Halloween Horror Nights Orlando 2024 Recap
Editor’s Note: Once again we would like to that our Horrorspondant - Mitch Krpata for not only attending this event on our behalf, but lending his exceptional writing to this blog post. We are truly the luckiest to have his talents in-house. Thank you, Mitch!
Once again it was my honor to visit Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights on behalf of Magic Memories with Molly. I don’t take this responsibility lightly. I do it for you, the people.
This year I attended HHN for a record three nights, with the hope of spending a little more time soaking in the atmosphere and trying out some things I would usually skip. I mostly succeeded, although it still ended up being exhausting and painful on the old feet. Again: I do this for you.
I got the Express Pass for the first two nights. I won’t belabor the point, but I always recommend doing this even if it means cutting back your trip budget elsewhere. With the Express Pass, you can get all 10 haunted houses done in one night – a busy night, to be sure, but it’s better than standing in line for hours and missing stuff.
I will note, though, that over the years the Express Pass line has gone from non-existent to more like 10-15 minutes. Still well worth it when standby lines routinely exceed an hour, but it feels just a bit less like the seas are parting for you. That’s what the RIP tour is for, I guess. I also saw an ad for a cheaper Express Pass that is valid only after 11 PM, so that’s an option for people with youth and vigor.
Well, here I am writing my life story when what you really came for are the haunted house rankings. What is this, a recipe blog? Skip to content!
Halloween Horror Nights 2024 Haunted Houses Ranked
1. Monstruos: Monsters of Latin America
Loved this. Absolutely loved it. The house began with a stroll through a church where a skeleton priest guy sang a menacing song, and then was split into three unique sections, each one dedicated to a particular monster. The makeup and costumes were top-shelf here, with some excellent visual effects and unexpected scares. Not to mention some excellent scent work in the room with the gigantic practical owl monster. I did this one three times.
2. Insidious: The Further
This one had all the buzz and it delivered. I hadn’t seen any of the movies (watched the first one after I got home; it sucked) so the specific references were lost on me, but this was an example of the expertise that goes into making jump scares effective. Insidious hits you with a lot of well-timed combos of sight and sound, plus some 1-2 punches that got me every time. There’s also a room full of mannequins and you just know they’re not all mannequins and oh god get me out of here!
3. Major Sweets Candy Factory
We’re dropping down a tier after the first two, but this one was a hoot. The premise was that a school tour of the candy factory has turned the kids into sugar-fueled killers, so this was one of your more lighthearted houses that was also full of horribly mutilated bodies. There were delicious candy smells to go with the gore, and a lot of funny sights like a deceased person who’d gorged on sugar syrup. Nothing happened when I pressed the red button.
4. Triplets of Terror
This one didn’t really appeal to me when I first read about it, but it perfectly captured the vibe of an 80s slasher and I wound up enjoying it a lot. There was nothing supernatural about it, just gory kills, plus some lo-fi scene dressing like newspapers and over-the-air TV broadcasts. The finale takes you through the sewers which is presumably how the triplets escaped to kill again.
5. A Quiet Place
If you’ve been to Halloween Horror Nights, you know these houses are LOUD, to the point of setting off warnings on your Apple Watch. That’s why this one stood out, because there were long stretches where it was, well, almost quiet. The monsters were all done with puppets and animatronics, which was cool, and most of the actors were people who couldn’t keep their damn mouths shut. I only had one problem with this house, which is that it perfectly recreated John Krasinski’s stupid whiteboard from the first movie and I can’t tell you how much I hate that thing.
6. Slaughter Sinema 2
This one was also funny moreso than scary. The premise was that you’re wandering from one cheesy, Z-grade horror movie to another. So one is a fairly standard slasher, another is some kind of sci-fi thing, and the best one was a Jaws ripoff that featured a big animatronic shark. Not mindblowing but fun enough.
7. The Museum: Deadly Exhibits
A cursed relic causes everyone to turn into weirdo monsters! Ack! The makeup and costumes in this one were really good and almost a little nauseating. I don’t remember much else though.
