Halloween Horror Nights 34 (UOR) - Speculation & Rumors

[Lucky Planet]

Orlando had a version of it in 2007.

We got a sequel house for THE THING in 2007 & a prequel house in 2011... one for the 1982 film will happen at some point I'm sure

Army of Darkness had a scene in 2009's Silver Screams house under the title of Medieval Dead. And the "Lights Camera Hacktion" SZ was supposed to be an AOD SZ, but due to licensing issues it was changed. BUT the name of the Director in that SZ was "Mas Imiar" which is Sam Raimi backwards.

For The Thing: They did? Twice?

For Army of Darkness: Rights are complicated. They thought they could use it in 2009 for a scene in Silver Screams, turns out they couldn't. They had to hastily reframe the scene, basing it on a "fictional movie" called "Medieval Evil." It still had an Ash lookalike with the chainsaw and the pit deadite.

I was wondering about a proper and faithful house following the carpenter movie. with the events and characters of the movie.
I'm just shocked that they have repeated Halloween, Leatherface, with multiple houses, they repeated American werewolf twice,
but we never really got a house based on the carpenter the thing movie. I still want it .
they even had the creatures already to reuse.

 

[rageofthegods]

The thing (heh) is that The Thing isn't actually that big a property. The 50s movie was a small-time cult classic and the Carpenter movie was an infamous flop (for context, Poltergeist came out the same year and made more the *five times* as much at the box office).

Combine that with how expensive the effects are, it's just not a very easy property to do for the amount of attention you'll get.

Of course, that's less of a problem when you consider the huge budget that the event gets now, where even an original like Monstruos can get huge, custom-built animatronics.

 

[Clive]

I was wondering about a proper and faithful house following the carpenter movie. with the events and characters of the movie.
I'm just shocked that they have repeated Halloween, Leatherface, with multiple houses, they repeated American werewolf twice,
but we never really got a house based on the carpenter the thing movie. I still want it .
they even had the creatures already to reuse.

The reason they haven't done it is because it's expensive. It would require a bunch of unique puppetry and/or animated characters. With American Werewolf in London, they can at least build multiple identical werewolf puppets (which have since been reskinned and reused in other houses).

They also don't have The Thing creatures ready to reuse - the 2007 creatures are no doubt long gone, and the 2011 costumes, if they still exist, aren't seen in the original film.

 

[RedRightDan]

Yeah new line cinema and Warner Bros owns it now, because of evil dead rise. And ghost house productions is Sam Rami’s company.

I don't believe that's 100% correct.

The license for Army of Darkness is separate from the rest of the Evil Dead franchise.

Those rights holders had a big rift from Rami and the rest of the gang. Bruce actually refuses to sign any of the Army of Darkness comics at his appearances because of this.

 

[cdogsumo]

Me still waiting on an original Phantasm houses.. as long as we are all wishing..

Until they find a way to make animatronic silver balls flying through the air and not hitting guests, I think we will still be waiting

For a while there it seemed like they were making a point to include a more obscure or less obvious choice from the 80s (AWIL, Shining, Poltergeist, Creepshow, KKFOS, Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice), but maybe the well has dried up on that one.

Would love to see a Re-Animator house come to pass, but I have no idea where the rights are. I also think to some extent the 80s obsession of the 2010’s has subsided—maybe they can start mining some more obscure 90’s properties?

 

[EAS]

Me still waiting on an original Phantasm houses.. as long as we are all wishing..

A Phantasm house would be such a dream come true

 

[TheCodeMan95]

Yeah, whenever someone asks for The Thing to come I think they're clearly referring to Carpenter's movie lol

It feels like one of those things that someone like Aiello or Murdy could push for if they really wanted to do it badly enough - so it may honestly not be a white whale for them.

(Of course that requires all parties to play ball)

 

[Tereglith]

The thing (heh) is that The Thing isn't actually that big a property. The 50s movie was a small-time cult classic and the Carpenter movie was an infamous flop (for context, Poltergeist came out the same year and made more the *five times* as much at the box office).

Combine that with how expensive the effects are, it's just not a very easy property to do for the amount of attention you'll get.

Of course, that's less of a problem when you consider the huge budget that the event gets now, where even an original like Monstruos can get huge, custom-built animatronics.

The Thing flopped at the time, that's true, but it has had a huge reclamation among horror fans and cinephiles alike for the last ~30 years. It ranked in the top half of the dang Sight & Sound poll in 2022 (higher than Lawrence of Arabia!). Its search traffic averages higher than Poltergeist's most of the time, including the period when Poltergeist had a house at HHN in 2018. And it's far higher than other retro titles that have gotten houses like KKFOS and AWIL were when they got picked.

