Scott Strobl, Universal Studios Hollywood’s executive vice president and general manager, tried not to sound overzealous as he described to a group of press what to expect from the Los Angeles park’s newest special event, Fan Fest Nights. “Here’s the way to think about it,” he told the crowd. “If you know and love the immersion we create with the IPs at Halloween Horror Nights, it’s like if Halloween Horror Nights and Comic-Con had a baby.”
For 12 nights, during the four consecutive weekends between April 25 and May 18, fans of sci-fi, anime, fantasy, and gaming will be able to celebrate popular properties through a series of activations and attractions spanning every corner of the park. “Fan Fest is a total park takeover, so guests will be able to experience each and every genre, each and every piece of content throughout the event, every single night of the event,” Stephen Siercks, senior director, entertainment production, Universal Studios Hollywood, told The Hollywood Reporter.
A separately ticketed after-hours experience — complete with express, multi-night, and early entry options, which officially went on sale Wednesday — Fan Fest promises lovers of Star Trek, Back to the Future, Dungeons & Dragons, One Piece, Jujutsu Kaisen, Harry Potter, and Super Nintendo will have “a chance to step into these worlds, be a part of them, and experience them in a way that you probably haven’t before,” according to Strobl.
Some of the event’s more ambitious experiences, several of which are currently being constructed, will lean into the park’s studio tour origins and history of collaborative partnerships, creating interactive environments within the park that center immersive storytelling and character interactions. It’s a milestone event for Universal Studios Hollywood, Siercks said, designed to both “celebrate the genres and celebrate the fans of the genres.”
In the works for years and created using two guiding principles — authenticity and a fan-first focus — it’s an opportunity, Sierks said, to deliver in a new way on the “legacy of authentic experiences that are uniquely Universal.”
For Universal Studios Hollywood, that legacy begins in 1964 with the arrival of the Studio Tram Tour, a behind-the-scenes look at the magic and method of movie-making. Sixty years later, the park has built popular attractions like the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, is in the midst of constructing a new coaster tied to the Fast and Furious franchise, and hosts one of the industry’s biggest after-hours events, Halloween Horror Nights.
Situated on the park’s calendar alongside other events like passholder days and nights, Butterbeer season, and annual celebrations for the Fourth of July, the winter holidays and New Year’s, HHN has evolved from a casual separately ticketed event for locals into an internationally attended three month industry-leading experience. Much of that shift has been fueled by a combination of multisensory production design and, more significantly, the adaption of popular horror franchises into haunted houses.
Produced annually by the park’s internal teams, including some working entertainment industry members, on an active back lot using props from the largest collection in the industry, the highly immersive event has not only seen interest skyrocket in the last decade. The separately ticketed after hours event has shifted a historically slow fall season into a brand experience that bridges the park’s summer and winter holiday attendance.
Yet, unlike its U.S. counterpart in Orlando, or even international parks like Universal Studios Japan, Hollywood had not yet programmed a similar bridge between its New Year and summer season, until now. In Japan, special IP fan-focused events like “Detective Conan: The World,” tied to the anime and manga series of the same name, or “Peril at the Masquerade,” inspired by Keigo Higashino’s Masquerade Hotel mystery books series, entice fans into the park where they can engage with popular fandom titles alongside the park’s attractions.
At Universal Studios Florida, the more traditional special event, Mardi Gras: International Flavors of Carnaval, is gearing up for its 30 year anniversary. “Because Universal Studios Florida was fairly new at the time, they wanted a springtime event that could really drive our local audience and the surrounding states’ audiences,” Lora Sauls, assistant director of creative development and entertainment for Universal Orlando Resort, told THR.
A celebration of New Orleans and international cuisine as well as Mardi Gras parade culture, 12 original floats serve as the event’s centerpiece, created in conjunction with Kern Studios, a float building and entertainment design production company. “We come up with the concepts together,” says Sauls. “Kern Studios draws the floats and brings us the props. Sometimes they create new props for us. But it truly does bring authentic New Orleans Mardi Gras to Universal Studios.”
