People generally seemed bullish on the idea that I should write about Halloween Horror Nights during October, and I'm always in the mood for a good infodump about a special interest of mine, especially one that really doesn't have any other outlet. I'll maybe do an entry about this year's houses next, but for now, I thought I'd talk a bit about the event itself and why I'm so enamored with it despite its myriad of problems.
What is Halloween Horror Nights?
Halloween Horror Nights is an event put on every fall at Universal Studios. It actually orginated at Universal Studios Hollywood in 1986 as a haunted tram tour that seemingly took inspiration from haunted hay rides. They already had trams that gave guests a tour of the Universal backlot during the day, so it's pretty easy to see how this would have made sense as a quick and fun Halloween activity to put on. This first iteration of the event ended in tragedy, though, as a worker was pulled under the tram as they attempted to jump out and scare people.
The event wouldn't be revived until 1991 when in October of its second year of operation Universal Studios Orlando decided to host a "Halloween party." In an attempt to both synergistically promote other Universal films and to avoid comparisons to the tragic Halloween event in Hollywood a few years back, this initial event was titled "Fright Nights." It was a fairly modest affair, lasting just three nights - the Friday and Saturday before Halloween, and then Halloween itself. It also just offered a single haunted house and a smattering of live entertainment like knife-throwers or scripted skits featuring Beetlejuice.
Still, despite its small scope it proved popular enough to do the following year (at that point rebranded back to Halloween Horror Nights), and the event has grown each year. At this point, all four Univeral Studios (Orlando, Japan, Singapore, and Hollywood) each have their own Halloween Horror Nights event, with Orlando's even having the most houses (10) and going the longest length (Sept 1-Nov 4). But each of the events has a pretty wildly different vibe. The Japanese event, for example, has some houses open during park hours in the middle of the day! And they spurt people through in groups! Both things that neither American event does! And despite their geographic proximity, the Hollywood and Orlando events are wildly different as well - though I may want to save that for a separate rant.
Is it scary?!
People who don't go to haunts always ask me that, and the best metaphor I've landed on is that it's scary in the way a jalapeno is spicy. If you're someone who is extremely sensitive to spicy things, putting jalapenos on your food might seem like a wild and reckless act of a masochist. If you're someone who's real into spicy food, putting jalapenos on something might struggle to even register as heat.
Similarly, if you're someone who is easily freaked out by scary images, gore, ominous music, or people in spooky costumes jumping out at you - it can be pretty terrifying. But if you're someone who attends haunts regularly, it's actually pretty tame. Not not scary, mind you - everyone can get jump-scared if you do enough run throughs of these houses. But there are structural reasons why the event can't be that scary:
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Conga Lines: When your event attracts an audience as large as HHN does, throughput becomes a major consideration. Your local haunt might be able to "spurt" guests in through the houses in groups, letting a family go in together and then waiting 20-30 seconds before letting you in your peers in to explore the house effectively "alone." But HHN can't do that - to ensure everyone gets to see the houses, they just keep sending a contiguous and unending line of people (hence, "conga line"). This is way less scary than walking into an unfamiliar place with just your group - you'll see the people in front or behind you get scared, and scare actors aren't targeting you but instead just trying to time their jumps so that people who would not have seen them the last time they jumped get the scare. It also means you don't get a number of classic haunt tactics - there's no being followed, and no being threatened by scare actors outside of their pre-scripted posts and motions. In a very real sense, they're human animatronics - put in one place to repeat the same motion to a pre-recorded audio over and over again as a line of people walk by. Getting scared becomes a numbers game - surely one of these actors is going to take you by surprise and not the person in front of or behind you.
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Beloved IPs: We'll get to the upsides of having this stuff in a second, but when it comes to making something scary the unknown is so much scarier than the known. Walking through a Chucky house just puts a smile on my face when I see the little guy. Stepping through the lovingly recreated events of the first movie Halloween (which I have seen 30+ times) simply isn't as scary as pulling up to a farm just outside of town to walk into a run-down barn labelled 'GORE HOUSE' when I have no idea what's in there and all I hear are screams and chainsaws.
