Universal Studios Orlando Halloween Horror Nights 2014

If you’re not from the states, chances are you don’t know what Halloween Horror Nights is. Most of you are probably still familiar with the world-famous film franchise, Universal Studios and you know they have theme parks, Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood. So what do you get when one of the biggest film companies in the world produce a Halloween event? You guessed it, Halloween Horror Nights, and this year the Fairytale Traveler went on foot to check it out.

This year Universal Studios Orlando featured the return of AMC’s The Walking Dead, the Purge, and the just-released Dracula Untold in theaters today. Off the bat, we were most excited about seeing these along with the classic, Halloween haunted house with film favorite Micheal Meyers. In the past, we’ve experienced insanely long lines and overpriced booze. This is what we experienced for Halloween Horror Nights 24 at Universal Studios Orlando.

What We Loved about Halloween Horror Nights 2014

• Street Performers – Universal Studios spares no expense with their street productions. Elaborate costumes and performers on stilts always make for an entertaining production when you enter the park.
• Booze that Didn’t Leave Us Broke – Surprisingly, I was able to order mixed specialty drinks in a souvenir cup for just $10. I was happy about this price and kept the drinks filled.
• Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure – An adult, pop-culture parody show. I was bent laughing over this one. It was great to give my feet a rest and the performance was seriously hilarious.

• Alien vs. Predator and Halloween was our favorite haunted houses. They were really the only ones that made me jump. I think this is because of their layout. More turns so you don’t know what to expect.
• Dracula Untold was awesome. It gave a sneak peek into the movie which storyline is about Vlad Dracula before he was used as a basis of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The history of Vlad Dracula is a very gruesome and interesting one.
• The Purge was so cool. It totally felt like we were in the movie right in the middle of the street!
• Our Express Passes- don’t even bother going if you’re not planning to spring for the express passes. We blew past hundreds of people chumping it in an hour-long line and waited like 10 minutes to get in. Such a better experience.

What We Didn’t Totally Love about Halloween Horror Nights 2014

• The Walking Dead Haunted House (as the Universal Studios PR rep gasps)- While we LOVE AMC’s The Walking Dead, we were not that blown away with the haunted house. Maybe it’s because there is so much MORE gore in the TV series, but we were just not that impressed with the level of makeup. I know Universal Studios can do better than that. I also know it’s a huge production to do zombie makeup, so for that, I can cut them some slack. I’ve seen some serious gore scenes in other haunted house productions that have a fraction of the budget Halloween Horror Nights has for production and it was better. BUUUUT, I did like walking through the scenes.
• The Jello-shots- BARF!
• Getting rushed through the mazes. There were times where I couldn’t even take in what was around me because I was being waved on by workers in black. I didn’t really get to appreciate the scenes that much because I was rushed. I get it, it’s a haunted house, it’s not for hanging out, but like 4 more seconds would have been cool.

So overall you can see the good really outweighed the bad. We love Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights and look forward to many years with the event as part of our Halloween agenda, less the Jello-shots.

Complimentary admission and express passes provided by Universal Orlando Resort. While we were given media admission to this event, it in no way changes our opinion or outcome of our published material.