The Walking Dead come to life - Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles, CA
This was seriously the greatest Halloween celebration ever.
Amanda and I essentially just slept in, hung out during the day, and then left for Universal at around 4:30, arriving around 5:00pm. The park didn't open until 6:30, but our earliness paid off, and we were among the first fifty or so in line. By the time 6:30 rolled around, there were already hundreds of people waiting to get in.
When they finally let us through the gate, Amanda and I linked arms and booked it through the crowd. We had heard that the two big haunted mazes-- The Walking Dead and Black Sabbath-- would get very crowded very fast, so we knew we needed to get there first. After some chaos and running and trying not to get run over, we made it to the very first bus that took us out to the mazes.
The moment they let us into the maze area of the park, they shot off huge clouds of dry ice and zombies were instantly at us. Shrieking, Amanda and I made it to the big area where the two maze entrances were, which was actually just a huge remake of the set of the post-apocalyptic town Woodbury, complete with the town hall and the seemingly-safe streets all from Season 3. When we arrived to the area, the "town" was already dark and just made the streets so much creepier and better.
The Walking Dead maze was first on our list, so we ran to the line and got in after five minutes of waiting, which was lovely. The maze itself was so, so epic. For those of you who don't watch the show, none of the following will make sense, but those of you who have seen Season 3 will fully appreciate how awesome it was. Also, the following contains spoilers from Season 3, if you care. And is rather graphic. You've been warned.
The first part of the maze was the prison. Walkers (slang and much cooler term for zombies) tried to get at us through the chain-link fence. Once we were in the prison area, however, they had full access to us and we had to dodge them (some dressed as police officers too) until we made it to Cell Block C, which is where much of the scary stuff happens in TWD. Walkers were trapped in cells and jumping out at us from all over. After turning the corner from Cell Block C, we found ourselves in another part of the prison where, in the show, they had to knife that one prisoner in the head for betraying them. The guy with the moustache. I don't remember his name. The worst part of that room was the breathing-- even though the guy had a knife in his head, he kneeled there and just stared at us, breathing heavily. (To tell you the truth, the noises were probably the scariest part of the whole park. But more on that later.) The next part of the maze led us to the plane crash scene, a freaky animatronic zombie chopped in two, and the no-armed walkers that Michonne kept for part of the season. Obviously, they were tied up, and couldn't get at us.
The next maze segment led us to Woodbury and the Governor's SCARY BACK ROOM, where all the tanks were filled with water and severed heads. The Governor's daughter even jumped out at us, this little girl with fantastic acting abilities. After dodging more walkers, we made it to the meat locker, which I thought was definitely the scariest part of the maze. Dead animals and random entrails hung from the ceiling and we had to shove our way past them, all the while dodging the walkers. As we were walking toward the end of the maze, this one walker leapt out and snarled at us; for whatever reason, I didn't flinch and actually just growled back, staring the walker down. It ended up slinking away, and that was when Amanda and I realized the beauty of fighting back at the zombies.
Soon, Amanda and I made it out of the maze, laughing and pretty much raving about it. We then decided to go to the other large maze, based on the music of Black Sabbath. This maze was clever because we were handed 3D glasses as we went inside and that made everything far more psychedelic. The whole maze was just a mess of people being disemboweled and skeletons jumping out at us and lots of neon coloring and heavy metal music. It was quite entertaining, but definitely not as good as TWD maze.
After the Black Sabbath maze, we decided to take advantage of how early we had come and go back through TWD maze one more time before taking the bus back up the hill. We knew we wouldn't get the chance later. When we went through the maze a second time, it took a lot longer and we had the chance to appreciate all the little details a little more. Rick's ringing phone from the middle of Season 3 rang at us from one of the rooms-- I tried to grab it and answer it but it was glued shut. I still decided it was a nice touch, and thought it was cool that I noticed something new.
The next thing on our list, after the bus took us back to the upper lot, was the Walking Dead Terror Tram. This was a completely different attraction from the maze and Amanda and I knew we definitely had to do that next before the night ran away from us. Since we had arrived so early and planned everything so well, we literally had no wait to get on the tram. It then left and trucked us over to the Hollywood Studios backlots, where they have a ton of sets from films on display and set up for us to see.
On the way to the backlot, we watched a small clip of TWD on the tram to prepare us for where it dropped us off. Once there, we exited the tram and a bunch of walkers started trailing us, as well as a group of military guys-turned-walkers as they waved chainsaws at us. This part probably would have been scary if we hadn't been walking right next to the set of Whoville. Somehow, thinking of the Grinch stealing Christmas put a small damper on the horror of the undead attacking. However, that was quickly rectified as we made it to Psycho's Bates Motel (which was, hilariously enough, directly beside the home of the Whos). We walked through the mess of cars and old, ratty hotel rooms as walkers jumped out at us. This then led to another meat locker/deer hunting cottage thing (I have no idea what movie this was from) and we were met with more walkers, among them Michonne's armless cronies again.
The next backlot section was this pitch black hill that just spat out every single scary noise known to man at us, though no zombies came after us until we made it to the top. There were a bunch of incapacitated zombies on the ground grabbing at our feet and some steaming in this huge, firey pit into which we couldn't see. A crazy scientist was hacking one apart on in the next section, which then led to a small reconstruction of the TWD prison, where walkers banged against the fences and broke through them to get to us. We then passed the Psycho mansion on our way to this sort of tunnel/ally where men would stand on the walls on either side and swing plastic weapons at us, yelling at us to keep moving or we'd die.
