Halloween Horror Nights has reached a grand milestone as it launches its 25th year of fear at the Universal Orlando Resort. Recently voted the best Halloween Event by AmusementTODAY.com, it enters a new era of terror with more fiendish force than ever before. 9 houses, 5 Scare Zones and 2 Shows turn the world-class Universal Studios Orlando park into a living breathing nightmare.
This year guests will have the chance to come face-to-face with a nice mix of original houses and popular franchises. Familiar franchises hit guests with the familiar terrors in houses like Freddy Vs. Jason, An American Werewolf in London, Insidious, The Purge, and of course The Walking Dead: The Living and the Dead. Among the original House creations are Asylum in Wonderland 3D, Body Collectors: Recollections, Run: Blood, Sweat and Fears, and Jack Presents 25 Years of Monsters and Mayhem. We love these houses for their fresh ideas, inventive scares and of course, their originality.
To kick off the auspicious opening of Halloween Horror Nights 25, a very special presentation was held in the park’s Pantages Theatre. Settled into the presentation the icon of HHN25, Jack the Clown took the stage and welcomed us to the 25th year of Halloween Horror Nights.
Director of Entertainment – Creative Development Universal Orlando Resort, Michael Aiello took the stage and introduced the legendary director of the film, An American Werewolf In London, John Landis, Co-Executive Producer, Special Make-Up Effects Supervisor Greg Nicotero, and The Walking Dead’s Chandler Riggs who portrays Carl Grimeson the popular TV series now in its 6th season.
The group went into great detail about the creative process behind their own productions, and then praised Universal for the extreme amount of work that goes into bringing HHN to the masses every year. Nicotero noted, “The zombies on the Walking Dead are on set for maybe three hours at a time, but here at HHN, zombies are on stage for 6-7 hours a night.” Aiello chimed in here and said that “on any given HHN night, Universal employs an extra 1200 people.” An amazing achievement.
Chandler Riggs spoke about his hopes for the event, saying that a house based on Dawn of the Dead would be his dream. Greg Nicotero’s favorite current TV show other than Walking Dead is HBO’s Game of Thrones.
The panel closed as each praised HHN for their immense attention to detail. Each night is full-on live, interactive theatre for their guests. Congratulations to Universal Orlando on 25 years of truly spectacular carnage and epic horror. Nobody does it like you do.
Below is a listing of the attractions we experienced on Media Night along with our thoughts on them. We also bring you as many pictures and as much video as we could. This place is a popular, busy, and bustling nest of frenzied fear but we did our very best to capture every gory detail we could for you.
Shows
There are two live shows for guests to enjoy at this year’s HHN. We were sad to see that the phenomenal Rocky Horror Picture Show Tribute had not returned. We were not able to catch its replacement show, The Carnage Returns. We hope to on a future visit.
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure
Our first stop was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure. There were no photos or videos allowed here, but as per the usual, there was a lot of satire of pop culture, quite a few jokes at Disney’s expense. There were many moments that had the crowd riotously laughing. Fair warning, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure does contain offensive language and not-so-PG dancing, If you’ve got kids in the group, bring the earmuffs and blindfolds.
Haunted Houses
This year there are a record total of 9 haunted houses for visitors to experience. Half are IP’s, the other half are the original houses that Universal Orlando is known for. Here is a rundown.
The Walking Dead: The Living and the Dead
The Walking Dead: The Living and the Dead takes you through season 5 of the show, and, as such, it reflects the escape from Terminus and more walkers. We do have to say that there are some great effects inside. The much talked about scene involving walkers in water was a particularly interesting scene. However, while it did have some good scares, it was the one that excited us the least.
The Purge
This house was in a word, METAL. The setup here is simple. It is a new America. The New Founding Fathers have decided that, in order to maintain population levels a Purge night be held. On one night a year, for a 12-hour block, all forms of crime are legal. Murder, and destruction are sanctioned by the government and all hell breaks loose. The experience is loud from start to finish, with the sounds of gunfire and knives going all throughout the house. There were lots of scare actors here and a ton of strobe lights, which did a great job disorienting everyone. There also was some ingenious uses of screens to show news footage of The Purge happening. What made this house so terrifying was the believability. It felt like the world was actually exploding all around you. It was one of the standouts.
Insidious
This house is just straight up creepy. There isn’t a lot of music or audio cues, so the house kind of just creaks as you walk through. It excels at close up scares, and going through it a second time, I noticed way more detail than the first go through. During an interview, Creative Director, Michael Aiello said that for one scene the particular type of wallpaper that they wanted to have did not exist, So they had to create it and then spend a lot of money to install it. Pretty awesome for a temporary house that is only seen for 30 days.
RUN – Blood, Sweat, and Fears
RUN was very similar to The Purge in that it involved a lot of loud noises and all human scares. Despite the similarities, this house is quite original. Taking place in a prison, it had a cool mix of culture, with some Asian based scares, American based ones, and in true Halloween fashion, chainsaws. Here is a video of some of the highlights of RUN.
