We all love to see our favorite characters from cartoons or movies in a theme park. Getting a chance to hug a favorite character can be a legitimately emotional experience. There’s something perhaps even more special about those characters that are original to a theme park. Universal Orlando has created some incredibly memorable characters through Halloween Horror Nights. It calls the the likes of Dr. Oddfellow and Jack the Clown "icons," but for any that prefer Christmas to Halloween, and I do, the true “icon” of Universal Orlando is Earl the Squirrel, the mascot for the Christmas season.
But why exactly is Universal Orlando’s original holiday character a squirrel in an ugly Christmas sweater and no pants? I have wondered exactly that in the past, but on my recent trip to experience Universal Orlando’s holidays for the first time, I learned exactly where Earl the Squirrel came from. Assistant Director of Creative Development Lora Sauls told the story of Earl, who is based on an actual squirrel that ended up in the Universal Orlando Christmas tree several years ago. She explained…
Earl came to us many, many years ago, as a real squirrel, that liked to eat the lights on our Christmas tree. Our technical team decided because they loved that squirrel so much, only because they had to figure out who was eating the blue lights, they put a little squirrel in the tree, that at first was just a little stuffed squirrel.
So Earl the squirrel started life as a real squirrel who stowed away on Universal’s tree, and then he became a stuffed squirrel that would sit in future trees. What exactly happened to the real squirrel is unclear, though one assumes he was captured and released somewhere. You don’t want a squirrel eating your Christmas lights since the little guy could get shocked.
Earl may have started as a fun character for Team Members at Universal Orlando, but it wasn’t too long before he broke out and became known to regular guests. Eventually, finding Earl in the Christmas tree became a game for guests to play before it was decided to take Earl out of the tree and make him a full character in the park. Sauls continued…
But then, as our technical partners do, they want to enhance things every year, the squirrel started popping out. Then we started hiding it in different places all around the tree. So it became an Annual Passholder scavenger hunt to find the squirrel every year. And then we got to expand that program into what it is now.
In addition to being a character around Universal Orlando, Earl the Squirrel has his face on merch and his name on some of the fantastic seasonal food at Universal Orlando. He’s as much a part of the holiday as Santa himself. That's not bad for a squirrel that liked to eat plastic Christmas lights.
