Halloween Horror Nights 34 (UOR) - Speculation & Rumors

[johnathanm]

Corporate is the most accurate descriptor I've seen thrown around.

The atmosphere shift crossing the bridge to the park entrance from City Walk used to be palpable.

Agreed on this (though I caveat with I’ve only been going since 23). I think just having the front gate music at a substantial volume, which was certainly the case at 29 but has lessened since, impacts the perception of walking into the event more than I appreciated until recently.

Also, I haven’t been able to place what felt so off about last year for me specifically, but corporate is a pretty good word to describe it generally.

 

[HHNSK]

Also, I haven’t been able to place what felt so off about last year for me specifically, but corporate is a pretty good word to describe it generally.

Last year felt like a gauntlet of houses (albeit quite good) separated by pavement, crowds, and very little theming. It didn’t have the vibe of an event or festival IMO. It’s all very subjective but I think the deterioration of scarezones over the last ten years, certainly post covid plays a role. As does crowds. If you’re not a fan of Nightmare Fuel the lack of a second show or lagoon show is a tough pill to swallow. I also miss Monster Cafe - I enjoy the community aspect of HHN and taken the above into account the closing was a real downer. Finally, someone mentioned earlier the effect of nostalgia and I suspect 10 years from now someone will be begging for the good old days of HHN 33 ….. I’m hoping with Mike being back we get a little taste of pre covid HHN and I would be happy with that.

 

[Midnight Detective]

Last year felt like a gauntlet of houses (albeit quite good) separated by pavement, crowds, and very little theming. It didn’t have the vibe of an event or festival IMO. It’s all very subjective but I think the deterioration of scarezones over the last ten years, certainly post covid plays a role. As does crowds. If you’re not a fan of Nightmare Fuel the lack of a second show or lagoon show is a tough pill to swallow. I also miss Monster Cafe - I enjoy the community aspect of HHN and taken the above into account the closing was a real downer. Finally, someone mentioned earlier the effect of nostalgia and I suspect 10 years from now someone will be begging for the good old days of HHN 33 ….. I’m hoping with Mike being back we get a little taste of pre covid HHN and I would be happy with that.

Agree with everything but I truly think 33s legacy will always be it was weird/off

 

[HHN Maddux]

Credit to 'who is Jackson' for bringing this up on the main HHN Discord:



This would suck. If true, hopefully it's the Dead Exposure/Spawning/Havoc route (same design, different house theme), rather than a straight-up repeat.

 

[Lucky Planet]

Credit to 'who is Jackson' for bringing this up on the main HHN Discord:

View attachment 25378

This would suck. If true, hopefully it's the Dead Exposure/Spawning/Havoc route (same design, different house theme), rather than a straight-up repeat.

I'm just expecting just only 10 houses, no lagoon show,
the same tiny scarezone area without props in the front of the park, and no rip ride rock it....because why not lol. it's gonna be great

 

[DannyPowers]

I'm just expecting just only 10 houses, no lagoon show, the same tiny scarezone area without props in the front of the park and no rip ride rock it....because why not lol. it's gonna be great

Honestly, I think that's most likely at this point. The "no 24A" thing might just be insiders getting caught up in minutia, and we only have a 'B' for some silly behind the scenes reason.

 

[Legacy]

Honestly, I think that's most likely at this point. The "no 24A" thing might just be insiders getting caught up in minutia, and we only have a 'B' for some silly behind the scenes reason.

Oh… it’s also possible there’s no A because they moved it to 25 after building the permit submission for B. I’ll acknowledge there’s a lot I still don’t know.

But, in the absence of knowledge conspiracy reigns.

 

[TheCodeMan95]

Well this is going to continue to be a fun spec season. We truly won't know until we get the coveted "MORE HOUSES THAN EVER BEFORE" announcement.

On the topic of HHN33 - I still enjoyed the event like I do every year, but it's definitely towards the bottom of the ranking. I don't really know what exactly was off - but if I had to wager a guess, it was truly the scare zones. Every year there's at least one zone that I LOVE and want to spend a significant amount of time in, and there was none of those at the event.

