Fear comes to life on select nights at Universal Studios Florida in Universal Orlando Resort until November 4.
This year's event packs in an incredible line-up of 10 haunted houses, 5 scare zones, a brand new live show and more.
We ventured into the fog on September 28 for a night of terror.
Our experience of Universal Orlando’s 2023 Halloween Horror Nights began with our arrival into the park via the Hogwarts Express to Kings Cross, following a day exploring Universal's Islands of Adventure.
Entering the park this way allowed us straightforward access into one of the ‘Stay & Scream’ areas and gave us plenty of time to go and enjoy a great meal and drinks at Finnegan's Bar. Whilst enjoying our refreshments the park made a rapid transition from daytime operations into evening – with the streets filling with smoke and other surprises.
Feeling suitably refreshed and with the excitement building for what awaited, we were delighted to be informed that the event had started ahead of schedule and with this we promptly made our way to the first house.
With express passes in hand our plan of attack was to start with the house which turned out to be the night’s most popular (with a queue peaking at 100 minutes) and work around the park in an anti-clockwise direction. Our order was as follows:
Stranger Things 4
Season 4 of Netflix’s original series “Stranger Things” is brought to life in a terrifying all-new haunted house that transports guests to Hawkins, Indiana where they will be immersed in the eerie Upside Down for a heart-pounding experience while traveling through iconic scenes. Guests will confront their deepest fears and come face to face with otherworldly creatures like demobats, and even Vecna himself within his blood-red Mind Lair in a race against the clock to escape and save mankind from his deadly curse.
The Exorcist: Believer
Inspired by Universal Pictures’ terrifying new horror film from Blumhouse and Morgan Creek Entertainment (in theaters Friday, October 13), “The Exorcist: Believer” haunted house will transport guests to a bustling street market in Haiti, where an innocent purchase of a strange folk doll with three eyes leads to the opening of a demonic portal, the awakening of sinister spirits and the subsequent disappearance of two 12-year-old girls in the U.S. The girls are found three days later with no memory of what happened to them. After the girls begin to exhibit unsettling behavior, it soon becomes clear that only an exorcism can save them – and everyone who comes in contact with them, including unwitting guests, is suddenly at risk of losing their souls.
Dueling Dragons: Choose Thy Fate
The great wizard Merlyn has been transformed into the Enchanted Oak, leaving a power vacuum. When two powerful warlocks invade his castle to steal his spell book, they are turned into dragons of fire and ice. Now guests are caught in the middle of their battle and are forced to choose a path and a victor. But beware, one never knows who will win in “Dueling Dragons: Choose Thy Fate.”
YETI: Campground Kills
In a 1950s campground, a group of towering, terrifying yetis are running rampant, ripping apart campers, rangers and anyone else who gets in their way. In “YETI: Campground Kills,” guests must flee through the campground into cabins, a bait shack and even the outhouse in hopes of making it to the ranger tower before it’s too late.
Bloodmoon: Dark Offerings
Colonial-era villagers begin to worship the moon obsessively. When the blood moon rises at their fall festival, they take it as a sign that they must hunt down any non-followers within their village. Guests will need to try not to become part of the sacrifice as they gather body parts to form a grisly offering in “Bloodmoon: Dark Offerings.”
At this point in the night we took our first opportunity for a much needed breather and sampled some of the ghoulishly themed special Halloween Horror Nights cocktails. There are a large number of eateries located around the park with a good selection of haunted treats as well as alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks including cocktails which were delicious. We also opted to purchase the souvenir skull shaped glasses which not only light up, but also provide discounted refills throughout the remainder of your stay. This first break came in at around 9.30pm and the 2023 Halloween Horror Nights glasses themselves were unavailable parkwide already. If these are of particular interest we recommend heading to one of the bars early to avoid any disappointment.
Following our short break and after soaking up some more of the atmosphere, we headed for our next batch of mazes which were;
Universal Monsters: Unmasked
The dank Catacombs of Paris house a much darker secret sixty feet beneath the bustling streets, as the all-new haunted house “Universal Monsters: Unmasked” takes guests down into the infamous burial grounds where every corner and crevice overflows with millions of skeletal remains and even more sinister secrets. Deep within the Catacombs, Universal’s most notorious creatures – The Phantom of the Opera, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dr. Jekyll and his deranged alternate personality Mr. Hyde, and Dr. Jack Griffin, aka The Invisible Man – lie in wait as they bide their time and seek vengeance against guests after the opening of the Catacombs to public visitation. These desperate and dangerous fiends have become filled with a rage toward guests navigating the twisted tunnels of their underground labyrinth home.
