Beginning this Friday, Dungeons & Dragons fans can experience the realms of the tabletop RPG in a new way with Universal Studios Hollywood Fan Fest Nights. The fandom celebration will showcase new participatory entertainment at an after-dark theme park event that will give guests the opportunity to experience their own D&D adventure. Think Halloween Horror Nights but with a fantasy spin and fewer scares, where you’ll be joining a group walk-through in a scaled-up version of Dungeons & Dragons: Secrets of Waterdeep among other immersive experiences inspired by One Piece, Star Trek, and Back to the Future.
During a recent behind the scenes tour for media, io9 got to witness the build of the fantasy forests and ruins within Waterdeep along with Stephen Siercks, Director of Entertainment Production at Universal Studios Hollywood. The D&D experience has had its share of interactive RPG popularity that’s lent itself to online campaigns with on-camera geeky talent and live-improv shows like Dungeon Master, which saw costumes and props galore. But this official collaboration with Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast seeks to go a different route.
Here, pulsed groups will enter and encounter the Harpers on one of their quests to join their heroic spy network and take down the legendary beholder Xanathar to save the city of Waterdeep while still incorporating elements of gameplay. Attendees will be able to identify with class designations. “We want to have the experience of the role of the dice,” Siercks revealed and added how that will come into play in “terms of having those plot twists and being able to roll that next 20 to establish that final moment here in this space is experiential—and there’s Easter eggs along the way as well, with some dice too.”
The final moment he’s referring to is the last act plot twist that happens when you come face to face with Xanathar the Beholder, the quest’s big bad. And trust us, it’s very awesome to see up close. “And this is an exceptionally impressive creature, a puppet that’s a great collaboration with Henson Creature shop. We’ve had the pleasure of working with them before and this has been an amazing collaboration between the Universal Studios Hollywood Entertainment team, Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro team, and the Jim Henson Creature Company,” Siercks said showing us details only seen during the lights-on tour. In full light, we could see first-hand the level of artistry the Henson Creature Shop put into the monster, with room for a hidden puppeteer during performances.
“So seeing this scale of a creature come to life in front of us has that surprise reveal moment where—just when we think we’ve saved the day, he’s here, and he’s not going to let us go that easily,” Siercks continued.
The iconic D&D antagonist sits on a pile of gold and it’s a towering behemoth—think Audrey II’s final form in Little Shop of Horrors or for Horror Nights Fans, the Alien Queen from the Alien vs. Predator house. “So you can see both Xanathar and his goldfish, Silgar, there, and there’s some battle that ensues,” Siercks said. “We’ve worked with Henson on several different occasions, so this is definitely one of the ones that is rising the top.”
It’s so cool that it’s not solely a pre-programmed animatronic and brings in that immersive gaming feel with a puppeteer putting on a performance, which almost makes it feel like you’re in a Jim Henson Dungeons & Dragons movie. It just adds to the movie magic of being at an event that’s distinctly Universal Studios.
“Xanathar has mouth movement, eye movement, and it fully lights up, so it is quite impressive to work with. We’ll l have something that obscures the visual here, so all of our focus goes in that direction, and then in that surprise moment, and we all turn around and there he is,” Siecks explained. “We’re doing a great job of setting up moments like [where we] can introduce [guests to] Xanathar at the very beginning as the person you’re ultimately looking to see and then when you find them you’re able to connect that dot.”
And the level of authentic details doesn’t end there for D&D fans. “The Easter eggs, the characters, the plot twists, the story points really speak to those fans so that they get that much more out of the experience as well,” Siercks said about being able to “create that fan-first experience in [the] fantasy genre. And Dungeons & Dragons just raises to the surface in terms of one that we could both develop an amazing story around [and] develop an amazing experience—and bring to life those environments to drop our guests into. That [is] also something that we knew that guests wanted as well.”
Universal Studios Fan Fest Nights begins this Friday at Universal Studios Hollywood and will run select nights through May 18. More info on tickets and pricing here.
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