Official 2023 Halloween Horror Nights 32 (Orlando)

[spewey]

Update from our second night. Have a non private RIP tour for 6:30; instructions said to check in at guest services 30 minutes prior. Which translates to having stood in a barely moving line 20 minutes so far with at least 50 people ahead of us before you even get in to guest services. Not a good start.

They opened the main gates tonight at 6:10 BTW.

 

[soniam]

Update from our second night. Have a non private RIP tour for 6:30; instructions said to check in at guest services 30 minutes prior. Which translates to having stood in a barely moving line 20 minutes so far with at least 50 people ahead of us before you even get in to guest services. Not a good start.

They opened the main gates tonight at 6:10 BTW.

That’s pretty typical. People start lining up before 5pm. I usually have a 5:30 private tour and see people lined up early. They also prioritize private over public, so if they are understaffed, the public can move more slowly.

 

[spewey]

I hear that - but in general I guess I don’t love the idea of lining up early or having to stand in a hot line for a half hour just to check in for an expensive tour.

Which we’re now on, and it is pretty great.

 

[keishashadow]

From what I heard from the (very nice) TMs over at the main gate was that they pulled staff from the resort gate because of lightning. Totally get that - but no one (even the supervisor they pulled over) could answer whether or not the staff would ever go back.

Ok safety first, FL is lightening capital of the world

They have lightening sectors galore. Heck, little league fields in PA have them. Not as tho they didn’t know it was a possibility

Nor, was it was the first time (ever) there was a bad storm at HHN entry time.

A bit disconcerting it wasn’t standard operating procedure to put up a closed sign in that area if it wasn’t staffed. I’ve seen similar sorts of signs throughout all the parks in the area

Ah well, give them the benefit of the doubt of first night disarray, “Green” employees, etc. Doubtful, the situation will repeat itself going forward!

 

[Greg36]

Wondering if anyone has walked back to the holiday inn across from universal after HHN? If so, would you recommend doing it or drive instead? Thanks.

 

[Robo56]

Which we’re now on, and it is pretty great.

You have made it. Enjoy your tour

 

[djmeredith]

From what I heard from the (very nice) TMs over at the main gate was that they pulled staff from the resort gate because of lightning. Totally get that - but no one (even the supervisor they pulled over) could answer whether or not the staff would ever go back.

So I called my family to come join me at the main gate, rather than risk waiting around for nothing. I also heard there was some kind of mix up or something with the holding areas, with one opening early (someone said “by mistake”, letting out some guests but then closing again a few minutes early) with all the others holding until 6:30. If true, the lucky ones that were released had the whole park to themselves for a nice chunk of time. Wonder how much of that is accurate …

That appeared to be accurate at the NY area from what we saw. Not sure about the closing it again part though.

Our stay and scream was almost useless last night because of the chaos, but we made the best of it. We ended up just grabbing a table in Louie's because we needed to eat dinner anyway. We were able to do Chucky with very little wait. Then we started heading toward the back of the park houses thinking we would stay ahead of the main gate crowds. Ended up doing Gringotts first and then heading back, which still worked well. We managed to do all the houses except Yeti with our EPs. We had time to do it, but we ran out of steam.

No spoilers but here is what we thought (in the order we did them):
Chucky - extremely disappointed; multiple jump scare locations were empty (literally maybe the majority of them)
Dr. Oddfellows - we all liked it, good theming
Darkest Deal - pleasantly surprised, we all liked it, very good theming
Last of Us - we liked it, but were. a little disappointed, felt like they could have done more
Monsters - we loved it, theming was excellent, good scares, the entrance scene was really cool
Blood Moon - we all liked it, a couple of excellent effects
Dueling Dragons - we all liked it, some very cool effects - be sure to spot the dragon
Yeti - got in line when standby said 35, but when we walked back there the EP line was LONG so we bailed to make sure we had enough time to do ST and Exorcist, with a plan to do it at the end
Stranger Things - we loved it, perfect depiction of season 4, my nephew said "almost like it was a play", scareactors looked great, Vecna looked incredible, all the scenes were detailed
Exorcist - we all liked it, great theming and details

We didn't make it back to Yeti because we were to tired. I'm bummed we didn't get to do it because we heard it was really good. We did see the Yeti during shift change and they looked awesome.