It very clearly has its place in the horror pantheon and I'd love to see them tackle it since, as you say, they clearly have the budget now.

 

[Brian G.]

Do not post or discuss leaks. They will be deleted and warnings will be given.

 

[CoryLevy91]

The Thing wouldn't be a huge headline type attraction but it would fit very, very nicely as a third or fourth tier (as in super popular IPs first and second) house for truer horror heads.

Until they find a way to make animatronic silver balls flying through the air and not hitting guests, I think we will still be waiting

You turn down another corner to yet another pristine white marbled corridor in the endless mausoleum to see the man himself, The Tall Man that is, at the very end of the hallway, one arm raised as a trio of deadly, silver spheres come whizzing towards you. However, just before they can slice and dice through you, a sound cue diverts them to your right. You follow the sound to the right to find a mausoleum patron on the wrong end of the pitch, one ball lodged into his left knee, one ball digging through his stomach and the third drilling into his temple. Blood (SEE: red water) comes spritzing out the top most ball in misty streams as you hurry past him.

Easy peasy.

 

[Staggz]

Hey y'all, been lurking quite a long time and decided today just to join in and chat a bit, because why not?

A lot of rumors, some I like, some I'm iffy on.

• IPs this year seem really strong. Even the things I'm not at all a fan of (Terrifier and WWE) sound pretty dang great. I never liked Terrifier as a film series, and have tried to watch them to get some sort of entertainment, and I just straight up don't get the appeal. It's not realistic enough to be pure gross out and wild, and it's not over the top enough to be funny like a really crazy dark humor. It's somewhere in-between, and I just couldn't dig it. THAT being said... as a house? I really think if it comes to the event, it could be very gory and heck potentially pretty scary if done right. WWE I don't know anything about but characters seem interesting enough that as long as the house doesn't have like.... actual wrestling things in it like a wrestling ring, I think it'll be pretty good. Disappointed to see no rumored Universal Monsters house, but if we're getting Fallout, I'll take it. First time we're doing both coasts, and it's almost 100% just simply due to Fallout. The amount of video game to movie/show adaptions that are now being made into houses REALLY gives me hope that we'll eventually see BioShock once it comes to Netflix in the years to come. Rumors of a remake of the original being announced in August, and of course that freshens the audience up and preps them for the movie so... fingers crossed.
• FF+ Express going away.... This is the one I'm iffy about. I'm not a local, used to do some work for the mouse but since moved on and live about 6 1/2 hours away. My wife and I travel to HHN UO for about 2-3 weeks for our anniversary in September every year, and then we'll go for about 8 additional nights in October. We make a big deal out of Halloween around here, and we usually get FF+ with Express, and go all out for HHN. We stay on property, eat/drink every time we go to the park, don't hold back on getting merch (heck on top of that, our house has a room filled with actual props, signage, costume pieces, etc. from the event). In every sense of the word, we are indeed die-hard fans of the event. With that being said, if Express doesn't return to multinight tickets, it's going to severely change our gameplan. I love the event, and still will tell you all hands down that it's the best event of the year period. However, I'm not going to spend more than I spent last year on tickets, and not get an equal experience to what I've been getting in the years past, so there's just absolutely no way I'm getting express for every night I'm there, it's absolutely a waste of money. Which brings me to my next point.... we're just simply not going to go as much as we did last year or in the previous years. Like yeah, of course we're going to go, but I'm not going to spend money on tickets that I have to buy individual express for every night and stay on property and do all that and be left comparing it to years before when it was not only much cheaper, but a better experience than using a separate express pass every night. And I can't imagine many locals or other die-hard fans will go and buy express every night. I have no idea what the financial results were from last year from having the express tickets very limited for multiday passes.... but if I were to guess, last year they probably made more than they did the year before. And that makes sense because people didn't expect it to happen and so they already had trips planned with hotels, airfare, etc. so they panic bought express for EVERY night they are there. This year, more than likely the same thing will happen, a panic buy due to people not expecting FF+ Express to be gone, resulting in Universal getting a financial benefit.... but next year, I doubt it. People will be prepared, and won't plan as long of trips so as to save money, do something else, etc. Thankfully, I've been reading the rumors and we planned out well enough in advance to instead have our anniversary for two weeks in UO (aiming for ROF, since we are going in September) only buy express for maybe 1-2 nights because... lines are honestly fine if we have some drinks and food and chill (and we RARELY want to do all 10 houses every night even with express), visiting Hollywood's HHN in October, Disneyland as well probably Oogie Boogie Bash, and then taking a little flight from there to Vegas to do their spooky stuff and of course Horror Unleashed. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't see this being financially beneficial to Universal in the longrun other than this year in particular, as it will more than likely decrease next year as people are prepared for no more express with multinight tickets.

