Some Quick Thoughts on HHN 2025

Halloween Horror Nights is one of my favorite events at any theme park. It is a place I go several times per year and typically get to go through all of the houses more than once. I have loved most of the additions of this year but the IP lineup isn’t really for me this year but I have enjoyed all of the houses I have been in. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to do all of them this year, but I have done all except Terrifier and Jason Universe. Here are some quick thoughts over the house lineup this year that I have done.

The first one I want to talk about is Five Nights at Freddys. This house is consistently the longest line in the event and has built hype up due to this. I have seen multiple times on social media that this house reaches capacity during Stay and Scream and maintains over a 100-minute wait. This IP was the one I was most excited for. Followed closely by Fallout as I just recently watched the show it was based on and loved it. I am sad to say that both of these houses are mediocre. Five Nights at Freddys just doesn’t have the energy that all the others have. The animatronics do look fantastic, but it isn’t my favorite. This feels like it could be a year long Horror Nights house that looks incredible but isn’t very scary.

Fallout was another IP that I was extremely excited for. So much so that this was the first house I went into during my first stay and scream. It was also the longest wait of that stay and scream at about 40 minutes just to become a five-minute wait immediately after we were done. Unfortunately, it was very mediocre and not very scary. There were some cool moments, I will say that much. When I say mediocre, I mean mediocre for Horror Nights standards. It just doesn’t quite measure up to the best ones of the year.

Wyatt Sicks is an IP that I just didn’t have any interest in. I haven’t seen the WWE since 2008, so I had no idea who these people were. I ended up liking the house fine enough, but I took it in as an original.

The other two main houses are Terrifier and Jason Universe which I haven’t been in… Yet.

My favorite houses have been the originals this year. There are two really good ones this year that rise above the rest rather easily. But lets start with the others. I have a really hard time ranking them with how similar they are in my head. They aren’t as good as the best originals in the past, but they fill the lineup. They typically have the smaller waits.

Hatchet and Chains Demon Bounty Hunters was a house I was excited for but was let down again. I loved the idea of original characters back at HHN, but these characters didn’t really pull me in. This should’ve been a small section of Slaughter Sinema over its own standalone house.

Dolls Play Dead was a fun house, you shrink down to the size of a doll and you travel through a worse version of Sid from Toy Story’s dollhouse. This had some fun scares to it and one that I would like another run through of it. I missed out on several of the scares. Just how it is sometimes.

Graves of Flesh was the best run I have had in an HHN house in a long time. I felt like everywhere I turned around there was a scare. I also liked the story of going further and further into the grave. The front façade was fun to see and I really enjoyed this house. It was a classic haunted house.

Then there were two. These are easier to rank as I think the best one is clearly the best.

Galkin Monsters of the North was a beautiful house. I loved all of the details, all of the monsters we went through and how cold the house was. I really want to go through more run-throughs of this one but even after one run-through I knew that this one was much better than its Fallout neighbor. A really fun house that deserves multiple walkthroughs and should be near the top of the list of original houses in the last few years.

El Artista is the best house of the year and I don’t think it’s close. Walking up to the house is beautiful and the different show scenes are incredible. It has some great misdirection scares and some statue scares with one being fake and one being real. Also, a flying scareactor as well. This house has a little bit of everything tied together by a creepy story of a tortured artist that finally meets his end at the end of the house in a rather gruesome way. This house is the best and there would have to be a Herculean effort to drop this one any further. This was a good HHN year. I have enjoyed all of the houses, and I still haven’t seen two of the better Ips on the year.

The only issue with the HHN this year is the tribute store. I have loved all of the tribute stores that Universal has made. I loved the Jurassic Park one especially so there is a high bar for these stores. This one attached to the Mummy’s gift shop is a little underwhelming.

Overall, it is a great year for HHN, and I am hoping they continue this momentum for several more years. I am also hoping for a few IP houses that I adore. A big issue when it comes to that is that I don’t like scary movies.