Stranger Trip, The Report. Day 6, Epcot and HHN.

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Day 6 October 11th 2018

There had been a change to The Plan a couple of weeks before we came out, with Epcot being added for this morning. I had been looking in vain for Fastpasses for either Slinky Dog Dash or Flight of Passage when I decided to see what was available elsewhere and spotted some for Frozen. Last holiday Frozen was the must have FP and they were almost impossible to get, so it just shows how things change.

Epcot is by far our least favourite park and Edward decided his time would be better spent resting ahead of our night at Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, especially as that was the whole reason we had booked this holiday.

Julia and I were out quite early for us, before 10am at least. This probably explains how we managed to forget the battery for the ECV, which we were taking into the room each night to recharge. I’m blaming Edward, as he had been carrying it back to the car each morning so far. Sadly we didn’t realise we were missing it until we got to Epcot, when it was too late to turn back.


The light was red as we passed Coronado Springs and I got a picture of the new tower being built.


Legally required golf ball photo.

Although we were early by our standards, we were just too late for our Spaceship Earth FP. We planned to go and try our luck anyway as normally they will give you a couple of minute’s leeway, but the queue to even get to the Mickey Head was all the way up the side of the ride. Standby was 50 minutes, so we didn’t get to visit Dame Judy.

With a little time to kill before Frozen we stopped for some pictures by the Fountain of Nations.


It was quite nice to be out with just the love of my life.


I had to crouch a bit to get in the frame, it didn’t help when Julia also started to crouch.


Chef Mickey welcomed us to World Showcase.

The booths for Food and Wine were only just opening up, in fact World Showcase was only just opening as walked round. The smells were delicious and having not had much in the way of breakfast I couldn’t resist stopping for the beef short rib at the Mexico hut. Julia liked the sound of the rice pudding but didn’t want to get it yet in case the river was rough in Frozen and she got sea sick.


This tasted amazing, but was quite hard to eat with the crisp base.

We thought there was a huge queue to get on the boat ride in Mexico as we walk past, but then realised the pavilion wasn’t yet open and the crowd was watching the opening show. It was just finishing as we arrived, so I can’t tell you what it was like.


The show certainly drew a crowd.


Soon enough we were in Norway.

Our Fastpasses got us past a fairly sizeable standby queue. I think it was about 40 minutes, which isn’t bad compared to the 2-3hour waits we saw last holiday. The ride was as good as ever and we were luck enough to be put into the front row of our boat. I like how the show is much more tightly controlled on this ride compared to older ones, so the characters are actually talking to you rather than just a loop of audio that isn’t synced to where the boats are.


They even watch you go by.


She’s about to let one go I fear.


Odd little snowballs.

We spent some time poking about in the gift shop and I think Julia picked up a few bits before deciding that having survived the frozen north we should head to the Mexican deserts. Grand Fiesta did actually have a queue, but it was only a few minutes and we were quickly placed onto the front row of another boat.


The pyramid in a pyramid.


That blooming duck, on stage at last. See my 2009 Trip report for an explanation.

We had another good look around the shops in Mexico, but didn’t buy anything here. The walk all the way to Norway had been enough for Julia and she was suffering now. I did offer to go back and hire a wheel chair for her, but she said if we took it slow she’d be ok to get back to the car. Take it slow we did, pausing again at the Mexico hut for a rice pudding and flower for Julia.


Very tasty, but neither of us tried the flower.


I love this view of Tower of Terror over Morocco, I think I include a picture of it in every trip report.

I got myself a Pork Slider from the Hawaii hut, but didn’t take a picture. This one was tasty enough, but again was difficult to eat main due to a very soggy bottom. We also a had a look around the Port of Entry shop, where I picked up the 2018 t-shirt I had seen in Hollywood Studios the other day. Each time I’d seen it since they didn’t have my size, I was so happy to find one in my size I failed to spot it was probably left because it had a mark on it.

We continued our shopping theme by going into Mouse Gear where we picked up a set of pyjamas for our friend’s new born son and a 2018 mug for me at the bargain price of $53, no wonder Mr Iger’s salary fell to a measly $36Million in 2017 at those prices!

