Universal Orlando’s yearly “Halloween Horror Nights” extravaganza expands its line-up of haunted mazes, scare zones and live shows with a new attraction hoping to send a chill up the spine of visitors while exercising their noggins. The Repository ushers in the next evolution of the theme-park experience by delivering a puzzle-solving ghost story with help from live theater and virtual reality elements.
“We were looking at new opportunities to engage differently with our guests,” says T.J. Mannarino, senior director of art and design at Universal Orlando. “And, we wanted to create a more interactive way to allow them to drive a story and become part of the show.”
Within the roughly 30-minute adventure, teams of up to four guests, now members of the paranormal investigating organization Legendary Truth, first walk into a crowded, musky warehouse representing a former Scottish armory built in 1775. Team members may or may not get additional help from the curator, if they solve his riddle by finding four specific antiquities hidden in the room. Groups then get hustled along to more detailed areas as they eventually greet a clearly insane keymaster that doles out a glowing, colored cube covered in symbols to each member and a frustrated scientist looking for answers to the curse. Both frantic interactions allow the team members to further refine their sleuthing techniques with more riddles needing their participation.
Tall rows of shelves are on either side of the large room and contain an unorganized group of possessed artifacts ranging from skulls to antique dolls and creepy tchotchkes. A curmudgeonly and slightly insane Scottish curator welcomes the team and explains they are to help break the Grimslew Curse, an unintended consequence from the collection of objects emitting potent supernatural powers.
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Source: The Washington Post