2004 USS Nightmare Media Event
By Noah Wullkotte
On Wednesday, October 13th 2004, USS Nightmare held its first media event celebrating its 13th anniversary. Review sites were invited to chow down on pizza, have some refreshing drinks and control some of the scares from inside the ship from the new mess hall party room. There was a tour of the makeup room, sound room and various parts of the ship unseen by the public. Well, City Blood was there and we got some pictures while touring USS Nightmare.
Here’s the book that was given out to all the review sites. Inside are the 2004 reviews of USS Nightmare. You were also given a laminated piece of plastic with the name of your site on it that was placed at your table.
Inside the mess hall party room there is a TV monitor where you can view people walking down a hall of USS Nightmare. It’s connected to a button. Once the button is pressed air would spray the person walking down the hall.
Next to the mess hall is the makeup and sound room. In the sound room, receivers, monitors and blinking lights are all around you as everything in the ship is monitored from that single room. Next is the makeup room with masks all over the wall and chairs where actors can sit and have there makeup applied. The makeup artist commented in that they create burn scars using dry cherry Jello mix. An animatronic electric chair can be seen running on the outside of the upper floor of the boat. So next time your at USS Nightmare and you see a switch inside the boat that says pull, do it.
Much of the animatronics in USS Nightmare have to be reconstructed every year due to wear and tear and poor construction. The Impaler animatronic had to have its spear trimmed down just to fit inside the ship. A cage also had to be constructed around it so people wouldn’t be hit by this massive prop.