ORLANDO, Fla. — Mandy Slaback has been going to Universal Orlando almost every year since she was 10.
When the resort shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Janesville, Wisconsin, resident didn’t know when she would be able to visit again, so she decided to bring the parks home.
Using her degree in broadcasting and film, Slaback, 24, put her production skills and love for Universal to work by making videos recreating some of the resort’s most popular rides.
Her projects created a theme park COVID time capsule viewed hundreds of thousands of times across social media. Her latest video, a miniature recreation of the Jurassic Park River Adventure, was posted on Twitter earlier this month and is her most detailed yet.
The video has amassed nearly 83,000 views so far and received recognition from Universal and theme park fans alike.
“My dream was always somehow to be a part of that magic that Universal brings to life, and by the recreations, I feel like I’ve kind of accomplished that,” she said.
During the early weeks of the pandemic, Disney and Universal fans started a social media trend filming themselves pretending they were at the theme parks amid nationwide lockdowns.
Universal’s Twitter account got in on the fun, encouraging fans to post versions of their favorite rides. An April 6 post about the Revenge of the Mummy, Slaback’s favorite ride in operation, inspired her to try her hand her own “whimsical” version, she said.
The result was a project shot in one day, complete with low-tech recreations of the ride’s special effects — such as a shot of her yawning dog taking the place of an archway riders are launched through — and costumes similar those worn by ride operators.
She posted the video to Twitter on April 13, 2020. Universal’s social media team responded the next day, and that encouraged Slaback to continue parodying her favorite rides, she said.
The E.T. Adventure followed, then Slaback’s all-time favorite ride, the defunct Jaws attraction. The E.T. recreation took two weeks between scouting props and locations, while the Jaws video took two days of filming.
She intentionally picked rides with humanoid animatronics for easier recreation, she said. Though she sometimes enlists the help of family members or her fiancé, she does the majority of the productions herself, from memory.
The Jurassic Park River Adventure is her most ambitious yet.
Slaback spent three months planning it and four months putting it together, between set design and construction, then filming and editing, she said.
“I put a lot more time and effort into it than any other ride, and I love how it turned out,” she said. “And I could just watch it over and over again.”
The props for the “ride” are mostly things she had around the house. Her dad helped her carve foam blocks into buildings and form them into the channel for the ride’s river, and she spray-painted boxes and bottles for set pieces.
“Whenever you see water, it’s actually just a Styrofoam box with a rectangular cut-out into it,” she said. “We painted it dark so it’s like dark water, we added water into it — we actually had to put food coloring in the water to darken it to get a more realistic look.”
The hardest part of the set was finding plants that didn’t dwarf the miniature dinosaurs, she said.
“(At) probably the same forest I filmed E.T., I found little plant life that looked like miniature ferns or miniature trees and kind of threw that in together,” she said.
Though she had no experience with miniatures before, Slaback said her appreciation for the ride made her want to make her version of Jurassic Park as accurate as possible.
“I wanted to outdo myself every time,” she said. “And so the first scene we filmed for Jurassic Park was the opening gate scene, and I loved it so much. It was so realistic. Watching it back, it almost gave me chills just listening to the theme track and then watching those gates open up.”
Beyond making the set, Slaback needed additional help for the ride’s practical effects, she said. The raptor scene involved the most teamwork.
“My sister was actually wearing a black glove, moving the raptor from side to side to make it move,” she said. “My fiancé and my dad held two sparklers, one above and one below the cage, giving that electric fence effect, and then my mom held a light to give the dinosaur more of a [lifelike] look. And then I filmed it on my phone.”
Theme park fans on Twitter reacted enthusiastically, praising the creativity and realism.
“It is nothing short of incredible how much detail you put into these,” one wrote.
Slaback, a student teacher at a high school, said she shares her ride recreations and love for Universal with her students, too.
As she looks forward to returning to Universal for the first time in two years next February, Slaback says she thinks she’s done with recreating the resort’s rides — for now.
“I feel like Jurassic Park was probably my last one. But I’ll never say never,” she said.
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