Welcome And The Scare Setup

Nathan 0:03

Alicea 0:23

Hello everyone, I'm Alicea.

Nathan 0:25

And I'm Nathan.

Alicea 0:26

Welcome to episode 248 of Adventures and Mouse Capades.

Nathan 0:30

While Disney fans are busy deciding whether they want an extra scoop of pixie dust, some people voluntarily spend their weekend getting chased by chainsaw-wielding maniacs. As you may remember us mentioning in last week's episode, Alicea traded pumpkins and parade floats for screams and jump scares, and somehow survived the night at Halloween horror nights with enough stories to fill a haunted house of all of her own. Let's figure out if she came back brave, traumatized, or some combination of both. So, Alicea, which is it? Are you brave or traumatized?

Alicea 1:11

I don't get traumatized by these things, so I'm brave, I guess, or just indifferent. I don't know.

Nathan 1:17

Criminally insane.

Alicea 1:18

Yes, yes.

What Halloween Horror Nights Is

Nathan 1:20

So for Disney listeners who may never have heard of it, what exactly is Halloween Horror Nights and why is it such a big deal for theme park fans?

Alicea 1:31

Halloween Horror Nights is Universal Studios' version of haunted houses, basically. Uh this year it was their 35th one in Florida. And this actually predates Mickey's not so scary Halloween party because they just celebrated 31 years. And Universal Studios, it started out, I think, with just maybe one haunted house. Um they have all sorts of houses. They they contact different IPs and try to get different, I guess, IPs to do their haunted houses. And they also have scare zones and all sorts of stuff, you know, themed food, all that.

Nathan 2:10

I'm gonna interject here. We should just clarify an IP intellectual property. So this is scary movies, thinking about different uh themes and genres and series of movies.

Alicea 2:22

So yeah, and we'll go over what the different ones for this year. They have they have different ones every year.

Nathan 2:26

Yeah. I've I've realized that we throw the word IP around or the the the acronym IP around. And it's not just us, like everybody kind of in our social media podcasty space will just say IP and we never define it. Intellectual property. Yeah.

Alicea 2:43

So in Universal Studios Florida and Universal Studios in Hollywood, this is a separately ticketed event. Uh, and there's of course different levels of passes and everything like that. The one in Florida had 10 houses this year and multiple scare zones. And we went to just about all of them. We hit eight this year.

Nathan 3:06

Whoa.

Alicea 3:07

And by we, I mean um, my our friends Heather and Jon. Um most of our other Florida friends will not touch Halloween horror nights. And I love Halloween horror nights. And um, I found out that there is one of them that will go. So I asked, and he said, Yeah, you can come along. And then his wife is like, Well, I guess I'll come along too. And she doesn't really do scary stuff. So this was fun.

Nathan 3:37

Oh boy. This sounds like when I went to Halloween horror nights with you a few years ago.

Alicea 3:44

Well she did a lot more than you did though.

Nathan 3:44

Great. Well done, Heather. Yes, yeah. All right. So, what

Ticket Strategy And Expectations

Nathan 3:50

made you decide to go to Halloween horror nights this year? Was it just, hey, I'm in town and of course I'm gonna go?

Alicea 3:56

Yeah, pretty much. I I would have gone by myself. I mean, this like I said, Halloween horror uh horror nights, it doesn't, it doesn't scare me. I guess my brain just realizes none of this is real, it's just there. Yeah. Which is not the case for a lot of people. It just I I like seeing the production of it and some of the jump scares are a lot of fun, I think. So yeah, I would have gone by myself, but I found out that Jon goes to this every year, and I asked Heather, I was like, Would you mind if I asked Jon if I could go along with him? And she's like, Oh no, that's fine. So he said, Yeah, I usually go. I do, he usually does the early entry.

Nathan 4:35

Okay.

Alicea 4:36

So you can get a 2 p.m. entry into Halloween horror nights while the park is still open for regular guests, and you get kind of a jump start on some of the houses. I think only three of the houses are open at that time.

Nathan 4:49

Okay.

Alicea 4:49

And I proposed, what if we do the express pass rather than just the early entry? I said I'd do either way, but I think we'd be able to get to more of the houses if we did express pass. Now, there is a much higher cost involved with this. It is not near as much as if you do the VIP tour, which they call the RIP tour. Uh, but we didn't do that. I I recommended the Express if we could, if we could do it. So we did that. And I can tell you a little later how much time we saved by doing this.

