Halloween Horror Nights (Brian)

Well, this post is a good bit overdue. So, I'll make it longer to compensate. I apologize in advance, many of the pictures below are poor in quality due to the night-time taking and/or moving while taking them.

We went to Halloween Horror Nights a few weeks back. It was a great time. Hanneke and I along with my friend Adam from college and my brother Dave all went. Here's the Universal Studios Globe at the front:

When we first got there it wasn't very dark but they still had the fog machines on full blast in some areas to set the mood.

When we first got there, it was pretty rainy. As you can see, that rain was terrifying and caused strange things to happen to all of our faces.

They had areas in the park set-up as Haunted Houses that you had to walk into intentionally but they also had Scare Zones set-up that you could just wonder into by accident. Here's the sign from one of the Scare Zones:

And here's Hanneke sharing a special moment with the rabbit from a Scare Zone (based on Alice in Wonderland in this case):

And here's a quick video, just 13 seconds long, of walking under the entry light for a scare zone. It will give you a quick sense of the mood. For those really curious, I've put a 26 second one of a different zone that is a totally-dark area lit only by jack-o-lanterns. You can't see much in it, but it'll give you an idea of what a Scare Zone is like thematically.

Aside from the Scare Zones, there were also haunted houses. They were the main attraction. There were 8 haunted houses in total and we went into each one. The houses lasted about 5 minutes each, maybe a little more for some and a little less for others. Here are some pictures from the different houses (from the outside, no photography on the inside - and unfortunately, since I had to take these while walking in line, they are exceptionally poor photos). The scarecrow/pumpkin-crow one is from a Scare Zone entry:

They also had a lot of special effects set-up all over the place. I tried to take a picture of Hanneke (on the left) and Dave (right) in front of a jet of flame but you can see how that turned out (and thereby guess how big the jet of flame was---pretty sizable):

My favorite Haunted House was either Fractured Tales or The Hallow (if I'm remembering the names right). There was a moment in one of them where you walked through a short tunnel and saw the shadow of a large werewolf creature moving against the wall. Then you hear a loud wet chomping and biting sound that filled the room completely and came from all directions, like an animal biting into something, and at the same moment the tunnel was misted with water as if you were being soaked in the saliva of the beast. Another favorite of mine was a room in Dead Exposure. Dead Exposure was based around the theme of a totally-dark haunted house lit only by the occassional flicker of a camera flash. That flash was a sort of ultra-bright blacklight that caused strategically-placed paint to light up in the room. In one of the rooms of Dead Exposure, there were several bodies hanging from the ceiling that you had to walk through. Except the bodies were not all fake and were not all attached to the ceiling; some of them were actors that would move and scare you as you got close. But because of the flickering lighting, you couldn't tell which was which until it was too late.

We had a good time after Halloween Horror Nights too. We did mini-golf the next day before Dave flew out, as Hanneke talked about before. The course had lots of water features and whimsical obstacles. It was a lot of fun. Han already put up pictures of it, but here are a few more:

Finally, we also played a few board games while Adam and Dave were in town. We were up really late on the night we went to Halloween Horror Nights playing Powergrid.

All in all it was a very fun trip and I look forward to going in the future. If you're a haunted house person then you should check out Halloween Horror Nights.