I'm here to share a project I just finished that came about from a commission I recently did for a full park plan. That park included a Stranger Things area, and I decided to develop that area and the attractions in more detail.
Level 1
Level 2
The land is set in the town of Hawkins soon after the events of the first season of the show. The Hawkins National Laboratory is under new scrutiny after the recent incidents and they have opened their gates up to the community of Hawkins to prove that nothing dangerous is going on. Tours are being conducted in the main lab, and other voluntary experiments are going on in a research station on site.
A block of downtown storefronts form the main public area of the land, which includes a classic diner quick service restaurant and multiple retail shops.
Just across the road is the mysterious Hawkins National Laboratory, sitting behind a tall chain link fence and a security shack with its main windowless building looming over town. The utilitarian grounds at the base of the building are open today for visitors, including a converted office trailer that is now a retail shop.
Around the corner from town and the Laboratory entrance is the Byers house, nestled in the woods alone. The house contains a meet and greet experience.
Stranger Things: Terror of the Upside Down
The main attraction of the land is a trackless dark ride where guests must escape from Hawkins National Laboratory when a tour goes wrong. Guests are invited into the main lab building for a brief tour and demonstration of the kinds of technologies being developed in Hawkins to prove that everything is completely safe. The queue enters through the public reception lobby, passes through office rooms and conference rooms set up with dioramas and infographics on the research done on site, through a museum type space about the history of the lab, and finally into a data processing center room where all current experiments are monitored. From there, guests are split into one of two pre-show rooms, where a welcome film from Dr. Sam Owens, the new director of the lab, is shown. We are informed that our tour is going to be done with automated conveyance vehicles, for security reasons, and that we are going to see a demonstration of unique energy generating devices.
After the pre-show, the queue leads up a ramp to level 2 where guests are sent to one of four load rooms. Each room has 2 eight passenger trackless vehicles, which have small monitors in the dashboard in front of each row where Dr. Owens will appear to describe what goes on in the lab. After loading, a roll up door goes up and the pair of vehicles begin the tour. The pair pass down a hallway with closed lab doors on either side, all labeled generically. Guests pass one large window on the right that looks into a lab with experiments and large computer terminals set up. At the end of the hallway, the pair of vehicles enter one of two identical demo rooms. Large windows look into a lab room and the vehicles park in front of the first two.
There is a lab set inside the windows but there is also a hidden angled glass pane crossing the room to create a musion effect. A trio of scientists in the room are preparing the experiments as we enter. Dr Owens tells us that we are going to get to see a brief demonstration of some of the energy experiments that are typically done in this lab. As he starts to explain some of their projects, an alert starts to display on the monitors in the lab, and the scientists run over to check what is happening. The recorded version of Dr Owens cuts away to show a live feed of a security officer, who tells us not to be concerned and to stay seated. But then the lights start flickering and the back wall of the lab begins to crack and crumble, revealing a gate to the upside down behind it. The scientists look at it in fear and begin to rush away from it before a demogorgon suddenly steps through it and roars.
It starts to prowl towards the scientists as the officer on the screen frantically tells us that everything is going to be ok, and that they know what they are doing. At that moment, safety curtains descend over the windows to block out the view of the demogorgon attacking the scientists, but we can hear the fight. The vehicles slowly move along towards the other side of the room, towards the third window. Suddenly the curtain crashes down and a full size demogorgon figure pops towards us, hitting the glass and clawing at it to get to us. The screens tell us that we are being evacuated and to stay in the vehicle as it makes its way to the exit.
The vehicles quickly retreat out of a second door in the demo room, back out into the hallway. Now it is darker and red alert sirens and lights are going off. Screeching noises and screams can be heard in the distance around a corner. The vehicles move quickly down a hall while on the vehicle displays we are being told that we are going to an elevator. The pair of vehicles turns down one of two identical hallways that are next to each other. At the end of the hallway is an open elevator door, waiting for us. The vehicles move towards it, but halfway down, a terrifying roar from ahead stops us. Suddenly, in the darkness a blob monster swings around the corner and faces right at us. This is a large animatronic figure on a hidden track that is able to move towards us down the hall and flail its arms. The vehicles stop and quickly start retreating as it slides towards them.
The vehicles turn around another corner and enter a lab room. This room continues into what we find to be the sensory deprivation tank room. We lose connection with the lab team as our monitor goes to static, so we are forced to continue unguided. The vehicles move into the next room, appearing to be a storage space, where there are multiple framed openings into the room beyond which are actually screens. After we are in the room, we see a demogorgon drop into view in the room beyond and start taking steps towards us, but suddenly it is lifted into the air and thrown backwards. Eleven and the rest of the main characters run into view and are surprised to find us there. They say that they'll try to help get us out while they find a way to send the monsters back into the upside down again. But then 2 more demogorgons appear ahead and we are told to split up and escape while they take care of them.
Each vehicle turns and goes through a different door into another room that features a similar screen set up. In one room, we see Eleven and the other kids taking on a demogorgon, and in the other we see Hopper and Joyce doing the same. Each vehicle then moves on into the next room, where a demogorgon figure pops out to attack. In one, it comes from a storage rack, in the other it comes from above through a ceiling grate. Both vehicles quickly pull away and enter a small projection dome room. It appears to be a dark empty lab space, but suddenly a swarm of dark particles start to form around us, forming a creature above us and reaching down to us. This is the Mind Flayer starting to come for us. The vehicles speedily exit that room and come face to face in a hallway. To one side is a dead end so both turn to the other side and find the room with the Mothergate. Guests look down into the large 2 story space with the scenic wall ahead. Demogorgon roars follow us so there is nowhere to go besides ahead, so the vehicles move forward and stop on the elevator platform. It then starts to descend to the floor and the open gate.