Nathan 5:21

Oh, excellent. Data. I love I love having data.

Alicea 5:24

I I yep.

Nathan 5:26

So before arriving, what were your expectations? And do you think the event ended up being what you imagined it would be?

Alicea 5:35

My expectations. Um, because I knew the houses that were there, I was actually quite excited. There's a lot of these that just sounded really interesting. I actually did a couple of watch parties with myself uh to to watch some of the um movies that happened to be houses this year.

Nathan 5:55

Ah, got it. Okay, so you were you were ready to go.

Alicea 5:59

I was I was prepped. Yep.

Nathan 6:01

Cool. All right.

HHN Versus Disney Halloween Parties

Nathan 6:02

Before we dive into the details of Halloween Horror Nights or HHN, let's compare this a little bit with Mickey's Not So Scary. I mean, in as much as you can do a comparison between something that's actually scary and Mickey's not so scary Halloween party. How would you explain the difference between HHN and not so scary?

Alicea 6:26

Um, I think age is going to be the biggest difference here. These are both Halloween parties. That is the only similarity between these two parties, is these are both Halloween parties that happen to be at theme parks.

Nathan 6:36

Got it.

Alicea 6:37

The recommended age for Universal Studios Halloween horror nights is 13, as the youngest. I did see a couple of fairly young kiddos there, probably seven or eight years old, and um raised my eyebrow. I'm like, okay, I mean, maybe these kiddos absolutely love scary stuff. I don't know. But I did take Sterling when when they were 13 to one in in Hollywood. And uh let's just say they won't ever be going with us again.

Nathan 7:06

Nope. Nope. Uh Sterling will be hanging out with me, not going to HHN. Yes. So to expand a little bit, uh, if Mickey's not so scary is family-friendly spooky, what words would you describe HHN to be? Like what's that vibe?

Alicea 7:22

Um, they are out to scare you. Some of the houses are very gory and disgusting. Yeah, they're, I mean, they're just out to scare you. The scaractors are, it is their job to to try and freak you out, scare you, whatever. And they will do pretty much whatever they can to try to do that, whether you're in a scare zone or whether you're in a house.

Nathan 7:43

Yeah. What are some things that Disney fans might be most surprised to find at HHN that are just completely different from a Disney Halloween event?

Alicea 7:54

Completely different. Well, I mean, the scare factor of it, and there's I mean, there's the haunted houses too. The production of these is just amazing. They start planning for these in February. Okay. They start building them in February. I think they actually start planning what they're gonna do years ahead of time.

Nathan 8:12

Right.

Alicea 8:13

But these are in the sound stages, so they're like a movie set. They do so much stuff in here. And it's it's really cool to see.

Nathan 8:21

That's that's amazing. I am so happy for you. And I will nope. Nope, nope, nope. All right, so let's hop back forward. Let's dive into HHN a little bit. You mentioned the express pass. Do you think that it's a must-do? It's a nice to have, or kind of a a skip it purchase for HHN?

Alicea 8:43

I think it really depends on what you want to experience while you're there. I can tell you how much time the wait time was for all of the houses that we went to if we hadn't done the express pass. And this was this was not a sold-out night.

Nathan 8:59

Okay.

Alicea 8:59

There was a lot of people. It was not a sold-out night. We would have waited for eight houses. We only did eight houses. We did not do ten.

Nathan 9:07

Okay.

Alicea 9:08

If we had gone in the regular standby lines, it would have been a seven and a half hour wait.

Nathan 9:13

Wow.

Alicea 9:14

Our time was about 65 minutes waiting total.

Nathan 9:18

Whoa. That's huge.

Alicea 9:21

Yeah. And if you do the RIP pass, it's even faster. It's literally a walk-on because they have their own entrances for most of the houses.

Nathan 9:28

Wow. So that's like an incredible thing. Now you're paying for that privilege. This is effectively, this is the lightning lane. This is the fast pass into these events or into these houses. Yikes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's a thing. That's definitely a thing. I guess you know, I had this question down. I'm going to ask it, but I kind of am imagining the answer already. Like, how much did the Express Pass change your experience? Were there houses that you might have missed without it? I'm I'm assuming yes.

