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Halloween Horror Nights 25 - Orlando 2015 - SPOILERS.

Lofty

CF Legend
Hello all,

I recently visited (arguably) the largest Halloween event in the world - Halloween Horror Nights.

As a lot of you are aware, I absolutely love haunted houses, haunted attractions, scare attractions, scare mazes, whatever you want to **** call them. So with the 25th anniversary and a really strong line up, I just HAD to visit.

This review isn't picture heavy, but just some snaps I took and an explanation as to what I thought of each attraction - rated worst to best.

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Houses.


9) The Walking Dead - 2/10.

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**** ****. Tired-ass concept and just need to go from HHN in my opinion. The 'scares' were lazy, it lacked atmosphere, the mask choices were abysmal. The only slight redeeming feature was the scale of the sets inside, some very impressive theming.


8) Freddy Vs Jason - 3/10.

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(Didn't bother taking any form of photo)

This could have truly been incredible, instead, it fell by the sideline completely. The attraction was split into three sections, Jason, Freddy & Freddy Vs Jason - in concept this was a fantastic idea but in reality just didn't work at all. This may have been due to the naming of the attraction keeping the same name as the somewhat good movie of the same name, making people think it was associated with it when in reality it just wasn't.

I only actually saw 3 of the Freddy characters whilst inside the attraction, which was just absolutely ridiculous considering he's actually somewhat stronger as a character than Jason Vorhees is. I just couldn't like the attraction at all, it fundamentally didn't work.


7) Asylum in Wonderland 3D - 3/10.

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(Also didn't take photos)

I love a well done 3D house, sadly, this was far from being perfect, or good fun for that matter. Due to the bright nature of 3D haunted houses, they are next to impossible to make scary, in relation to increasing tenuous with darkness, so to counteract the maze falling flat, you have to add a lot of dark humour and make it a fun rememberable experience. This wasn't. Still now, I can't remember all of the scenes. The scareacters just could not be arsed to perform when I went in which completely killed any of the atmosphere in there. There was some really clever scenes and tie-ins with the Alice in Wonderland narrative, but if you're not a fan of the original book or it's movie interpretations (like my friend I went with), you'll leave completely bewildered and dare I say it, a little bored.


6) The Purge - 5/10.

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Now, this is where things start to perk up a little in this review, the following attractions were very strong in nature and enjoyable experiences.

I've never been a fan of the movies, but, I love the concept of one night a year where all crime is legal. The first thing that hits you when you head to the attraction is the atmosphere, due to the constant alarms and public service announcements, the whole crowd was on a 'buzz' and singing songs, etc. It was a really nice touch to keep the narrative of the attraction playing in the queue line audio so that those who don't know anything about the movie will still understand what's going to happen.

Inside the attraction there are so many scares, from all angles (watch your heads) and a heady industrial/grunge city style theming, I've always been a fan of this type of scenery and it perfectly fitted this style of attraction. My main criticism of this attraction was that every single scare was the same, which you will find so evident at Halloween Horror Nights, they consist of two elements: A scareacter walking towards the crowd in strobe lights branding a weapon, or, a scareacter shooting a gun in time with the lighting, audio and air cannon - it becomes stupidly repetitive after the third time in each attraction and it just really needs a variation between scares.


5) An American Werewolf in London - 6/10.

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(Not my photo)

For any fan of this movie, you will absolutely love this attraction. The theming and scenery is just completely and utterly stunning, with iconic scenes such as the 'Slaughtered Lamb', London Underground, Adult Movie Cinema etc. included, it really did feel like you were stepping into the movie.

This attraction has been done before at HHN and it didn't seem like there was all that much change from the one before minus the navigational changes they had made, but it really didn't matter. You only bump into the werewolf a small number of times, which isn't the best scenario considering that is the only threat or malice behind the whole attraction. Each encounter with the werewolf is quick and LOUD, the animatronics all look exactly the same, but there isn't all that many of them.

One absolutely phnneonal scene is the 'transformation' of the werewolf, this is done by an actormatronic (animatronic controlled by the scareactor) in which they are submerged under the body of the transforming werewolf that is thrashing it's arms and legs around - really, really well done.