Jack Presents 25 Years of Monsters and Mayhem
Next up was Jack Presents 25 Years of Monsters and Mayhem. This house is a collection of many popular HHN scenes from the past. Don’t take that as a negative thing. This house was the longest of the night, and was simply amazing. So many great scenes from the past, a couple rooms with disorienting floors, and some larger than life scares. Keep an eye out for different versions of Jack popping out to get you along the way!
An American Werewolf in London
This house was recreated exactly how it was two years ago, except for the addition of an extra wolf, along with an overall improvement of the look of the creatures. The molds for the puppets were made more accurate at the request of John Landis. This was my favorite HHN house of all time, and it did not disappoint. Still a wonderful experience in its encore.
Freddy vs. Jason™
Wow. Freddy vs. Jason exceeded all my expectations. The Camp Crystal Lake section was very eerie, with Jason stalking throughout. Once you exit the camp, the grand reveal of 1428 Elm Street is massive and beautiful. After Freddy has his fun torturing you, then you get the epic finale, with actors dressed as Freddy and Jason stabbing each other and fighting to the end. We won’t spoil who wins, but we will say that it’s a ton of fun. Epic on all levels.
Body Collectors: Recollections
Body Collectors: Recollections takes place in the Shadybrook asylum and the scare actors do what the title says – collect bodies. There are some cool moments here where you get to see the kills happen, and the Body Collectors are dressed like perfect gentlemen, smiling the whole way. There is one scene in particular that is rather graphic and involves a spine. That’s all we’re going to say about that.
Asylum in Wonderland 3D
No photos from this house as photos don’t do the 3D justice. This house, while being not too scary, is very trippy and does a great job of messing with your senses. Watch out for the vortex at the beginning!
Scare Zones
Icons – HHN
Here, we saw vignettes from some of the more popular HHN characters of the past. In these photos, you can see the Director, the Usher, the Storyteller, and the Caretaker.
All Nite DIE-In – Double Feature
Next up, we got to check out the All Nite DIE-In scare zone. While we were there, it was all characters in color, but at other times of the night, there are black and white characters roaming and scaring. This takes place in the San Francisco area, right where Disaster’s entrance once was. It was cool to see Chucky and his Bride as well as some members of the Purge out here.
Psychoscarepy – Unleashed
Psychoscarepy was a block party taken over by the inmates of Shadybrook. There was some funky music playing in this house, and a giant fire effect that made me wonder how much Universal is spending on propane every night this event runs.
Scarytales Screampunk
By the time we made it to the Scarytales Screampunk scare zone, it was already 1AM and the park was closed, so we just have a few shots of these props for you. Just means we have to go back.
Evil’s Roots
Evil’s Roots scare zone takes place in Central Park. This zone had some fun monster type creatures, and some good scares thanks to quite a bit of fog. The jack ‘o’ lanterns were also really quite beautiful.
Merchandise
The Aftermath gift shop over by Twister is the main merchandise location, and also serves as somewhat of a museum of older HHN props. Pretty cool!
Overall, this year’s Halloween Horror Nights is a banner event. More than half of the houses are extremely strong, and I think they will only get better with time. We didn’t get to spend as much time in the scare zones as I would have liked, and we do hope to return. We also did not get the chance to see Jack’s The Carnage Returns show, so we’ll need to head back to provide some coverage of that for you all.
You can really see the passion and the heart that goes into making this event what it is.Halloween Horror Nights celebrates in a very grandiose, gory and epic way as it charges into 25 years of horror. We were extremely impressed by all of it.
For more information, head to www.halloweenhorrornights.com.
Dark Harbor VIP Haunt event, Long Beach CA, Oct 3rd
If you will be in the southern California Area and would like to experience an amazing haunt, we have just the thing for you. Join us for the Dark Harbor VIP Haunt event on Saturday Oct 3rd.
- Lights-on tour of a maze with creator/designer JJ Wickham:
- Admission to the All-New Anubis Paintball Adventure: This up-charge experience is certain to sell out quickly every night, because it allows you to face an onslaught of mummies and monsters, armed for the first time with a paintball gun. Do you have what it takes to survive this “newly” transplanted pharaoh’s tomb?
- Admission into the Freakshow experience
- All Night Front of the Line access: This really is worth its (lack of) “wait” ingGold. Most of these mazes you will want to experience more than once, and this is the only way to do it without spending most of your night in lines.
- All-night-access to the exclusive R.I.P. lounge: Perhaps the greatest perk of all! A deck above, and yet in the middle of all the action, with endless, delicious street tacos, 3 drink tickets at the exclusive bar (again, avoiding the long lines below), and a variety of places to comfortably lounge while enjoying the delightful chorus of horrific screams that the world famous Dark Harbor sliders relentlessly create all evening.
We have bundled all of this together at the very reasonable price of $125.00 per person. If you have visited before, you know what a great value all these extras are. If you haven’t, this is the best way to first experience this distinctively unique haunt that is the Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor.
Get your Exclusive Event Tickets Here