Alicea 9:57

Oh, yes. Yes. There were, um, I think the longest wait that we saw, and it got longer as you went on in the evening. We started with some of the very popular houses right at the start. And because the event had just started, it was a lot shorter wait. Um, the highest wait was 105 minutes.

Nathan 10:15

Wow. Okay, so stepping back a little bit, you mentioned that you can do early entry at two. When does the actual event, you know, the hard-ticketed event in theory start, and then what's closing time?

Alicea 10:31

I think it was six o'clock.

Samantha 10:33

Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando officially begins at six thirty p.m., but guests with Scream Early or stay and scream tickets can get early access to the park at two PM. Select haunted house cues open at four p.m., with the houses opening in waves between 5 15 and 6 30.

Alicea 10:49

Closing time is 2 a.m.

Nathan 10:50

Okay.

Alicea 10:51

That's the other difference. This goes a lot later, well, two hours later than the not-so scary parties.

Nathan 10:56

Right. So you do have a bunch of time to get through stuff.

Alicea 11:00

Yeah, yeah.

Nathan 11:01

So in theory, even if you didn't have express pass, you could have gotten through everything. You just would have been there until the end of the night.

Alicea 11:10

Exactly. Yeah. And we left around midnight. So Okay. But there's also things other than the houses to experience. They have a show, a sit-down show. They have um the little lake area there does a little presentation as well. We didn't really watch that, but it was there. And then you can also spend time in the different scare zones that have their own themes while you're walking throughout the park. We kind of skipped those. We didn't really go through those very much. Um, but that's an option too. And there's

Scare Zones And The Chicken Badge

Alicea 11:40

there's food and drink, there's themed food and beverages you can sit down and do stuff to.

Nathan 11:44

How many scare zones were there this year? I wanted to talk about this. I sounds like you didn't really hit them. We'll kind of cover it briefly.

Alicea 11:52

There are six different scare zones.

Nathan 11:54

Okay.

Alicea 11:55

One of them is Downtown Clown Town.

Nathan 12:00

Okay.

Alicea 12:00

Yeah, which is an amalgamation of Art the Clown from Terrifyer and Killer Clowns from Outer Space. We kind of saw part of this, but didn't go through it. Um, I saw Art the Clown and I was actually pretty excited because I'd love to go see art, but he was very surrounded by people. It was it was Christmas art. He had his um Santa outfit on and then the beard ripped directly off of Santa Claus on his face.

Nathan 12:26

Sure, as you do. I mean um yeah I'm interested to hear about the others, but can you kind of explain a little bit about what a scare zone is?

Alicea 12:34

Yeah, sure. A scare zone is an area of the park just kind of out in the open that they transform into a scary area. It's heavily themed, and the scaractors there are themed to the specific scare zone. They'll have some of them will have chainsaws that make noise. They're not just they won't actually work, you know.

Nathan 12:55

It's just well, the motors are running, but they don't have chains on them.

Alicea 12:59

There's no chains on them.

Nathan 13:00

Yes.

Alicea 13:00

Um, and as you walk through, the the scaractors will try to get you. And it's usually very foggy in there. One of one of the themes of HHN is see you in the fog.

Nathan 13:11

So these are kind of areas along the pathways that you need to traverse between haunted houses. It is interstitial space that this is where you'd normally have, you know, food carts and snack carts and all the rest of that stuff as you're going between attractions and stuff like that. And they're big, I don't know, basketball court size areas, depending on where they are. Some are bigger, some are a little smaller, where yeah, it is a themed little experience to navigate. And uh, from my own personal experience, if you uh put your head down and put on your don't mess with me face, they will thankfully leave you alone. Because not all of those scare zones have a way to get past them in like a non-scare zone area. Like some of them, there's a pathway where you can clearly like, okay, this is outside the zone, and I can get from A to B. Some of them you have to get through. And I don't like these. And and thankfully, if if you are clearly in the don't mess with me phase of life, they will leave you alone.

Alicea 14:12

Nathan, let me tell you something that they're doing this year.

Nathan 14:14

Oh God.

Alicea 14:15

I think they've done it for a couple of years. You can buy a chicken necklace.

Nathan 14:22

Okay.