Among those dozen original pieces — all of which are inspired by “some of the biggest and most famous krewes in New Orleans,” according to Sauls — half are new each year. Adorned with repurposed and glittered props from real former Mardi Gras floats, “the scale and size of is enormous, and part of their enormity is because we have guests riding these throwing beads,” explained Sauls. “A lot of the krewes in New Orleans throw all kinds of different things, but we stick to tradition.”
For the 30th anniversary, the parade will also feature a first line band performing New Orleans zydeco music, with appearances by Mardi Gras Indian Irving ‘Honey’ Banister. That’s in addition to this year’s concert series featuring headlines like T-Pain, Joe Jonas, and TLC, and an already expansive food and drink menu inspired by New Orleans flavors and dishes from over 10 countries around the world.
It’s the kind of authenticity that Fan Fest Nights, produced by the team behind L.A.’s HHN, wants to bring to the West coast, but with a uniquely Hollywood touch and in a more unprecedented, pop culturally-driven way. That was highlighted by Strobl on Tuesday, when he reminded the preview event that “the Back to the Future movies originated here on this lot, so. there’s no better place than Universal Studios Hollywood to bring it to life.”
Leaning into NBCUniversal IP and the park’s long history as a filming location, Fan Fest Nights will trade in the terrifying indoor mazes and terror tram experiences of the Bates Motel, Psycho House, War of the Worlds crash, and Nope’s Jupiter’s Claim sets for the “fan tram,” which will drop Back to the Future fans into the back lot’s outdoor Courthouse Square, just like Marty McFly, with “Destination Hill Valley.”
A combination of light set dressing, musical performances, vehicles from the film, and immersive character appearances — including Einstein, the dog — this back lot activation will indulge guests in unique story-based interactions. Transporting guests back to 1955 and soundtracked to “Mr. Sandman,” the experience will unfold each hour and feature a version of Back to the Future’s epic time-jumping finale.
Beyond offering a new kind of interaction with the back lot, Fan Fest Nights will also embody the Universal parks’ history of interstudio collaboration with “Star Trek: Red Alert.” The partnership with Paramount delivers what Sierks described as a pulse-based story experience, which will group attendees for a longer interactive action-based attraction set in the Picard-era of the Star Trek franchise.
Groups will enter the Starfleet Museum, where legacy spacecraft are on exhibit in space, a narrative vehicle for connecting classic Star Trek with its latest iterations. Invited to tour the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D, an otherworldly entity threatens each group, wreaking havoc on the ship. While navigating the chaos, fans will enter the shuttle bay, sick bay, control room, and turbolift before being redirected to the ship’s bridge.
A Paramount-built recreation of from the Enterprise-D, the bridge is a screen-used version from the Picard series, allowing guests to step into the same space as their favorite characters and actors. Teased as a thrilling narrative adventure, it will conclude with one final yet familiar element of the Star Trek ship experience as attendees transport themselves back to Earth.
Fan Fest Nights will continue to expand its relationship to real-world gameplay experiences, like those found in Super Nintendo World, with “Dungeons and Dragons: Secrets of Waterdeep.” Filling the entirety of Sound Stage 15, the table-top inspired attraction is the event’s second pulse-based experience.
Groups will enter via pre-show that prepares their party to go to the past, where they’ll meet the Harpers, a heroic spy network, before making their way through various locations and facing fantastical threats in order to find a stolen item. The quest, which involves interactive play, will lead groups to the doorstep of their enemy Xanathar, where they will face off in a battle with a life-size version of the foe, created in conjunction with the Jim Henson Company.