We took a wander to Starbucks to pick up the You are Here mug and a drink. Once again service was incredibly slow with half the shop closed for staff training. We were not the only ones in the queue to say the training could be made a lot more realistic if they were serving drinks to real customers.

We eventually got our drinks and slowly made our way out of the park and back to the car. I feared that Julia may have done too much and wouldn’t be able to come out tonight, but hoped the long rest we now had planned would give her time to recover.

We must have got back to the hotel about 1pm and didn’t go back out until around 4, which did indeed give Julia time to recover enough for tonight’s fun. She didn’t plan to take the ECV into HHN, but then she was only going from the park entrance to Diagon Alley and back.

The plan was to have an early dinner in City Walk then head over to Universal Studios before the 6:30pm opening time for HHN. Edward and I had Express passes, so we didn’t have to worry about being right at the front of the queue to get in. Also the park was open until 2am tonight, so we had plenty of time.

We left Orange Lakes at 4pm and the I4 was its usual grumpy self so it took us half an hour to get up to Universal. The entrance off of the interstate was still a huge construction zone, but it was good to see Volcano Bay finished. Parking at Universal was the usual rubbish with no parking attendants in sight. We ignored a few arrows and found ourselves a parking bay in disabled, making sure Julia took note of where the car was parked as she’d be on her own later going back.

We stopped at the kiosk by the security on the walkways and Edward got himself an HHN t-shirt. He did go to the restroom to change into it, but then decided to leave it until after his dinner instead. Security was still nice and quiet this early in the evening, so we were quickly through the full-on airport style x-ray machines and metal detectors. Universal absolutely did want me to empty my bulging shorts pocket and had the glasses case went through the x-ray machine.

Cowfish was our choice for dinner. We did briefly consider going somewhere else, but had enjoyed our meal here in 2016 so much we decided to return. There was no wait and we were sent straight upstairs to a table. The hostess had no issue getting Julia a children’s menu and commented that she’d worked at the restaurant since it had opened and the only thing to have not changed in that time was the children’s menu.

We had,


Myself, The High Class Hillbilly - Southern Style Bar-B-Q-Shi, Pulled pork, caramelized onion and BBQ sauce, potato wrapped and flash fried. Topped with housemade bacon coleslaw and chives. I also had a side of sweet potato fries that I didn’t need.


Edward, The Cowfish Bento Box, A combo meal featuring both burger and sushi, including a mini-burger with American cheese, pickles and chopped red onion, sweet potato fries, Thai cucumbers, edamame and choice of a 4 piece sushi roll.


Julia, Dragon Bitez, Just grilled chicken with some fries and carrots.

We all really enjoyed our meals but I don’t think any of us actually cleared our plates as the portions were huge. Julia was the only one to have desert, the rice crispy square with a jelly fish on it in her box.


Continued Below

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By just after 6pm we were walking over to Universal where we found they had already opened the gates. We had a look at the merchandise stalls by the boat dock on the way over as I was looking for a Stranger Things t-shirt I’d seen people in. I never did find it, and have just seen a vlog showing it for sale in Target, which explains why it wasn’t in the parks. Julia found a backpack she liked, but didn’t want to carry it all night. I asked the girl serving what time the stand closed and on hearing 3am Julia decided she’d pick the shopping up on her way out.


The weather was perfect for a night in the park.


Julia wanted a selfie to prove she had made it this far.


The entrance was busy, which probably explains the early opening.

Getting in wasn’t as bad as it looked, once through the bottleneck of the buildings all the turnstiles were open and so we went to the far left and waited for maybe a dozen people in front of us to go in. As we waited we could hear the revving of chainsaws and screams coming from the park, which built the atmosphere nicely.

Julia was not overly happy at this point, she wasn’t here for the horror stuff, she just wanted to get her fix of Potter for the holiday. Edward and I were going to escort her to Diagon Alley leave her in there all evening safe from the scare actors, we just needed to get past two scare zones to get there. The daylight certainly helped keep the fear factor low when we went in as the monsters had a harder job creeping up on you.


These look friendly enough, they were even posing for pictures.


[I]Him less so, especially looming out of the dark behind you later. [/i}

First scare zone, The Harvest, cleared we could have gone right, past Transformers to the waterfront, but that would have taken us to Killer Klowns From Outer Space and Julia has been scared of normal clowns since she was a little kid. Killer Klowns From Outer Space might just actually have killed her. So instead we went straight up past the Mummy to brave Vamp 85.