Alicea 14:22

And they won't go after you.

Nathan 14:25

Wow. I'm assuming it actually has a chicken on it.

Alicea 14:28

I don't think it does. It's it's um, I mean, it has the HHN logo on it and it's lit up red.

Nathan 14:35

Okay.

Alicea 14:36

So they will leave you alone. There were quite a few people that had one of these on, too.

Samantha 14:42

This is actually called the Deathly Afraid necklace, and it's a light-up wearable medallion on a lanyard that visitors jokingly called the chicken badge because it signals scare actors in scare zones in common areas to ease up and limit direct jump scares. It does not work inside haunted houses, however, so it doesn't guarantee a completely scare free night.

Nathan 15:00

Uh yeah, that would be worth the investment for me.

Alicea 15:04

All right, so the first one was downtown Clown Town. Right. They also partnered with Fortnite and had a Fortnite scare zone called Fortnitemares. Okay. And I was I was taking a video. The one time I really got got during this thing, I was taking a video of the bus, which is it's like three bus lengths long. It's huge. Um and I was gonna show that to Sterling. And as I was taking a video, I was just about to stop, and somebody, I didn't see him, he came up behind me and just said boo. And and I I went, ah, he scared me. He made me stop the video too. Like I had my finger over there and he said boo, and I just flinched. Anyway, okay, so that was there. That was actually kind of a cool one. We went through that one because there's no way around it. Then there was Sideshow of Decay. Oh. A carnival junkyard, basically. Then there was the infernal carnival of nightmares. There's a theme here, it seems like. And then at the Mel's Dine-in food area there.

Nathan 16:11

Mel's Die-in because they turn off the end. Yes.

Alicea 16:14

So it says Mel's Die-in and it's zombies on roller skates.

Nathan 16:19

Oh, sure. Yeah. Whimsy.

Alicea 16:22

And then Club Horror was another one.

Nathan 16:24

Well, that um, yeah, those all sound hand me, hand me a chicken necklace. That's that's my path forward.

Alicea 16:31

All right.

House Lineup And Top Highlights

Nathan 16:32

Okay, so there's 10 haunted houses at HHN Orlando this year. Let's talk about those. Can you kind of uh give me a little bit of a sousson, a sampling, if you will, of what uh what is on offer from haunted houses for uh HHN this year?

Alicea 16:50

Yeah, like you said, there are 10 different houses. There's a bunch of different intellectual property that they partnered with to get houses this year. Uh, one of them is Stranger Things. This was Stranger Things Five, the final chapter, and it says, Join the Hawkins game for one last adventure. Try to survive an army of demogorgons, face the mind flare, and defeat Vecna once and for all in this haunted house based on Stranger Things Five.

Nathan 17:14

Okay.

Alicea 17:15

Next was Sinners, the movie Sinners, which won some Oscars, if I remember.

Nathan 17:19

Yeah.

Alicea 17:20

You are in for one bluesy bloodbath. It is opening night at the Smokestack Twins juke joint, but the blues becomes red when a hive mind of bloodthirsty vampires crashes the party in this haunted house based on the original film Sinners.

Nathan 17:35

Wow.

Alicea 17:35

So I w that was one of the ones that I watched the week before. Got it. It was good. Hellraiser raise some hell. In this haunted house, based on the original Hellraiser trilogy, enter a realm of pure pain where Pinhead and his tormented Cenobites derive their hellish pleasure. I watched this as well. This was a waste of my time. Sorry for all those who liked the original Hellraiser. I did not.

Nathan 18:04

There you have it.

Alicea 18:09

You're in Ozzy's world now. Bow at the throne of the Prince of Darkness in this haunted house, inspired by the twisted mind of one of Rock'n'Roll's greatest legends. I learned this was really cool. So a lot of times Universal will go after the IP to try and get a house based on them. I learned that Ozzy's son, Jack, actually came to Universal and asked if they would do a house based on his dad.

Nathan 18:34

Oh wow.

