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Approaching The Overlook Hotel, guests walk along a winding, hillside road up towards the ominous and overbearing structure set upon the mountainside. The foreboding trek towards the hotel creates an inauspicious atmosphere of uncertainty and genuine mystery, as in the background you can hear an off-pitch trombone playing the same notes over and over, as baleful screeches pierce your ears louder and louder as you approach the exterior of the hotel. Tall trees isolate you from the rest of the park, and the feeling of dreadful solitude creeps over the guests as they continue up the queue line towards the entrance to the attraction.
Passing a mystifying green hedge maze, you note the title of the maze reveals the name of the hotel you are entering - The Overlook Hotel in Sidewinder, Colorado.
With the hotel in forced perspective view, the scale of the hotel is overwhelming as it feels almost like a living presence you are about to encounter. Walking through the main gates of the hotel after rounding around the outdoor queue section, you walk over towards the main entrance of the hotel.
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As you enter into the main lobby, an eerie silence encompasses the beautiful native american wilderness inspired hotel. Sprawling felt pieces drape the sides of the walls, and meticulously hand crafted chandeliers hang from the ceiling. The lights are on throughout the hotel lobby, welcoming you into its humble abode. You get a sense of your surroundings when mysteriously, a Ray Noble song, Midnight, The Stars, And You, begins to play throughout the empty lobby.
Nobody is visible and no stereo or music box is present, which makes you wonder...where is the music coming from? The sense of comfort that the music played in another setting would bring, in actuality brings a sense of fear and concern for what will happen next.
As guests continue to file into the main lobby entrance, a hotel staff worker closes the main door to the outside and suddenly, the windows peering out into the landscape go dark with a blizzard window special effect, and the guest's perspective is 'corrected' to view the red elevator doors at the end of the lobby entrance. This is done by having the sound effect of the song, slowly moving towards the elevator doors, before eventually fading away. At first guests may wonder why they are being addressed to seemingly commonplace elevator doors, however they are soon shook with horror at the red river of blood seeping through the elevator doors. (This effect is accomplished by projection mapping on the elevator doors to give the impression of flowing liquid - or in this case, blood)
Silence can be heard through the lobby, as a river of blood comes flowing towards the main entrance. Once the flow gets close to the main entrance, the lights go dark. And when the lights turn back on, the river of blood is gone, and it's like nothing ever happened, except for one aspect. Standing behind the guests at this point is a hotel staff employee, with a ghastly stare and an unnatural sense of calm as he says:
"Would you like to view the rest of the Overlook?" the man says.
You walk through towards the foyer where the attraction load area is. The creepy sound effects from the outdoor queue section return as you approach the ride vehicles.
The attraction will use the complex and perplexing set designs from the Stanley Kubrick film. With this being a trackless ride, guests might enter and re-enter the same set pieces, but from different and inordinate perspectives that throw the rider off of their sense of direction, consuming them in The Overlook Hotel. The disorienting set design could be simply a mistake on the part of Kubrick's, but given the director's attention to detail in his other films and the multitude of errors, it has come into question whether or not those errors were intentional to throw off the audience. We'll be assuming they were intentional and adapt similar mysterious layout techniques here in the attraction.
The attraction has several scenes that take place on two separate floors, The Colorado Lounge, Gold Room, and Maze which take place on the first floor, Room 237, twins encounter, and the residential quarters on the second (even though in the film there are 3 floors)
To give a sense of scale and impending vulnerability, the ride vehicles will be themed after Danny's tricycle from the film.
The decision to go with the tricycle as the trackless vehicle throughout the attraction is because while the singular trike will be modified to fit four guests (two rows) The dimensions of the trike give the audience a sense of magnitude for the size of The Overlook. Being closer to the ground, everything around you seems bigger, and more menacing, and thus, you feel more vulnerable. Using forced perspective throughout the attraction - you'll view The Overlook from the perspective of Danny on the trike, heightening the sense of doom and suspense that lies around every corner of the hotel.
After boarding in the foyer, you take your tricycle on a lap around the Colorado Lounge, as Danny does in the film. The trackless vehicles ride in a series of four cars. In the wrap around scene, each of the four trikes follows each other in a steady motion at a decent speed for a dark ride (around 5mph) to give the breezy feeling of freedom riding around the brim of the lounge.
The eerie effect is compounded when you are one of the trailing trikes, following the trike in front of you, giving the sense that something is always following you around the hotel!
As you are about to complete your lap around the Colorado Lounge, you can hear the thud of a tennis ball being thrown up against the wall, and the sound of Jack Torrance violently yelling for Danny. The trike makes a turn towards a ramp (not in film) that head towards the upstairs balcony. Before leaving the Colorado Lounge, it makes a quick spin around Jack's work station, which has hundreds of pages that, in all different formats, are scattered around saying "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"
This shift towards the next scene and set piece then sends in the next set of vehicles into the lounge area for their lap around the Colorado Lounge.
On the second floor, you ride past Room no: 237, where the door is crept open to view the interior. Your trikes stop in front of it, and the lights go dark. When the lights come back on, you see an animatronic of a creepy, decrepit old lady peering out at you as she laughs. Your trikes then continue down the long, carpeted hallway towards the residence. Your trike takes a turn, but into a dead end. All four vehicles line up side by side, in a wider hallway than in the film in order to accommodate everyone for the view. Two animatronic twins stare out at you saying "Come play with us. Forever, and ever, and ever"
Your trikes back away and turn back towards the hallway you just came from, before making a left into the caretaker residence room, and allowing the next trailing cars of trackless vehicles to enter into the twins scene.
