A fire burned a backstage area near the Minion Mayhem ride overnight at Universal Studios Hollywood. The blaze happened on the 13th anniversary of the backlot fire that destroyed the old King Kong encounter on the Studio Tour, but this fire caused no damage to park operations.
Reader M. Ryan Traylor sent us video of the fire, which started just before midnight.
A Universal Studios Hollywood spokesperson said this morning, "We are looking into the cause of the fire, but I can tell you there was no damage and no rides or attractions were affected and will not impact park operations. There were also no injuries and the incident occurred back of house in a non-guest area. We will open, business as usual. The situation was swiftly managed."
Indeed, the adjacent Despicable Me Minion Mayhem ride opened as usual this morning, reporting a 45-minute wait just after 10am, which is not out of the ordinary for current capacity restrictions.
On June 1, 2008, a fire destroyed Courthouse Square and other sets on the Universal backlot, including the King Kong encounter (which Universal eventually replaced with King Kong 360/3D). That fire also destroyed thousands of original master recordings in the west coast archives of Universal Music Group.
In January 2013, a fire struck what is now the show building for Minion Mayhem, one month after the Terminator 2: 3D show closed there.
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I literally missed it by a couple of minutes! I went to pick up my sister from work and passed by that structure a little after 11:30pm. It’s insane!
The fire 13 years ago was two days after I quit my job there (I promise, it wasn't me -- it was two days after I quit, so I had no access, and I remember it being something to do with construction crews who left some roofing work smoldering when they went to lunch). And Universal has had other fires before these. But it never makes me happy to see a part of Hollywood history go up in flames. I hope this was accidental and not intentional.
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13 years to the day? That's insane. I guess it' safe to assume we will never find out the cause. Why so many fires...?