Alicea 18:35

That was really cool. Yeah. That's cool. Evil Dead Burn. Fan the flames of evil. An infernal force has taken hold of a family home and it's hungry for its next victim. Dodge Deadites Hellbent on bloodshed in this haunted house based on the new film Evil Dead Burn. I tried to watch this, but it was for rent and I didn't want to rent it, so I watched instead one of the Everything Wrong with videos on YouTube. I'm actually glad I didn't watch this because this is one of the goriest things I've ever seen. And I've seen the I've seen some of the other Evil Dead movies, which have been fine. This one I don't think I would have liked. The house was fine. Next was Jack and Oddfellow Chaos and Control. The forces of horror collide. Horror icons are not born, they are made. Discover the unholy origins of Jack the Clown and enter Dr. Oddfellow's universe as the two-pit chaos versus control in this showdown decades in the making. Both Jack the Clown and Dr. Oddfellow are original constructs of Universal Studios. They found out when they started this, like, what if we made our own little horror icons?

Nathan 19:44

Sure.

Alicea 19:45

So Jack was the very first one, and Oddfellow was another one. And they have paired together in this house.

Nathan 19:50

Well, I mean, it it saves them money. They don't have to license it.

Alicea 19:55

It's their own stuff, but yeah. Cybergoria. Immortality comes at a cost. Awaken thousands of years the future in this haunted house and brave a cold world driven by machines with a singular goal to make you live forever, even if it kills you

Nathan 20:11

Okay. That just sounds like what's gonna happen this coming spring.

Alicea 20:15

All I could think of was Doctor Who and the Cybermen. So we're going through this, and I'm thinking in my head. Delete, delete, delete. HR Blood and Guts presents a Halloween fright tacular. Big screams on the small screen. I did not go in this one. Your favorite Mater D macabre returns to WKNB with a special Halloween scarathon. Tune into this haunted house complete with ghouls, gore, and all the frights that keep you coming back for more. This is kind of like a campy, fun-ish version type thing.

Nathan 20:49

Fun, sure. You and I have very different definitions of fun.

Alicea 20:55

Mad Lands, Caged Cannibals. We did not go on this one either. You're at the bottom of the food chain. The animals might be gone, but animalistic violence is inescapable. Try to survive a defunct zoo that has become the deadly domain of warring cannibal factions in this haunted house.

Nathan 21:14

Okay.

Alicea 21:15

I did a tour a little later. This was the bloodiest and goriest one. Yeah. Next one. Invasion alien abduction. Extraterrestrial and extra terrifying. Make contact with horrors from worlds unknown in this haunted house, where a ship full of greys have torn apart a remote homestead in search of fresh test subjects. That's all of them.

Nathan 21:40

Got it. Yeah. Wow. Um that there's a lot of words and descriptors, and none of them seem interesting to me at all.

Alicea 21:48

I enjoyed all of them. Yeah.

Nathan 21:50

That's awesome. All right. So without giving away details and spoilers, what were some of the more notable houses for you? And what Why did they stand out?

Alicea 22:01

Honestly, the IP-driven ones. Just because I kind of knew the stories. Now, I will say my favorite house was the Ozzy Osborne house.

Nathan 22:10

Oh, cool.

Alicea 22:11

It was it was really cool. Uh, just just all the things that they put together for this and the music. I mean, it's Ozzy's music. You can't beat that.

Nathan 22:20

Yeah.

Alicea 22:21

Of course, most everybody knows the song Crazy Train. And you actually go into a train on this one. And the scene in that is really neat. Um, it it's going through different years while you're on a train of the same couple. And it's yeah, it's pretty cool.

Nathan 22:37

Neat. How was the Sinners House?

Alicea 22:40

The Sinners House was great. I thought the movie was really good. I enjoyed it. And Michael B. Jordan plays twins in this movie. And though just the way they filmed it, it was groundbreaking in how they did it because he was pretty much in every scene. They tried not to use stunt doubles at all for this. And he's in multiple scenes with himself together. Sure. Um, so how they did that was was pretty cool. There's there's a scene in there where he hands his twin a cigarette, and they said that was one of the hardest scenes to film because they didn't use any stunt doubles or anything in it.

Nathan 23:18

Wow.

Alicea 23:18

So yeah.

Nathan 23:19

Wow. So how did that translate into the house?

Alicea 23:22

Um, into the house. I mean, they had different characters there, and they, for a lot of these houses that are IP driven, they did a really good job of finding characters who really look like the actual characters in the movie. So you start out in the Sinners house and Smoke and Stack are right there. The twins are right there before everything happens. And they looked, I mean, it wasn't Michael B. Jordan, but similar enough. It was pretty cool. That house was good, and the music in that movie is really good. And just going through all that, it's a lot of fun. I thought it was fun anyway.

