Halloween Horror Nights 2008 – Reflections of Fear Trip Review

Here is a review of Halloween Horror Nights, courtesy of my son. Better late than never!

Well, my girlfriend and I decided to go to HHN this year once again to get scared out of our minds. I have gone to HHN for the past number of years and this was my girlfriend’s 2nd year going.  HHN once again returned to its roots at Universal Studios.

The title this year is Reflections of Fear/Bloody Mary, which is a good thing, because they have tried to revive past icons the past few years and it has been a mediocre attempt at best. This year HHN brings us 8 haunted houses and 8 scare zones, making it the largest HHN yet.

We decided to do the Islands of Adventure upgrade for $15 a ticket, which allowed us to visit IoA for 3 hours before HHN started, which was a nice little bang for our buck upgrade. Anyway, when we entered HHN at 7:00pm, my girlfriend was bombarded by scareactors right at the entrance. I believe 3 of them got her, one right after another. Poor girl, I was busy chuckling, and she was so scared that she cried. It’s no lie folks; Universal has truly raised the bar in the scare factor this year. It really is quite intense this year.

Unfortunately the lines were insane the night we went, and we didn’t buy the additional express pass. So we were only able to go through 2 of the 8 houses; Interstellar Terror and Creatures. Interstellar Terror was a really great scare. Creatures, on the other hand was lame at best. I walked into the house expecting to be scared by weird things with tentacles, but I guess they were not on our planet the night we went, because the house was littered with deranged hillbillies. No creatures, whatsoever. One of the hillbillies was shouting “Shake and Bake” at the top of his lungs. It didn’t scare me; I just thought it was funny and strange.

Terror was a good house, filled with crazed lunatics who supposedly went insane from an artifact they brought back from space.

We wanted to go into the Body Collectors house, as I experienced the original a few years back and is in my opinion the best house in HHN history. There just wasn’t enough time, however.

Express Pass is mandatory, unless you only want to go through around 2 or 3 houses. The lines are average of 75 minutes and above.

We saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show Tribute, which to me was just strange, as I don’t particularly care for the movie, but if you’re a Rocky freak, then it’s definitely a show for you.

Overall, even though we didn’t see a lot of the houses, it was still a good experience. It’s much better than last year. The themes are great. Oh, on a side note. The Icon House, Reflections of Fear, had a 120-minute wait time, and the line itself was a sight to see. It was like 6-8 interweaving lines that each went about 100 yards down in length.

Keys to success at HHN: Plan your night – know what houses you want to see and which ones you can skip. Express Pass – just get it. Park Map – will save you time when trying to find a specific attraction/house.