The HHN 2025 Experience

The HHN Experience

Halloween Horror Nights is one of my favorite events of the year. It is a great opportunity to get together with friends and go enjoy a high energy event. Up until 2018, I didn’t want any part of it, and even that night was a terrible experience. 2019 was one of my peak years, and I have been back every year after COVID for the last four years. I feel like I am getting a much better grasp on what makes a good scare zone, what makes a good house, and if the event is a strong year or not. I have been blessed enough to be able to go multiple times per year as well. Do all of the houses multiple times, and really get a good feel for the year.

2025 was not one of those years that I do all of the houses multiple times over. There were multiple factors here. I was out of town, every weekend of September, I lost my guest pass early in Late August and it wasn’t until mid-September when I got it replaced. The lines would also get crazy during the evening, and I just couldn’t take advantage of Stay and Scream very often. I also turned away closing the park down multiple times, because, well… I’m old. We also didn’t get our usual staycation for HHN where we get a hotel on property, and open it up and shut it down. Plenty of factors that went into this event being the least productive in the last few years.

Food & Beverage

I still think about the HellFire Club from two years ago, it was the best food item to come out of Universal, ever. Similarly to my house experience being light this year, I wasn’t able to try much of the food. I did try one of the specialty drinks, but it was forgettable. Tasty but forgettable.

Scarezones

They added quite a few details for this year. One of the most popular additions, that I guess I will add into the scarezone portion is a wandering Art the Clown. This was extremely popular on social media, and extremely popular in the parks as he typically had several people following him wherever he went. The club portion in San Francisco was an odd addition. It reminds me of the event at Seaworld where they had a club during the first year that I went. With the dancers on platforms in masks, and a DJ. It tended to stuff the walkways, and I would rather take the billboard for Blumhouse like it was last year. I think a club section at HHN is a fun idea but maybe place it on a walkway that isn’t a main section. The section of New York wasn’t my favorite either. This one is usually home to my favorite scarezone, it is a long portion of street and is typically full of stages, props, and fun actors popping left and right. I just didn’t enjoy it as much this year.

Tribute Store

This was one of my main gripes from the event. I couldn’t believe how disappointing the store was this year. This store is usually one of my favorite pieces of the event and it had moved from its original spot to an area with less room and clearly less thought was put into it. I hope they move the store back to the long store on Hollywood across the street from Bourne, or beside the Mummy across the street from the Ghostbusters Fire station.

The Queues

Waiting in line for most of your event time is a certainty if you don’t purchase express, or a VIP tour. With limited space available due to backstage areas, they really try their best to maximize the footprint and make these queues less painful. One of the largest issues with the event is of course, the wait time, because psychologically the queues feel longer because all of the House queues are switchbacks. Giant human corrals going back and forth, back and forth. For this year’s event there were four queues with outdoor portions. Five Nights at Freddy’s, Wyatt Sicks, Graves of Flesh, and the Jason Universe. Utilizing the soundstages and the Fast and Furious queue to have huge indoor sections of queue. The air conditioning helped you get through the giant room of switchbacks. Including these interior additions, there were also a couple of houses with covered waits. Fallout and Galkin were in the large tents in the back and were both underneath a huge covered area. It was still hot under the cover but at least it was protected from the rain. The last four houses like Hatchet and Chains, Terrorfier, Dolls Play Dead, and El Artista, are uncovered for a majority of the wait. With the rain in September being heavy and sporadic, I am glad they made this change with almost all of them being under cover for a majority of the wait.

Houses

The main event, the reason why you pay $100 for your ticket, and maybe even more for express and VIP tour options. There was a strong list of IP and original houses that held their own for this year. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do Jason or Terrorfier which were two strong options for the year, but I just couldn’t hit them at the right time. El Artista and Galkin were my two favorite houses from the year. They were two extremely strong original houses that I loved to go through. They each had great set design and creative scares. My favorite house of the two was El Artista as it was my favorite house in the entire event. Graves of Flesh and Dolls were my next two favorite in the original houses. The Dolls lets play dead had a very fun premise, and traveled throughout a creative story where the innocent dollhouse turned into a horror film. Graves of Flesh was a classic haunted house premise that I ended up loving. Hatchet and Chains was the last original of this year and just not quite my favorite house. It was still good but not something I was interested in. The IP houses had some winners and losers. I loved Wyatt Sicks, I thought it was great. I basically went into it like an original, as I hadn’t watched WWE in years but wow it exceeded my expectations. I thought it was really fun, and had some great scares in the mix. I only was able to go through this house once, but it left an impact on me. The other two IP houses were Five Nights at Freddys and Fallout. Two houses that were just okay in my eyes. The wait time for Five Nights at Freddys would routinely be the highest in the event and this was a disappointing house for me. I don’t think it deserved the line that it got. I was most excited for Fallout and Five Nights at Freddys so naturally those didn’t quite reach my expectations. I had just finished Fallout on streaming and I couldn’t wait to go into the house to check it out. Both of those IPs I watched just for the HHN involvement and I really liked the Fallout show.

Overall, it was a solid year of houses and fun extras. I hope they continue building on this and bringing more to the event. I will continue to go to this event, and I hope next year Stranger Things 5 comes to the event, and maybe even the Black Phone Two.