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TTG does Halloween Horror Nights

Once a year, Universal Orlando Resort puts the frighteners on its guests with a Halloween spectacular. Could Aaron Millar hack it? Let’s find out  

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Universal Orlando Halloween Horror Nights Giggles & Gore
Universal Orlando Halloween Horror Nights Giggles & Gore

The vigilante mob fire up their chainsaws and run at me. My heart is pounding. There are bodies on the ground, smoke everywhere. In the distance, a voodoo priest offers a blood sacrifice as the dollhouse of the damned creaks open.


I am a grown man but I scream like a little girl. No one, I realise, does Halloween quite like the Americans. And nowhere is it celebrated with more gusto, gore and Hollywood-budget special effects than Universal Orlando Resort’s Halloween Horror Nights. Marking its 25th anniversary this season, and consistently rated as one of the top Halloween events in the US, HHN is to British Halloween what professional bodybuilding is to the occasional visit to the gym. The principle may be the same, but the flex is far more impressive. Hundreds of “scareactors”, eight big-budget haunted houses, fully immersive street scenes and enough Halloween cocktails, sweets and merchandise to satisfy even the most ghoulish of appetites. HHN should be on the bucket list of any horror-film fan and scare enthusiast. But would its on-steroids American version of Halloween affect a cynical British punter like me? There was only one way to find out…

 

Giggles and gore

We start in the deep end. Each of the haunted houses, or “mazes”, is constructed in professional TV studios on site at Universal Orlando. They are like mini-worlds: incredibly detailed, with realistic sets, cinematic sound and unique scents wafting through each terrifying environment. (Be warned: don’t go into the cannibal maze if you’ve just eaten!) Guests walk through the narrow, winding environments as live action characters jump out, enact gruesome scenes and do their best to scare the skin off your back. And it works. “We’ve had people crawling on their hands and knees to the exit,” creative director Mike Aiello says with a touch of pride. “I’ve literally seen people lose their facilities.”

 

The mazes are built fresh every year and never duplicated. As a result, repeat bookings are common – if you’ve had clients who’ve come in previous seasons, they can be reassured that no two scares will be the same. There are also new Halloween-themed theatre shows each season, plus it’s a good time to visit Universal Orlando: the weather is warm, but bearable by British standards, and the queues of summer have thinned. HHN could be sold as scary icing on an already tasty theme-park cake.

Plagued by zombies

But it’s not for the faint-hearted. First up is The Walking Dead: a zombie-fuelled reenactment of the fourth season of the cult TV show and the largest maze HHN has ever created, with 20 unique environments and more than 60 actors.


I hold hands with complete strangers and creep through a prison of half-dead monsters and across a bloody hospital, the undead leaping at me from behind cubicle screens. The Dusk ‘til Dawn maze, another movie and TV spin off, is more visceral: slimy entrails hang from the ceiling, snakes writhe across my path, a vampire rips the head off a dummy, spraying me with a gloppy unknown fluid.


There is no actual physical contact from the actors, but they come close. And the limits of one’s nerves are most definitely stretched: ages 13 and up are allowed in, but families should think of the experience like an 18-rated film. Clients should also be prepared to wait: popular mazes can see queues of an hour or more, although Front of Line Passes are available. But, whatever the wait, the shocks are worth it and well orchestrated throughout.

 

“It’s about using distraction techniques,” says Aiello. “We’ll place a voyeuristic moment in front of you, so you forget about your left and right, and then we’ll attack.”

 

The scares don’t stop at the end of the maze either. Universal Studios’ usually welcoming streets are transformed into three live-action outdoor horror zones and the noise is relentless: heavy metal, car crashes and screams bombard patrons at all times. Zombies emerge unbidden from the dark.

 

Alien vs Predator

But most impressive of all is the faithful recreation of the horror brands themselves – a key selling point for fans of the genre. In Alien vs. Predator, we walk through every facet of the story – from the crackling hatching of alien eggs to animatronics beasts popping out of victims’ chests. In Dracula Untold, we are transported to a medieval world nearly identical to the one depicted in the film. “We want people to come out of our mazes feeling like they’ve lived that movie,” Aiello explains. And that, perhaps more than anything, is the secret of HHN’s success: it’s not about watching something scary, but about being immersed in, and interacting with, the scary environment itself. For most British trick-or-treaters, that will be a new and unnerving experience. But thrilling, too: in HHN, your clients get to be the star of the movie.

Sudden loss of bravado

Sudden loss of bravado

When it comes to horror, however, being the star of the movie is not always a good thing. There is a moment in scary films when (usually) a girl is alone in a house, stalked by a killer, and – despite your screaming at her through the TV – instead of running away she opts to go upstairs. In the last maze, based on iconic 1970s slasher movie Halloween, I become that girl: creeping through the bedroom as a killer waits for me in the closet, creaking open the bathroom door as the murderer lurks behind the shower curtain.

 

I enter brave and full of macho bravado, but leave shrieking like a child – but giggling uncontrollably too. And perhaps that is the point. “The thing I love about being scared is that it’s always followed by a laugh,” Aiello says.

 

Like Universal Orlando’s big roller-coasters, HHN is, first and foremost, an adrenalin ride. People don’t come here to get scared – not really. They come here for the rush. And horror fan or not, that’s a lot of fun… even for a cynical old Brit like me.

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