 

[shh]

Wondering if anyone has walked back to the holiday inn across from universal after HHN? If so, would you recommend doing it or drive instead? Thanks.

I have every time I've done HHN. Heck the long walk back to the parking lot feels like half the distance of just walking across the street. During those HHN years where I don't have an annual UO pass, walking over saves us $30 daily - that adds up after a while! But if you have any health or physical issues or just aren't used to walking a lot in day-to-day life (I am) it may feel like too much on top of all the HHN walking.

 

[spewey]

Thoughts after our two nights. Obviously insanely busy, and a few delays and hiccups, some avoidable on the part of UO, some not.

We were mainly focused on the houses, while also enjoying the scare zones. All the zones were good and well worth doing. In terms of houses, the feeling from our group (two adults, two teens) was:

- the two that stood out to us were the Exorcist and Yeti. Exorcist had a great creepy feel, and Yeti was just a blast, and perhaps the most fun one.
- high marks (especially from the teens) went to Blood Moon.
- my wife and I loved Oddfellow. Very inventive at hiding the jump scares, and it was relentless. My daughter said so much was going on she just “gave up”. Undoubtedly the most screams per foot of all the houses.
- as I said above, Chucky did a wonderful job with it’s IP, and had a very cool “story”. Which is Chucky is real, and he found out UO was doing a house based on him, but is angry that no one is actually being killed, so he came and took over.
- Darkest Deal is neat, and unique. Monsters Unmasked is got a great gothic look and we really enjoyed that one.
- although worthwhile, the three we all thought the least of were Duelling Dragons, Last of Us and Stranger Things. LOU and ST no doubt will appeal to hardcore fans, and they really honoured both the LOU game (or so I was told - never played it) and ST season four, which I didn’t watch. And DD we found was just … OK.

As to our NP RIP tour. Our guide was awesome, and it is indispensable for the houses. But if that’s all you want it for, it does drag a bit. We started about 7, and got 6 houses in by 8:30. However with a break, lining up for the show (which we should have skipped), and regrouping, etc, we weren’t in our 7th until 10:15. That more than hour and a half in between kinda drained the energy a bit.

Overall a great experience, albeit we were battered and bruised (well maybe just us middle aged adults) from all that walking.

 

[Snyders22000]

That appeared to be accurate at the NY area from what we saw. Not sure about the closing it again part though.

Our stay and scream was almost useless last night because of the chaos, but we made the best of it. We ended up just grabbing a table in Louie's because we needed to eat dinner anyway. We were able to do Chucky with very little wait. Then we started heading toward the back of the park houses thinking we would stay ahead of the main gate crowds. Ended up doing Gringotts first and then heading back, which still worked well. We managed to do all the houses except Yeti with our EPs. We had time to do it, but we ran out of steam.

No spoilers but here is what we thought (in the order we did them):
Chucky - extremely disappointed; multiple jump scare locations were empty (literally maybe the majority of them)
Dr. Oddfellows - we all liked it, good theming
Darkest Deal - pleasantly surprised, we all liked it, very good theming
Last of Us - we liked it, but were. a little disappointed, felt like they could have done more
Monsters - we loved it, theming was excellent, good scares, the entrance scene was really cool
Blood Moon - we all liked it, a couple of excellent effects
Dueling Dragons - we all liked it, some very cool effects - be sure to spot the dragon
Yeti - got in line when standby said 35, but when we walked back there the EP line was LONG so we bailed to make sure we had enough time to do ST and Exorcist, with a plan to do it at the end
Stranger Things - we loved it, perfect depiction of season 4, my nephew said "almost like it was a play", scareactors looked great, Vecna looked incredible, all the scenes were detailedYeti -
Exorcist - we all liked it, great theming and details

We didn't make it back to Yeti because we were to tired. I'm bummed we didn't get to do it because we heard it was really good. We did see the Yeti during shift change and they looked awesome.

