Universal Orlando 2017 - Halloween Horror Nights, Day 4

Continuing with the theme from the previous post, here's my notes from this day.

Left hotel at 10:10am. Poseidon. Jurassic Park lunch. Cheeseburger combo with fries and choc shake. Good. Ate on balcony looking out over park. Great location. Jurassic Park ride. King Kong. Aborted due to tech diff. Butterbeer fudge. Hogwarts train. Shopping. Hotel. Finnegan holding area at 4:15. Let out at 6. Shining queue. Shining = incredible!  10 min.  wait.  Dead waters.  Neat boat. 15 min. wait.  Doughnuts. Yuck. Scared on bridge by clown with chainsaw. The Hive 15min. wait.  Not good. Blumhouse. Pretty good. Scarecrow. 50 min. Good!  Simpson’s meat pizza. American horror story. 35 min. Very good. Starbucks. Once more around park. Hotel at 12 something I think. 

This was our last full day at the park and the night that we planned to attend Halloween Horror Nights.  So excited I could hurl!

Told you

This is a prop train, not the one that travels between the parks

"Magic at work"

Pteranodon Flyers is a kids ride - adults can't ride unless they are accompanied by a child

Kind of disturbing to see the track just end in the air like that.  It's like those clickbait videos on Youtube.

Todd and Optimus...
...
...
Toddimus

This was our holding area for Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) while the park closed and everyone else exited.  I believe there were four different holding areas around the park to choose from.  The park closed at 5pm, and HHN opened at 6:30, though they let us out of our pen at 6:00.

This inside-the-holding-pen line is for Finnegan's Bar & Grill, a full-service restaurant that remains open during the transition period.  Some people choose which holding area to go to based on its proximity to a particular haunted house, others choose based on which amenities are available in the area - in this case food and alcohol.

Once we were let out into the park, we made a beeline for the queue for The Shining haunted house (which was awesome!).  A few other people had the same idea:

The Shining haunted house was located in one of the soundstage buildings behind the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit rollercoaster

Good, were almost at the end of the line...

...or not.  It wasn't bad though - with our early enter we only waited in line about 10 minutes, although later in the night I think it was up to 2 hours.

As the queue goes through the parking lot behind the studio you can see the track the Hogwarts Express travels as it goes from park to park.  You'd never know it from inside the train though.

The Shining was amazing.  The next one, Dead Waters, was ok but had a really cool boat set.  The next on was not good at all.  It was called Hive and was located in a large tent behind Men In Black.  Lots of backstage areas used during this event.

Apparently this was the last year for Universal's show Bill & Ted's Excellent Halloween Adventure.  We didn't watch it, but could see the theater was rocking from one of the queues.

Blumhouse was pretty good

The Scarecrow was good, and was our longest wait of the night at 50 minutes.

Thoughts on Halloween Horror Nights:

It was a really fun event that I would totally do again.  The haunted houses were hit and miss, but the production values of all of them were terrific.  The designated, themed scare zones around the park were well done and could be effective even with scores of people walking around.  Todd and I were ambushed by a clown with a chainsaw that had been hiding - one minute we were crossing a bridge, talking and laughing, the next we were screaming like little girls while a crowd of people (who apparently were watching this event repeat itself) laughed.  Then we were laughing too and it was great.

The only negative had to do with the necessity of moving so many people through each haunted house.  I get that there's no way to let small groups go in at a time with any sort of meaningful pause between each group.  Just be aware that having a constant line of people steadily moving through does diminish the scares significantly as you're consistently seeing things/actors jump out 10 people ahead of you.

That being said, there are still scares to be had as Universal does the best they can with what they have to work with.  Aside from that, the sheer artistry of the houses is something to see and worth the price of admission.  In the American Horror story house I was amazed by a creepy Santa that appeared out of thin air, and The Shining rooms were like stepping into the film - complete with the blood-gushing elevator.