Like I do pretty much every year* since 2002, I went to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando Resort. Some mild spoilers for what I saw of the event throughout the review!
For a couple of reference points: I used to work for Universal Orlando back in the day, so I became extremely accustomed to attending this event multiple times each season for low or no cost. In the last few years since I left that job, I’ve really only been able to attend once a year (or, in 2019-2020, none times per year.) and for the last couple of years I’ve decided to bite the bullet and get myself the HHN Express pass. Cost wise, most years it seems the best days to do that are Wednesdays and Thursdays. Those tend to be emptier, quieter days as well, and historically I’ve always gone on a Wednesday, Thursday, or Sunday. I did attend a Saturday during opening weekend once, but the crowds are just too overwhelming. I definitely recommend a Wednesday or a Thursday whether you get the Express or not, but if you can do both: I was able to blast through seven houses and two rides in a little under three hours with the Express on a Thursday, and I was back in my hotel bed with a heating pad and a ginger ale by 10pm.
I did not watch either the seated show or the lagoon show, and due to a combination of inclement weather and crowding I didn’t catch any of the scarezone scripted events. I’d been particularly looking forward to seeing what would happen in the scarezones, so that bummed me out a little. I did see a couple of scareactors in the Spooky Farm zone – including the Corntastic guy, that was a really cool costume – but the cemetery and the pumpkin lord zone were pretty much empty. I really would have liked to see the Pumpkin Lord at all, especially since his house was far and away my favorite from last year. Whatever zone was in San Francisco was so hellishly overcrowded that even when I spotted the scareactors they were being crushed in by guests – I’m at the point where I honestly think they need to find a way to split the crowd into traffic lanes there, because that area ended up being boring and annoying more than anything else. The Candy Parade From Hell zone was really good, though! The parade floats, set pieces, and seeming legion of aggressor/victim characters wandering around were really immersive and fun. I would have liked a better sound design there, and I didn’t catch that some of the food stalls I was looking for were in the area. I think that area would have really been a perfect in the daylight and with a transformation sequence from normal parade to hell parade.
Speaking of scarezones… I think Hellblock Horror, which ended up being my last house of the night, should have been a scarezone, probably in San Francisco, which little separated walkthrough elements. I really didn’t get that the house was supposed to be some kind of jail for radiation monsters until like, a little bit into it, but a lot of the elements they used in the house were super cool. I just think for it to be effective they should have had a kaiju or two, and the kind of space/sound design they’d want for that has already been used in previous scarezones. As a zone or as a house, it also could have tied in really well with Bugs: Eaten Alive, what with the nuclear terror/50s monster vibes… if they’d been anywhere near one another. A little bit of planning could have linked a fair number of the houses and scarezones into a single cohesive narrative this year, but like… the Candy Parade+Pumpkin Lord+Cemetery+Farm+Legends+Chupacabra+Coven+Halloween as one single Classic/Vintage narrative, and Bugs+Hellblock+Descent+Winter’s Wake forming their own kind of Fallout-ey narrative.
I wanted to like the Weeknd and there WAS a lot to like about it, but the combination of constant intense strobe lights + problems I was having with my glasses getting fogged up from the rain meant I barely could see anything but what I did see gave me a headache. Weeknd seems like a house that would have really benefited from some kind of buildup in the line, like – idk, clips of an interview before and after whatever caused the … undead Weeknd situation? It was really hard to tell what I was seeing in there. Legends was cool in the way the line to get on the Mummy ride is cool, but it was… kinda goofy. When I went the Wolfman was the winner, holding Dracula’s decapitated head, and I spend so much time around various nieces and nephews that I told him he did a Good Job. It wasn’t very scary and I didn’t really get a good idea of WHY they were fighting, though at least I had the feeling that the Wolfman was a good ?? guy?? And I have no idea what happened to the Mummy.
I’d been REALLY looking forward to three houses: Bugs, Winter’s Wake, and Chupacabra. I would have liked just a teensy bit more time in the first room in Bugs, possibly with a clearer voiceover explaining that the AC unit has a Pesticide Option, a visual cue that the Ominous Fog was the pesticide, and maybe something to indicate why the display lady started Blood Curdling Screams instead of trying to easily escape. That being said, the rest of the house was pretty coherent and VERY upsetting if you’re at all uncomfortable with bugs, holes, parasites, etc. I legitimately felt itchy and twitchy for a while afterwards, it’s probably the best house experience I had that night. Not as good as last year’s pumpkin house, but still pretty good. I did appreciate the uh. Man Pregnant With Spiders. :3
I… okay, so, I got in line for Chupacabra before Winter’s Wake, because the line was shorter by about 20 minutes before Express. At 25 minutes, I ended up in the door to a house at the expected 8 minute mark. That’s fine. The person checking our Express passes did so for the Chupacabra house. That’s also fine. The lines merged at some point? And so we stepped into the soundstage and… it was very obviously Winter’s Wake, but we didn’t feel comfortable going back through the people behind us? So I didn’t get to do Chupacabra due to having forgotten to take my anxiety meds before the event started, lmao.
