This year me and my girlfriend (Mary) headed out to Halloween Horror Nights on September 30th, the first night. At the end of the night, we decided to upgrade out tickets to Frequent Fear Passes because we figured we might want to come back a few more times, and at only $24.75 to upgrade, even if we only came back once, it'd be worth it. Turns out, upgrading was one of the best things we've done. We ended up going 12 times, and got to be a part of one of the most exclusive things the Universal Creative team has ever done. If you don't feel like reading the Trip Report/House reviews, skip to the second post in this topic.

So here's a review of the houses, in order of favorite to least favorite.

#1: Terror Mines
This was our favorite house because of the countless number of times we got scared in it. I got to wear the hat two times and Mary got to wear it once. We went though the house over 10 times, and it is way better with the hat. Some of the best scares come at the end as you're walking through mineshafts and alien looking creatures (actually called cave dwellers) are jumping out at you from all sides. They actually had me on me knees one time because three of them surrounded me.

Rating: 9/10 - Overall good scares, but without the mine hat it's kind of lacking.

#2: Body Collectors
Also one of the best houses at the event this year. The Gentlemen costumes are quite possibly the creepiest costumes ever. This house had tons and tons of gore in it, and quite a few decent scares. The house ended with a strobe light filled room with two Gentlemen with air hoses. One of the times they surrounded us, making it the first time I'd been so scared that I wanted to run out of a house.

Rating: 8/10 - A very well themed house with a few decent scares. Rating is only low because of the lack of scares.

#3: Where Evil Hides
Once again a house that had some great scares, more scares then Body Collectors, but it was a pretty short house and wasn't themed too spectacularly, so that's why it is ranked third. Some of the best moments include the werewolf that jumped out from under the bed, the vampire in the attic room, and the many Jason's that are throughout the house.

Rating: 7/10 - A solid house with good scares, but due to it's length and kind of lackluster theme, it's third.

#4 Cold, Blind, Terror
The first time we went through the house we thought it was pretty lame, but as the event progressed, the house got better and better. Plus it was a LONG house. Some neat effects were the bubble room, a room that was filled to the ceiling with suds, the scareactors with the flashlights who seemingly came out of nowhere, and the final room with strobe lights and checkered walls, which was very disorienting.

Rating: 6/10 - No theme whatsoever, but the creative effects and scares more then make up for it, making this house number 4 on my list.

#5 Demon Cantina
This house had quite a bit of detail but we never got too many scares during our many trips though it. The flow of people through this house was pretty bad, as we were constantly stopped in the room with many red curtains. The final night of the event was probably the best time we had in this house because there was no one in front of us so we were basically open game for everyone in the house. There was also an awesome looking devil/demon costume at the end of this house.

Rating: 5/10 - An awesome set and a few scares, but nothing really stands out as amazing.

#6 Skool
Another house with a lot of detail, it just lacked any serious scares and it was short, which is very understandable because it was in a restaurant. Only one scene sticks out in my mind and that was when a girl came from behind a curtain with a pen or knife or something and it looked like she was going to stab me. Other then that this house was only cool because of the scenery.

Rating: 5/10 - A good set and a few scares, but nothing too special.

#7 Blood Ruins
Ah Blood Ruins, a house that had so much potential but never delivered. We never really got 'scared' in this house, it was just a bunch of cool looking sets and a few BBQ smells. There was also a water effect that sprayed 'blood' on you and kind of made the house bad, cause I don't like getting wet too much.

Rating: 3/10 - A cool set but where were the scares? Also the water kind of ruined it.

So out of twelve times going and multiple times through each of the houses, there's my final verdict on HHN 15's houses. The over all event gets an 8/10 for me because some of the scarezones were incredible (Fire Pits and Cemetery Mines), but I won't bore you with those reviews.

And now, for probably the best thing I've ever done at Universal, see my next post.

So, on certain nights throughout HHN this year (7, 13, 16, 21, 27, 30, 31), their website was updated the day of with ‘clues’ that ranged from being in different languages to just longitude and latitude coordinates, and then a password. Once you figured out the clue/password/location/time, you would go to the event that night and find the “Dark Master” who gave out tattoos and beads for the first three nights. Then on the next three nights certain people in the certain realms gave out pieces of paper with different clues on them that lead up to the final night, October 31st.

If you had been to most of these select night (we made it to all but one) and posted at the HHNVault forums (I’m NickC over there), you were private messaged on the 31st by one of the members of the HHN Team with a personal password for a ‘special event’ on the final night of HHN.

The event began at 11 and was incredible. We were taken up to the Navigators Club (above Confisco’s) and got to sign a guestbook. In the ‘club’ were refreshments, the bookcase from the HHN website (http://themeparks.universalstudios.c...o/hhn/hhn.html), all the props from the website, conceptual artwork for HHN 15, blueprints for the houses of HHN 15, and the Creative Directors for HHN 15 (including Rick Spencer, “The Man” when it comes to Halloween Horror Nights.) We were allowed to browse around, talk to the creative team, and take pictures for around 40mins, then we got to take part in the Final Sacrifice of Halloween Horror Nights.

In case you didn’t know, throughout every night, at the Terra Throne stage right at the end of Port of Entry, there was a ritual sacrifice held in which the “Terra Queen’s” alter boys would pick ‘guests’ (actually employees) for a pretty brutal and bloody sacrifice. Since it was the final night of HHN and it was the Queens final season, she was to be sacrificed.

We were all handed black robes to ware and processed down to the Terror Throne stage, past all the park guests, and got front row viewing of the Final Sacrifice, and we were publicly recognized as the ‘Most Honorable”. There were 34 people there in all, and it was an amazing night.

To see the clues on the HHN 15 website:

1.)Go to:
http://themeparks.universalstudios.c...o/hhn/hhn.html
2.)Click the bowl on the top shelf.
3.)Click the Terra Throne icon on the map
Each one of the dated blade objects contains the clue for that night.

Now, the cool thing is, when you click on the 31st Blade, a list of all that attented and solved the clues is there, there were 34 of us in total, me and my girlfriend are in the second row, Nick Chandler, and Mary Foster.

Here are all the translated clues for each of the nights, if anyone is interested:
http://www.hhnhq.com/forums/index.ph...=0&#entry16636

And finally, a picture of the two of us in front of the bookcase:


More at:
http://www.hhnhq.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1146

Hope you enjoyed reading this!
-Nick

Gosh, how did you know about this? It would've been awesome to go and have the private dinner and then witness the final sacrifice and do all the stuff you did....

Wasn't really a dinner, just refreshments; cookies, soda, chips etc...

It was kind of a group effort thing on the HHNVault and CSW boards, when the first one was posted, the 7th, no one really knew what it was, but we figured something was up, then the next night, the 13th, the few people who were now aware of this showed up and figured there was an actual prize and what not, so we started going to the other nights, and more and more people started coming, when word of this got around to other boards.

The first few prizes were just beads and tattoo's, but on the 21st it all changed and we knew we had to keep coming, my g/f was especially addicted to it, and really wanted to keep going, and we were glad we did.

Hopefully Universal will do something like this at next years event, but it'll probably be much harder due to the large amount of exposure it now has...