Anyway, that's all I got. Sorry, I know that's a dang essay I just wrote, but I'm wordy.

 

[Mashmingingmasher77]

Hey y'all, been lurking quite a long time and decided today just to join in and chat a bit, because why not?

A lot of rumors, some I like, some I'm iffy on.

• IPs this year seem really strong. Even the things I'm not at all a fan of (Terrifier and WWE) sound pretty dang great. I never liked Terrifier as a film series, and have tried to watch them to get some sort of entertainment, and I just straight up don't get the appeal. It's not realistic enough to be pure gross out and wild, and it's not over the top enough to be funny like a really crazy dark humor. It's somewhere in-between, and I just couldn't dig it. THAT being said... as a house? I really think if it comes to the event, it could be very gory and heck potentially pretty scary if done right. WWE I don't know anything about but characters seem interesting enough that as long as the house doesn't have like.... actual wrestling things in it like a wrestling ring, I think it'll be pretty good. Disappointed to see no rumored Universal Monsters house, but if we're getting Fallout, I'll take it. First time we're doing both coasts, and it's almost 100% just simply due to Fallout. The amount of video game to movie/show adaptions that are now being made into houses REALLY gives me hope that we'll eventually see BioShock once it comes to Netflix in the years to come. Rumors of a remake of the original being announced in August, and of course that freshens the audience up and preps them for the movie so... fingers crossed.
• FF+ Express going away.... This is the one I'm iffy about. I'm not a local, used to do some work for the mouse but since moved on and live about 6 1/2 hours away. My wife and I travel to HHN UO for about 2-3 weeks for our anniversary in September every year, and then we'll go for about 8 additional nights in October. We make a big deal out of Halloween around here, and we usually get FF+ with Express, and go all out for HHN. We stay on property, eat/drink every time we go to the park, don't hold back on getting merch (heck on top of that, our house has a room filled with actual props, signage, costume pieces, etc. from the event). In every sense of the word, we are indeed die-hard fans of the event. With that being said, if Express doesn't return to multinight tickets, it's going to severely change our gameplan. I love the event, and still will tell you all hands down that it's the best event of the year period. However, I'm not going to spend more than I spent last year on tickets, and not get an equal experience to what I've been getting in the years past, so there's just absolutely no way I'm getting express for every night I'm there, it's absolutely a waste of money. Which brings me to my next point.... we're just simply not going to go as much as we did last year or in the previous years. Like yeah, of course we're going to go, but I'm not going to spend money on tickets that I have to buy individual express for every night and stay on property and do all that and be left comparing it to years before when it was not only much cheaper, but a better experience than using a separate express pass every night. And I can't imagine many locals or other die-hard fans will go and buy express every night. I have no idea what the financial results were from last year from having the express tickets very limited for multiday passes.... but if I were to guess, last year they probably made more than they did the year before. And that makes sense because people didn't expect it to happen and so they already had trips planned with hotels, airfare, etc. so they panic bought express for EVERY night they are there. This year, more than likely the same thing will happen, a panic buy due to people not expecting FF+ Express to be gone, resulting in Universal getting a financial benefit.... but next year, I doubt it. People will be prepared, and won't plan as long of trips so as to save money, do something else, etc. Thankfully, I've been reading the rumors and we planned out well enough in advance to instead have our anniversary for two weeks in UO (aiming for ROF, since we are going in September) only buy express for maybe 1-2 nights because... lines are honestly fine if we have some drinks and food and chill (and we RARELY want to do all 10 houses every night even with express), visiting Hollywood's HHN in October, Disneyland as well probably Oogie Boogie Bash, and then taking a little flight from there to Vegas to do their spooky stuff and of course Horror Unleashed. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't see this being financially beneficial to Universal in the longrun other than this year in particular, as it will more than likely decrease next year as people are prepared for no more express with multinight tickets.

Anyway, that's all I got. Sorry, I know that's a dang essay I just wrote, but I'm wordy.

Ooof. I like my forum posts like my video game conversations. Short and sweet or I hit the X button to get through it.

 

[Staggz]

Ooof. I like my forum posts like my video game conversations. Short and sweet or I hit the X button to get through it.