For the park’s anime debut, the Hollywood team partnered with Universal Studios Japan to help shape the pop-culture counterpart to HHN’s scare zone, the “fan zone,” with “One Piece: Grand Pirate Gathering.” This experience will allow parkgoers to walk the streets and experience character and photo opportunities based on the anime and manga hit. “Jujutsu Kaisen: Hunger of the Cursed” will also take over the DreamWorks Theater, bringing an adapted version of Japan park’s film experience, with 4D though no 3D elements, to run exclusively during Fan Fest Nights.
This is in addition to a Super Nintendo-themed drone show and chances to meet Yoshi (as well as a different colored Yoshi) through an event exclusive egg scavenger hunt; a castle projection show and character interactions with the Niffler, a baby dragon, and the debut of the Occamy in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter; and group meet-ups, cosplay celebrations, trivia, and live music takeovers in Universal Plaza.
It’s already an expansive IP slate for an inaugural event, but Sierks told THR that the team has not taken adapting different properties in future years off the table. “We’re very much focused on delivering the best possible year one experience and then continuing to build on it thereafter. But it’s exciting to be getting into the home stretch of this inaugural year and seeing what resonates and how it resonates,” Sierks said. “But to be able to develop this experience now in the spring-time is an important moment for us.”
“Sci-fi, anime, fantasy and gaming — those are the key IPs that we’re going after and what we’re going to secure,” Strobl noted separately during the preview event. He also emphasized that the park is “going to really lean into both our food and retail, and have that be an integral part of [FFN]. You’re going to be able to actually taste, feel, touch these worlds.”
Julia Thrash, Universal Studios Hollywood’s vice president, culinary & executive chef is already deep into building out the menu to make that possible, an effort that required the team to “become intimate with the intellectual property,” Thrash explained. “Our goal is if we put something in front of someone, they know exactly what it is without me having to tell you about it.”
At least 60 items are already conceived — a mix of savory plates and handhelds to colorful, intricate desserts and sensory-driven alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks — with more on the way, all inspired by thematic and narrative elements of the inaugural event’s seven IPs. While the more traditional Mardi Gras event in Orlando offers a more street-food style menu, with Fan Fest, what Siercks called an “elevated” fandom-driven menu partly shapes the presentation.
“For Star Trek, we’re actually opening Quark’s restaurant, and if you look at everything there, it’s more plated and sit down because there’s a table right outside,” Thrash said.
Both parks’ spring events have different experiential expectations, with Orlando looking to tell a food story with a certain level of cultural accuracy. “It’s all about bringing culture to life through smells and aromas,” Orlando’s head chef Jens Dahlmann told THR. “If we can really draw guests in through multi-sensory experiences to try new foods and embrace new cultures, that’s what it’s all about.”
At Fan Fest, the team is up against a historical approach to fandom-inspired food that typically prioritizes how Instagram-able food and beverage is over its taste profile. Thrash’s team considered the presentation, but “honestly, when we started, we didn’t even tie in the intellectual property or the experience,” she explained. “We eat with our eyes first, but what does it smell like? What’s happening in your mouth?”
The Dungeons and Dragons fireball dessert, inspired by a spell from the game, is one example of how the menu doubles as a taste experience and interactive event that’s focused on bringing attendees joy. “There’s pop rocks on the outside and then tajin on the inside, so as you start to eat that dessert, you get the popping. Then once you get to that center it ignites in a way that’s supposed to feel like a fireball.”
The menu, like the attractions and activations, offer fans yet another “chance for you to step into these experiences,” according to Strobl. Together, said Sierks, with FFN, “we’re using the foundation set by events like Halloween Horror Nights to build upon the level of immersion and storytelling through all facets of [this] event.”
“One of the amazing things about what was first built into Halloween Horror Nights, and is now extending into Fan Fest nights, is being able to drop our guests into the world of these stories, genres and properties, then allowing our guests to navigate and experience that immersiveness,” Sierks added. “It’s one thing that we believe to be a pillar of what Fan Fest is and wants to be moving forward, and is a way to differentiate it from other events and experiences that might be out there. We’re developing a brand new way of experiencing this.”
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