Howl-O-Scream 2025 (SWO)

[Magic1636]

how many actors did you feel that the houses had?

and was the park crowded? I know that you said that they were pulsing the houses,but how crowded was it?

Really hard to say how staffed the house was. We would go through multiple rooms and only come across one actor. It was just a lot of dead space. The park was relatively empty there would be plenty space around as we were going through the park.

 

[Lucky Planet]

Really hard to say how staffed the house was. We would go through multiple rooms and only come across one actor. It was just a lot of dead space. The park was relatively empty there would be plenty space around as we were going through the park.

jeez.... sounds like a weird situation, thank you I really appreciate your review.

 

[Tereglith]

Planned a group trip for next Friday with my friends because the AP bulk rate was too good to pass up (I can't talk anyone into paying $90 for HHN, but $32 for HOS is doable). I, uh, hope they're running things better by then!

 

[GAcoaster]

It seems to be hit or miss on the HOS experience-- some people go and it's great, and some show up to low staffing and chaos.

 

[Lucky Planet]

the only thing that would bother me is if it's a 90 minute wait and the house is understaffed and empty.
I wouldn't even wait 90 min whenever I went to hhn at universal even for great houses.

 

[Tereglith]

Just got back from visiting tonight, they must have stopped doing whatever they were doing with the house ops at the start of the season because the pulsing was perfectly reasonable for us, never waited longer than about 25 minutes for any house throughout the night and most runs we were on in less than 10.

I thought the houses were as good as or better than previous years at this event, with mostly strong premises (Collector's Curse is incoherent but the others all make strong setting choices, with Raveyard a particular highlight) and lots of fun interactions that you don't get with the strictly dialogue trigger scares at HHN. (Me: "Why is the alien taking a shower?" Farm guy: "even our bathrooms aren't safe!")

The IV bag SIF in the Wellness house still got to me and Raveyard was a very fun new addition. A stiltwalker at Farm 51 grabbed my shoulder? Which I think is technically not allowed but I'm fine with it. The bungee scares are always a highlight of the houses here and they were placed well and fully staffed. Lots of places that would have been dead zones in years past here were filled with Spirit Halloween tier robots, which isn't great but is way better for the overall energy than just having static scenery.

What has clearly suffered is the scare zones, which all feel sparse and understaffed compared to years past. Only the Trailer Park Tragedy one felt as alive as I had come to expect from this event, but to its credit that one was going all out with crazy guest interaction bits (at one point the scareactors were goading a guest into chugging his beer, and at another they had corralled someone into a cage and were forcing him to accept a marriage proposal??). One of the my friends was wearing a light costume with small angel wings and she did get chased down aggressively in every single zone by the end of the night, which was fun (for the rest of us if not for her). One of the stiltwalkers in the cannibal zone was going faster than I have ever seen a stiltwalker go.

So the zones weren't a total loss, but they were noticeably diminished (especially the area along the lake that used to be a campground zone but is now just a few guys in ghillie suits and then a long section of just, like, speakers playing loud toilet flushing noises? Really not sure what was going on there)

Monster Stomp remains the exact same show it has always been, beat for beat. If I hadn't been visiting with friends who had never seen it before I probably would have skipped it, it's a fun show but it's getting so stale and those bleachers are not getting any more comfortable.

 

[Cameron]

I went last night to HOS SW and unfortunately it will be a skip for next year. The houses were not good at all. In all of my years of going to Haunts I think this was the first time that I left an event utterly disappointed. First the OPS were confused and not very organized for all of the houses except The Orphanage. As stated before by others there were very few scare actors in the houses. They were not even as visually appealing as they were a few years back. The scare zones are virtually nonexistent with the presence of a few scare actors and limited theming. HOS Tampa was so much better than Sea World. Sad to see that it is not getting the same attention by the park. Positive side was crowds were pretty low.

 

[GAcoaster]

Monster Stomp remains the exact same show it has always been, beat for beat. If I hadn't been visiting with friends who had never seen it before I probably would have skipped it, it's a fun show but it's getting so stale and those bleachers are not getting any more comfortable.

Good show, but it's time for a change. I've always thought they should develop one "new" show per year and rotate it through SW/BG parks so each year they all get a "new to them" show. All the parks have the same issue with their "big show" getting stale, and it would be a cost effective way to give everyone something new.

 

[hunnylvr]

We used to go to BG one time per year before COVID. We'd ante up for a VIP private tour which gave us our own tour guide with just our group (and it was nowhere NEAR as expensive as a RIP or UTH tour). The first time we did, we had an awesome tour guide because she was terrified at everything and would scream then giggle, scream then giggle.. it was a lot of fun. We did that for about five years in a row - always requesting the same guide. Then, COVID hit, and our guide, who had been working there 20 years got laid off. That was the beginning of the end for us. While we enjoyed the change-up from HHN by going to BG (the rollercoasters are AWESOME), other things like the 1970's bathrooms (ALWAYS DIRTY), losing our guide, and the terrible food kind of took this off the list for us.

