Universal set to unwrap edgy Mummy attraction
By Todd Pack
Sentinel Staff Writer
February 9, 2004
Just three months shy of its spring opening, Revenge of the Mummy is
part construction site, part thrill ride.
Its maze of stage sets is nearly complete, and a roller-coaster track
coils like a whip through its building on the back lot at Universal
Studios Florida.
But a foam cutout holds the place of a robotic figure in one scene,
and no one passing by seems surprised by the demon warriors springing
from their hiding spaces as workers check whether the monsters are
operating properly.
Universal has a reputation for edgy attractions, but executives say
Mummy, which is entering its final weeks of construction, will be
unlike anything the company has built.
It will take passengers on a four-minute “psychological thrill ride“
that includes a skeletal villain, a roomful of flesh-eating bugs and
a chamber where real flames roil overhead.
A ride as elaborate as this one is “a very complicated thing to pull
together,“ said Scott Trowbridge, vice president of Universal
Creative, which designs attractions for Vivendi Universal's five
parks in the United States, Spain and Japan.
It also is crucial to keeping Universal competitive with its
archrival Walt Disney World, theme-park consultant Dennis Speigel
said.
Competition between the resorts “continues to be an armaments war,
and if you don't come out with a big gun,“ you're not going to
attract tourists, said Speigel, president of International Theme Park
Services, a Cincinnati consulting firm.
Construction on the Mummy started more than a year ago, even before
Universal unwrapped plans to spend $80 million on a pair of Mummy
attractions at its theme parks in California and Orlando.
In fact, an army of artists and engineers had been working on the
attractions since before the movie that inspired them was released in
spring 1999.
That's not unusual.
Ride designers typically start thinking about possible rides several
years out because it takes so long to build them, Trowbridge said.
Some of those ride plans are shelved because the story is weak, while
others are filed away because they would cost too much to build or
there's no room for them, he said.
But building a thrill ride based on The Mummy was “a natural,“
Trowbridge said.
The movie, like its 2001 sequel, The Mummy Returns, is about a mummy,
Imhotep, who returns from the dead and wreaks havoc.
“We thought, 'Here's a story line that's classic Universal,' “
Trowbridge said.
Company officials are careful about what they will say about the
ride. Universal will talk about the making of the attraction but
won't say what happens after the first few scenes, and it won't allow
photos of the work in progress.
One of the first decisions the designers made was to have the
attraction combine an indoor attraction with a roller coaster -- an
idea that had been on the shelf since the early 1990s.
Space Mountain and Rock Rock 'n' Roller Coaster at Disney are indoor
coasters, but Mummy will be different because the coaster is simply
one more twist in the attraction's plot.
Passengers will ride a 1930s-style open “railcar“ and pass slowly
through several scary scenes, stopping for some, before the slow-
moving ride becomes a fast-moving coaster.
But while the designers settled on the coaster idea early on, “it
took a good year to a year and a half to find the beats“ -- the
twists and turns that make up the ride's story, said Jennifer Sauer,
the Orlando ride's creative director.
Sometimes, an idea that works on paper might not play as well in 3-D,
Sauer said.
Ride designers routinely build real and computer models of the ride
to get a clearer idea how it will look to paying guests, she said.
“It really does evolve over time,“ Sauer said.
Several of the proposed scenes in the attraction were so elaborate
that the designers built full-scale mock-ups off-site to see whether
they would really work.
One idea Sauer's storytellers came up with was a room where fire
licks the ceiling.
“Your first reaction is, 'Oh, you can't do that!' “ said Bob Shreve,
a creative producer with Universal.
“Then, the second reaction is, 'Oh, you can't afford to do that,' and
once you've worked all that out, you go, 'Oh. How can we pull that
off?' “
Shreve joined Sauer's team in 2001 and spent the next several months
coming up with a way to create a fire effect that was safe and could
be reset every 24 seconds -- the length of time between cars leaving
the ride's loading platform.
Workers built a mock-up of the room where the effect was planned.
They suspended three pans -- each larger than an SUV -- upside down
from the ceiling. The shallow sides trapped natural gas beneath the
pans.
When the gas was ignited, the flame rolled beneath the pans in an
effect called “brain fire“ because the roiling flames resemble a
brain.
“We played with different heights, different amounts of gas for a
couple days until Jennifer said, 'That's the look I want,' “ Shreve
said.
But they decided to remove one of the three pans because “we kind of
figured out we were truly making a roaster. You could have warmed
your sandwich in there,“ he said.