Right after we exited the corridor, this enormous guy swung an axe at me, and I didn't flinch. I just stood there, and he then started saying something about how I have to continue doing that through the maze and how I needed to protect Amanda or something because she was about to get bitten-- and then a walker jumped out of the darkness at us. Totally caught us off guard. Then, when we turned around we were on the set of War of the Words, complete with hordes of the undead. There was this one walker with a beard who started walking behind me and Amanda, and he followed us for a while. However, when he caught up with us and was really close, his breath was minty fresh and I almost laughed. At the end of the backlot walk, we went through one more small building with a bunch of random walkers and chainsaw guys at the end. The tram then led us back to the rest of the park after showing us a nice sneak preview of TWD Season 4.
There were a few other mazes Amanda and I decided to try before the lines became unbearable. The first was called El Cucuy: The Boogeyman and was... slightly forgettable. It was certainly good during the time we were inside, but all I really remember as outstanding was a huge hairy monster under the bed in a bloodied bedroom, which was pretty cool.
Once we were back outside, we stepped unwittingly into the scare zone of Chuckie and a bunch of awful clown minions. Creepy, creepy clown minions. One in a devil mask ran at us and I stopped and stared it down. I think that made the actor frustrated that we weren't acting scared so he breathed down my neck as he went away.
The last maze we went to was the Monster Remix, which is actually open year-round so the line was rather short. I was surprised at how unpopular it was because it was my favorite maze after TWD one. I think the actors were having a really good time; they were playing a bunch of classic monsters from old movies, and we passed through a couple werewolf rooms, Dr. Frankenstein's lab, a Slenderman area, a Chuckie room, a mirror room, and lots of "scary bald dudes," as Amanda put it. One of the actors yelled at Amanda that "he liked her face," and another guy that I stared down made kissing noises at me. I think they knew we weren't scared so they were just having fun with it.
After that maze, we were ready for the rides. The first was The Mummy roller coaster, and I thought of my mom the whole time; she and I both love that movie and even just waiting in line was awesome because they made the waiting area the set of The Mummy. This is also a ride that's open year-round, but it was very appropriate for tonight. The roller coaster itself was very entertaining but not very long, so we decided not to do it more than once.
We also came very prepared. The Jurassic Park ride takes place in a boat and one gets wet when on it, so Amanda suggested we bring trash bags to wear. It worked perfectly and, though we were trapped in a boat in the dark next to a bunch of animatronic dinosaurs spraying water at us, we stayed dry.
By the time we were finished with the JP ride, we had completed everything we had come to do and decided to go on the Transformers ride. Why not? We had spent the whole evening jumping lines by going into the single riders lines (which was a very very smart idea), so we figured we might as well go on the other ride too. It was in 3D and also pretty entertaining, though I definitely enjoyed the other two rides far more.
After Transformers, Amanda and I decided we couldn't leave without trying the Terror Tram backlot experience again. The line was far longer, but not terrible, and we went through the whole thing all over again, this time noticing more details and going slower just to have fun with it. There was one walker (er, crawler?) ran up at us on his hands and knees and just would not let us through the passage. We kept trying to get around him, but he'd jump out and block our path, so we finally took a moment when he was distracted and separated. He couldn't decide who to attack and just went for the next people in line, so we survived. Perfect tacticians right here. Then, at the entrance of the yelling-people corridor, this time, an actor came up to us and told us to "become grown-up women because they're going after young ladies," and we were both like, okay! And we made it through.
Over at War of the Worlds, this zombie started creeping on us and stalking us. He was another neck-breather and stared us both down, following us until the end of the backlot section and definitely trying to scare us. We both stared him down, however, and warded him off. He even tried barking at us (though Amanda thinks he was saying "Hi!" so I'm not sure).
The tram then took us back to the park, and we started walking back toward the entrance. Throughout the park, there are a bunch of "Scare Zones," which are just random places in the park with specific themes and people who dress up and scream at people as they walk by. Amanda and I walked through this Scare Zone to get to the entrance, but we had already been through it a couple of times, since it was in a central area between a few of the mazes. We thought we knew what we were doing. But then this guy in a mask and carrying a chainsaw started walking very, very slowly behind us. We sort of brushed him off, but when we looked back, he was still there. When we walked faster, he walked faster. Every time we looked back, he was closer, and as we picked up speed, so did he. Finally, we broke out into a full-on run and he sprinted after us, brandishing his chain saw. We got separated and the guy went right for me As I ran, I took one second to look back, saw he was there, and prepared to run more when I actually crashed into another chainsaw guy with dreadlocks. I was trapped between the two of them.
When the first chainsaw guy saw that I was preoccupied with Dreadlocks, he abandoned me to go find Amanda. I finally escaped Dreadlocks and got back to Amanda. We stood together and warded off Mask man, and after another stare-down, he left. We were almost at the entrance then and made it out without another incident.
We survived.
And celebrated with warm chocolate chip chocolate-filled cookies back at Amanda's house.
We deserved it.