For the past 15 years, my best friend and I head down to Orlando, Florida, during spooky season. For me, it was always about Walt Disney World and the child-like wonder of Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. But slowly, the trip became just as much about Disney World’s rival theme park Universal Studios Orlando and its Halloween Horror Nights (HHN). It’s crowded, expensive, and often very hot, but I keep going back year after year.
Guess I love it.
Other theme parks have similar Halloween events (Universal Studios Hollywood has a sister event with similar material), but to me, no one does it like Universal. Their inventive haunted houses stem both from other intellectual properties (this year: Ghostbusters, A Quiet Place, and Insidious) and from weird ideas the creative team whip into horrifying experiences. Imagine stepping onto a live movie set with realistic special effects and award-worthy costumes and makeup. Imagine the actors hiding around every corner, ready to pounce. Sometimes, a pass through a house disappoints — it’s all about the timing — and sometimes it literally knocks you off your feet.
This year’s crop of haunted houses and scare zones — outside areas meant to scare as you walk from house to house — ranks as one of the most consistent in the years I’ve attended. There weren’t any bad or “stinker” haunted houses, which is the main reason to attend. I’ll admit to disappointment in the scare zones which, aside from one or two, felt like afterthoughts.
So, here’s my ranking of the 10 haunted houses and the 5 scare zones you can experience at Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights. You have two weeks until Halloween. Might be worth a road trip.
Haunted Houses
10. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
This house doesn’t want to scare you. It wants to envelope you in nostalgia. It’s a triumph of production design, but the actors look absolutely nothing like their counterparts in the film that inspired the house. Your enjoyment of the house entirely depends on what you want out of it. For me, I like a little scare with my chills.
9. A Quiet Place
Another brilliantly designed house that doesn’t really scare (although I was shocked to my core midway through). The creative team outdid themselves by recreating a pivotal boat / dock scene from the films, but the scares are limited because the creatures are all puppets that can’t really lunge at you.
8. Monstrous: The Monsters of Latin America
La Muerte guides visitors through three Latin American legends. Tlahuelpuchi is a vampire-type creature who feeds on children. La Lechuza is a giant owl (or a witch that transforms into an owl? I wasn’t sure…) that forces you to walk through a room filled with poop. El Silbón killed his father and is condemned to walk the earth with his father’s bones in a sack. It’s a good house made more eventful thanks to the shifting perspectives throughout.
7. Universal Monsters: Eternal Bloodlines
Most years, HHN tries to feature some spin on the classic Universal movie monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame) to varying degrees of success. This year, they focus on Van Helsing’s daughter as she teams up with the Bride of Frankenstein to kill Dracula’s daughter (and other female monsters). It’s a fun, silly house undercut by the fact that Van Helsing’s daughter doesn’t appear to be very good at her job.
6. Triplets of Terror
I have no evidence for this, but leaving this house, I felt like Universal wanted one more intellectual property and couldn’t get it. So, we have a Strangers-inspired house with a twist — it’s framed as if it’s a true crime podcast. It may have been an afterthought, but it’s entirely my kind of scare.
5. The Museum: Deadly Exhibits
You never open the box containing the ancient relics. This wonderfully creative house (again, FANTASTIC production design) imagines a museum that houses The Rotting Stone, which infects exhibits and humans in the museum. This is one of the few haunted houses where you need to go through it multiple times to absorb all of its fantastic detail, which is exactly what the actors want you to do so they can jump you when you’re not looking. Fun.
4. Goblin’s Feast
An original house that is the favorite of several Universal employees, Goblin’s Feast imagines a scenario in which goblins and orcs celebrate their own Thanksgiving-type holiday. One thing: humans are the main course. It’s funny. It’s gross. It has a giant spinning wheel and authentically pine-scented forest. Outstanding design with a strong concept backing it.
3. Major Sweets Candy Factory
Every year, there’s a least one “comedy horror” house. This year’s is Major Sweets in which you’re part of a school group touring a candy factory. The candy is, of course, laced with some sort of maddening agent, and the kids have gone insane, killing the chaperones. It’s funny. It’s gross. And, spoiler alert, you “die” at the end.
2. Slaughter Sinema 2
A fantastic ode to B movies: Slaughter Sinema 2 lets you walk through trailers of extremely trashy movies like Mardi Gras Murders, Killer Kringles, Night of the Undead Clowns, and Mummy Strippers: Unwrapped. Infectiously fun and inventive in the very best way, this house is perfect for the low-attention-span set. Don’t like something? Keep moving because there’s more around the corner.
1. Insidious: The Further
This year’s scariest house walks attendees in and out of scenes from the Insidious films and some original set pieces. It’s weird. It’s creepy. It has an enormous cast of actors who appear fully possessed, and it all starts with a journey through a 13-foot tall red door. Absolutely worth the price of admission and worth revisiting multiple times. One of the best haunted houses I’ve ever been through.
Scare Zones
5. Demon Queens
No idea what this was. It was dark, and there were actors. That’s all I remember.
4. Duality of Fear
There were chainsaw drill teams that performed ceremonies. That was cool. Otherwise, meh.
3. Enter the Blumhouse
Look it’s M3gan! Look it’s The Purge (see below)! Look it’s the guy that kind of looks like Ethan Hawke from The Black Phone! Movies R Fun!
2. Swamp of the Undead
You walk through a Louisiana bayou with alligators chomping down on people and zombies lunging out at you from the dark. Effective.
1. Torture Faire
A renaissance faire goes horribly wrong. Lots of medieval torture equipment and inventive ways to die, including the “blood eagle.”
