Thread by @john_murdy

Today were going to look at “The Curse of Pandora’s Box.” Chris & I both had ideas for an original maze. Chris had the basic idea for Pandora while I was developing a Latino themed maze (like La Llorona & El Cucuy). We decided to go for Pandora so I shelved my idea for later.

Chris’ idea was to have guests enter Pandora’s Box and then transition the environment to UV with black light sets and characters (which we hadn’t really done since Clowns in 2014). So I set about doing what I always do at the start of a maze...tons of research.

I started with the obvious...the story of Pandora which first appears with the poet Hesoid in 700 BC. I learned that Pandora wasn’t given a box in Hesoid’s tale...it was a jar. Someone improperly translated the story from Greek and the box stuck, which is good. A jar isn’t scary

I liked the idea of a gift from the Gods you weren’t allowed to open...that when opened unleashes all the evil into the world. The problem was Chris envisioned a box big enough for everyone to enter it. I needed to come up with a setting that made sense for that...

I’ve always been fascinated by “cabinets of curiosity,” usually rooms in the manor houses of aristocrats that housed collections of natural wonders and other oddities. In the 16th century, these were kind of like the earliest versions of museums for the rich and famous.

Eventually they spread to the masses and become attractions in Europe and The New World.” There are some that still exist today so this gave inspiration for the facade, “Pandora’s Cabinet of Curiosity.” A place where you might find a mysterious box...

But then there was the problem of what to do once you’ve stepped through the box? Since Pandora originated in Greek mythology, I decided to tie the maze into the idea of The Netherworld or Hades from Greek mythology...

Greek mythology is full of all kinds of crazy monsters...the further I researched, the longer my list became as I compiled tons of reference images. Ultimately there was too many for the maze so we had to pick and choose.

Medusa the Gorgon was an obvious choice. Originally we were going to do her with a live performer using the giant snail coils we made for Alice Cooper Goes to Hell...that is until we discovered someone had “decommissioned” them...which is a fancy word for destroyed!

Cerberus the hound of Hell that guards the gate for Hades was another obvious choice. We were going to take you into that realm so made sense.

A little less known is Arachne, a mortal woman who is turned into a spider by The Gods. Again, originally we were going to repurpose the body of the black widow we created for Alice Cooper Welcome to My Nightmare till we learned that too was decommissioned!

One of the scenes I wrote but we didn’t end up doing is The Harpies, bird-like women which are originally from Greek mythology and later show up in “The Wood of Suicides” in Dante’s Inferno. Space was an issue so it got cut.

Some of the characters were visually inspired by unusual sources. The look of the skeletal figures in The Damned were inspired by an old Aurora model I used to have called “The Forgotten Prisoner.”

And the look of The Lord of the Dead stilt walker was inspired by this scene from Conan the Barbarian.

And the entrance to Hades was inspired by this set piece that Chris and I created for the first project we ever worked on together...The Creature Factory from Special Effects Stages in 2001.

As for the look of Pandora...that was Chris’ idea and his original sketch was given to our concept illustrator Lucas and ultimately sculpted by Magee FX.

In addition to her look, she needed a voice. I wanted her to narrate the experience and do it in the style of the original source material...so I decided to write a series of rhyming couplets for the maze that would tell the story...not many mazes involve poetry! This one did.

So for the next thread. I’m going to attempt to take you through the maze with pics but only using the text of the poem I wrote...we’ll see if it makes sense. You can chime in whenever you recognize an HHN Easter Egg (hint...there’s a bunch in the first scene). Should be fun.