In the residence, you enter another dead end, but this time it's of a bed, with the voiceover of someone (Danny) whispering 'Redrum'. His voice gets increasingly louder and louder as you observe lipstick written on the door with the word 'Redrum' however, screeching bells are heard as the trikes turn towards a mirror where Murder is spelled out in the reflection. The door to the residence is heard opening with Jack saying 'Wendy, I'm home'
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Your trike backs away again, spins around, where you see Jack's face in the doorway that he just knocked down with an ax. In order to get back down to the first floor and make your escape down the residential ramp. Haunting chanting and loud foreboding sounds echo through the halls. On the way down the ramp, there are several doorways, with one of them open, and a man in a bizarre animal costume creeps his head out as you make your way back down to the first floor. Seemingly out of the horror, yet the horror is just beginning.
As you approach the first floor, you enter what appears to be the foyer you started with, and the elevator shaft you saw in the introductory pre-show scene, however you're not home free.
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Your trike then travels through deflated balloons and decorations down what seems like an endless hallway, before glancing past the Gold Room and travel inside. As you go into the Gold Room, your trike begins to slowly spin, and as it spins, the scenery around you goes from ominous silence to a decadent July 4th party. A British butler comes out as an animatronic and says "I hope you won't need to be, corrected" as your trike veers away from the party and back out towards the foyer. The screeching returns and is as loud as ever as the trike makes it back into a mirrored room of the entrance, yet instead of the brightly lit, charming entrance you started with, it's dark, full of cobwebs and skeletons sitting around in the lounge chairs.
*These effects are accomplished by building duplicate, identical foyers and entrances, back to back, in the set design, giving the illusion you are home free, when in reality, it's a different set. - hopefully later I will be able to draw a blueprint of the entire show building and its layout*
Some of the skeletons begin to move and you race out of the entrance and into a snow covered maze (this is in a show building similar to the graveyard 'outdoor' scene in the Haunted Mansion). You hear footsteps of Jack behind you and yelling as he waves the ax around behind you as you make it out of the entrance gateway and into the maze. In the maze your trike rounds through towards the center of the maze, before backtracking out of it and towards the entrance once again. This scene is tense and suspenseful as you'll never know what will be around the corner or if Jack will find you. Projections of Jack appear sporadically on the bushes, dark and silhouetted, with his ax ready to chop. Danny! You can hear as he calls out. However the horrors in this scene are all psychological, as there are no cheap jumpscares in the maze. It's only the looming threat of danger that causes the horror.
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As an homage to the novel, two animatronic maze animals move towards you and stare at you as you exit the maze. Eventually you make it back inside and into the foyer, which is part of the loading/unloading area. As you exit the vehicle, you walk past pictures of past celebrations at The Overlook, and can see Jack's face front and center at the July 4th Ball in 1921 - leading to more questions than answers about The Overlook Hotel, as Midnight, The Stars, And You - plays you out as you exit back out of the attraction and down towards the rest of the American Mystery land.
As we queue, we are walking around Derry and seeing signs everywhere of the disappearances and learning about Derry's dark past. We then realize that all sewers lead to 29 Neibolt Street and enter the decaying, abandoned house, for an IT preshow. IT tries to convince us that he is not harmful, and shows us a balloon and tells us to come with him and you'll float. Soon , IT tries to lunge at us but the Losers Club runs in and distracts IT before he attacks.
In memory of Georgie and in defense of IT, the Losers Club built an escape route through the sewers, building escape 'row boats' named the S.S. Georgie. They hustle the guests into the boats and you're off on the roaring adventure.
At first you try to escape through the upper level tunnels but then IT peaks his head around the corner and you dive down. Within the boat ride, there are 3 drops, each of varying heights. First drop 15 feet, second drop 20 feet, then a grand 40 foot drop as you ascend from the bottom of the sewer lines to the top on a Derry hillside, but IT has laid a trap and you're redirected down towards the town off a runoff waterfall cliff and back to 29 Neibolt Street to escape the terrifying fate.
IT
By Disney Dad 3000, D HIndley, MonorailRed and spacemt354
Artwork by Disney Dad 3000, Logos by MonorailRed, Blueprints by spacemt354
All work and no play makes you a dull boy...venture into a land of chills and thrills. Of horror and intrigue. Inspired by the terrifying writings of Stephen King, American Mystery is a land steeped in themes that evoke a sense of suspense. What may seem like natural beauty of coastal seaside towns in Maine, or a Rocky Mountain getaway - are filled with intricate backstories that will leave a lasting memory when you discover what lies within.
Pet Sematary
Follow in the footsteps of the Creed family as you venture into the Pet Sematary in Ludlow, Maine. You creep around the corners, not heeding warning to not cross the barrier into the Pet Sematary, as the ground beyond is 'sour'. Be prepared for some spooky encounters.
The Shack at Cabot Cove Harbor
Located on a harbor in Maine, the Murder, She Wrote inspired restaurant - The Shack - is a fish/lobster quick service restaurant with a New England inspired menu. Featuring items such as a lobster roll, lobster salad, crab roll, New England clam chowder, and more - this is one of the most exquisitely quaint quick service venues in the entire park.
King's Needful Things
Inspired by the mind of Stephen King, this New England facade shop is home to various merchandise from the surrounding attractions, in addition to a library of all of King's work for purchase, as well as a variety of other horror/suspense novels.
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