HALLOWEEN HORROR NIGHTS

 SO yesterday I finally got to go to my first HHN Orlando (long story, was supposed to go last year but got sick) and it was super exciting!!

 < pic of me in the parking lot lol

The first house we did was Spirits Of The Coven, which is about these 1920s witches that kill people in their speakeasy? Honestly it felt a little disjointed? Like the first half was speakeasy and flappers and tarot cards on tables, and then suddenly you were in a cellar (?) with some ""witch"" symbols on the walls but otherwise not much else that screamed "witches" to me tbh. There was one scene of a man carving a dead pig and honestly he moved so scarily fast it was terrifying when he jumped at us!

The second we walked through was Halloween. I have nothing bad to say about this one tbh. The actors were scary, and the sets were cool. Some of the actor's wigs were realllyyy cheap looking but that didn't really detract from the scares of the house lol. It was probably one of my favs of the night! The mirror room of Michael's was especially fun.

After that, we stopped and grabbed a "beating heart" gummy and some other food, but I didn't try any myself so I couldn't say if any of it was good lol

The third we walked through was Fiesta de Chupacabras. This one was a little weird because I thought it'd be about the Chupacabra but it's actually about this, like, cannibal town that celebrates the Chupacabra I guess? One disappointing feature was the fact that basically every actor was wearing a mask, and not like a scary mask, idk how to describe it. I feel like for me, one of the fun parts of Haunts is seeing the special effects makeup, and the masks kind of felt like a cop out I guess, even if I can understand now how they fit into the synopsis of the house on the HHN website. This house was SUPER animatronic heavy, most of the scares coming from extremely loud audio cues or animatronics set on loop. Including the Chupacabra, which was seen in the house 2 or 3 times, and was just the same wolfy animatronic each time. Kind of disappointing tbh

Fourth up was Dead Man's Pier: Winter's Lake. This was one of my favs of the night! The sets were super cool, ranging from inside boats to "outside" on the dock with sirens looming above. This house also uniquely has a portion that was that typical old haunt/funhouse aluminum floor that shakes under your feet. Even though it was brief, it definitely made this one stand out from the other houses. The makeup on the actors was also amazing, some of them were barnacle, sea-logged zombies, and a few were divers in old-timey diving suits covered in neon paint. There was also one actor who was on a massive fish hook, sliding back and forth scaring people. Super cool.

Then we took a break and hit up the Tribute Shop. This store was unbelievably cool and totally worth the walk through even if you don't buy anything tbh. It was very well themed and well decorated and it really just added to the ambience of the event. Personally, none of the merch really suited my tastes, but I did see this wall of super cool masks and after seeing this totally sick wolf mask with a gazillion studs, my mom said I had to have it. Funny story: Last year we were visiting Islands of Adventure during HHN season and I was turned away at security because the spikes on my jacket were a "safety hazard." Ironically, despite selling the mask in their own park, you're not allowed to carry the spiked mask through the event. Instead it was packaged up and sent to a store in CityWalk for us to collect after leaving.



The fifth house we did was The Horrors Of Blumhouse and tbh I have to admit, I've never seen one of the movies, so the first half was a little lackluster to me. However the second half was "The Black Phone" themed, and I thought it was awesome. The sets were super cool, and the actors were awesome and super scary!

Sixth we did Bugs: Eaten Alive and it was... gross. The bugs were really unsettling lol but otherwise it wasn't super scary? The actor's costumes ranged between being dressed as human sized cockroaches, to being people with holes in their faces and maggots crawling in them. Despite the outside of the house being 1950's themed, and the first room following that theme, after that I literally forgot it was the '50s until the very last room where this army guy popped out and his old uniform made me realize "oh yeah, this is supposed to be the '50s!" I felt like the scariest part was all the fishing line hanging from the ceiling, dragging across my face.

Then we stopped to see the "Halloween Nightmare Fuel Wildfire" show and it was probably my favorite part of the night. The show went viral on Tiktok last year for having really hot dancers, but, wow. Seeing the full show IRL just made them that much hotter. It's a fun mix of circus acts and BDSM gogo dancing, set to a soundtrack of the most overused (but still the best) alternative tracks of the past few decades. It's a really amazing show, seriously, I can only try to imagine the amount of work those performers put into mastering the acts of gymnastic stunts, aerial stunts, contortionist magic tricks, and flame throwing. Plus... watching half naked people dance around in latex to Rob Zombie? Who would say no to that? The only drawback would be the crowd. We were packed like sardines in a can on those benches, and they're so close together that your knees touch the backs of the people in front of you. 