“We really want people to feel threatened in there,“ but “it isn't as
dangerous as it looks,“ Shreve said.
“You're using lighter-than-air gas,“ he said, and “we built the room
so it can never catch on fire. In terms of guest safety, they're 100
percent safe.“
Passengers will feel the heat, but federal safety guidelines say the
temperature on riders' foreheads can't exceed 111 degrees and can
last only a few seconds -- about the same as opening the door on a
broiler.
Another big decision that the designers had to make early on was
where in the park to build it, Trowbridge said.
“Real estate is obviously a huge concern,“ he said.
The only soundstage big enough was on the park's New York back lot,
but it was home to one of Universal's signature rides,
Kongfrontation, based on the 1976 remake of King Kong.
Despite its aging technology -- the 30-foot gorilla could move its
arms, slowly, but that was about all -- the attraction had a loyal
following.
“But we felt this [Mummy] attraction would be more popular, and we're
all about updating [the park],“ Trowbridge said.
Kongfrontation closed in September 2002, and workers began striking
the ride's New York street sets almost immediately.
The soundstage has about 70,000 square feet of floor space and is
about 55 feet tall, but fitting Mummy into the building created
problems because of the ride's design, said Mike Hightower, vice
president of project management with Universal Creative.
“Everything is right on top of each other,“ he said.
What's more, the stage has only one entrance in the rear for
construction equipment, he said. So, the builders had to install the
attraction like a tourist packing luggage into the trunk of the
family car, making sure everything would eventually fit.
“It takes a tremendous amount of planning to schedule the sequences,“
Hightower said.
Now that the major sets and coaster track are in place, crews will
spend the next several weeks testing the equipment and finishing the
sets before opening the ride intermittently for “technical
rehearsals“ and making any final adjustments.
Universal hopes to have Mummy's official opening sometime in late
spring, before the summer vacation season.
Sauer spent a recent morning in the ride's queue, telling a couple of
workers where to place a broken “stone“ column. It looked to weigh as
much as a car, but they lifted it without much effort.
During a break, Sauer said she had lost track of how long she has
worked on the ride. “I started four, four and a half years ago?“ she
said, doing the math in her head and reacting in mock horror at how
quickly time had passed.
This sounds like it's gonna be one hell of a ride
:sohappy:
By Todd Pack
Sentinel Staff Writer
February 9, 2004
Just three months shy of its spring opening, Revenge of the Mummy is
part construction site, part thrill ride.
Its maze of stage sets is nearly complete, and a roller-coaster track
coils like a whip through its building on the back lot at Universal
Studios Florida.
But a foam cutout holds the place of a robotic figure in one scene,
and no one passing by seems surprised by the demon warriors springing
from their hiding spaces as workers check whether the monsters are
operating properly.
Universal has a reputation for edgy attractions, but executives say
Mummy, which is entering its final weeks of construction, will be
unlike anything the company has built.
It will take passengers on a four-minute “psychological thrill ride“
that includes a skeletal villain, a roomful of flesh-eating bugs and
a chamber where real flames roil overhead.
A ride as elaborate as this one is “a very complicated thing to pull
together,“ said Scott Trowbridge, vice president of Universal
Creative, which designs attractions for Vivendi Universal's five
parks in the United States, Spain and Japan.
It also is crucial to keeping Universal competitive with its
archrival Walt Disney World, theme-park consultant Dennis Speigel
said.
Competition between the resorts “continues to be an armaments war,
and if you don't come out with a big gun,“ you're not going to
attract tourists, said Speigel, president of International Theme Park
Services, a Cincinnati consulting firm.
Construction on the Mummy started more than a year ago, even before
Universal unwrapped plans to spend $80 million on a pair of Mummy
attractions at its theme parks in California and Orlando.
In fact, an army of artists and engineers had been working on the
attractions since before the movie that inspired them was released in
spring 1999.
That's not unusual.
Ride designers typically start thinking about possible rides several
years out because it takes so long to build them, Trowbridge said.
Some of those ride plans are shelved because the story is weak, while
others are filed away because they would cost too much to build or
there's no room for them, he said.
But building a thrill ride based on The Mummy was “a natural,“
Trowbridge said.
The movie, like its 2001 sequel, The Mummy Returns, is about a mummy,
Imhotep, who returns from the dead and wreaks havoc.
“We thought, 'Here's a story line that's classic Universal,' “
Trowbridge said.
Company officials are careful about what they will say about the
ride. Universal will talk about the making of the attraction but
won't say what happens after the first few scenes, and it won't allow
photos of the work in progress.