Freddy looks a bit Deady.

Vamp 85 was a mixture of show and scare zone, they had a stage set up for New Years Eve 84 where the various dead stars would perform from time to time, but then they’d jump off and attack the audience. The other thing to watch out for, especially when watching the show was the zombie news crew filming them. Get too engrossed in the show and you never know what might creep up behind you.

We just kept walking, heads on swivels to stop any surprises from behind, and were soon out of the zone. In theory we were now ‘safe’, but what I didn’t know was that the Chainsaw Wielding Freaks didn’t have their own scare zone this year, rather they just roamed the park at will in packs looking for victims.


As usual security and the sheriffs were out in force in the park to prevent any actual unpleasantness.

Safe now, only a grumpy dragon to worry about.

Once we got to Potter land we thought we may as well take advantage of there being no one else there to take a ride on Gringotts. Julia went to put her bag in a locker and I was also sent over to put my camera in with the bag, yes it had to come out of its secure case on my belt and go in the locker. Thankfully I could keep my phone, so we still got pictures of a deserted bank.


Not a good day to be a market trader.


The 10 minutes shown is the time it takes to walk through the bank, go in the office, down the elevator and onto your cart.


This bank is rather overstaffed.

It was lovely being able to just walk onto the ride and see everything in the queue. The last few times we’ve either walked the single rider line or express, so it’s been a long time since we saw the whole queue. It was also nice not to be crammed into Bill’s office or the Elevator, there were not enough people waiting to fill either.

Once ridden Edward and I made sure Julia was happy, arranged a time to meet her for the dance show later and were off into the park to visit some of the ten houses.

Maybe I should have explained earlier about how Halloween Horror Nights is set up? There are 5 defined Scare Zones in the park where the like of the monsters I’ve shown you wander about trying to scare you. They do not ever touch the guests (and you can’t touch them) but they will chase people if they get a response from them. The rest of the park although lit differently to normal is just the same as it is during the day, all be it this year you might have come face to face with a Chainsaw Wielding Freak. There are then 10 Houses scattered around, mainly outside the normal park boundaries. These are basically very elaborate film sets that you walk single file through and are populated by actors who’s job it is to scare the living daylights out of you and to play a role in the film. For example, in the Stranger Things house there was a lady playing Joyce busy chopping a hole in the wall, she wasn’t there to scare you, but the monster who leapt out of the hole certainly was. Most of the rides are open as normal but tend to have very little queue as most people concentrate on the houses. The Potter area is off limits to any scare actors at all, which is a shame as there are plenty of monsters in that universe that would make an excellent addition to the event. Some Death Eaters in Knockturn Alley or Dementors in the market would work really well I think.

The first house Edward and I reached once out of the safety of Potter was Blumhouse. Being at the far end of the park from the entrance there was hardly anyone waiting and so we didn’t use our Express passes. This is a great tip, if you go to the event go straight to the far end of the park and work your way forward. Most people go straight to the first houses at the front for some reason. Later in the night these lot will be moving onto the back of the park and so the first houses quieter.


It might obviously be a tent from the outside, but you’d never know that from inside.

My notes for this one say ‘Not very scary’. It was a built around a college dormitory where students were being killed in their rooms, so you walked from room to room where corpses were laid out and you never knew who was going to leap out at you with a knife.

This was Edward’s first time at HHN as he’s never wanted to go before, so I wasn’t sure how he’d react. He was fine, like me he was more interested in the amazing standard of the house and the actors’ costume and makeup. Sadly you can’t take pictures in the houses, but they are not cheaply done at all. These are Hollywood filmsets, prepared to the same standard and level of detail of the largest budget films. The actors are chosen for their ability to act, not just a bunch of kids off of the street. They must spend hours in makeup, just as they would for a film. This event is as far removed from the likes of Alton Towers’ Scarefest as that event is from a funfair haunted house.

Having survived our first house we continued around the end of the park to the next two, who’s entrances were between Simpsons and Men in Black. We were being treated to an amazing sunset and the light had taken on an eerie red glow. I promise you these next few pictures have not been edited in any way or had any filters applied.


