Halloween Online Goes To The Opening Of
Coming along with us for tonight's thrill ride were our photographer, Deena "Living Dead Girl" Ginn and her husband, our builder/mike operator/writer Johann "Creepy" Ginn. This was their first trip to the Universal Halloween Horror nights as well as ours, we were all looking forward to the evening with great anticipation.
The biggest applause and screams came next when Rob Zombie came out to get his award. You could tell that he was what the crowd was there for. He gave a very short speech, left in a roar of applause and the show ended.
It was off to the next line, Clive Barker's Hell. That was equally entertaining. Now it was of to the nearest bathroom where Deena and I were accosted by two of the chainsaw carrying Scare-actors, they were really drawing a crowd!
The Mummy used props from the film, lots of sand on the floor, giving you the impression that you were in the tombs. Last on our list was Classic Creature Features which was done up like a dusty, old, abandoned castle, falling prey to the terror of Universal's most merciless celluloid slashers and fiends - Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, the Mummy, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon - all chillingly revived. Also opened were the main ride, like Back To The Future, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2 3D and others. There were also some of the stage shows that had been Halloween themed going on like the Carnival of carnage, a Jim Rose type stage show and the Animal House of Horrors with the animal actors in Halloween costume. We finally crawled out of the park and back to our car at12:30am, heading for home. The rides weren't quite over for the night though. Just five minutes after we got home, we were hit with a 7.0 earth quake. Living about 50 miles from the epicenter as the crow files, we got quite a ride. It was fitting end to a perfect night. We like earth quakes...... what can I say? We, here at Halloween Online, are a sick and twisted bunch. All I could think about was how those bags full of human parts hanging from the ceiling in the Zombie maze must have been swinging like crazy! "Wraith" *** This article, MPG's and all pictures are copyrighted by Halloween-Online™. Any use without permission is not allowed.** All content is copyright© 1999 Halloween Online. All rights reserved. Last Updated
3-10-2005 |
Things were very hectic in the outside
press area, if you think your life is stressed out, try working for a movie studio! We
were ushered into the press area inside the park and allowed to get our camera set up to
film the Eyegore Awards. We were on the back riser with a couple guys
from E! and the Universal Studios film crew. We were having some major camera envy with
all the beta cams surrounding us with their heavy duty mikes, lights, etc. but we ad one
thing that they didn't! A flashlight!! The E! guys used it the most.
At 7:00pm they started letting in
the crowd. Fog was filing the park, you could already start to hear screams. We heard this
loud marching and chanting, it was the chainsaw Scare-actors coming in the park to play.
We have to hand it to Universal Studios, they have some of the scariest ideas for
Halloween that we've seen in a park this year. If you are looking for true scare, this is
the place. These guys were menacing, scary and welding chain saws. Everyone was loving it,
screams could be heard ringing throughout the park.
First on the nights agenda was the
Eyegore Awards show. This is where Universal Studios gives awards out to those who have
contributed greatly to the horror genre. Some past winners have been Alice Cooper, Clive
Barker and Janet Leigh. Tonight's winners were to be Rob Zombie
(multi-platinum recording artist and designer of a maze this year), Stephen
Sommers (writer & director of The Mummy) & some of the cast of The Mummy
, Clive Barker (author & designer of a maze this year) and Lupita Tovar (star of
the Hispanic version of Dracula circa 1931). Clive Barker, we found out a couple weeks
before, had to fly back to England due to a family illness. As it turned out, his father
passed away and our deepest sympathies are with him and his family.
There was an hour delay in the Eyegores while we all waited for Rob Zombie to arrive.
Rumor had it that he had gotten lost on the 5 minute drive over from his house. Another
one said that he got lost coming up from his maze. The show finally started and was hosted
by Bill Mosley (Crop Top - Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2). The first award went to Stephen
Sommers(writer and director of The Mummy), who was joined on stage by some of the cast,
Kevin J. O'Conner (Beni), Arnold Vosloo (Imhotep), Erick Avari (Museum Curator) and
Barnard Fox (the old pilot & Dr. Bombay). Next was Lupita Tovar who gave a nice
speech. During the evening I hunted down a rest room. When I came out, I found Spooky
chatting with Kevin J. O'Conner, which was great. He's a nice guy and a hell of an actor .
Now it was time to track
down Audrey for our interview with Rob. This was no small challenge as Audrey was being
pulled in twenty different directions at light speed. But finally we were able to grab him
for a minute of interview. It wasn't the private 13 questions interview we had been told
we could have three months before but we were grateful for the time we did get. 
He was as nice as he could be. We did feel kind of bad for Rob, he was being pulled around
by the arm from interview to interview and he really looked like he didn't want to be
there. But he was taking time to sign autographs for fans. I had always heard that he was
a very nice guy and I can say that he is. 
Then it was off to
hit the many mazes and try and get as much in as we could since it was now 9:00pm, which
left us with four hours to get through everything. First we headed over to the right side
of the park to check out Clive Barker's Hell and The Cleaver's Meat Locker.
The Meat Locker had a 30 minute wait as opposed to Barker's Hell at 45 minutes so we chose
the Meat Locker first. These are some totally grisly mazes, we loved them. Tons of body
parts, gore deluxe, it was a cannibal family meat market! This is not an attraction for
little kids unless you want them to grow up as twisted as we all turned out!
Now it's off to the other side of the park
and the Thrilling, Chilling World Of Rob Zombie and The
Mummy mazes. The sign said it was a 90 minute wait so we got in line and started
waiting. The line did move faster then that and if you were going into The Mummy, it was
even less time. We split up at this point, not wanting to spend another half hour in line
since you had to get in line again to hit the other maze. Deena and Johann took The Mummy,
we took Rob Zombie. One of the nice things they did for the line, videos from his latest
CD, Hellbilly Deluxe were being played on monitors to keep us all happy. After entering
through his mouth (you go in through a giant Rob Zombie head) we went deeper into his
maze. It was a very cool maze, more gore, a zombie go-go-girl, a Rob Zombie look-alike in
his stage costume.