The Walking Dead Experience is a haunted house located at Parque de Atracciones de Madrid in Spain. The experience operates all year round and costs an additional €5.00 on top of park admission. Inspired by the hit TV show, this experience has received international recognition, having won the LIMA award for best international show, design and location based on a license during 2016. Tickets can be purchased from a booth outside the house entrance.
The right side of the exterior of the building is designed to look like the famous ’Terminus‘ sanctuary from the show. Parked outside is a motorbike and police car, referencing the iconic character’s Daryl Dixon and Rick Grimes. Guests enter on the left, where the building appears more reminiscent of the ’Prison‘ location from The Walking Dead’s earlier seasons.
The house begins after you walk upstairs, into the building and are greeted by a man with a gun prop. He briefly explains the situation of the zombie outbreak before a zombie appears in the room and your group is guided forward. The first location you visit is the hospital from season one, where you walk past the famous ’Don‘t Open, Dead Inside’ doors. As you continue forward, meeting many zombies along the way, you visit numerous locations from the show. Next up is the prison, followed by the Governor’s house with zombie head aquarium and all. The house end’s with a visit to Terminus, where you are chased out with one final chainsaw scare.
One of the most unique aspects of this scare maze was that they took a sort of ‘On-Ride’/‘In-Maze’ photo during the early zombie scare. This certainly makes for a fun souvenir, although not a particularly flattering photo of you jumping out of your skin!
Horror experiences based off of ‘The Walking Dead’ have not been hard to come by. Since the show‘s release, the property has been utilised by many theme parks such as Movie Park Germany, Thorpe Park and of course, most notably, at Universal Studios Orlando and Hollywood. Since 2013, we have been lucky enough to visit many of these experiences. We’ve enjoyed almost every single house and scare zone based off ‘The Walking Dead’ at Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights and the permanent experience in Hollywood, scare mazes at Thorpe Park’s Fright Night’s and their ‘The Walking Dead’ rollercoaster and finally, ‘Fear The Walking Dead Survival’ in Las Vegas.
Of all our ‘The Walking Dead’ experiences, we’d honestly say that this falls on the scarier end of the spectrum. This is because, most obviously, it benefits from the lack of a conga line system as utilised by Universal parks. As a result of this, you get to witness every single scare as a complete shock. The effects, set design and make up within this house are great, although not the best we’ve ever seen. However, considering that this park doesn’t have the benefit of Universal’s budget or movie making connections, it’s hard to fault what they’re able to achieve!
It’s certainly no surprise that ‘The Walking Dead’ continues to prove popular in the form of live experiences to this day. Zombies remain ever popular, although may be slightly past their prime during the height of ‘The Walking Dead’ craze. Nevertheless, many still participate in Zombie walks, conventions and, like us, scare mazes. If you’re at Parque de Atracciones de Madrid, definitely give this a go if you enjoy a good scare maze! It definitely took us back to the time ‘The Walking Dead’ dominated pop culture and Halloween Horror Nights! In fact, if you’re ever anywhere with a ‘The Walking Dead’ experience, give it a go! You can‘t go far wrong with a good zombie or two!