I absolutely HATE the accuracy of this, because I'm the complete opposite and want to spend hours in video game conversations and learn every single bit I can and have like an hour long conversation.

I guess I've discovered, you can learn a lot from someone from their video game conversations. More you know hahaha.

 

[Mashmingingmasher77]

I absolutely HATE the accuracy of this, because I'm the complete opposite and want to spend hours in video game conversations and learn every single bit I can and have like an hour long conversation.

I guess I've discovered, you can learn a lot from someone from their video game conversations. More you know hahaha.

Staggz let’s never meet in person. We can chat on here though lol

 

[Returning-The-Reaction]

Forgive me, and feel free to skip on past this post as it's not very HHN-centric...

Just want to wrap up my thoughts on non-wrestling fans' awareness of all-time popular professional wrestlers in 2025.
I think it'd break down to something like:

Spoiler

Tier 1 = Stone Cold, John Cena, Hogan, The Rock
Tier 2 = Dave Bautista, Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, The Undertaker
Tier 3 = Andre the Giant, Sasha Banks, Ric Flair, Rey Mysterio, Randy Orton, Roddy Piper, CM Punk, Macho Man, Triple H
Tier 4 = a huge group - but, I think Bray Wyatt would fit in this tier.

*each tier is listed alphabetically. The specific order is obviously debatable. Also, the list doesn't reflect the relevancy of fitting into a HHN environment.

Anyway, back to your regularly-scheduled HHN speculation.

 

[Clive]

Forgive me, and feel free to skip on past this post as it's not very HHN-centric...

Just want to wrap up my thoughts on non-wrestling fans' awareness of all-time popular professional wrestlers in 2025.
I think it'd break down to something like:

Spoiler

Tier 1 = Stone Cold, John Cena, Hogan, The Rock
Tier 2 = Dave Bautista, Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, The Undertaker
Tier 3 = Andre the Giant, Sasha Banks, Ric Flair, Rey Mysterio, Randy Orton, Roddy Piper, CM Punk, Macho Man, Triple H
Tier 4 = a huge group - but, I think Bray Wyatt would fit in this tier.

*each tier is listed alphabetically. The specific order is obviously debatable. Also, the list doesn't reflect the relevancy of fitting into a HHN environment.

Anyway, back to your regularly-scheduled HHN speculation.

Anecdotal evidence, obviously, but this checks out based on my personal knowledge!

 

[Casper Gutman]

Forgive me, and feel free to skip on past this post as it's not very HHN-centric...

Just want to wrap up my thoughts on non-wrestling fans' awareness of all-time popular professional wrestlers in 2025.
I think it'd break down to something like:

Spoiler

Tier 1 = Stone Cold, John Cena, Hogan, The Rock
Tier 2 = Dave Bautista, Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, The Undertaker
Tier 3 = Andre the Giant, Sasha Banks, Ric Flair, Rey Mysterio, Randy Orton, Roddy Piper, CM Punk, Macho Man, Triple H
Tier 4 = a huge group - but, I think Bray Wyatt would fit in this tier.

*each tier is listed alphabetically. The specific order is obviously debatable. Also, the list doesn't reflect the relevancy of fitting into a HHN environment.

Anyway, back to your regularly-scheduled HHN speculation.

Dave Bautista and Andre probably belong in tier 1 - both have had big parts in beloved movies, Bautista continues to be a major actor, and Andre’s image is iconic. Roddy Piper probably belongs in tier 2 for They Live. I’d personally swap Lesnar and Macho Man. One you didn’t list - GI Joe probably gets Sgt Slaughter into tier 2.

Interesting project.

 

[TheCodeMan95]

I'd honestly say Undertaker is probably tier 1 lol

Back to the wristbands conversation - as much as I love the idea, I'm curious how they'll prevent people from just hoarding around outside of house portals waiting for them to open. I feel like the only way to prevent this is to open up the lines as soon as they start handing out the wristbands (or soon after)

 

[Rikku]

Just because I am really curious about Premium Scream night this year and the crowds of it, according to thrill data it looks like the ticket cap is 7500 and about 50% has been sold. Which I believe is certainly tracking a lot better than last year and I know there is still plenty of time for it to sell but makes me think it will probably take up close to the date to sell the rest and may not even be a total sell out again this year. Like I think most of those who had fomo from last year probably purchased already.

 

[FlattestMatt]

So is stay and scream only accessible through a scream early ticket this year? Or do you get it for free by having a day park ticket and a HHN ticket?