One of the first decisions the designers made was to have the
attraction combine an indoor attraction with a roller coaster -- an
idea that had been on the shelf since the early 1990s.
Space Mountain and Rock Rock 'n' Roller Coaster at Disney are indoor
coasters, but Mummy will be different because the coaster is simply
one more twist in the attraction's plot.
Passengers will ride a 1930s-style open “railcar“ and pass slowly
through several scary scenes, stopping for some, before the slow-
moving ride becomes a fast-moving coaster.
But while the designers settled on the coaster idea early on, “it
took a good year to a year and a half to find the beats“ -- the
twists and turns that make up the ride's story, said Jennifer Sauer,
the Orlando ride's creative director.
Sometimes, an idea that works on paper might not play as well in 3-D,
Sauer said.
Ride designers routinely build real and computer models of the ride
to get a clearer idea how it will look to paying guests, she said.
“It really does evolve over time,“ Sauer said.
Several of the proposed scenes in the attraction were so elaborate
that the designers built full-scale mock-ups off-site to see whether
they would really work.
One idea Sauer's storytellers came up with was a room where fire
licks the ceiling.
“Your first reaction is, 'Oh, you can't do that!' “ said Bob Shreve,
a creative producer with Universal.
“Then, the second reaction is, 'Oh, you can't afford to do that,' and
once you've worked all that out, you go, 'Oh. How can we pull that
off?' “
Shreve joined Sauer's team in 2001 and spent the next several months
coming up with a way to create a fire effect that was safe and could
be reset every 24 seconds -- the length of time between cars leaving
the ride's loading platform.
Workers built a mock-up of the room where the effect was planned.
They suspended three pans -- each larger than an SUV -- upside down
from the ceiling. The shallow sides trapped natural gas beneath the
pans.
When the gas was ignited, the flame rolled beneath the pans in an
effect called “brain fire“ because the roiling flames resemble a
brain.
“We played with different heights, different amounts of gas for a
couple days until Jennifer said, 'That's the look I want,' “ Shreve
said.
But they decided to remove one of the three pans because “we kind of
figured out we were truly making a roaster. You could have warmed
your sandwich in there,“ he said.
“We really want people to feel threatened in there,“ but “it isn't as
dangerous as it looks,“ Shreve said.
“You're using lighter-than-air gas,“ he said, and “we built the room
so it can never catch on fire. In terms of guest safety, they're 100
percent safe.“
Passengers will feel the heat, but federal safety guidelines say the
temperature on riders' foreheads can't exceed 111 degrees and can
last only a few seconds -- about the same as opening the door on a
broiler.
Another big decision that the designers had to make early on was
where in the park to build it, Trowbridge said.
“Real estate is obviously a huge concern,“ he said.
The only soundstage big enough was on the park's New York back lot,
but it was home to one of Universal's signature rides,
Kongfrontation, based on the 1976 remake of King Kong.
Despite its aging technology -- the 30-foot gorilla could move its
arms, slowly, but that was about all -- the attraction had a loyal
following.
“But we felt this [Mummy] attraction would be more popular, and we're
all about updating [the park],“ Trowbridge said.
Kongfrontation closed in September 2002, and workers began striking
the ride's New York street sets almost immediately.
The soundstage has about 70,000 square feet of floor space and is
about 55 feet tall, but fitting Mummy into the building created
problems because of the ride's design, said Mike Hightower, vice
president of project management with Universal Creative.
“Everything is right on top of each other,“ he said.
What's more, the stage has only one entrance in the rear for
construction equipment, he said. So, the builders had to install the
attraction like a tourist packing luggage into the trunk of the
family car, making sure everything would eventually fit.
“It takes a tremendous amount of planning to schedule the sequences,“
Hightower said.
Now that the major sets and coaster track are in place, crews will
spend the next several weeks testing the equipment and finishing the
sets before opening the ride intermittently for “technical
rehearsals“ and making any final adjustments.
Universal hopes to have Mummy's official opening sometime in late
spring, before the summer vacation season.
Sauer spent a recent morning in the ride's queue, telling a couple of
workers where to place a broken “stone“ column. It looked to weigh as
much as a car, but they lifted it without much effort.
During a break, Sauer said she had lost track of how long she has
worked on the ride. “I started four, four and a half years ago?“ she
said, doing the math in her head and reacting in mock horror at how
quickly time had passed.
This sounds like it's gonna be one hell of a ride
:sohappy:
