Alice Cooper to design Halloween maze at Universal Studios Hollywood
Rock icon Alice Cooper will help design a theme park maze for Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights as area theme parks battle to lure more fall visitors.
In recent years, Halloween has represented a new opportunity for huge revenues for theme parks such as Universal Studios, Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park and Disneyland in Anaheim.
Nationwide, more than 300 amusement parks operate extra Halloween attractions, generating $150 million to $200 million in revenue annually, according to the Haunted House Assn., a national group based in North Carolina that promotes businesses with “haunted” or Halloween themes.
Universal announced Tuesday that Cooper, known for his macabre-tinged stage persona, is the second celebrity that the park has named to help create horror-inspired mazes for the annual Halloween celebration that runs on selected nights from Sept. 23 to Oct. 31.
Horror movie director and actor Eli Roth, who produced the 2002 horror film “Cabin Fever” and 2005’s “Hostel,” among other movies, will design a maze called “Eli Roth’s Hostel: Hunting Season.” Over the next few weeks, the park will announce the names of other celebrities to design mazes.
The mazes are often temporary structures installed at the theme park among the other rides and attractions. Guests walk through the dark mazes, past scenes of gore and costumed actors that jump out from the shadows.
According to Universal Studios Hollywood, Cooper’s maze will include “guillotine decapitations, electric chairs, a sadistic insane asylum, predatory snakes and giant black widow spiders that have helped make his imagery timeless and indelible.”
