Halloween Horror Nites 30... Lite

At the end of the previous theme park post, we were planning a Thanksgiving at a beach condo and getting ready to ring in 2020. The new year came with a Gatsby party, Andy Reid won his Super Bowl and the President gave his State of the Union about closing borders off to China. People told him he was nuts and xenophobic, and the rest is history. Currently we're in month 9 of restrictions.

Luckily for us Floridians, the governor decided tourism business was vital to the state's economy so our theme parks retooled some of their processes and by mid-June most parks were open. That said, news came that Universal was cancelling Halloween Horror Nights. Although it was hard to argue the move, we were still devastated.

Three weeks pass by and Twitter blows up with a picture of a 'gateway' (normally associated with HHN queue entrances) placed outside the entrance to Jimmy Fallon. Then the rumors: HHN is back on, HHN will do four houses, HHN will do two houses and then change the two houses? Nevertheless, one week after HHN was to start, two houses 'soft opened': The Bride of Frankenstein Lives and Revenge of the Tooth Fairy. Universal burst at the seams with people, as both parks hit capacity before noon.

I won't go too much into any houses as I believe they will be back for next year's event. But it's important to know that the intensity will be kicked up a notch when the social distancing aspect is removed between the scareactors and patrons. In addition to the houses, a pop-up bar opened near Horror Makeup and a scarecrow scavenger hunt took place within gift shops on the Studios' side. On the other side, kids, for the first time, could dress up and trick or treat in Islands. For a year with minimal outside entertainment, Universal hit it out of the park, giving fans a taste of Halloween at no extra charge.

The last surprise took place the weekend of Halloween. Josh Young at TPU wrote a crazy article that due to some strange agreement, Universal would be required to open one more house just for the weekend. Once again, Twitter went nuts when a patron of Hard Rock Hotel noticed work being done to one of the buildings behind ET... black and white adorned the facade and by morning, Beetlejuice could be found on the Universal app.

Again, this house is expected to be back next year. I won't give much away, but note that it will most likely be the 'fun house' of the year with an innovative interactive opening as well as some interesting elevation changes and optical illusions. All that said, Universal did a huge service to its fans in the local areas and can't wait for a hopefully normal event next year.

This whole lack of HHN allowed us to explore some other Halloween options. Unfortunately not much came close to HHN... our first trip to Howl-o-Scream was a disappointment and was no doubt a haven for infections. Screamageddon was decent, but scareactors seemed to be more into following people through a house than giving everyone fair amounts of scares. That said, zombie paintball was incredibly awesome and would do it again every year. Lastly, Haunted Road was a new concept developed due to the virus where you could drive through a storyline. All things considered, it was pretty good and provided some jumps surprisingly. Just hope it doesn't end up needing to permanently replace the idea of the walk-through haunted house.