
Comic-Con has taken over San Diego, as it does every year, with the entire spectrum of humanity — from eye-meltingly attractive celebrities to obese introverts from the Midwest dressed in homemade Batman costumes — descending upon Southern California in droves. There are all sorts of events taking places during the festivities, but one of the coolest ones I’ve heard about so far is an obstacle/escape course based on The Walking Dead, set up in and around Petco Park (the home of the Padres). From THR:
Staged by a team of nearly 600 crewmembers — in addition to the scores of zombies expected to scare the daylights out of fans as the creatures swarm and jump from out of nowhere — the event took six months of planning and two weeks of building preparation before the four-level course was assembled in four days.
“What we’ve really done is build big builds, and the first one you get to is really challenging — it’s cargo nets, and you climb up a 10-foot ladder, go up another 10-foot cargo net, come back down and then go back down a slide,” Liam Brenner, producer of The Walking Dead Escape: San Diego, tells THR. “Our goal was to create the apocalypse in an urban setting, and that’s where all the zombies are going to be when the world ends. Here, as you’re running through the stadium, every obstacle is themed to be something that should be very urban-like and apocalyptic.”
I can’t decide if this is actually going to be great, or if it’s one of those things that looks cool on paper but underwhelms in real life. The THR article goes on to say that they expect something like 10,000 people to participate when the course opens up tonight, and that there will be about 650 zombies “lurking under cars, in huge nets and underneath ‘safe’ passages hung from the rafters,” so at the very least it should be something to behold.
Now if someone could just please set up a Mad Men themed obstacle course where I can drink whiskey at lunch under the guise of a socially acceptable interactive fan experience, that would be delightful.



Okay, I would actually do this.
I’d probably trip, sprain my ankle and get swarmed by zombies, but I’d do it.
Not to intrude on Walking Dead’s moment in the spotlight here on WG, but Game of Thrones is kicking some serious ass at Comic Con. They just posted this youtube video introducing the new characters for season 3. Sadly, no Ramsay Snow, but they didn’t say these folks were all inclusive.
[youtu.be]
Wasn’t the show all hard up for money? How much did this cost? Unless you have to pay to do the course, seems kinda counter intuitive on their part
Link much?
[www.hollywoodreporter.com]
I actually did this on Thursday night and it was a freaking blast. It did cost money ($70 I think?) but I think it was worth it.
You start out in a huge group of people, being led into a penned in area where there’s a cage full of zombies, along with a guy holding onto a couple fo zombies in chains. The zombies break down the cage they’re in just as the open up the park to let you in so you’re running away from zombies chasing behind you.
The huge group soon thins out to small bands trying to escape and run around guys and girls dressed up as zombies, trying avoid getting touched by them. Everything from cargo nets, to broken down cars and tunnels. I hope they do it more than once a year, it was exciting.
Ran this last night, and let’s just say that I was NOT prepared… at all. The actual obstacles were the easy part. Cargo nets? Easy. The real challenge were the zombies. The course was 2.5 miles long, and there was probably close to a hundred zombies to avoid. And they wear you out BIGTIME. I, and everyone else around, were sweating pretty profusely by the end. I also kinda ran into a fence and got minor scrapes on my arm while jump-cutting a zombie that came out of nowhere. This thing was no joke. Well worth the 80 bones (after mandatory insurance and registration fees). Another guy who ran the course was quoted saying, “It’s like a haunted house at 100 MPH,” which is the perfect description. Sure there were lulls where you could, and Ill be damned if you didn’t, walk and even get some water. But yeh…
TLDR: I am out of shape.
Although the real highlight for me was nearly breaking one zombies ankles and high-stepping away like Prime Time. There were several people wearing Go Pro cameras(including my buddy I was with), so there should be some awesomely edited vids popping up on youtube in the next few days.
Oh, and I forgot that Dale was running the course in my time slot – [i49.tinypic.com]