We are going tonight with our teens. We have express and are staying at Portofino CL. Trying to decide whether to go early for stay and scream (find something to eat at stay and scream) or stay at the hotel longer this afternoon and enjoy club level dinner at 5:00 and go later to the hotel guest entrance at 6:30. You mentioned stay and scream was chaos and almost useless. If you had it to do again would you skip stay and scream?

 

[Kestryl]

So we went last night and we must have the worst luck or Universal doesn’t get wait times, because every standby line ends was nearly double (or more) the posted wait time. Yes, I know it’s opening weekend and Labor Day weekend, but Universal has been running this for 32 years- is it always this rough? And the exit queue merge for TLOS and Monsters was a major bottleneck and moved like it was a line for a house.

We liked the scare zones at the front of the park (Collection of Horrors, Jungle of Doom, Dark Zodiac). Bloodmoon was my favorite.

Idk, this was our first time. We are probably one and done for HHN. It was frustrating. Yes, yes, more room for you, no one forced me to go, if I did xyz I would have had a better time, etc. I get it, I’m not new to theme parks. It just did not live up to the hype.

 

[zavandor]

I went yesterday. It wasn't planned, I flew yesterday into Orlando, after an 8 hours flight the idea was to stay at the resort (staying at Disney) and relax. But I have the Rush of Fear with Express yo use later this month and so I said, why not?

Some preliminary comments. Consider I was stunned by the jet lag, so not sure how much I can be trusted . I'll return for multiple nights later this month, so I'll update my judgements.

Biggest surprise and favorite house: Dr Oddfellow. I don't know why I wasn't expecting much, but I was very pleasantly surprised. Lots of different characters, nice scenes, variety, multiple scares. Great work!

I'm a fan of both TLOU and ST so those were the ones I was looking for the most.
I liked them. TLOU I have to admit wasn't much, but seeing face to face Stalkers, Clickers and Bloaters was very very cool. And the entry scene is well done.
ST was really great. There were all the scenes I was expecting and more. As a PP said: excellent casting. Everyone was great but special mention to the kid doing small Eleven, phenomenal.

I also liked Bloodmoon, Chucky and Yeti.

I didn't connect much with Exorcist, Dueling Dragons (the physical set is excellent, but the scares not so much) and Darkest Deal.

Biggest disappointment was Monsters.

Biggest wait with EP was for Chucky. 85 minutes standby, I waited 35 with EP.
Then TLOU, 90 minutes standby, 30 with EP.
ST wasn't too bad, 90 and waited 20, but I did it as my last one, after midnight. Everything else was a short wait before the merge point.

I realize I'm getting old. Even with EP I was knackered at the end of the night. And I skipped everything else, focusing only on the houses this time (but I didn't get in until 7:40 so I didn't get any change for a short wait anywhere). Finished by 12:30. The rideshare area was very busy, but no surge pricing (or maybe just minimal).

 

[Monykalyn]

Idk, this was our first time. We are probably one and done for HHN. It was frustrating. Yes, yes, more room for you, no one forced me to go, if I did xyz I would have had a better time, etc. I get it, I’m not new to theme parks. It just did not live up to the hype.

Unfortunately opening weekend is always chaos from reports. There are just some things that can’t be predicted until people get in and ops sees how crowds flow. Usually many of these things do get better or changed to make things smoother (One thing. I’ve found is Universal really does listen to guest feed back and RESPONDS with actual ACTIONS in timely manner). When you get a survey definitely mention your frustrations in as much detail as you can.

