HALLOWEEN HORROR NIGHTS
It’s your favorite podcast host (lie to yourself if you have to) to tell of adventures had in October related to Halloween. It’s really not all that hard to figure out. I will, however, have to write a Cliff Notes version for Clint the Reckless.
I’d like to start this column (only to appear in October) with a little something I like to call Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios in Orlando — just in case any of you are making the pilgrimage or happen to live in Florida.
When I first saw news of this event years and years ago on some Discovery or Travel Channel special, I thought it was awesome but there was no way I’d ever get to go to one. Fast forward a bunch of years, and I found myself being corralled one Thursday night in Orlando. Yep, corralled. If you are in the park at the time of the park’s closing, you are literally corralled into one of three holding areas while park employees switch the park over for Halloween Horror Nights.
For those of you who may be wondering, Halloween Horror Nights isn’t that different than whatever theme park is closest to you’s Halloween celebration. There are “haunted attractions” throughout the theme park. There are a couple of Halloween themed shows. There are scarezones. Scarezones are basically portions of the park that you have to walk through with street actors scaring you. This is all just a reason for any theme park to break out new merchandise they can sell you for inflated prices.
I was corralled in the area they had set aside for a scarezone based on the movie The Purge (and its sequel). I thought this made my corralling cool because it played into the storyline. My partner in crime for the night did not share my enthusiasm — especially when I kept going to the barriers and yelling about how they cannot keep us locked up because we are American citizens!
First, let’s talk about the shows since they are the least advertised, and honestly unless your brother is one of the actors, you ain’t going all the way to Universal to watch the shows.
The first show was entitled Bill and Ted’s Halloween Adventure. If you think Alex Winter and/or Keanu Reeves are involved, you are wrong. Dead wrong? However, this is a very fun show that makes no excuses for it’s foul language or the fact that they are throwing the sexuality of young, good looking dancers right in your face. They actually tell you that at the beginning of the show. The plot revolves around a fraternity of useless celebrities (including the likes of Zac Effron, Justin Beiber, Megan Fox, etc) and their unexplained deaths. Expect a lot of pop culture references and a lot of not-so-thinly-veiled shots at Disney including a hilarious take on the Frozen phenomenon. If you end up at Universal for this event, this show is the one “must do” that I must insist you do. See how that works?
The second show for Horror Nights is a tribute to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It’s just as it sounds. Actors/Dancers/Singers act/dance/sing various scenes from The Rocky Horror Picture Show in a very abbreviated version of the movie. If you are a Rocky fan, definitely check it out. If you didn’t go to the theater every Saturday at midnight to watch the movie like I did all throughout high school, you may be lost. The end.
Let’s move onto the Scarezones. I have no idea whether they should be capitalized or not so I am going to be erratically inconsistent about it the rest of this column. The three main Scarezones were The Purge, a cannibalistic masquerade ball and a voodoo/wendigo area. I enjoyed The Purge area the most because it seemed the most chaotic and even had scenes right out of the films play out. The masquerade ball area was full of Victorian dressed people on stilts getting in your face. The voodoo area was the same, but with fog. On a side note, if the Purge is a lawless half day, why are there rules on what weapons you can use and who you can attack? Just saying.
The big draw is the haunted attractions, haunted houses or even mazes as they are sometimes called by uncreative people. I know “uncreative” is not a word, but I’m using literally license here, people. I’m from Indiana — that’s my excuse.
The haunted attractions take a movie and/or a theme and build around that. The main advertising surrounded the attractions for The Walking Dead and the new houses for From Dusk Til Dawn, Halloween and Dracula Untold. Add to that Alien vs. Predator, a clownhouse, a dollhouse and Roanoke – Cannibal Colony and there is plenty for you to do.
Only you can’t do them all. Once you are released from your corralling, the most popular houses (Halloween and The Walking Dead) get wait times of over an hour immediately. Once the party is in full swing almost all haunted attractions will have at least a 45 minute wait time, with the more popular ones looking at two hours. Is this an issue with Universal selling too many tickets? Probably, but they are making money and are not stopping any time soon.