On the ground floor, the vehicle moves off the platform and towards the opening in the Mothergate wall, entering the upside down. We are in an upside down version of the lab hallway, with vines growing all over the walls. The vehicles rejoin and turn down a hall with exit signage and emerge out a doorway into the upside down forest. Ahead is a field of trees and vines with a screen beyond to extend the view to the distance. The vehicles now move more freely and weave through the trees. To the right, a demogorgon pops out and startles the vehicles to keep moving faster into a cave beyond. The track for the second attraction passes by this area and the two attractions look at each other as they try to escape. The cave that the vehicles enter into is dark and it sounds like something is stalking us. Emerging from the cave, the vehicles are in a clearing surrounded by the forest and there are two other vehicles already weaving around the area. Demobats are swarming above the clearing, occasionally swooping and forcing the vehicles to stay in motion as they weave and dance around.
After a minute, the vehicles escape through to the other side and enter another clearing, which is a large projection space that surrounds the view of guests. We see a pair of demogorgons coming towards us but suddenly Eleven arrives to save the day. She pushes the demogorgons away and starts to battle them while yelling for us to move away. The vehicles move to the right to follow the action. Then Eleven turns to us and forcefully pushes us away to get out of the fight, and the vehicles shoot backwards and into a dark tunnel that leads to the final scene. The vehicles emerge into a two story projection space extending above, showing the forest beyond, and come to rest on an elevator platform. There are 2 identical elevator scenes. The demogorgons and Eleven appear again ahead of us as they continue to fight. Suddenly, Eleven explodes with power and pushes both the demogorgons and us away as we shoot up to the upper level in a blinding flash of white. The vehicles come to rest on the upper floor in a room that looks like the remains of a closed Mothergate, and then slide backwards through opening doors. Finally, they turn and move forward to the unload area ahead, where lab employees apologize for the unconventional tour, but promise that the lab is still completely safe.
Guests unload and head down a staircase or elevator and emerge into the employee gift shop, and then exit back out to the grounds of the lab.
Hawkins Cycles
The second attraction starts in the downtown area and is a unique bike-based indoor/outdoor dark ride through the town and eventually into the upside down. Guests enter the local bike repair and rental shop and queue through the showroom, the shop, and the warehouse before boarding a vehicle with 4 individual bicycle seats in the shop loading yard.
The bikes take off and leave the load area, heading south. A walkie talkie on the bike gives us a message from Dustin to meet them at the Byers house for some fun around town. The bikes pass under a bridge and then enter the woods before veering right towards the house. But there behind the house is a clearing with abandoned bikes and no Dustin. A new message tells us that something came up and to head to the Laboratory instead to meet them.
The bikes continue along and are now up against the Laboratory fence, riding along in a ditch that goes under the entrance roads into the complex. This is the scenic portion of the ride. A message tells us to look for the hole in the fence up ahead, and the bikes soon turn left and find that gap, going through it. The trail continues along to a clearing where there's a mound of dead pumpkins. Another message tells us to head into the drainage tunnel ahead, that they are just inside.
The bikes continue into the dark tunnel and come out into a small indoor forest where there is another tunnel ahead. Guests continue forward into this much longer tunnel, and they start to hear strange noises, like dogs growling in the shadows. Finally the tunnel ends in a nondescript utility room and the bikes continue forward and turn into one of two identical dead-ends. Ahead is a screen that fills the rider's view and continues the view of the utility room. Dustin pulls up on his bike in the distance, waves, and then says on the radio that something bad has happened in the lab and the monsters are back, so we need to be careful. Suddenly, ahead, a pair of demodogs emerge from the shadows and start growling at us as they slowly walk towards us. Dustin starts waving frantically and yells for us to get out of there.
The bikes quickly rotate on a turntable and take off back out of the dead-end and then turn right, revealing a large gateway into the upside down ahead, and Dustin tells us not to go that way, so the bikes stop. But a demodog pounces out from the left and forces us to escape by racing ahead through the gate and into the upside down. The bikes speed through a tunnel of vines and then turn right into the forest where another demodog pounces. Screens behind the forest of trees and vines extend the view into the distance. Dustin yells at us on the radio to keep going forward and find another gate out, so the bikes keep moving and pass openings into a cave, where the vehicles from the main ride pass by. Ahead we see the other gate and keep racing towards it. The bikes go through it and emerge into another indoor forest area, where we get a relieved radio message congratulating us for escaping.
We turn to the left and go through a wooded bridge tunnel, which emerges back out to the real outside. The bikes continue straight, pass under a bridge and then arrive at the bike shop, where guests unload and exit through a retail space.
G Force Testing
The third and smallest ride is a centrifuge flat ride, themed as a research experiment to test the human limit of extreme forces. The queue leads through lab spaces that demonstrate other tests being performed by the Laboratory. A pre-test room has displays that evaluate live results of the experiment guests are about to undertake. They are then loaded into one of two test bays where the classic centrifuge ride subjects the group of guests to a high speed spin. Guests exit back out to the grounds of the Laboratory.
Meet and Greet
Guests have the opportunity to step into the Byers home and meet some of the characters from the series. The queue entrance leads around the house to the back door, and a small group is pulsed into the kitchen to wait. Then the group is moved into one of two identical living rooms, which are dressed like the first season with the Christmas lights. The group interacts with a few rotating characters before the lights go out and the Christmas lights blink, suggesting that something is happening in the upside down and danger is near. Then they are told to be careful and led out through a side door to exit and walk back to the front of the house.