For your first time certainly is frustrating. If you do decide in the future to try again definitely go a later September or October weekend. Ops has a better handle on stuff or things get changed to help with issues and scareactors really have a chance to settle into roles.

 

[djmeredith]

We are going tonight with our teens. We have express and are staying at Portofino CL. Trying to decide whether to go early for stay and scream (find something to eat at stay and scream) or stay at the hotel longer this afternoon and enjoy club level dinner at 5:00 and go later to the hotel guest entrance at 6:30. You mentioned stay and scream was chaos and almost useless. If you had it to do again would you skip stay and scream?

Sorry, just now seeing this. It probably won't be as bad tonight because they've now had 2 nights to straighten things out. It also will not be a monsoon right at 5:00. Your other option would be to use the hotel guest entrance right when it opens. That feeds directly into a house and then you're in a good position from that exit to go to the rest of the houses in NY or head to the back. That should still keep you ahead of the pack.

 

[djmeredith]

So we went last night and we must have the worst luck or Universal doesn’t get wait times, because every standby line ends was nearly double (or more) the posted wait time. Yes, I know it’s opening weekend and Labor Day weekend, but Universal has been running this for 32 years- is it always this rough? And the exit queue merge for TLOS and Monsters was a major bottleneck and moved like it was a line for a house.

We liked the scare zones at the front of the park (Collection of Horrors, Jungle of Doom, Dark Zodiac). Bloodmoon was my favorite.

Idk, this was our first time. We are probably one and done for HHN. It was frustrating. Yes, yes, more room for you, no one forced me to go, if I did xyz I would have had a better time, etc. I get it, I’m not new to theme parks. It just did not live up to the hype.

I hate it that you didn't have a good time. That's a lot of money and time (and walking!) to not enjoy it. Our first time was last year, opening wknd again, and it was a totally different experience. SOOO much better organized last year on opening weekend and we fell in love with the event. If you are a big horror/Halloween fan, you might want to give it one more try.

 

[spewey]

Normally, we would never have gone opening weekend, but as we are from Canada, with my DD's school starting in a couple days, this was basically the only option for us.

We've actually been looking forward to this for over a decade, as when my DD first asked about going she was six, and we promised her then if she still wanted to go we would when she was 16, and she could bring a friend. We were prepared for crazy busy, which is why we had EPs the first night, and the RIP tour on Saturday.

I guess in the scheme of things my criticisms are pretty minor. Like, if you pull staff from the designated resort guest entry - for whatever reason - you should probably remove the sign pointing guests that way, and maybe even go over there and tell people not to wait around for nothing? Which, as I mentioned, I'm not sure they ever did, even after this was brought to a supervisor's attention.

And I'm not sure I'd do the NP RIP tour again, which is of course based on what I know now. It is pricey, and for what we want (not speaking for anyone else) not necessarily more efficient than EPs. We got to the RIP check in at Guest Services at 6PM, and the tour wrapped up around 11:30. That's 5 and a half hours, which of course included the painful wait in line to register, waiting around for enough people (12) to head out, a few breaks, and about an hour needed to head over to the show, get seats, watch, get out, regroup, etc.

On opening night, in the rain, with what seemed like a massive oversell of EPs and crazy crowds, we managed all the scare zones, seven houses, a couple breaks, and a sit-down meal at Finnegan's all in 5 hours with just Express - and that includes us being stuck in the EP line at Oddfellows for 45 minutes, not moving until we jumped out. If that hadn't happened, and we went on a later, or mid-week night with lower crowds, I feel confident we could do everything we wanted to with EPs in the same, or less, time than the NP RIP.

Oh well. Live and learn. Still had a blast.

 

[keishashadow]

as I said above, Chucky did a wonderful job with it’s IP, and had a very cool “story”. Which is Chucky is real, and he found out UO was doing a house based on him, but is angry that no one is actually being killed, so he came and took over.

that’s the best synopsis I’ve read so far Re Chucky house!