Nathan 23:57

And then uh the other one that sticks out in my brain, just again, because it's intellectual property and and I know it. How is the Stranger Things House?

Alicea 24:05

This was really cool. This is not the first Stranger Things house that I've been through. I think I was went through Stranger Things Three as well.

Nathan 24:13

Okay.

Alicea 24:13

I don't know if they've had one for every year, but they have one for multiple years.

Nathan 24:18

Yeah.

Alicea 24:19

Uh, and this is the, you know, this is the end of the series. And there was a lot of demigorgans in this one. I don't remember there being that many in the the one that I went through before in in three. It was fun. There was a lot of characters that you know and love in here. Delightful Derek was in there with his uh with his catchphrase, suck my fat ones. So that was fun.

Nathan 24:43

Nice. All right. So obviously, we don't want to verge into spoilers here. So let's skip ahead a little bit.

Food Drinks And The Stage Show

Nathan 24:51

You all had a a fun night uh going through eight of the haunted houses. You hit some of the scare zones. Did you hit any of the food?

Alicea 25:00

We tried to. We didn't have a menu ahead of time. We didn't look online at anything. We were just kind of walking through because we got hungry. We were trying to find something.

Nathan 25:08

Sure.

Alicea 25:09

And a bunch of the stuff looked interesting, but wasn't what we wanted to have at the time. Got it. There's yeah, there's a lot of good food options, and they're just little kiosks here and there. Finally, we found something that all of us wanted, and it was basically a uh Philly cheesesteak sandwich type thing. It was it was quite delicious.

Nathan 25:28

That sounds amazing.

Alicea 25:29

Yes, that sounds great. And of course, there's all these different cocktails you can get too. I got, and they have they have canned drinks as well. And I got something, it was like a strawberry vodka drink. And I got that, I think it was before our first house as we were walking to it, or second or something, I don't know. And I'm like, I better down this. So I downed it. So I was going through that house. I was I was nicely buzzed.

Nathan 25:59

Excellent. That's that's the way to do it.

Alicea 26:01

That's the way to do it, yeah.

Nathan 26:03

How about the show? You mentioned earlier um there is uh a big stage production. They've they've got this huge kind of amphitheater available there in Orlando. Did y'all hit the show this year?

Alicea 26:16

We did.

Nathan 26:17

I will say that the year that I went with you, this is a uh few years ago now, that stage show uh I don't think you went to, you were doing houses. I went to the stage show, Divide and Conquer, you know, for content. And that stage show is actually quite impressive. What sticks out in my mind is a whole bunch of fire and a whole bunch of people doing some pretty incredible tricks and um some interesting costumes. We'll just uh leave it there. Um yeah. What was it like this year?

Alicea 26:49

Pretty much the same thing. Do you remember the theme of yours at all? Was it vampire-driven?

Nathan 26:54

Uh, I don't remember. Uh there was something to do with magic because they were doing some illusions where people would disappear from one side of the stage and then like reappear like elsewhere.

Alicea 27:04

It was so it sounds like it was a different theme. Ours was based off of vampires. There was a lot of leather and there was a lot of fire.

Nathan 27:12

That's that sounds I remember that. Yes.

Alicea 27:16

And the music was really very loud. My my watch kept pinging like you're in a very loud environment. Go away. It was interesting to see. It was like burlesque cirque de soleil.

Nathan 27:28

Yeah,

Alicea 27:29

I guess. Yeah.

Nathan 27:31

It was scary cirque de sole, definitely leaning into fire, definitely leaning into leather. And then not a lot of leather in places.

Alicea 27:42

Burlesque, yes.

Nathan 27:43

Yes. Yeah.

Alicea 27:44

Um, and a lot of aerial acrobats, which is really cool to see. Yeah. Just the athleticism and just what these people do, I can't, I can't even comprehend it. It's really cool to see. I don't know if I'd go see this one again. It's kind of a one and done for me.

Nathan 28:00

Sure. It's hard to describe. But it's also good knowing that it is different every year. Go check it out if you're there every year, because it it will be different from from what we've experienced.