It was also dead calm as you can see from the pond.

Next up was Slaughter Cinema, built around a drive in where the horror films have come to life.


The projector, despite being the size of a small car, was struggling in the remaining daylight.

The fog machine in the entrance to this house had had some popcorn flavour added, which was a nice touch. There were all sorts of horrors in this house, including some sort of mutant guinea pig creatures eating through someone’s chest.


The sun had almost gone by the time we got back.

He entrance to Dead Exposure Patient Zero was right next to where we emerged from the cinema, so using our Express passes for the first time we entered. The queue had built to about 20 minutes and they only got longer from there on all night. If you want to get everything done in one night then Express passes are an absolute must. For most houses you’ll only wait about 10 minutes with Express, but there are a couple of exceptions and on busy nights you may well wait longer even with Express.

Dead Exposure started well, with a well themed entrance and outside of the temporary building it was in. The house was themed around some sort of deadly virus and the outside was set up as a field hospital.


For some reason all the signage was in French, I guess foreign diseases are more scary?

Sadly the house went down hill from there and had far too much strobe lighting, to the point that you couldn’t really see what was going on. There were some nice touches with infected doctors out to get you, but if you could have seen them they might have been able to scare you.

The house took about ten minutes to navigate and when we came out it was fully dark.


You can see how different the lighting of the park is for HHN.

We paused to buy some bottles soft drinks from the stand by Men in Black, it was still quite warm despite the sun going down. I think we confused the lady serving by not asking for alcohol, it took her two attempts to get our order right. Universal do push alcohol sales during the event with temporary bars everywhere, even in the queues. As during the day you need to be careful about how much you drink as the heat will soon get you dehydrated.

Drinks in hand we went to walk past The Simpsons to the next house and had our first encounter with the Chainsaw Wielding Freaks. These lovely people carry an actual chainsaw around and like nothing more than sneaking up on you before starting and revving the saw in your ear. OK, so there is no chain on the saw, but it sounds and smell like your head / leg / arm etc may well come off very soon. So long as you are not their target these guys are fantastic to watch, if they get someone who reacts then the chase is on and the pack will be after them.


They are not the easiest people to photograph, but you get the idea.


Chainsaw wielding is an equal opportunity job, we didn’t get a picture but there was also a guy in an electric wheelchair.

The next two houses had their entrances in the gap between Simpsons and ET, which meant we had to brave the most terrifying thing in the park, Barney.


The Purple Horror lurks back here somewhere.

The actual house we were going to was Seeds of Extinction, themed around some sort of disaster that has seen the plants take over the world. I always knew vegetables were bad for you.


This house was built in what is normally one of the backstage maintenance buildings.

Seeds of Extinction had some of the best costumes of the event. There were times that you could not tell what was scenery and what was an actor, until the plant you were passing tried to bite you. They had also done something to the atmosphere in there, it was seriously humid with water dripping down on you and a real smell of plant growth about the place. We both thought it was one of the best houses of the event.

By the time we had done Seeds of Extinction it was nearly time to go and meet Julia. We had waited about 15 minutes for this house even with our passes as the Express and regular lines merged some way short of the door. We’d seen from our exit route back into the park proper that the queue for the next house was set up the same and so knew that would also have a longer wait.

To get back round the lake to Diagon Alley meant braving two scare zones, Twisted Tradition and Killer Klowns From Outer Space.


Twisted Tradition, basically killer pumpkins and monsters with pumpkin heads.


Killer Klowns something much sillier, unless you are afraid of clowns.


This guy was hilarious walking his ‘dog’, he’d occasionally flick it into someone as if it was trying to bite them.

As we passed Lombard’s Grill we met up with the Chainsaw Wielding Freaks again. This time we saw them get a lad good and proper. He was very tall and when one of the freaks got up behind him as he walked along playing with his phone and started his saw the boy must have jumped at least four feet in the air. As he did so he dropped his phone, so when he landed he bent down to pick it, just as another freak got her saw under his bent body. Up he went again, about six feet this time from the crouch. If the kid doesn’t play basketball he should do. All his friends and his sister found this hilarious, I’m not sure he found it as funny as Edward and I did.