 

[hunnylvr]

I wish there was a little more to even have speculation on. Maybe it's me, but it seems like we are all pretty much just hanging on nothing or just regurgitating wish lists this year. I understand Epic is the main focus and center of Uni's world, so god only knows when we will get an announcement. It would be nice to have something to chew on for a while.

In regards to the music at HHN now - I hate it. I miss Midnight Syndicate and similar types of music. Note on that: definitely wouldn't exclude various rock artists because so many have music that would tie in nicely, but you have to put the effort in to create such a list. When we would walk back and forth through the park and hear those artists, it really captured the Halloween vibe. Isn't that kind of the point? We aren't attending a dance party nor are we jumping into a mosh pit. I still play "God Particle" (from the Angels & Demons soundtrack) on my personal Halloween playlist as well as loads of Midnight Syndicate and a vast array of soundtracks and various rock bands with songs related to Halloween or something creepy. My playlist is seven hours and 22 mins long. I'd be happy to share it with A&D should they like to reference it.

Re HHN33 - we also felt like it was an "off" year, and we couldn't place the reason why either. The only scarezone we enjoyed was Torture Faire and that's mainly because we made the effort to engage with a lot of the scareactors who would then play with us consistently. Outside of that, the others were boring (and don't get me started on the Blumhouse photo op, bottle neck garbage). The one thing that saved the whole year for me was Insidious. That house consistently scared me (I don't get scared). It was the overall vibe, the aggression of the scareactors, the soundtrack inside the house and the intense creep factor of the material. Outside of that, the rest of the event was ok, but I didn't feel like it measured up to many of the last 19 years I've attended. I'm hoping this is rectified this year because this is my 20th year attending.

 

[Lucky Planet]

Honestly, I think that's most likely at this point. The "no 24A" thing might just be insiders getting caught up in minutia, and we only have a 'B' for some silly behind the scenes reason.

everyone keeps thinking or speculating on different ways to fix the crowd issue and the lack of shows, we are all wondering on what new shows or venues can be used, what new ways to use the streets, what possible places for new houses,
but universal might not see it as a problem to be solved or their numbers might show that there's no reason to change anything. maybe bringing in 2 more houses causes extra problems.

I was curious about the possible new houses but I'm not gonna be surprised if it's just like previous years. as long as the scarezones and the original houses are amazing, it's gonna be good.

I wish there was a little more to even have speculation on. Maybe it's me, but it seems like we are all pretty much just hanging on nothing or just regurgitating wish lists this year. I understand Epic is the main focus and center of Uni's world, so god only knows when we will get an announcement. It would be nice to have something to chew on for a while.

In regards to the music at HHN now - I hate it. I miss Midnight Syndicate and similar types of music. Note on that: definitely wouldn't exclude various rock artists because so many have music that would tie in nicely, but you have to put the effort in to create such a list. When we would walk back and forth through the park and hear those artists, it really captured the Halloween vibe. Isn't that kind of the point? We aren't attending a dance party nor are we jumping into a mosh pit. I still play "God Particle" (from the Angels & Demons soundtrack) on my personal Halloween playlist as well as loads of Midnight Syndicate and a vast array of soundtracks and various rock bands with songs related to Halloween or something creepy. My playlist is seven hours and 22 mins long. I'd be happy to share it with A&D should they like to reference it.

Re HHN33 - we also felt like it was an "off" year, and we couldn't place the reason why either. The only scarezone we enjoyed was Torture Faire and that's mainly because we made the effort to engage with a lot of the scareactors who would then play with us consistently. Outside of that, the others were boring (and don't get me started on the Blumhouse photo op, bottle neck garbage). The one thing that saved the whole year for me was Insidious. That house consistently scared me (I don't get scared). It was the overall vibe, the aggression of the scareactors, the soundtrack inside the house and the intense creep factor of the material. Outside of that, the rest of the event was ok, but I didn't feel like it measured up to many of the last 19 years I've attended. I'm hoping this is rectified this year because this is my 20th year attending.

it's like it feels like uni wants the vibe and the energy of the nightmare fuel show for the rest of the park. and academy of villains before that.
the soundtracks for those two shows and the soundtracks for the park blend now. one long party. I noticed that it blends.

 

[Casper Gutman]

I don’t need 11 or 12 houses. I DO need the scarezones to be a lot better then 2024.

 

[Brian G.]

