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Thursday, October 4, 2018

Horror Made Here: Warner Bros Second Year At Haunting SoCal

by Jonathan Bilski

Warner Bros is throwing it's severed head into the ring with it's own horror nights via the WB Studio Tour. A second year run has some fun frights and a little bit more to be expected from a major studio in Burbank. We previewed the experience and are telling you what it was like. We're breaking it all down including mazes based on Batman: Arkham Asylum, IT, The Conjuring and Friday the 13th.

October 5-6, 12-14, 18-21 and 25-28.
7:00 PM- 1:00 AM
WB Lot 6510 Forrest Lawn Drive
Los Angeles CA, 90068
$59 and up, price varies by date
$169 Loser's Club VIP

So, first off, we're blown away by getting to enter the park/experience through The Joker's mouth. They even added the little touch of having Mark Hamill's Joker laugh ringing in your ear. For fans of Batman, thats'a nice. There was a circus area in front too. We'll assume some creepy clowns are suppose to be there, but on this night it was just barren when we arrived.

Through the Jokers lips and into a small section of town and you're in the main center of the experience. You can see much of the park and a small main stage blasting top hits-let's have some horror music in the future though.

Then it's your choice of maze or experience.

Let's just go with what you"ll be drawn to immediately, Batman: Arkham Asylum. The outside of the maze just looks amazing. It looks like Batman's favorite place to put his psychos, even with the game's series latest Batmobile out in front to take pictures with. Then there's a Bat signal in the back, that really works.

You'll enter Arkham through its iron gates and the immediately get your mug shot taken. You can choose to buy it later as fun souvenir. The basic concept is Joker has taken control of Arkham and has judged you sane. So, he wants to make you insane. You"ll meet him and the rest of Batman's rogues, based on their designs from the Arkham games.

Let's clarify that it doesn't seem scary to us at all. What it is though, is a great rendition of that game world made real. Meeting up with the Joker, Harlequin, Riddler and other bat-bad guys was just too much fun for any fan of Batman. It's just fun to meet up with them, the actors playing them do a great job and we kind of wish they were roaming the park just as Pennywise was.  If WB decided to make a permanent Arkham you get to just walk through and take pictures with your favorite Bat-villains it might be a success on its own.

There's sort of an ending to the maze, but we felt sort of rushed out, maybe someone needs us to you  to stick around to hear some choice words with a dark knight.

It Knows What Scares You, based on the recent IT movie was the weakest maze in our opinion. We went on a much longer adventure when they had a free pop-up for the Neibolt House when the movie was coming out. This is in no way how big that pop-up was. They take elements from the movie and they have a great room where "You"ll float too," but, it just didn't have as many good scares at the other mazes, Arkham not included, as we stated as it's just fun to go through.

Nightmare on Camp Crystal Lake should just be called Camp Crystal Lake. This was one of our favorite mazes of the night. They got us good with some great scares. There are two problems with it though: 
A. You go on the Horror Made Here Night Tour to get there.
B. Freddy Krueger is there for like two minutes.

Our tour guide/driver was trying, trying so hard to entertain us on the Horror Made Here Night Tour and she just couldn't, because it was boring and the jokes written for her were bad. It's the only way to get to Crystal Lake and you just want to get there fast.

*If someone does read this and the data does get collected, please just take this as advice to improve your experience. We had fun, but there's so many chances to make it much better.

-Please, on the tour leading up to Camp Crystal Lake have people to come out and scare us while on the shuttle. Have them hiding in the sets, have something. Our poor driver was trying so hard to entertain us.

You"ll arrive on Elm Street? We guess. There's nothing that really stands out and then you get to see Freddy Krueger for like two minutes. You see the house from A Nightmare on Elm Street and Freddy a few times and he's a dream.

-Just make it about Jason and Camp Crystal Lake.

Camp Crystal Lake was great. You've got camp counselors running around screaming, telling us to leave the woods. And this isn't inside a studio or small area, you're outside surrounded by trees. Jason can come out of nowhere here and that's scary. These are big Jasons roaming the woods too, they cast tall people. 

We loved this part. You"ll eventually enter some camp housing and see a real mess caused from kids with teen supervision and un-dead psychopath after them. We got scared quite a bit with some gags that just got us.

-Expand on this, please.

Then a silent ride back to the main area-what happened to jokes and entertaining guests- and Stage 48: Script to Scream, which really doesn't have anything to do with Halloween, cept' maybe, a nice section for Tim Burton. We did enjoy ourselves in this area, which is part of the regular tour, because it's just nice and goes through a lot of WB's films.

The Conjuring Universe is the final maze you can do. With not a lot of knowledge from the film series we were still entertained by the scares and fun ideas that we were met through the house. It's a fun idea that the people showing you the house are suppose to be ghost hunters or know about the arcane stuff and things keeping going awry. Credit to some great scares that got us from out of nowhere.

For another experience you have The Exorcist: The Forbidden Screening, it's not a maze, but, you watching clips from the scary film with some live action elements that make it a little more fun. So, sit back, relax and get ready to be frightened.

There's one ride called the Devil's Drop Tower, we thought it was called the Devil's Pit at one point, but it's even more confusing when you see it as it's so bright and colorful.

-Was there no scary looking version of this 90-foot plunge?

For entertainment there's just a bizarre short stage show called " The Ultimate Rivalry" between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, don't watch it.

Food, however, huh, forget about it. Sadly, the carnival food was subpar. Just get some local restaunts to sponsor it or go with some-themed Halloween treats. The food was just a miss for munching on in-between mazes.

Now, as for alcohol they will be serving blood bags with a vodka and juice mix that are both tasty and look perfect for the season. It was very convenient to carry around as you can close it, like a real blood bag. It'll cost you $16 at the Fangtasia Bar out of Tru Blood. It's a nice place to get a buzz, but you can get other drinks around the experience.

The Lost Boys Arcade on the other hand is just...ehh, doesn't need to exist. The arcade game selection is pretty lame and just is nothing more than a few arcade machines.

The Little Shop of Horrors is the gift shop. And it has a great collection of goodies to get.
-We would have loved if Audrey ( the man-eating plant from the movie it's named after) was somewhere in the shop. Or maybe if some doo-wop girls could be near by singing.

You exit the way you came in, now leaving out of Pennywise's mouth.

There's a few little other fun things to do like getting your picture taken where Georgie was taken by Pennywise with him in the sewers under your feet or getting pictures with the creepy scarers wandering the experience.

We see a lot of potential in Horror Made Here: A Festival of Frights Experience, which needs a much catchier name. We want WB to expand on the mazes, have more mazes!WB has a lot of properties they can pull from. They've got to lose the food, the night tour, the main stage, arcade and mediocre ride. Maybe, play horror movies all night in the center of the park or something else to grab attention.

Keep going Warner Bros you've got some great ideas and scares, just keep improving on them.