Since we were right next to it when we were released, we hit the From Dusk Til Dawn house first. Two things impressed about this house. 1) The barker in the first room was hilarious (“These chicas want you to pin them in their pinatas!”) 2) There were a lot of attractive girls in skimpy bikini outfits. They are covered in blood and are eating the various body parts of their “Joes” whom they are giving lapdances to, but they are in skimpy bikinis, nonetheless. Overall, it was the same gag over and over.
The hidden gems of the attractions are the ones not affiliated with a franchise. The wait times are shorter and the lines hilarious run through the Barney, Woody Woodpecker and Curious George areas. They also have been around the longest, so they have permanent theming in their houses (as opposed to From Dusk Til Dawn which was new and everything looked very temporary). I enjoyed the Roanoke Colony attraction the best of these. Partially because it had the most creative gags and partially because while we waited in line, we saw an entire cast of bloody and wounded Pilgrims (one was even headless) be horded into the building. Five minutes later, a matching cast in the exact same clothes came stumbling out. At least there are shift changes!
Though I am morally opposed to waiting two hours for anything in a theme park, we did hop in line for the Halloween house near the end of the night. Mostly because if I didn’t, Jessica would kill me. Literally. She loves murder.
The Halloween house consists of a super long line, a turkey leg stand that also sold beer, one of the many bloody hot girls dressed as nurses selling the fake candy blood IVs (Note to Universal: I appreciate the sexy nurse outfits on hot girls covered in blood, however you have to give them something better to sell than that awful candy blood crap!), and a house that looked identical to the house from the original Halloween. Universal put a lot more effort into this house than they did any of the other newer houses. About every five minutes, the lights in the upper window would come on with stripper mom silhouetted in one window and clown little boy Michael Myers in the other. You know how this ends. it’s a nice distraction at a time when any distraction would do.
The actual house is one of the better ones that takes you through the events of the first Halloween, starting with little boy dressed in clown costume and showing each death scene from the first film. There was a couple of nice gags including a room full of mannequins with the Michael Myers costume on — but two of them were real! Which two?!! OMG!! There was also a semi-hidden reference to Halloween III as a couple of trick-or-treaters were wearing the infamous Silver Shamrock masks.
Most of the haunted attractions are of the East Coast variety. In the Midwest, to get our bucks a haunted attraction would have to be at least 20 minutes long and have a ton of different gags. East Coast style is five minutes long and people jumping from dark spots. That’s not to say that they are bad, just that I’m used to something different.
Overall, I’m glad I went. It is a good time and if you’ve never gone before, I would recommend it. I should also mention that a variety of the attractions are still open with shorter waits than normal, so there’s that.
My strategy for first-timers: Hit either Halloween or Walking Dead once you are released (Halloween will have the shorter wait because it’s further back in the park). Then hit the non-affiliated stuff. They will have ten minute waits at that point. Get in the Walking Dead or Halloween line last. You’re welcome.
BONUS: Here’s a little bonus segment for you! Since we are focusing on Frankenstein on the podcast, I took time to eat at the Famous Universal Monsters Cafe in the park. It was very well themed, though I wonder why they only focus on Frankenstein’s Monster, The Wolfman and The Creature. It’s Universal — they have the rights to all of them!
I will say for a quick service cafe, the food was excellent. It’s probably the best quick service food I ate in a week at Universal and Disney World. I recommend the rotisserie chicken with steamed broccoli and roasted potatoes.
The theming was excellent as well with full size Frankenstein, Wolfman and the Creature hanging out as well as several themed rooms to eat in including The Crypt, the Swamp and the Space Alien room in which I ate. In all the rooms are TVs playing clips from classic Universal monster films.
If I ever go back to Universal Studios, I am definitely eating there again, You can even win a scary monster prize out front at one of the carnival game booths!