Next up was Descendants of Destruction our seventh house of the night. Apparently this house was a sequel to one from a few years ago, but tbh it stood really well on it's own. Basically it's set in this apocalyptic world. You start by entering a partially destroyed subway station filled with people in gas masks looking to escape a decimated New York. The deeper you go, the more mutated the people around you become. Eventually you venture so deep into caves, they become mutated fungal people. Honestly this house was my favorite! The theming was amazing, the story was easy to understand, and it was terrifying. The sad part is that during our walkthrough there was a pileup, and there were certain corridors where I didn't get to see the actors because we were all just standing there waiting, so they obviously weren't trying to scare us while we were looking them in the face.

Then we went ahead and went to our eighth house, Universal Monsters: Legends Collide. This was definitely one of my top favorite houses! It wasn't particularly scary compared to some of the others, but oh god the sets were beautiful. The theme of this house was that The Mummy, Dracula, and the Wolf Man are all in Egypt fighting over an amulet to break their curse. God, there's nothing I love more than an angsty monster story. My one complaint is that I wish there were a little less mummies and a little more Dracula. But they totally made up for the lack of Drac by the end, because in the last room you see a dead Mummy, then Dracula holding the decapitated head of the Wolf Man. Go Drac!!! (Though, according the HHN wiki, who "wins" depends on the night you go! SO glad Drac won our night.) My favorite actor costumes of this house were absolutely the Anubis's and Dracula's. They looked so sick!!

The ninth house we did was The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmare. And.. I'll be honest,... it wasn't my favorite. I heard everyone say so many good things about it, but then we got inside and 99% of it was just blinding strobe lights that made it impossible to see actors coming at me, and rooms of unconvincing mannequins. Honestly it could've been really good if the strobe lights weren't there. But really, the lights made it difficult to even walk, they were so overwhelming. It also sort of felt like a bunch of disconnected rooms? Like you'd go through a few that matched and made sense, and then the next wouldn't be related at all. There were also a shocking amount of corridors that just had 0 scare whatsoever? Like an entire hall of mirrors that had one.. single.. scare actor at the very end. No scary sounds, no "omg the mirror is see-through and there's a monster!"..... literally just a hallway of mirrors and neon LED strips. My mom said it'd make more sense if I saw some of The Weeknd's previous performances but that begs the question.. is it a good haunted house if I need to watch things beforehand for it to be scary? I felt like the first half of the Blumhouse haunt was plenty scary despite me not having seen the movie, so idk.

Have you ever heard the phrase, "saving the best for last"? Yeah well we did not do that lol. My family didn't see the very first house in the park so this was our tenth and final house of the night, Hellblock Horror. This. One. SUCKED. I mean, I know I've sounded like a total negative bitch so far, but at least I enjoyed all the other houses to some extent! This one was baffling, it wasn't scary at all, and it left me and my mom scratching our heads and sharing confused looks as we walked through empty hallway after empty hallway. And I mean literally empty! I get that it's about a prison break, but literally EVERY CELL EXCEPT ONE was empty! Maybe we just accidentally caught a shift change or some shit. I'm reading the wiki and it's talking about vampires, aliens, TOOTH FAIRIES?, bat people, swamp yeti's, and all these monsters that literally were not there when we walked through. I mean, I'm looking at photos of these monsters and I'm genuinely upset now! These look so damn cool! Apparently the costumes are all reused monsters from old HHN houses. I would've loved to have seen them, too fucking bad over half of them just weren't there I guess!

During the last hour of the night, I wanted to ride Rip Ride Rockit since I'd heard that the code "666" would play the Chucky theme. Well, just my fucking luck, I happened to sit in the very front row, but unfortunately my song selection didn't work. It was all janked up and it didn't even automatically play anything after it DIDN'T let me choose a song. I literally had to sit through the ride in dead silence? It shouldn't do that.. Like literally every other 'horror' story I've heard about that ride has involved people taking too long and the seat auto-selecting a song. But dead silence? What the hell, dude.

After we got off I mentioned this to my mom, she mentioned that her touchscreen-thingy was glitched out too, but even SHE was shocked by the fact that it didn't auto-select a song for me like it did for her. It was my little sister's first time on the coaster, however, (round of applause for her) and luckily it allowed her to choose a song she liked and she enjoyed the ride. This kind of sucked tbh. I was really excited for this to be a good Universal send-off before my pass expires. (Since, back in the days of our old passes, my mom and I went on our last day and I rode it for the first time.) It's a little frustrating considering the ride really isn't worth it unless there's music.. Especially when you're 5'2 and weigh less than 100 pounds and the sheer force of the ride makes your entire vision go black.

I'm just happy that earlier in the night, we got to ride The Mummy! It's been closed since we got passes again, and it's my favorite coaster from any FL theme park, so I'd have been very sad had my pass expired before it reopened and I got to ride it at least once. My sister ALSO rode Mummy for the very first time, and I think she enjoyed it. Phew. Maybe soo  she'll get over her "fear of roller coasters"*. I already had to bully her into getting on Rip Ride Rockit. *I put this in quotes because she has been on much worse, much scarier roller coasters and not mentioned this "fear" at all