Now we go to the cream of the crop, some of the best attractions I've ever visited (and that's been a **** lot).


4) Jack Presents 25 Years of Monsters & Mayhem - 7/10.

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(Not my photo)

If you're a fan of Halloween Horror Nights Orlando, you would absolutely LOVE this house, it's absolutely genius. You meander through a series of rooms and corridors themed to 25 years of Halloween Horror Night attractions - all presented by the infamous 'Jack the Clown' character and his band of 'maniacs'.

Halloween Horror Nights conducts market research every single year and always has ears open to the fan talk of what their favourite scenes and elements were etc. So with all of this information, they included the fan favourite scenes from 25 of their most well known attractions with jump scares throughout from Jack's Maniacs to have an omnipresent narrative.

I just really enjoyed it, but wish it would have been much longer, it felt really short on some runs through it.


3) Run: Blood, Sweat and Fears - 8/10.

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Run was an attraction featured at HHN over a couple of years, it consisted of gruesome scenes of decapitation, murder, torture etc. very much like the Hostel and Saw movies. To spice things up and make it different, the new narrative consisted of you entering a Prison full of weird and wonderful game show contestants who were thirsty to win on the blood leaderboard. It was like you had been transported into something like Mortal Kombat or Tekken.

With a very heavy 80's styling and such amazing concept for the characters, you witnessed gameshow contestants from around the world, all of them competing to kill as many people as possible to get further up the leaderboard, and that included you as the guest. It was such a strong concept and paid off perfectly, you were constantly reminded of the game show via screens throughout showing which team was killing most and how they died etc., it felt like you was in an 80's Hunger Games.

I genuinely loved this attraction so much, the only slight downside to it is that due to it being positioned in the Disaster extended queue line,t he light bleed is pretty awful, so you have to try and go as late as possible but even then it is stupidly bright in the scenes - it doesn't affect it that much though, and if you're as much of a scare geek as me, in the daytime actually provides more reason to look at all of the incredible theming in detail.


2) Insidious - 9/10.

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I'm really not a fan of the movie and apart from Tiptoe Through The Tulips, I think it's completely and utterly ****. I went expecting the attraction to be the same but was completely and utterly blown away by how phenomenal it was.

it was so dark in each scene and the jump scares just didn't end at all. There was a lot of tricks to make the guests feel so on edge and you truly didn't know where the next scare was going to come from, I cannot say how much I enjoyed it.

Now, for Halloween Horror Nights performers touching an absolute 'No No', but in Insidious, in one section, they broke that rule and it enhanced the experience so much. You entered a VERY dark corridor with material walls either side, pipes and wires hang down in the pathway and you had to push past them to exit, as you was doing so, scareacters were on both sides pushing against the material and grabbing at your arms etc, it was so well done for HHN. This effects has been done everywhere, but is so obvious most of the time, it was so unexpected for HHN to do such a scare but I take my hat off to them for doing so.


And finally, the best of the best at HHN...


1) Body Collectors: Recollections - 100000000/10
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(Not my photo)

Just simply phenomenal.

For the 25th anniversary, HHN merged two of the most-loved houses (Body Collectors & Psychoscareapy) together to create 'Body Collectors: Recollections'. The attraction is set in an asylum during a horrific snowstorm (it does snow throughout in certain areas that have broken grooves etc) and you come into contact with the 'Body Collectors' (a collective of monsters that collect body parts), killing anybody that gets in their way.

What I absolutely loved is the concept that you were witnessing what happened to the people on one night, you wasn't experiencing the events as it happened, they were all a replay of a previous time, hence the 'Recollections' element to the title - it reminded me of the montage scene from Ghost Ship of all of the people being murdered.

I absolutely loved it, it's amongst my favourite ever attractions I've visited with some truly gruesome and disgusting effects that even had me wincing. The Body Collectors time their scares perfectly and the undertone of the asylum patients works so well with the chaotic narrative they wanted to create.