8. Goblin’s Feast
This was one of the ones I was most looking forward to but it didn’t blow me away. For one thing, a lot of the Goblins looked like Yoda and you could really see the seams in the makeup and the costumes. It was cool that there was a big hand belonging to a forest giant but it also felt kind of cheap. However I absolutely loved the foppish, aristocratic goblin with a pencil mustache who showed up right at the end.
9. Universal Monsters: Eternal Bloodlines
I’m usually a sucker for the classic monsters, but of course these weren’t the classic monsters but their sexy offspring. This seems like it’s meant to tie into the upcoming Dark Universe section of Universal’s Epic Universe, and while I’m really looking forward to that, as an HHN house it didn’t leave much of an impression.
10. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Pretty brief retelling of the events of the film, and while I didn’t hate the movie, when Podcast and Phoebe are trying to jumpscare me it’s like, what are we even doing here? The line also got backed up at one point so I spent about a full minute standing still in the climactic battle scene, and what might look cool as you’re passing through it becomes silly and downright embarrassing when you’re standing there watching it over and over.
Halloween Horror Nights 2024 Scare Zones Ranked
1. Torture Faire
The biggest of this year’s scare zones, the Torture Faire had a lot of different setpieces and characters, all inspired by allegedly real medieval torture methods. For instance, there was a guy walking around with a caged rat strapped to his belly. Classic. But the best thing about this zone was that it wasn’t just people jumping out at you. There was a decent amount of interactivity including a king and queen on stage who riffed with the crowd, and at certain times of night it seemed like there were more involved bits of storytelling.
2. Swamp of the Undead
There’s always an outdoor-themed scare zone in the same part of the park, and this year’s had some really fantastic makeup and costumes. Swamp of the Undead was a bayou setting with a bunch of cajun zombies coming after you. This one was small but effective, and a nice touch was a mangled body caught in the propeller blades of a fan boat.
3. Demon Queens
This was one half of the “Duality of Fear” (I think Torture Faire was actually the other) and it had a lot of cool and surreal costumes, in particular the mask that was covered in eyes and mouths. I think this one also had some more performative moments up on stage but it was much smaller than Torture Faire.
4. Duality of Fear
This was mostly just people with chainsaws right at the entrance. I got there early enough one night to see a scripted intro playing out on the scaffolding up above. Neat enough.
5. Enter the Blumhouse
There were some characters walking around from the Purge movie, but mostly this consisted of a few small stage areas with characters from different Blumhouse movies. That’s good enough for getting photos but in my eyes these characters aren’t iconic in the least. I didn’t even know who all of them were.
Halloween Horror Nights 2024 Odds and Ends
A couple of other things from the event:
On Friday night I took in the bisexual stylings of Nightmare Fuel: Nocturnal Circus. While I don’t remember what the show two years ago was called, you could just substitute everything I said there for this one. The show is a mix of magic, dancing, stunts, and Glee-style covers of your favorite nu-metal hits. It’s impressive in a lot of ways, and the people in the crowd who liked it really liked it, but it’s not really for me.
Near the Transformers ride they had stages with characters from some of the houses that you could get pictures with. I’m not sure if they’ve done this before but it was a nice touch since photography is prohibited inside the houses. I got a great selfie with the owl-lady from Monstruos.
I made more of an effort to try out some of the themed food this year but I wasn’t terribly impressed. The Ghostbusters s’more tasted fine, but mine didn’t look like the Stay Puft man at all. The Slimer’s Korean Corn Dog, also from that kiosk, wasn’t great either. There was tons of crunchy coating, but little of the spice came through. I ended up not finishing it.
The best food I had was the spinal column from the Monstruos kiosk, which was a chicken skewer covered in a flavorful chile sauce. I also finally tried the iconic pizza fries and they were vastly overhyped. Crinkle-cut fries that were both dry and soggy, topped with a miserly amount of pizza sauce, cheese, pepperoni, and sausage with powerful notes of heat lamp.
I rode Revenge of the Mummy, which is a favorite, and while none of the lines are long for any of the rides, take note that the single rider line still appeared quicker than the Express line.
The merch was decent as usual, and I scored a big hit by getting my son the hooded sweatshirt – but I was disappointed that there was no dedicated merch for Monstruos. I can’t be the only one who thought it was the best one!
That’s about it for this year. A great time as always.
