they had American Horror Story. And it was like the year that they had Coven, I think. And there was some sort of throw up scene. And you walked through and there were like mats that you had to push aside and they were always damp. And I was like, I'll wait, I'll wait at the other side of the house for you guys. Go ahead and have fun.
Last thing, Joelle, what houses are you looking forward to this year with Halloween Horror Nights? Because did you do a walkthrough already? Did you all do all of that?
No, I didn't.
Two days from...
Technically.
You've done a walkthrough of it and you have not experienced it in its full glory.
So we do Unmasking the Horror Tours also, which are tours that you can purchase during the day and they'll take you through with the lights on and show you everything, which I think that's probably the coolest product ever.
I would love to do that for all the houses every year because I think that's just really fascinating.
So we have this thing called Excellence in Leadership, which is like a nice little award ceremony. And this quarter, they let us go through one of the houses with the lights on with a tour guide and they told us about it.
And I can't remember the name of the one that I went through, but it's something to do with twins.
And they... Listen, I will tell you that that was the goriest house I think I've ever been in. Like there were parts that I was like, we're okay with this? Okay.
All right. This is disgusting. And I've seen some gory houses, but this is gross.
Wow.
Yeah.
You're pulling up the names now.
Let's see. What am I looking...
So typically, working at Universal Studios at the front gate, we were privileged enough in leadership to get like a mock tour for team member preview.
And they'll typically do that as like a team building thing where, okay, the admission sales team is going to go on tour together and it's nice.
And then you can get to go through all the houses and experience it because most of the time you're working.
This year, I'm not working there, so I don't get to go on a tour, but I am looking forward to kind of just doing my own thing that night.
But Jonathan has to work so we won't be together, which is a little sad.
Oh, yeah.
You know, can't be scared together then.
Triplets of Terror is the one that I went into.
That was gross.
Slaughter Cinema 2. I love the Slaughter Cinema.
So I always like the fun houses.
They have like one funny house every year that isn't very scary.
It's kind of campy.
And I enjoyed those because I feel like I can laugh a lot.
Yeah.
There's always also like a balance of IP based houses. So like movie based houses that we just get the rights to movies, make a walkthrough.
And then we have original concept houses, which are going to be your universal creative completely designed from the ground up exclusively to Halloween Horror Nights themes.
And in general, in my experience, the original concept houses are the ones that have like the best quality scares, the most, you know, the most, what's the word?
Like compelling, compelling experiences, because they aren't beholden to an IP holder to make it look exactly like they want it to.
So they can really have a little bit more flexibility with that and really play around with some of the more out of the ordinary things.
For me, I think the museum Deadly Exhibits is the house this this year that I'm the most excited for.
It's like a imagine museum, but scary.
Okay.
So that was going to terrify me because so they have this scare that they do where you'll walk into a room and it'll be a bunch of mannequins.
And there's like one that is a real person.
And that gets me every time I'm like, Oh, fuck, somebody's going to scare me.
Somebody's going to pop out.
Is it you? Is it you? No, you're a mannequin.
Okay. Okay. That's that person.
And I feel like that's going to be the whole museum Deadly Exhibits one.
And that's terrifying to me.
They also do that thing where you go into a room and it's all black and just nothing happens.
Yeah, I hate that.
Wow.
Those are some mind games. Yeah.
So the houses that are based off of movies that we have this year is there's going to be a Quiet Place movie house, which if they don't have like a null sound room, I'm going to be real sad.
So like a room that they have designed where everything is soundproofed so that when you walk in, you can hear how quiet it is.
Right.
We're going to have a Ghostbusters Frozen Empire House, which if you haven't seen it, it's a cute movie.
Fun time if you've enjoyed any of the other newer Ghostbuster movies.
But when I was watching it the other day, I'm like, there's a lot of like set in here that will translate really well to a Halloween Horror Nights house.
So for an IP, it's one that I'm more excited for than I usually am for IP houses.
And then we have Insidious the Further.
No.
Oh, an Insidious based house.
And then the fourth is Universal Monsters Eternal Bloodlines.
So we've done a series of Universal Monsters houses.
That's when you were talking about the merchandise you were looking at for their house that had Hunchback, the Phantom of the Opera.
And it was fun because you would transition from scene to scene.
I really liked that house because when you're going into the Phantom of the Opera section, you had that transition of going through the curtains.
But you know, with theater and it's hard to find the between the curtain sometimes.
So if you're just kind of like digging your way through, they did such a good job creating that feeling as you transitioned into the Phantom of the Opera because they had like two or three layers of curtains as you transitioned into it.
And for anyone who's done theater work and knows that feeling of trying to make your way from one side of a current to another, they did a really great job making that like just a little bit longer than you're comfortable with.
Wow.
Well, yeah, this year we have the Eternal Bloodlines, so it's all female characters related to classic monsters.
That's right. I think I saw something about that.
Dracula's daughter, Bride.
Yeah.
And then Saskia Van Helsing.
Okay, cool.
I think that's great. There aren't, there are very few female monsters in the classic franchises.
So I love that.
Yeah.
One day when my daughter, my own daughter is old enough.
I can't wait to take her to Universal Studios.
Yeah.
Dark Universe.
Yeah.
I mean, I'd love to go to Halloween Horror Nights, but maybe she'll be a little older when I take you there.
Here's what we do. We get you set up with one of the on-site hotels, that little one to bed, and then we go do Halloween Horror Nights.
There you go. I have to go back one day.
Yeah.
It's too good. It's too good to pass up.
Yeah, you know who to call.
Ghostbusters.
Thank you guys. This was so much fun.
This Halloween, party with your favorite monsters during Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Florida.
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Ghostbusters was an action comedy based upon the supernatural happenings in the heart of New York and introduced startling special effects.
Our Universal artists have faithfully reproduced the famous Columbia Picture set here in Florida.
The only thing missing are the ghosts.
The Ghostbusters first became aware of the problem when they discovered massive amounts of psychokinetic energy in New York.
Spangler explains the seriousness of this situation by holding up a Twinkie.
He stated that if this Twinkie representing the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in New York, then the current level of the city's energy will be a Twinkie 35 feet long, weighing 600 pounds.
Well that's odd. I thought a Swingler was...
Bye bye.
So, Universal Studios would like to thank the movie creators at Columbia Pictures for allowing us to share the magic of Ghostbusters with you.