Living in Florida, we have our fair share of choices when it comes to haunted amusement parks. From Hallowscream to Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween party, parks of all different kinds will pour time and money into Halloween decorations, haunted houses, scare actors and events. I’ve always heard that out of all of these, Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights was the best of the best. When I went this year, though, I wasn’t very impressed. I had to ask myself: was it really worth the money?
These sorts of attractions can’t be mentioned without talking about the price. The further you move into the month of October, the pricier they tend to get, and although they vary by park, it would be difficult to find a single night ticket under $50. The Halloween Horror Nights ticket that I bought for a Friday night was over $120 dollars, which is a small fortune. I hoped, along with many people, that it would be worth the money, but I’m not sure that it was.
For one, all the lines were extremely long. There are ten haunted houses in the park, and we only made it through 4 of them. Although the less popular ones are generally less than an hour long wait, those ones are less popular for a reason. The cooler and scarier houses usually had wait times of over an hour and a half, and considering the whole event is from 6:30 pm to 2 am, there really isn’t enough time to make it to all of them without buying another expensive fast pass.
Another point is that usually parks will open up the rides during the Halloween events. While the rides in the universal studios section were open, because it was limited to only that part of the park, the more famous and fun rides were not accessible. We did end up doing a fair amount of movie-themed 3D rides, but they’re nothing compared to the Velocicoaster, the Hulk or the several roller coasters in the Harry Potter Wizarding World.
In the end, I was just generally underwhelmed with the Halloween event. Some of the scare zones were strange and seemed a little last minute; for example, one of them features a children’s story about a cat lady who turns kids into cats, with strange feline scare actors that didn’t really get my heart pumping. Similarly, the WWE themed haunted house left me more confused than afraid, and it felt very manufactured for a sponsor deal. I did truly enjoy some of them, such as El Artista, about a painter living in a haunted mansion. However, it wasn’t the experience that I was expecting, and I wish they had put a little more effort and creativity into some of their ideas.
Overall, Universal did a good job of decorating the park and attracting visitors, and I definitely did have a good time with my friends. I believe, though, that it was never something that you should pay over $100 for, and it just simply was not worth the money.