We met up with Julia just outside the Leaky Cauldron as arranged. She’d had a lovely evening mooching around Diagon Alley and had even been brave enough to venture into Knockturn Alley. She was ready to go, but was happy to come with Edward and I to see the Academy of Villains dance show, having heard me rave about their show in 2016.


Rather busier than earlier.

We got Julia safely into the queuing area for the show and sat on the planters telling each other about our evenings so far until the show started to load. Disappointingly the show was nowhere near as good as it had been in 2016 on a temporary stage when it was set in a mental hospital. I think the plot had something to do with cyborgs fighting humans trying to kill a computer, but it was difficult to follow the plot for all the strobe lights in your face and the very loud music. Julia didn’t enjoy it at all and pronounced it the most unnerving part of the whole event.


Bring back Bill and Ted.

If we were not in the middle of a row I think we would have left the show early, as it was we had to wait and follow the herd at the end. Edward and I then escorted Julia out of the park the same way as we had come in. We got out with only a few close encounters in the scare zones on the way. We had a look round the big gift shop by the entrance and got some more drinks for Edward and me before walking all the way to the exit itself with Julia just after 9:30.

After a quick restroom break we decided to restart our house tours in this corner of the park, which meant the main event, Stranger Things.

Stranger Things was the whole reason we were on this holiday, so expectations were high. Edward had taken out a Netflix subscription on the strength of the show, which he also introduced me to. When he heard the rumours of a Stranger Things house at HHN the course to get to see it was set. I’m happy to say the house didn’t disappoint. This one was built in one of the actual studios sound stages behind Rip Ride Rocket and was an extremely accurate recreation of several locations from the first series. They also had doppelgangers of most of the cast in there, I suspect with the aid of some very elaborate makeup. It was not a particularly frightening house, although a soldier in a contamination suit jumping out and firing a machine gun over my head in the lab scene did make me jump, but it was superbly done.


Walking out past all those waiting to get in, our Express passes saved us 70 minutes of queue.

As you can see we re-entered the park by the Jimmy Fallon thing. This wasn’t open for the event, but the first part of its queue was being used as the entrance to the next house, so I got to see some of the line. I’ve still no idea what a Jimmy Fallon is.

The next house scored much higher on the scare factor, Carnival Graveyard, Rust in Pieces was another in a sound stage and was themed around a junk yard of broken carnival rides and stalls. These were guarded by a number of interesting characters who did not welcome you onto their land at all. There were so many potential hiding places that you didn’t know where to watch. The theming was again superb and I’ve no idea if Universal had raided real scrap yards or had built and then broken their own rides. It did remind me of the delightful collection of scrapyards under the end of the West Cross Route in London that I have to get far too close to for work sometimes.

Next along the row of four houses up the road parallel to Rip Ride Rocket was Scary Tales Deadly Ever After, again in a sound stage. This one opened with a witch flying above you off the battlements of a castle. I couldn’t quite make out what the lady was talking about, but I don’t think she was inviting us in somehow. The house was a collection of original folk tales, much darker than the children’s fairy stories they have become. Hansel and Gretel were actually being eaten for instance. There was some humour as well, Humpty Dumpty had fallen from his wall and smashed, so he had been cooked and one of the soldiers was being very sick from the raw egg. As we came out a large bear came crashing out after me. Now the bear was not at all cuddly with its huge teeth dripping with blood, but all I could think off was Bungle from Rainbow. Sorry that I laughed at you Mr Scare Actor.

Once out of the house and walking back to the park we did see something quite sad.


Not for some time now it hasn’t been.

Poltergeist was the final house in this row and the queue took us past the theatre building that is just around the corner from the New York Library Facade at the end of that road. I think there are usually gates closed between the park and the entrance. I believe this building is used for special events, media events and maybe some show filming? This house was another where our passes got us past a significant queue, I think it was 80 minutes. Most house had queues of around 40 minutes even of this Thursday night, which are normally considered the quietest nights of the week.

Poltergeist was another very elaborate set and recreation of the film. Well I think it was, I’ve never seen the film. The entrance to the actual house from the film was inside the stage and they had somehow chilled it right down, with the wind howling and heavy cold rain falling. The rest of the house would have probably made more sense if we knew the film, but there was a recreation of the classic bulging TV screen complete with small child (probably just a tiny woman) in front of it.