I don’t need 11 or 12 houses. I DO need the scarezones to be a lot better then 2024.

I'd be ok with 10 houses and better zones, too.

 

[krazyhorrorkid]

Sounds like we are hopefully in for some surprises this time around.

Are we betting to see original announcements before Epic opens and do something like last year?

 

[TheCodeMan95]

Sounds like we are hopefully in for some surprises this time around.

Are we betting to see original announcements before Epic opens and do something like last year?

I know it's been discussed, but I'm really interested to see the announcement schedule for this year. I'm starting to lean toward not getting ANYTHING until EU is open.

 

[Neo]

I know it's been discussed, but I'm really interested to see the announcement schedule for this year. I'm starting to lean toward not getting ANYTHING until EU is open.

I'm hoping they at least announce (not necessarily sell) multi-night tickets by the time EU single day tickets go on sale. Single Day Epic tickets are going to be insane to get on "off nights" of HHN for all the out of towners like myself and after the surprise of RoF not covering all of Sept last year and the rumors of there being a Wed not included this year but a Tue being substituted in...a lot of reason for concern. Booking flights, hotels, rental cars, and buying single days to Epic is an expensive bet to take on knowing exactly what your multi-night ticket includes if they don't get announced/outlined/explained, if not sold, until months later.

 

[TheCodeMan95]

I'm hoping they at least announce (not necessarily sell) multi-night tickets by the time EU single day tickets go on sale. Single Day Epic tickets are going to be insane to get on "off nights" of HHN for all the out of towners like myself and after the surprise of RoF not covering all of Sept last year and the rumors of there being a Wed not included this year but a Tue being substituted in...a lot of reason for concern. Booking flights, hotels, rental cars, and buying single days to Epic is an expensive bet to take on knowing exactly what your multi-night ticket includes if they don't get announced/outlined/explained, if not sold, until months later.

Well I HOPE that single day Epic tickets are available within the next 2 weeks or so.. so I don't see multi day HHN tickets being announced by then lol

But yeah, I was initially planning to do Epic on 2 consecutive non-HHN days, but I'm thinking about switching one of them to be an HHN day. I imagine it will likely be a LITTLE less crazy on those days.

I'm just mostly curious where HHN announcements slot in with the EU marketing firestorm.

 

[Captain Spaulding]

the surprise of RoF not covering all of Sept last year

Was this really a surprise? I don't recall ROF including ALL of September since starting the event before Labor Day, usually been 17ish nights give or take, so depends on start date?

 

[Neo]

Was this really a surprise? I don't recall ROF including ALL of September since starting the event before Labor Day, usually been 17ish nights give or take, so depends on start date?

I guess it just always seemed to work out to include all of Sept (like the end date for the pass was Sept 28, 29, or 30), but I think that you are right in that it was never an official policy/ticket description. So think we just kinda assumed that was the deal. That was my group's thinking and I know lots of other people that were scrambling to rebook flights and hotels just like we were.

I can't remember the dates off the top of my head, but I know that if we went the 4th week of September like we always did, the pass would have only been valid for 2 nights. Some of my group has to submit their vacation plans at the beginning of the calendar year and we already had our flights and resort stays booked and had to reschedule everything which was not easy.

 

[srbmarc]

ROF has been advertised as the first 4 weeks for the last few years. When I first started going, it was just for the first 2 weeks. Since 2024 was the first time the event started in late August, it wasn't going to include the last September weekend. If ROF remains the same this year, it'll be just like last year.

 

[Captain Spaulding]

I guess it just always seemed to work out to include all of Sept (like the end date for the pass was Sept 28, 29, or 30), but I think that you are right in that it was never an official policy/ticket description. So think we just kinda assumed that was the deal. That was my group's thinking and I know lots of other people that were scrambling to rebook flights and hotels just like we were.

I can't remember the dates off the top of my head, but I know that if we went the 4th week of September like we always did, the pass would have only been valid for 2 nights. Some of my group has to submit their vacation plans at the beginning of the calendar year and we already had our flights and resort stays booked and had to reschedule everything which was not easy.

Yeah, I was lucky to pay close attention or it would have bit me in the ass too. Pissed my daughter off as her B-day was just after ROF and wanted to finally, Legally, drink at HHN.