Absolutely hats off to the designers - the 'spine' scene was incredible, a female nurse lay face down on an operating theatre in an old observatory theatre and had her spine ripped from her body with some really loud cracking as you passed along with a spray of water, of course.

Another scare that worked perfectly well was a female nurse running from a doorway before being grabbed by a Body Collector, having her throat cut in front of you and him dragging her off whilst holing the knife in front of his mouth in a 'Shhhh' manner. It was timed so perfectly every time I saw it. So good.

By far the best attraction at the park and it seemed a lot of other people agreed with me.


Scare Zones.

5) All Nite Die-In - Double Feature - 4/10.

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The concept was great, an outdoor cinema with iconic Universal monsters wandering around. It worked quite well, but it was SO small, it took over just the outdoor area of Disaster, about 20m x 20m or so, so so so so so tiny, it felt really weak compared to the rest.


4) HHN Icons - 6/10.

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This scare zone was situated outside of T2 and ran to Mel's Diner. It was really nice to see the icons of HHN's yesteryears and each had a sketch they would perform on a stage, it worked really well in face and was an enjoyable experience although due to them being on their stages, felt a bit flat.


3) Scary Tales Screampunk - 7/10.

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HHN twisted iconic fairytale characters into mechanical steampunk monsters intros incredibly smoky scare zone. It was located just between Despicable Me and Shrek - it did work well but some of the costumes didn't feel steampunk at all and there was only one large theming element to the whole experience, whereas the rest had quite a lot of theming included.


2) Psychoscareapy - Unleashed - 9/10.

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Near the Body Collectors section was the largest scare zone - it was HUGE, it took over the whole New York area of the park. The inmates from the Shady Brook Asylum had escaped the bus and were wreaking havoc on the streets during their favourite time of year - Halloween.

All of the scareacters were dressed in completely terrifying children's halloween costumes and were attacking guests everywhere. There's loads of little sketches that happen in the areas, just head to the small stages and wait, you will not be sorry, they're fab.

Really loved this experience, it felt like the movie 'Trick 'r' Treat', was so much fun.


1) Evil's Roots - 10/10.

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Years ago, a scare zone called 'Grown Evil' took over the wooded path towards ET, next to the BttF train, basically they brought the scare zone back and named it something els,e but I'm so glad they did. I LOVED it, it had a 'typical' gothic halloween feel to it with Jack-o-Lanterns, pumpkins, Spanish Moss and a horde of evil fairies, stilt-walking bars and trolls attacking everywhere.

Due to the nature of the area, the fog just cringed to the trees and caused for such an intense atmosphere. Truly brilliant.


Shows.

I'm not going to rate or order the shows, they were both on the same sort of level really and in all honesty, I didn't love either of them.


Bill & Ted's Excellent Halloween Adventure.

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Bill & Ted's has been a staple of the HHN experience for years now, providing a lot of laughs, singing, dancing tits and arse. It's quite a good show, but this year it was heavily based on what's happening in the USA at the moment with the presidential elections and a LOT of jabs at Disney. It seems really repetitive and didn't have that completely bizarre 'WTF' feel that the show usually has. It was alright and had loads of fun ties in with the previous 25 years, but yeah, not massively sold on the year's show at all - it was way better in 2012 when people actually LAUGHED at the jokes and it had more references to universal pop culture trends.


The Carnage Returns.

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I was so so so so excited to see this show, but again, it fell completely short of what I thought it would do. It was amazing to see the audience reaction to the Jack character and it truly shows how many true fans HHN has. The big downside to the show is that it feels so so so so so messy to watch - audio cuts in over the top of the performers, there's a lot of dancing for no reason, it feels really tired and it's less than a week old...

It has a lot of tie-ins with the previous 25 years too, with people being murdered in ways that the old shows used to do it, but yeah, I'm not sold on it. It ended way too quickly - but there is fire, that's a bonus :lol:


So yeah, this year's event is very strong and I would recommend anybody going to it - make sure you buy the Express passes though because even WITH these we queued up for around 45 minutes per attraction and seen as there's 9 houses, 5 scare zones and 2 shows, it's easy that you'll miss out on at least one thing.


Thanks for reading!
 
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