Winter’s Wake was good though. Beautiful set. The crashed fishing boat situation was cool as fuck. I really liked that it engaged guests with things to look at outside of their natural field of vision, rewarding you if you look up and around. I have no idea why that pretty girl was violining? I’m not sure how those fishermen became fishmen? I appreciated the one Sweater Wearing Man flying at us but the timing was a little weird and the lighting/costume meant that it was like, oh, he’s. he’s on the little swingy harness. The whole thing gave big Far Harbor Fallout 4 vibes, though, and a big nuclear disaster could explain the crashed boat and the monster fishermen situation. The house just wasn’t… scary, but I would love to do an unmasking the horror in it if I ever have the money.
I really wanted to like Spirits of the Coven. With the timing of the 1920s Prohibition stuff, I thought maybe we’d see some ties to past houses/zones set in that timeframe, or even a nod to the Legendary Truth storylines. I didn’t really feel like I… understood the house very well. Some of the scares ended up being like “Oh! The Monster Is … Normally Dressed Man In A Porkpie Hat!” and I felt like it wasn’t super clear what the witches were doing or why it was… bad or dangerous to us? But the glowing images in the one part really FELT like they should be connected to Legendary Truth. 
Oh well.
Descent was a good house… to an extent… I liked the set designs and character designs, again. The fungus bit was the coolest part. It felt like a missed opportunity or two in there, though. It didn’t make a huge amount of sense to me how it ended, and, as usual, the Rather Pleasant Cannibal Cookout Odors were more of a distraction than an enhancement. I love Fun Smells as much as the next person, but we gotta retire the Cannibal Flesh Cooking smell, it’s like, identical to the smell in the Sonnys/4River/Dustin’s parking lot. I also just really didn’t catch why we were down in the subway or how all this happened? This is another one that really would have done well with some kind of buildup to explain the setting.
I did not attempt to enter Halloween or Blumhouse, both of which had hourlong lines when I was nearby, because I just! Did not! Want to wait! 20 minutes! In a line! I’ve done the Halloween house a dozen times over, and I didn’t end up seeing either Freaky or The Black Phone, and while I’m sure those two houses are both highly anticipated and appreciated by some, I just couldn’t make myself endure another hour in the rain and crowds. That’s not necessarily a dig, because if I’d gone for a Frequent Fear pass I would have hit the houses I didn’t get to the next night. I just was, at that point, at my limit physically. (The joys of being relatively newly disabled… it’s my second HHN using a cane but I hadn’t taken the weather affecting my joints into account.)
The usual HHN complaints stand, I guess – houses falling into some predictable patterns even for HHN newbies, scares relying overmuch on Loud/Sudden Noise+Sudden Movement, exquisite amounts of lush detail that don’t get enough time to be appreciated and therefore don’t add to a sense of dread, horror, or terror. (This, I think, was the reason why last year’s Puppet Show house wasn’t super scary – it had everything it needed to be scary but TIME.) I would love love love to experience the true anticipation and dread that primes one to be not just startled but truly scared! There have been past years where this felt more possible. Nowadays, I think there would need to be more on social media – no complaints about the Twitter SMM, but I feel like lore drops, small-stakes contests and giveaways, and team building/faction choosing/alliance type activities starting at least 30 days before opening night would be a huge bonus. The fact that I didn’t realize there was a small anthology of official (?) HHN short stories this year because it was apparently on Spotify, a thing I don’t use, until 4 days after I went to the event makes me wonder where exactly the parks advertised this information.
That being said, I had a great time, the lines with express were short enough to get through what would have taken me 8 or 9 hours in past years in a mere 3 hours. If I’d been a little less waterlogged I would have headed over to Cabana Bay for the spooky photo gallery thing, but alas! I made it home to Endless Summer Dockside and spent the rest of the night eating Auntie Annies nuggets and alternating between Zak Bagans and Guy Fieri with my teenager. I do wish there could have been some fun HHN promo/activity stuff at my hotel as well, but hey, at least I had a great suite with a pretty neat view.
Compared to the other 16 years that I’ve gone to this event, I give HHN31 a 7.5/10.
SHARO CREATES 