Yes, I know it’s opening weekend and Labor Day weekend, but Universal has been running this for 32 years- is it always this rough?

I’ve never done opening weekend. Earliest for me will be next Wednesday.

from everything I’ve read, consensus seems to point to the issue of both Labor Day/opening day being the main difference, attributing to the crowds.

understandable

however, hoping it’s not more of a pacing issue with too many NP & Priv tours sold that are messing with the release of both stand by/EP lines

Consider I was stunned by the jet lag, so not sure how much I can be trusted . I'll return for multiple nights later this month, so I'll update my judgements.

Way to take one for the team .

Like, if you pull staff from the designated resort guest entry - for whatever reason - you should probably remove the sign pointing guests that way, and maybe even go over there and tell people not to wait around for nothing?

Um, yes, theme park operations 101

On opening night, in the rain, with what seemed like a massive oversell of EPs and crazy crowds, we managed all the scare zones, seven houses, a couple breaks, and a sit-down meal at Finnegan's all in 5 hours with just Express

Not too shabby time For you. nice to see a happy EP user

 

[tony67]

Chucky - extremely disappointed; multiple jump scare locations were empty (literally maybe the majority of them)

I wonder if you just had a bad walkthrough and they were doing a shift change - they usually handle the changeover pretty well so that is very disappointing - Ive heard pretty good things about this house in general

Goin early September is always a risk - the SAs really have not synced up yet and as the event goes on they get better and work together more - the rehearsals do not prepare them for the real thing IMO - but you have to go when you can.

I've been opening weekend (but never as early as labor day) in the past and often the following weekend its much improved and there are often more props out as they get more and more things set up. That said occasionally there are things that are removed over the event for various reasons as well, but I don't think that's as common.

In general I don't think you can enjoy HHN in one night unless you do a private tour.
I did one a few years back and even the guide was saying we got a bad walkthrough and took us through again and it was great. I don't think that will happen with a paid RIP tour, but they may be tipped off to wait to go through till after the A\B change.

I've had houses where the person in front of me had an amazing walkthrough and mine was not so good so if you can do multiple nights and/or multiple walkthroughs you can have very different experiences every time

I've been seeing a lot of mixed reviews about this year - but I think its way too early for that.
The biggest compliant seems to be that it is very visually appealing but not particularly scary.

 

[tony67]

I didn't connect much with Exorcist, Dueling Dragons (the physical set is excellent, but the scares not so much) and Darkest Deal.

I don't get the Exorcist one - its not even out yet - I know its really just a promotion for the film - I think its a poor choice in general

Dueling Dragons - this is really for the hardcore Universal fans who were fans of this coaster - if your in that group you would most likely love it otherwise - not so much and yeah not about scares

Biggest disappointment was Monsters.

Ive been hearing that from many people

And I'm not sure I'd do the NP RIP tour again, which is of course based on what I know now. It is pricey, and for what we want (not speaking for anyone else) not necessarily more efficient than EPs. We got to the RIP check in at Guest Services at 6PM, and the tour wrapped up around 11:30. That's 5 and a half hours, which of course included the painful wait in line to register, waiting around for enough people (12) to head out, a few breaks, and about an hour needed to head over to the show, get seats, watch, get out, regroup, etc.

Agreed - I don't think id do a NP especially since I was able to join a private one in the past it and was great.

 

[Monykalyn]

My UCF student daughter went all three nights -she has FF but no express so they waited in lines. She’s young lol. Seems Oddfellow, blood moon her favorite so far, said she did get some good scares in a monsters too. Said she enjoyed Darkest deal and exorcist as well. Haven’t heard feedback on Stranger things or chunky as I went to sleep lol.

She’s a veteran of these things: had extra socks, water bottle, small umbrella, poncho in her small backpack and they ate before they hit event.