Halloween Horror Nights: A Disney Fan's Review

Happy Halloween! Before your doorbell starts ringing from all those adorable trick-or-treaters, why not sit down a while and read a little more about Universal Studios' very scary Halloween Horror Nights?

As many of you know, I much prefer Disney over any other park. One of the things that Universal does VERY well though, is Halloween. 21 years ago, they began Halloween Horror Nights. This is no family-friendly event though, this is where scareactors (get it? "scare" actors?) fill the park, and if you're in past the allotted time, you're fair game for some fright. I was incredibly impressed with the theming this year. In honor of their 21st "birthday", they made the icon this year "Lady Luck". She can be beautiful, but as we all know, luck isn't always pretty. So, since I'm too much of a chicken to go myself, I enlisted my good friend, Dawn, to share her experiences this year. Kick back, grab some candy corn and read on about her awesome time!

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Welcome Foolish Mortals….Oh…wait a second. Wrong theme park. You see…when the family and I, or in this case, the husband and I, head down to Orlando, our theme park of choice is always Disney. It’s our happy place…I feel my spirits lifting the moment I step on property. However, this tour isn’t about Disney, it’s about going to what I refer to as “the anti-Disney”…Universal Studios Orlando. My husband, Marty, and I try to take an adults only trip once a year to reconnect. This time around, after booking and then cancelling a Disney cruise, we decided to go completely against our modus operandi….and head to Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure. We had a few reasons for going: first off, we would like to take our kids there in the future and we wanted to check it out, and second…Halloween Horror Nights. Halloween Horror Nights is a 13 and up (although, younger kids are welcome, but don’t blame Universal for the nightmares that may occur), Halloween event. There are blood, guts, chainsaws and scarezones. 8 haunted houses, and alcohol. This is NOT Disney. What follows is the impression of two tried and true Disney fanatics, who decided to step out of their comfort zone and try something new.

Having been to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party in the past (and, going there our last day in Orlando this time as well), the way they do things at Universal Is much different than Disney’s methods. There are no wristbands, but there are hard tickets, just like Disney parties. Marty and I purchased what they term “Stay n Scream” tickets. To do this, you have to have a one day park ticket, preferable to Universal Studios, and they corral you in an area and set you free about a half hour before the general public. We got to Universal roughly around noon, and began our tour. We hit a few rides…and yes…Universal’s rides are of the thrill variety. And you are not allowed to take bags or large cameras on rides that throw you around…so you have to place these items in lockers that are free for the duration of the ride. We took our time exploring, riding The Revenge of the Mummy, Men in Black Alien Attack, checking out the Twister soundstage (basically like a Backlot Tour with tornadoes and Bill Paxton), and the Simpsons Ride. We walked the whole circuit of the park, and ate at a few restaurants (they have a meal deal as well) and doing a little shopping for my mom, who was graciously babysitting for us (Universal has a Betty Boop store…my mom is a BIG Betty Boop fan). Around 4:15, the day crowd started to dwindle, and the Universal Team Members were moving items around to prepare for Halloween Horror Nights to begin. Marty and I decided to go to the Horror Make Up show before heading into the holding area. It was funny, and quite entertaining, but not what you would really expect from the name. A bit more gag related, and not so much make up related, but still, fun. The funniest line from the show was “This isn’t Disney, we don’t have to be nice to you!”. When we left the theater, we headed to the New York area. We handed the Team Member our tickets, they scanned them, and we headed inside to wait. We took a seat and chatted with a few guests who had done HHN before, and who hailed from the UK. Around 6:15, people started to congregate by the roped off opening of our holding area in anticipation of being set free to explore the haunted houses. The nearest to us was Winter’s Night; The Haunting of Hawthorne Cemetery, and that was the first one that everyone headed to once we were let loose. At a few minutes before 6:30, they let us go to our doom.

The queue’s are the same at any theme park, I think. And if anyone has experienced the running of the bulls for fastpasses to Toy Story Midway Mania or Soarin’, you will get my meaning when I tell you how the crowd reacted to being allowed to head to the haunted houses. It was a rush to get to the line, to be one of the first let in. We weren’t too far back in the queue and it took perhaps 10 minutes to reach the opening. I had hopes of being brave, looking around, soaking up the interiors of the haunted houses like a seasoned pro, but alas, my girly side came out and that was not to be. I made my husband go ahead in EVERY house. Yes, I’m a wuss. Ahem. Anyway, we approached the door to the soundstage and walked in. The first thing you noticed was the temperature. It was about 40 degrees in the building, and it was snowing. The area to the left was taken up by a stagecoach seen in Van Helsing. You entered a broken down cemetery, with statues….or were they? This is not the Haunted Mansion folks. They had a diversion…and when you were looking over there…something came from OVER THERE..and scared you. I knew what was coming, but couldn’t help but still jump and shriek. The theming…the temperature….the props. THIS is what you might expect from a theme park such as Universal. It was all and all…pretty awesome! We headed out of the haunted house and back into the daylight, laughing (while Marty snuck looks at the half moon depressions in his palms from my fingernails).

