Niles: Universal Studios looks to connect with fans in new after-hours event ...Middle East

Universal is looking to shake up the theme park business with a new way for fans to connect with their favorite movies and shows.

Last week, Universal Studios Hollywood put tickets on sale for its first Universal Fan Fest Nights. Universal also shared new details about the after-hours event, which starts April 25.

Universal is using its Halloween Horror Nights model to craft an all-new event that focuses on Comic-Con-style franchises rather than horror and music genres. At the event, fans will be able to walk through a Dungeons & Dragons adventure and to tour the Star Trek’s Enterprise-D, beaming back to Earth at the end.

But the highlight for me might be the Back to the Future: Destination Hill Valley experience. Visitors will take Universal’s trams down to the back lot, where they will be invited to exit into the Courthouse Square set where the 1985 movie was filmed. Universal will dress the location as it appeared in the movie on the night when Marty McFly went “back to the future,” complete with an Enchantment Under the Sea dance for fans to join. Multiple times a night, Universal also will simulate a lightning strike on the courthouse’s clock tower to complete the scene.

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Other experiences at the event will include a fan zone themed to the Japanese manga series “One Piece,” the U.S. premiere of the “Jujutsu Kaisen: Hunger of the Cursed” 4D movie from Universal Studios Japan and plussed experiences in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Super Nintendo World, including a special drone show.

It’s pure fan service, and Universal is offering it all for about half of the price of Disneyland’s After Dark events.

Show business sells dreams, and theme parks — at their best — offer fans unique opportunities for wish fulfillment. It’s the fantasy to step into your favorite entertainment productions, provided with just enough tangible reality to make it all seem convincing.

Putting fans into the actual filming location for Back to the Future or on to a reconstruction of the actual set to use film the Enterprise bridge in the “Star Trek: Picard” series helps people feel connected to those shows in a way that they never will feel in a theater or at home. It’s the same reason why fans go after game-worn sports jerseys or a drummer’s sticks after a concert. It’s why people queue up for museum exhibits to see in person relics from our history. We crave the fantasy of living in our heroes’ reality, so the more tangible that fantasy becomes, the better.

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Walk-through experiences, like at Halloween Horror Nights and Universal Fan Fest, allow fans to get closer to show scenes than they ever can on a ride system. It’s an inherently more intimate — and therefore more emotionally powerful — experience. But that intimacy comes at the cost of capacity, which is why we are likely to see the best of these experiences limited to after-hours and upcharge events.

If Universal’s new event works creatively, and fans support it, I would not be surprised to see many other parks try their own versions of Fan Fest Nights, not too far in the future.

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