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It simply isn't an extreme haunt: So if HHN is "jalapeno" spicy, what's "ghost pepper" spicy? Well, haunts exist on a bit of a gradient that goes from "causing anxiety and slightly off-putting vibes" to "active physical discomfort" and beyond. For example, The 17th Door is a pretty famous extreme haunt whose warning signs that make it clear what can happen to you. At HHN most of the actors can't even talk to you, let alone leave their posts or, god forbid, touch you. They're certainly not gonna cut your hair. The event simply isn't aiming for "ThE sCaRiEsT hAuNt EvEr!" The vibe is more Halloween party with a few good jump scares, not an all-out attempt to get you to pee your pants and cry.
So like... if you goal is just to get reliably scared silly, I wouldn't recommend going to Halloween Horror Nights. It's a crazy expensive event to attend. It's in a state that has travel advisories from both the NAACP and The Human Rights Campaign. And on top of that, odds are there's any number of enjoyable haunts in your local area. I myself have a number of awesome options that are closer, cheaper, and possibly scarier (without tipping over into extreme haunt territory). And you probably do too! Even if you're in central Florida!)
Okay so it's not that scary AND it's expensive. Why do you even care?
What made me really fall in love with the event at Universal Studios Orlando is that it's a failed motion picture studio.
Hear me out.
The idea for both Universal Studios Orlando and Disney's MGM Studios in the late 80's/early 90's was to open a theme park-slash-production studio in the vein of Universal Studios Hollywood. This... didn't work out. If you want a good idea as to why and want to fall down someone else's infodump, check out this hour and forty five minute history on the Nickelodeon Studios part of Universal Studios. The short answer, though, is that Hollywood is a union town and Florida is a right to work state. It's hard to find local crew that are both qualified cameramen/electricians/sound people/gaffers/lighting people who are also willing to scab their west coast union peers out of a job. And flying your LA talent out to the swamp to film in a theme park just wasn't an appealing gig for most actors/directors/producers. By the late 90's it was clear they were never going to have a real production studio in central Florida.
So they built all the sound stages for major productions which never really came. Disney gave up trying to make fetch happen by the early aughts and converted their sound stages into Toy Story Land and Star Wars Galaxy's Edge in the 2010's. Universal, however, has actually kept their sound stages around - and aside from the occasional commercial or wrestling event, they sit empty most of the year.
You can kind of see where this is going. See, most haunts have to work with the space they have. Family farms that run haunts might use old tractor garages, or make haunted corn mazes and woodland trails where the theming is minimal and the darkness is what's used to generate tension. And other theme parks often have to put their haunted houses in under-utilized ride queue areas or sacrifice a maintenance building to house a haunt for a month or two, with limited space to design boo holes. Even the similarly budgeted Horror Nights Hollywood tends to have to set up most* of their houses in temporary plastic tents in parking lots, which gives them more freedom than a ride queue (though they use those too) but less freedom and scope than a proper sound stage allows. It also allows a ton of light pollution in, and in LA that's actually kind of a problem.
But Universal Studios Orlando is in a really unique position - they have multiple dedicated spaces to erect whatever they want in whatever shape they want. They even added two ruggedized permanent Sprung tents just for the event. They also have a creative team that has, over the past two decades, really honed in their ability to create immersive spaces. And while that team is hungry to produce original content (and they do!), the event's popularity also allows them to license some incredibly popular IP as well.
And it's this particular confluence of things that makes Halloween Horror Nights so entrancing to me, because every house has the ability to effectively be an act of environmental storytelling. Whether it's retelling the events of a film in a new way, tapping into common fears and comedy with equal aplomb, or just exploring a tone of sorrow and regret, their houses are showpieces of craft and artistry alike - able to function as spookhouse thrill generators while conveying ideas other haunts simply don't have either the budget or space for. And they do it completely new and from scratch every year.
So why do I go? I go because it's a fun scary Halloween party, sure. But I keep going because I love seeing what they can do to convey emotions and ideas using just some spaces, costumes, set lighting, and scare barks. It inspires me, weirdly, to see a physical version of that environmental storytelling thing I talk about so much with video games. They're not all winners, but when they are... mmph. It's so good.
Next up? I think I'll talk about the houses this year.
*Look I know they use that one sound stage almost ever year (this year it's Stranger Things, I know, I know)