Let me take a moment and revisit the fast pass reference. Universal has something similar..but you must pay for that privilege. For Halloween Horror nights, they offer Express Pass Plus. On top of your ticket, they were charging $69.95. This is not front of the line, this is similar to fast pass, where you have a different line, that gets you there a little bit faster, but not ahead of everyone. We kicked around the idea, because we wanted to see all we could, but discarded that idea pretty quickly. They did offer something called a RIP tour…that does get you front of line, and guaranteed to see every house and every show, but it was about $150 on top of your HHN ticket. Maybe someday, but not this trip. With the Stay n Scream, you are ahead of the curve by a half an hour, which may not seem like much, but if you go on a week day, as we did, it does make a difference in how much you can see.

After we left Winter’s Night, we headed to the Forsaken. The background of the Forsaken was a cursed ship, the 4th of Columbus’ fleet. The ship was sunk, and a hundred years later, during a squall, it was tossed into a Spanish fort. The forsaken came back for revenge. You do get wet in this house…you are immersed in a squall, it rains on you, you hear lightening and some of the floors are pitched in such a way to throw you off balance. The forsaken were creepy…green glowing eyes clued you in to their approach, but they still managed to startle and scare. Again, we were pleasantly surprised. We headed from cursed pirates to something I’ve never done before – a 3d haunted house. The next one we went to was the In Between. They hand you 3d glasses and in you go. This was one of the coolest experiences. Having scareactors come at you while you were distracted by 3d effects was startling, but very cool at the same time. 3 for 3, we headed out of the house and into our next line. Right next door to The In Between stood Nevermore – the madness of Edgar Allen Poe. Every room of this house was pulled from a story of Poe’s – The tell tale heart, the pit and the pendulum, the raven, etc. This is where the differences from Disney started to become a bit more apparent. Yes, they sell alcohol at 3 of the 4 Disney Parks. And yes, you can end up dealing with someone who has had too much to drink. However, at HHN, they throw alcohol at you at every turn…er…every queue. They had zombie-fied nurses with iv poles…and they had jello shots and blood bags full of “sex on the beach”. The alcohol stands were plentiful and the drunks…even more so. We had the pleasure of standing in line for Nevermore in front of two very inebriated young men for about a half hour (Marty says it felt longer than a half hour). If it was possible to get tipsy from someone’s breath, it very well could have happened in this line. I have to say, in multiple trips to Disney, this was a new experience for us. We ignored them as best we could, and continued on into Nevermore. Again, very well done, lots of scares, and very immersive. The world is shut out when you step into these houses. It’s as if every sense is taken over, and the experience is very rich. We left this house feeling the madness of the author, and headed out to the next house.

If you are keeping count, we have done 4 houses of the 8, and it’s only about 8 pm or so. Not bad for not having express passes! We headed to the next line, which was for a house called Saws and Steam. This queue ended up being a VERY long wait. It’s not that the line was horrible long, it’s just that it came to a dead stop right before we were getting ready to get through the last bit of it. We started to see the crowd become rowdy, demanding and crabby. No one told anyone what was happening, the queue was not emptied. We just…stood there (or sat there…there was a ledge and I used it). About a half hour of no news, no movement and two stoic police officers/security guards standing watch. You couldn’t go anywhere, and we were so close to the entrance we didn’t want to leave the line. But it was frustrating to have no idea. Universal has a text message offer while you are on property for HHN…you get text updates on the wait times for the houses. While we stood there, Marty got an update, and Saws and Steam didn’t have a listing at all. Huh? Eventually, we went in and it was creepy. This was the gory house. Blood, guts, body parts, warm water being sprayed on you, making you think blood was being dropped on you….creepy scareactors (one told me I had pretty skin…ewwwww). It was more industrial like, organs being squashed and squeezed…nothing made you realize more that this was totally NOT Disney. Freed from the line and the creepy house, we decided we should go eat. And take a few minutes to rest. At this point, I’d been up for 17 hours with only about 3 hours of sleep…I needed a break.

We headed to HR Bloodengutz when we finished dinner. This was a comedy/horror house. With the longest line. Just when you thought you were done, the line kept going. It took FOREVER. This was a house based on a horror show host who was taken off the air and he’s back for one last hurrah. It was called Holidays of Horror, and once we got inside it took you through all the holidays (even Arbor Day) with a creepy, bloody twist. It was funny, and I still jumped. Marty laughed at me. Seriously…he never startled ONCE during this whole trip. He just laughed at my reactions. If you are keeping count (and you are still with me), we have done 6 of 8 haunted houses. The last two – The Thing and Nightengales – had long lines and we were exhausted. On top of the houses, they had scare zones – open air haunts with scareactors. We went through a maze, a nature based one and one called the 7. The 7 was cool…basically the 7 deadly sins in the forms of 7 women, temptresses by day and evil by night. I got snuck up on by a few scareactors, and they were good at their jobs. We also had a picture taken with Lady Luck, the symbol of this year’s HHN 21.

So, what did two tried and true Disney fans have to say about Univeral’s Halloween Horror Nights? Fun for adults, NOT for kids (especially some of the small ones we saw). It’s a good time for the older teen set, and the grown ups. I think that Universal (and Islands of Adventure) have a lot of charm, and you really have to approach them with an open mind and not compared to Disney. NOTHING compares to Disney and the way they completely immerse you in a fantasy. You don’t get that at US/IOA. We really enjoyed ourselves and are quite happy we stepped outside the Disney box for at least a portion of this trip. If you enjoy Halloween, being scared for fun, and maybe a few drinks, give HHN a try…..and happy haunting everyone!