The Last of Us
For the first time ever, Naughty Dog and PlayStation’s award-winning post-pandemic video game “The Last of Us” comes to life in an all-new haunted house that propels guests into an obstacle course of carnage and mayhem as they join a brutal journey in a world overtaken by a fungal virus that turns humans into various forms of a new threat known as the Infected. Guests will find themselves navigating iconic locations from the video game in a desperate attempt to escape and survive.
The Darkest Deal
In the Mississippi Delta, blues musician Pinestraw Spruce meets at a crossroads with a diabolical entity known as The Collector to make a deal: his soul for musical glory. Guests will witness his big break performing for a crowd before The Collector drags him to Hades with the other musicians who learned the terrible price of fame in “The Darkest Deal.”
Dr. Oddfellow: Twisted Origins
In the 1930s Dust Bowl era, guests won’t be able to resist going inside Dr. Oddfellow’s menacing menagerie of twisted oddities where they’ll encounter grotesquely distorted animals and freakish fiends. In “Dr. Oddfellow: Twisted Origins,” the price to enter this creepy caravan is steep as souls feed his immortal power.
Nightmare Fuel Revenge Dream
With another 4 mazes under our belts it was time to take in the event’s show and our first impressions were that we couldn’t believe how popular it was! We arrived at the stadium around 15 minutes before show start time and there were still a huge number of people waiting to head in. Full credit to the Universal staff however, as the stadium was filled to capacity promptly and the show started bang on time.
Nightmare Fuel Revenge Dream is simply incredible and is a must do part of Halloween Horror Nights in our opinion. From start to finish the show had us on the edge of our seats with spectacular stunts, illusions, dancing and pyrotechnics. The audience were going wild for the show as were we and it fits in perfectly with the party atmosphere that Halloween Horror Nights often has.
Time for another break! This time we headed over to one of the lakeside bars to top up our spooky cocktails and were joined by a rather sinister character from The Purge film series, waving her baseball bat at guests for photos. We remarked how enjoyable the party atmosphere was at the park and it was really pleasing to hear actual themed horror music being played instead of the heavy rock which features so heavily at these kind of events now.
Following our break, we headed over to Diagon Alley in hope to go and meet some Harry Potter themed frights with the Death Eater Encounter, however we were slightly disappointed to learn that this experience actually finished at 11.30pm, despite the fact the event was scheduled to run until 2am. This ended up as being a little bit of a theme, with the Transformers: The Ride also being closed early despite being listed on the available attractions for the event. Granted this may have been technical issues however there appeared to be no attempt to resolve this with the shutters firmly down.
With the time just passing midnight at this point it was time for us to experience our last house of the night.
Chucky: Ultimate Kill Count
Inspired by the hit USA & SYFY series and cult classic films, “Chucky: Ultimate Kill Count” casts this killer doll as the star of his very own haunted house for the first time. A true sadistic killer, Chucky has been mired in the agony of disrespect he feels from his peers at not being taken seriously. Thus begins his quest to turn his haunted house into a living slaughterhouse by killing every person who enters.
In truth we found this particular house to be the weakest and it was noted that there appeared to be a number of animatronics that weren’t working as we walked the corridors. Whether it was supposed to be there or not, there was also a huge ‘Chucky’ head on the floor near one of the exit doors which appeared to have fallen from a larger set.
Other than this blip towards the end of the attraction, it has to be said that the houses for the 2023 Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights are incredible. Granted that the houses are very much walk through, with one constant stream of guests, however, the actors do a great job at ensuring that each visitor receives an appropriate amount of attention for each visit. The sets, makeup and themes are particularly strong this year and that coupled with the five scare zones and live show makes the event a must visit for any Halloween fan.
The scare zones themselves all had a unique theme and feel and were packed full with actors. We absolutely loved the way that the actors interacted with guests and even found time to pose especially for the cameras.We finished our 2023 experience by getting on a couple of the rides, being Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride and Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit, however neither of these would have been possible without the use of our express passes for the event.
Although we very much ‘completed’ everything, with time for two drinks breaks, we still left the park a little after 1.30am in the morning and the park itself felt much quieter than at peak. Our advice here would be that if visiting the event as a one off, it is vital that express passes are purchased to ensure that you can experience the full line-up. For those that can visit more than once, we would recommend saving the money and splitting the event into two visits.