I was more than ready for a sit down with a coffee by now, so we made our way to the Starbucks from where we had come out of Poltergeist by the main stage. This took us past Transformers where for some reason we decided to ride. Edward said it was because there was no queue, but I’m not sure. We still had to walk miles around the queue pen to get to the ride my notes describe as “incomprehensible Bilge”. I know it has its fans, but this ride is just Spiderman with the film swapped for one that is a collection of explosions and gibberish about sparks. To think how everyone got excited about the obvious lift shafts that were seen while the ride was being built and how it is over two stories, you’d never know you went up or down while you’re on it.

Entertainment was provided while we waited for our coffee by a very happy and very loud drunken man. He was being very ‘helpful’ and calling out people’s drinks for them and offering commentary on their choices. He wasn’t nasty or aggressive at all, rather just very happy and enthusiastic and people were laughing along with him. I think the manager tried to get him to quieten down at one stage, but she’d have been better making his drink out of sequence as once he had it he merrily went on his way.

We sat on the curb outside Starbucks drinking our drinks and laughing at the antics of the Killer Klowns just up the street before moving on in the direction of the Halloween 4 house.


This was in the road the other side of Transformers, I guess to advertise during normal opening.

Halloween 4 was in that odd space behind the screen in the Shrek building. Again, we’ve never seen the film, but the plot was quite easy to follow with the Michael Myres character after you with his knife. The stand out moment in this house came when we entered a room with Myres hiding behind a female mannequin he’d killed. As we approached expecting him to leap out any moment the girl with the slit throat suddenly lunged at us instead. She had some stunning makeup and prosthetics on to make it look like her head was all but severed. Myres was in fact the dummy in this room, or maybe they took it in turns to jump out?

I should have said earlier that unlike all the Halloween attractions I’ve been to in the UK there is no holding onto the person in front of you. I’ve never worked out why they do it that way here, all that touching strangers is just odd. You simply walk through the mazes alone in the US. The many staff in the houses do try to keep you as close as possible to the group in front to make the queues move as fast as possible, but if you can it pays to let a gap build in front of you to allow the scare actors time to reset. Had we seen the girl above go back to her position it would have totally spoilt the effect of her moving.


We had to pass through Twisted Traditions again to get to the last of the houses.

The last house of the night also had the longest wait for us. We entered the Express line through the Curious George children’s play area and joined the main standby line not long after. We saved about 20 minutes, but still waited about 20 minutes.


Another house in a maintenance building, this one for parade floats I think.

Trick ’r Treat had a similar twist to Halloween 4, not all of the dummies were actually dummies. This was another elaborate maze, you could easily have been in a real house it was so well put together.

It was now 20 past midnight and we had done all of the houses, something that would not have been possible with the Express passes. Unless you are really luck with the crowds and don’t do anything other than rush from house to house I don’t think there is any way you’d see them all without Express.

Since we still had an hour and 40 minutes until the park closed we thought we’d get some rides done, starting with Men in Black.


All lit up for the evening.

There was no wait for this at all, so the fake elevator had both doors open and looked like a wide spot in the corridor. I did pause briefly to get a picture of my old US colleagues in the break room.


We had a coffee machine just like that one in our Anaheim office, but never any fruit.

I have recorded that one of us got a score of 330,000, but not who. It must have been me as Edward’s gun never works properly on this ride, or Buzz, or Tomb Raider, etc. Our score was no doubt helped by there not being anyone on the opposite track, which helped hitting the exhaust port no end. We did look at doing a re-ride through the child swap, but there were a couple of people waiting when we did so didn’t bother. When we got down to the gift shop they had a rack of HHN t-shirts front and centre, including a Stranger Things one we’d not seen anywhere else. Since they had my size I took it over to the register and said to the lady there that it was unique. She said “well now you know where the best gift shop in the park is”, but then immediately behaved as if she had somehow said something rude and offended me and kept apologising, it was most odd.

We wanted to see if Mummy was still open and if it was if it had a queue, but we also wanted to experience the final scare zone of the night, Revenge of Chucky so took the long way round the park.


