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Halloween Horror Nights Orlando attraction | |
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| Hellgate Prison | |
| Attraction type | Haunted House |
| Event | Halloween Horror Nights XIV |
| Park | Universal's Islands of Adventure |
| Area | Production Central |
| Year | 2004 |
| Housed in | Soundstage 20 |
| Based on | Original |
Hellgate Prison was one of the seven haunted houses that was featured during Halloween Horror Nights XIV. It was located in Soundstage 20 along with Horror in Wax.
Description
Warden Robert L. Strickland's monument to himself where paying visitors suddenly find themselves lost and alone inside the penitentiary's cell-blocks, corridors, and secret chambers... alone with a prison population of insane inmates, crazed convicts, and convicted criminals with nothing to lose before they walk the "last mile" to sit on top of Old Smokey, the world's most excruciatingly painful electric chair.
House
The Hellgate Prison maze was housed in Soundstage 20 and featured several rooms and areas common to prisons, including an entrance through a 'visitation room' in which prisoners behind glass held phones and taunted guests, a laundry room, an infirmary, and a furnace room with burned prisoners. This maze also featured Old Smokey, the audio-animatronic of a man in an electric chair thrashing as he meets his fate. The maze concluded with a run through a fenced off, multi-path "Riot Room" in which guests were commonly separated from their parties and made to go through separate paths of strobe light filled chain link fences with angry, shouting, aggressive prisoners surrounding them on all sides. The house had a soundtrack featuring music from Rob Zombie and was often viewed as controversial due to its somewhat adult content.
Hellgate Prison would return as the setting for the RUN: Blood, Sweat and Fears house in 2015.
Website
On the Halloween Horror Nights XIV website in the patient records it showed a criminal record of a man named Stanley. There was also a radio where if you click on it, it talks about the riot at Hellgate Prison and how the inmates overpowered the guards. It also showed a paper saying how Warden Robert L. Strickland had been attempting to cash in on his role at the prison by charging civilians to come in and take "tours" of the facility; he'd become obsessed with running the prison at maximum efficiency and wanted to display this to the paying public. After ignoring orders to cease and desist his practices by the Federal Bureau of Prisoners, Strickland began creating sales materials in an attempt to coerce the public to come and tour his prison. A breakdown in prison security and operating procedures in October of 1956 lead to an uprising, in which 99 inmates took control of Hellgate and rioted for over 30 days. After this incident, Warden Strickland was stripped of his authority and committed to a state facility for the mentally incapacitated.
Pictures
| Halloween Horror Nights XIV |
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| Characters: The Asylum Patient (Event Icon) • Eddie Schmidt • Jack the Clown • The Caretaker • The Director • Gunter Karl Dietze • Jeffrey Dietze • Robert L. Strickland |
| Haunted Houses: Castle Vampyr • Deadtropolis • Disorientorium • Ghost Town • Horror Nights Nightmares • Hellgate Prison • Horror in Wax |
| Scarezones: Field of Screams • Fright Yard • Midway of the Bizarre • Point of Evil |
| Shows: Bill & Ted's Excellent Halloween Adventure • Festival of the Dead Parade |