The Thing: Assimilation (2007)

Halloween Horror Nights Orlando attraction
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The Thing: Assimilation
Attraction type	Haunted House
Event	Halloween Horror Nights: Carnival of Carnage
Park	Universal Studios Florida
Area	Woody Woodpecker's Kidzone
Year	2007
Housed in	Sprung Tent 1
Based on	The Thing (1982)

The Thing: Assimilation was one of the houses that took place at Halloween Horror Nights: Carnival of Carnage.

Experience

Guests passed by a large Unimog truck and entered through a long plastic tunnel that connected the outside world to the sterile environment of the labs. Immediately, the blare of the alarm and flashing lights indicated that all was not well.

As guests passed through the entryway, they were startled by a soldier armed with a shotgun suddenly bursting from his hiding place in a locker in the security office. The soldier attempted to communicate the danger in the labs through the intercom on the other side of the plexiglass window, but was distracted by something in the hallway behind him. He fired his shotgun at the mysterious creature behind the wall, only for an unseen force to pull him back out of sight.

Guests passed by the frozen bodies of MacReady and Childs and entered an autopsy lab. The body on the table has burst open, and a massive multi-tentacled organic mass has stretched from its chest and is beginning to spread across the ceiling. As the body and tentacles twitch and shake, a soldier appears from an alcove and begins firing his assault rifle at it.

Guests passed by several doors, which opened to reveal scientists begging for help before being pulled back by tentacles. Passing through another plastic tunnel connecting the labs to the rest of the base, mutated Thing dogs began to push their heads through tears in the plastic and bite at the guests.

In the storage room, a spider-head clung to the fence as an infected scientist reached for the guests. A body pinned to the fence that divided the room in half had a Venus Flytrap-esque growth emerging from its chest, which shook and hissed as guests walked by.

The rec room seemed empty except for the lone soldier, armed with a pool cue from the nearby table and barricading himself with the vending machine. Suddenly, strobes flashed and a massive Thing with a dog's head growing from its chest appeared from a dark corner.

In the larger warehouse, the UFO from Outpost 13 was seen hanging from the ceiling, along with a taller humanoid thing perched on a crate. A soldier appeared from behind a stack of crates and fired at it over the guests' heads. Guests entered a kennel, where the growling and barking of scared dogs could be heard.

In the final room, a gigantic Thing had taken over the entire back wall, tentacles and limbs emerging from the mass of flesh. As guests exited, a loud air horn sounded and air blew at the exit door.

Trivia

• Outpost 51 was revisited in the Warehouse eXXperience.
• This was one of the earliest houses to make very heavy use of non-human scareactors, with almost every scene having some kind of puppet or animatronic.
• The assault rifles used by the soldiers were a mixture of sound effects and strobe lights on the muzzles of the guns.
• On the unofficial list of the top ten greatest Halloween Horror Nights houses of all time The Thing: Assimilation came 6th, losing to Psycho-Path: The Return of Norman Bates.