Going to a theme park with a bag always slows you down, but when you next head to Universal Studios Hollywood you will need to take one. Why? To carry a spare pair of pants.

Take it from us, if you're checking out the new The Walking Dead Attraction, you'll probably ruin the ones you're wearing.

It officially opens to guests on July 4 but a week ahead of that, Digital Spy was one of the first to get a peek inside.

Rather than a ride, this is a walkthrough experience similar to the world-famous mazes that Universal Studios create for their annual Halloween Horror Nights events. But this one's permanent, a new installation that takes you on a journey through the six seasons of the hugely successful TV show to date via recreations of classic moments, events and locations.

It's all housed in an impressive purpose-built building, immaculately battle-damaged to look like the outside of the Harrison Memorial hospital where we met Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes in the very first episode.

You enter through an archway displaying the name of the attraction and the second you pass under you are immediately immersed in The Walking Dead. With a familiar soundtrack playing as they move forward, guests find themselves standing in an alleyway, flanked by motorcycles, standing on floors strewn with abandoned medical paperwork bearing patients' details.

Also on the ground are pages from the Atlanta edition of The Daily Independent newspaper asking, among other things, "Is This Our Extinction Event?" and "Is This The Wrath Of God?" – you're not in LA anymore, you're on the road, fighting for survival.

As guests walk further down the alleyway towards the entrance doors of the hospital, there are bloodied makeshift body bags with corpses in, an overturned wheelchair, blood on the walls, an axe on the floor and the words "Wolves Not Far" daubed on a concrete block.

As you enter Harrison Memorial, the atmosphere immediately intensifies. Guests are directed down a hallway, under broken ceilings and flickering lights... And this is just the queuing area!

You turn a corner and are presented with one of the show's most iconic visuals – a door bearing the words "Don't Open Dead Inside" – and it sporadically springs into life as those behind it clamour to get through and feast on some tourist take-out.

Michael Boardman / Getty Images

Moving past the wailing wall of hungry undead, guests continue on to the Canteen – part of the hospital never brought to life on the show but a key location in the original comic book. The room is a mess, with medical equipment and furniture pushed up against the walls and doors, more bloody handprints, notice boards, overturned snack machines and doors tied shut with fire hoses. It's a dimly lit and ominous scene of devastation, set to a soundtrack of radio chatter directing people to the prison, West Georgia Correctional Facility.

At this point, the queue is split up into smaller groups as you leave the relative safety of the hospital. The experience immediately gets darker and more intense, the soundtrack changes and the feeling of dread and fear takes hold. As guests turn the first corner, at the end of a short corridor is the first walker encounter – a zombie trapped on the other side of a glass door but desperate to get through, banging on the gore-speckled door, hungry for human flesh.

AMC

The scene shifts as you quickly find yourself in a forest and face-to-face with Bicycle Girl – one of the show's most iconic walkers (the show's version pictured above). Reacting to movement, thanks to a series of sensors and triggers, this amazing animatronic drags itself and lurches forward, grabbing for flesh, as you're scared onwards to a burning cabin – a reproduction of the one that Daryl and Beth go to in season four.

Not only is it home to a flaming walker, but also the fire effects and the heat are a shock to the system and help to heighten the realism significantly, as do the charred remains of those who have gone before. It's a remarkable piece of work that needs to be seen to be believed and coupled with the attraction's audio experience, is utterly spine-chilling.

Michael Boardman / Getty Images

The next stop for the already-shaken guests is the prison, a location that quickly proves to be as far from safe as you can imagine. Walkers lurch out of the darkest corners, windows of administration offices are festooned with plasma and sinew, all of which look unnervingly realistic. It's almost pitch black, lights are flashing, gunshots are ringing out, alarms are going off, pulses are racing and anxiety levels are almost off the charts as you enter the main cellblock.

From an upper level, a survivor directs us through the debris and past the cells where battles rage and chaos reigns all around creating a hugely effective atmosphere of disorientation. A walker is loose and wants flesh, gnashing and clawing at survivors as they try to get by.

It quickly becomes clear that the prison is overrun – we survivors have to get out, have to move on, have to continue to try and find safety.

Around the next corner, safety is one thing that won't find. Horns blare as guests move through a pitch black passageway only to discover they are right in the middle of a loading dock, where trucks house walkers in various states of evisceration and dismemberment.

A whistle quickly confirms that we are now in a space occupied by Wolves and Negan's Saviours – the big man himself from season six might not be physically here himself, or even visually represented, but his presence is strongly felt.

AMC

In a maelstrom of noise and confusion, with hearts racing and tension at its peak, walkers appear from the darkness and the guests are the moving targets. The only way out is through a maze of more dark corridors, where survivors are faced with raging undead hammering on a window and consuming another victim as they scream for help.

Keeping on the move, each group weaves through cage after cage of walkers, all determinedly gnashing, gurgling and lashing out to make a meal of all who pass through.

In the distance, a way out, hope and possible salvation but will our group make it? Could this really be it?

On exiting The Walking Dead Attraction, guests are thrust back into reality, thoroughly shaken and hit by an overwhelming sense of disorientation.

Michael Boardman / Getty Images

Even compared to the Halloween Horror Nights events at Universal Studios, this raises the scare game by some margin. The level of detail that has gone into every inch of this genius attraction makes it uniquely immersive, extremely intense and entirely realistic.

There is more than enough in the attraction to independently scare the heck out of someone who has never seen or heard of the show, but this should certainly be at the top of every Walking Dead fan's To Do list – and they will probably want To Do it over and over and over again.

The Walking Dead Attraction opens exclusively at Universal Studios Hollywood on July 4, 2016.

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