We saw that Sea World was now doing it, so this year, we thought we'd try that since tix are so cheap. We went this past Sunday. The park seemed almost empty, and we didn't wait in line for any house longer than 10 minutes. However, all 5 houses we thought were horrible. I could count on one hand the amount of actors we saw in each, but we saw a lot of Spirit Halloween type animatronics. Really?? There were four of us (including the one friend I've mentioned in other threads who is scared of everything). No one - not even perpetually scared friend - got a scare. Nothing. The houses were incoherent and poorly staffed. The few actors in there were just terrible - with the exception of a couple bungee ones. Our haunts here in Chicago blow this event away by a long shot. I wouldn't waste any more time on my precious HHN trips to go to this event again.

Awful.

 

[Lucky Planet]

We used to go to BG one time per year before COVID. We'd ante up for a VIP private tour which gave us our own tour guide with just our group (and it was nowhere NEAR as expensive as a RIP or UTH tour). The first time we did, we had an awesome tour guide because she was terrified at everything and would scream then giggle, scream then giggle.. it was a lot of fun. We did that for about five years in a row - always requesting the same guide. Then, COVID hit, and our guide, who had been working there 20 years got laid off. That was the beginning of the end for us. While we enjoyed the change-up from HHN by going to BG (the rollercoasters are AWESOME), other things like the 1970's bathrooms (ALWAYS DIRTY), losing our guide, and the terrible food kind of took this off the list for us.

We saw that Sea World was now doing it, so this year, we thought we'd try that since tix are so cheap. We went this past Sunday. The park seemed almost empty, and we didn't wait in line for any house longer than 10 minutes. However, all 5 houses we thought were horrible. I could count on one hand the amount of actors we saw in each, but we saw a lot of Spirit Halloween type animatronics. Really?? There were four of us (including the one friend I've mentioned in other threads who is scared of everything). No one - not even perpetually scared friend - got a scare. Nothing. The houses were incoherent and poorly staffed. The few actors in there were just terrible - with the exception of a couple bungee ones. Our haunts here in Chicago blow this event away by a long shot. I wouldn't waste any more time on my precious HHN trips to go to this event again.

Awful.

did you regret going? was there anything at all redeemable?

 

[Speed]

Went last week for the first time since opening year, thought I would give it another try and can't really say I would like to go back. Infinity Falls down all night (Didn't really care to ride it but that's already 25% of the rides down) It started raining maybe 30 minutes into the event for about an hour, nothing too hard but just enough to keep the actors inside for a little bit. Around 8:30 it stopped, by 9:30 we had noticed that some zones still had no actors so when I went to ask a tech what time we should expect them back out I was told that they had let them go for the night. So 2 hours into the event all the zones were practically done for the night except for the red light district (nicely done for that space), and 2-3 actors in whatever clown zone goes on around Pipeline. With that, The Widow's Nest house was also down for the entire night due to flooding just about 2 hours into the event, and The Raveyard never restaffed the outside portion after the rain. Mako and Pipeline were great as always, but paying full price for 2 zones, 3 rides, and 3.5 houses (that outside portion of raveyard felt pretty long) just reminded me the quality of 2025 United Parks. Unfortunately the only thing that really scared me all night was a party city animatronic that popped up from behind some curtains, but the houses that I did get to do seemed well done for HOS standards. Monster Stomp was also as good as I remembered.

 

[UniversalRBLX]

I think HOS Orlando could benefit from either a reduction in size/scope to a point they can guarantee full staffing of houses/zones. SWO is a huge park, and so far the crowds haven't justified the use of even half a park.

I also think the event would benefit from the SWO/CF model of up charging houses, but the rest of the event included in daytime tickets?

 

[hunnylvr]

did you regret going? was there anything at all redeemable?

Honestly, we DID regret going. The only redeemable thing were the rollercoasters, but I'm not going to take a night out of my HHN schedule to just go somewhere for rollercoasters. It was absolute trash. Don't waste your time or money.

 

[Lucky Planet]

something interesting I noticed about the "One-Blood donation" donate blood to get a ticket stuff they did ,

they now added bush gardens if you donate blood ( you can pick either one I guess) it looks like no one went to donate for sea world lol

 

[RFRees]

Visited Howl-O-Scream for the first time ever, on Monday October 27.

They closed early and kicked everyone out at 10:20 pm. The event was open for about 3 hours.

The assumption was that attendance was so low that they just closed the park early. From what we could tell, the employees were just as surprised as the guests.

Thankfully, we were able to hit all five houses and hit three coasters. Another highlight of the night is that we saw several HHN Nightmare Fuel performers (the five Fuel Girls and the Nightmare Queen); we of course didn't bother them, just admired from a distance.

But unfortunately, the show we waited for had technical issues (due to a wet stage) which caused it to be cancelled, so we actually saw no shows. We also had to walk around quite a lot since several houses had technical delays throughout the night (I'm guessing because of rain).

They gave out comp tickets for anyone who wanted to wait in the guest services line, which ended up being the longest line we waited in. Can't complain much because we got the tickets for giving blood, and we're local, so we're just down the $35 for parking and the PTO I used to be there. (And $20 each for choosing comp tickets for blood instead of Amazon gift cards.)

I have no interest in going again this year, especially not for $35 parking. We'll be giving away the extra comp tickets to our friends. Next year when we give blood for free tickets we'll try to hit the Busch event instead.

I fault SeaWorld management for opening the event on a Monday. The scareactors and other staff were busting their assess, so kudos to them for putting in 100% even on a night like tonight.

I really don't want to see this event fail; HHN needs some healthy competition in Orlando.