There were a few of these small sets in the zone where there was some dodgy acting going on from time to time.

Mummy was indeed still open and was a walk on, all be it they were making you go the long way through the whole standby queue. When we got to the top there was a cart waiting and we simply stepped straight on and got dispatched. I love this ride, but I wish they would add a few more balls to the scarab beetles scene.

When we came out of the ride the dance show was running, so we thought we would stay and watch, only for the ball to drop and it finish about 20 seconds later.


It was good while it lasted.

We’d both had enough by now and so with all the houses done, our favourites still having standby lines of 40-70 minutes we started making our way to the exit. The Express passes only let you visit each house once, they get scanned at the entrance to the line, so there was no more queue jumping for us. Yes we could have walked right up the other end of the park to visit Blumhouse or Slaughter Cinema on Express having not used it at the start of the evening, but neither were worth the long walk.

We did take a look at the queue for Rip Ride Rocket and were surprised to see it showing as 30 minutes. We didn’t believe it as all the other rides were walk ons, but we took a look at the queue and the pens downstairs were indeed full. Neither of us wanted to stand for another half hour so we reluctantly moved on. Thinking about it now I’m not convinced that we couldn’t have used the Express passes, but I’m not sure if they were running Express, nor if our varieties would have worked if they were.

We left the park at 01:30 having done the whole thing in our 7 hours. I can’t stress enough how this was only possible by getting there for opening, going on a ‘quiet’ night and buying the Express passes for about $100 each. I see trip reports of people who only get to see a couple of houses and are upset about it, but this is an incredibly popular event and you need to either go multiple times or plan properly and invest in the passes to see it all.

On our way out we got stopped for a survey. While Edward went to do that, telling them the Dead Exposure house would have been better if you could see anything other than strobe lights, I called our ride using Lyft. I’d set my account up while sitting drinking my coffee earlier, which took a bit of time registering my credit card and such. I’d never used Lyft or indeed Uber before and so had no idea how long it would take to get someone to pick us up. As it was the app came back straight away with an ETA of 7 minutes.

We were still over by the globe, so needless to say I got charged $5 for missing the pickup. I think I saw our car being chased off by security when we got to the pickup point and hoped she would circle again, but she didn’t and up popped the cancelled message. I booked another car and he was there in less than a minute. The guy was friendly and his car immaculate. He also took us right to the door of our block at Orange Lakes, all in all an excellent service for $17 plus a $5 cash tip.

Julia woke up when we went in, but after the briefest of chats about what a fantastic night we’d had we were very soon in our beds.



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[Palm trees]

It sounds like you had a great time. I'm afraid that my fear tolerance is close to zero so it's not an event that would appeal to me at all but I liked your sunset photos!

[spencem]

Originally Posted by Palm trees

It sounds like you had a great time. I'm afraid that my fear tolerance is close to zero so it's not an event that would appeal to me at all but I liked your sunset photos!

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Thanks, HHN is certainly not an event that appeals to everyone.

The sunset and the red light were just amazing, I'm glad my camera and phone were able to capture it.

[klr15]

Sounds like a great night! I would love to do HHN but sadly no one is brave enough to go with me!

[spencem]

Originally Posted by klr15

Sounds like a great night! I would love to do HHN but sadly no one is brave enough to go with me!

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HHN is fantastic, I hope you'll get to it one day.

[Inky]

We did 6 of the houses on Halloween last year without express pass so not too bad, thoroughly enjoyed it and the scare zones were excellent, we liked the show as well, a long evening though, DD age 14 was especially tired

[spencem]

Originally Posted by Inky

We did 6 of the houses on Halloween last year without express pass so not too bad, thoroughly enjoyed it and the scare zones were excellent, we liked the show as well, a long evening though, DD age 14 was especially tired

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It certainly is a long night.

[Excitedx4]

HHN looks amazing as an avid horror lover I’d definitely enjoy it, however young child won’t permit but definitely in the future! I agree with you Epcot is certainly my least favourite park too! X

[spencem]

Originally Posted by Excitedx4

HHN looks amazing as an avid horror lover I’d definitely enjoy it, however young child won’t permit but definitely in the future! I agree with you Epcot is certainly my least favourite park too! X

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HHN is amazing, but certainly not for young kids.