Goosebumps Alive is an interactive show that was held in The Vaults under Waterloo Station in London, which opened up on May 14th 2016. It offers two versions of the show; an adult version and a kid-friendly one, both of which offered an immersive experience that brought many Goosebumps books to life.
Attractions[]
There are two different versions of the show:
Adult (Goosebumps Alive):[]
A more adult version of the ride which features many more jumpscares and more gruesome imagery, while still keeping to the spirit of the books. The attendees would be given cards at the start of the attraction, featuring symbols of a Rat, a Snake, a Spider, or a Crow, and each of those would dictate the path the attendee would take. As a result, there would be four different groups accessing through the attraction. Attendees would then in their groups traverse rooms based on The Cuckoo Clock of Doom, Say Cheese and Die, or The Blob That Ate Everyone, and then meet up to travel into rooms based on Stay Out of the Basement or The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight. Each room was accessible through winding corridors that would appear to twist and turn as you walk through them.
The overall narrative of the attraction would center around Slappy and his attempts to cross into our reality. The finale of the show would have all guests enter one last giant room, where a organ would sit at the end. Suddenly, an enormous monster version of Slappy would emerge from the organ alongside large Wooden Hands, while the Tiger Lillies song would play.
Kids (Goosebumps: Museum of the Weird)[]
A tamer version of the ride with fewer jumpscares and not quite as extreme as the adult version. Guests would enter a performance space, which represented a museum which housed many different artifacts. Unlike the adult experience, the group would be led through the attraction by a performer who acted a Museum Curator or Guide, to help the kids feel a little more secure compared to the adult version. Various production spaces and costumes from the adult version were used in the kids version as well.
The story of this attraction would tie in each room as an artifact from the museum that either had a story to tell, or got out of hand.
Night of the Living Dummy was one of the books represented, with multiple frightening versions of Slappy.
Books[]
- Night of the Living Dummy - Slappy would be a recurring villain throughout the attraction, though his appearance would change gradually. Starting from a regular ventriloquist dummy, he would both grow in size, and split into multiple Slappy clones, culminating in the end of the ride where guests would arrive at a large corridor, and he would emerge as a giant, grotesque version of himself, punching through reality.
- One Day at HorrorLand - This room featured a version of HorrorLand that was cobbled together from bits of a fairground, moving down a winding hallway, leading to a large stage coming out of a Horror's mouth.
- The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight - This room featured a corn maze that would wind around before arriving at a 1950's style farmhouse on one end, and a barn on the other end, while multiple scarecrows would roam and scare guests.
- The Haunted Mask - As you would traverse this part of the story, you would see that the mask the performer was wearing would grow more and more grotesque overtime, to show the way it was changing the wearer.
- Stay Out of the Basement - The story featured a couple in their 20's moving into a new home but find out that someone in the basement in doing experiments on plants. The group would go from the normal looking kitchen area, down into the basement, where all the plants would be located amidst creepy lighting.
- The Blob That Ate Everyone - The user typing on the typewriter would be writing things into reality, when suddenly a large blackout would occur. The room would then fill with a large blob full of Objects that were symbolic of excessive wealth and greed which would manifest in the form of this monstrous golden blob monster of consumerism surrounding the audience.
- Say Cheese and Die! - The area would start in a curio shop full of oddities that would lead into a room full of photographs on the walls. One effect done in this room would feature a seemingly glass ceiling (actually a screen), which would simulate birds falling dead onto the ceiling as a jump scare effect.
- The Cuckoo Clock of Doom - This room was an almost complete circular room, with a clock projecting onto the floor below the guests.
Trivia[]
- The attraction also featured mini-scenes that attendees could interact with, including a lift sequence with a monster trying to grab at guests, a gravedigging sequence, a ghost story in a tent, among others, which added to the interactivity to the event.
- The Slappy puppet featured at the end of the attraction measured to be 30 feet tall.
- The attraction featured 19 rooms, each with a reference of some kind to a Goosebumps book.
- The "Say Cheese and Die" room was said to feature many easter eggs and references to other Goosebumps stories within the curio shop.
- The show had a soundtrack tied into the attraction, composed and performed by the band The Tiger Lillies, simply titled "Goosebumps". The album featured original songs that would play into the different rooms of the show.
- The masks used in the show were designed by a shop in London called "The Ministry of Masks"
- The shows production was designed by Samuel Wyer, would also worked on production for another show in The Vaults, "Alice's Adventures Underground".
- Some of the masks and props used in the show are now on display in a bar in Waterloo called "Vaulty Towers".
- Slappy in the show was portrayed by Matthew Waters, who played a main role in the Australian kids show "Round the Twist".
- Tim Jacobus made a promotional art piece to tie in with the show. The art piece featured a man traversing a tunnel, which both represented the feel of the attraction and the Vaults itself.
- The attraction also had Food and Drinks via a Restaurant and Bar
- The Food Menu offered featured menu items, mostly sandwiches, including:
- "How Do You Take Your BURGER, Sir?"
- "Red Meat"
- "Clucking"
- "From The Deep Blue"
- "Straight From The Basement"
- "Or Would You Prefer To Say Cheese & Die With A Toastie"
- The Food Menu offered featured menu items, mostly sandwiches, including:
- The Scarecrows all featured different designs for both the head and the body, some more inhuman and deformed than others.
- An original concept for Stay Out of the Basement was to have grates in parts of the floor of the kitchen where the lighting from below would shine through.
Gallery[]