Alicea 28:12

The one thing that gave me hebie jeebies was the sword swallower.

Nathan 28:15

Oh, yeah. That's that's not cool.

Alicea 28:18

I uh nope.

Nathan 28:20

Yeah. 100%. All right. So y'all had a a fun filled evening. You left about midnight. You went back early the

Behind The Screams Lights-On Tour

Nathan 28:31

next day.

Alicea 28:31

I did.

Nathan 28:32

You did something called the behind the screams tour.

Alicea 28:36

Yeah.

Nathan 28:37

What exactly is that experience and what do you get to see?

Alicea 28:42

This is a a tour, uh extra cost, of course, kind of a VIP-ish tour where you get to go into either three or six of the houses, depending on which one you choose, uh, with the lights on.

Nathan 28:56

Oh, wow.

Alicea 28:57

And they take about an hour per house and go through multiple rooms with you, explain the story, explain what they were thinking about, what the whole thought was to each individual room that you're going in. It is very in-depth. It is really interesting. I loved doing this. Uh, I did the sixth house tour, so it was about six hours long.

Nathan 29:19

Wow.

Alicea 29:19

And um got to go through six of the houses, and they also serve you lunch. And the lunch was quite good, actually. It was a little uh buffet style, but good food.

Nathan 29:30

Excellent. So, which houses did you get a chance to go through?

Alicea 29:33

We uh went into Evil Dead Burn, Ozzy Osborne, Sinners, Jack and Oddfellow, Madlands, and Stranger Things.

Nathan 29:46

Got it. Cool. So some of the bigger ones.

Alicea 29:48

Yeah.

Nathan 29:49

So did seeing the sets and props and special effects behind the scenes change how you viewed the houses when you thought back on them from the night before?

Alicea 29:59

A little bit because when you go through the houses at night, it is well, it's dark. It's very loud and you're going through pretty quickly. So you get to miss a lot of the work that they just put into these things. And I got to take pictures in a lot of these houses. Now, the guy did let us know there are certain rooms where you could not take pictures. So he was very good at saying, you can take pictures now, I'll tell you when you cannot take pictures. Um like the Ozzy Osborne house, we could take pictures at the very beginning and the very end and nothing in between.

Nathan 30:33

Got it.

Alicea 30:34

And in Stranger Things, there's a couple areas that were really cool looking, but we could not take any pictures.

Nathan 30:42

So, how did it change your perspective from the night before?

Alicea 30:46

Really, just how much work is put into these houses. They are amazing inside. They are so detailed. There is so much that you just don't see when you're going through. And one of the interesting things is every year they have an animal of some sort that they put in every house.

Nathan 31:09

Oh.

Alicea 31:09

I think last year it was a rat, and this year it was a snake. So there's a little snake hidden, not real, of course, but there's a little snake hidden hidden in every single house. And so we kind of our guide was telling us where to look for to find him. And in a couple of the spots, like he's like, Oh, yeah, it's in this room, and none of us could find it because it looked like a tree root and the whole area was trees.

Nathan 31:36

So it's basically the HHN version of Hidden Mickeys.

Alicea 31:41

Yes.

Nathan 31:43

Fun. Anything else, again, without major spoilers, that you saw that that really sticks out in your mind?

Alicea 31:50

It's really interesting seeing the very gory scenes in the light, because there are definitely some gory scenes, especially if you've seen Evil Dead Burn. There are very gory scenes. There is a dishwasher scene, if you've seen the movie, you know what that is. And oh, it was disgusting.

Nathan 32:09

Was it just as disgusting with the lights on?

Alicea 32:12

Uh more.

Nathan 32:13

Oh, wow.

Alicea 32:14

More.

Nathan 32:15

Well, that was not the answer I was expecting.

Alicea 32:17

You can see all the detail. Yep.

Nathan 32:19

Oh, yay. Yeah. Fun. All

Who Should Go And Quick Picks

Nathan 32:23

right. So who would you recommend go to Halloween whore nights or or shouldn't go to Halloween Horror Nights? Uh, and who who might be uh happier sticking with uh Mickey's not so scary Halloween party?

Alicea 32:36

Well, I know there are people out there that like the adrenaline rush, that like to be scared. This is for you.

Nathan 32:41

Yeah.

Alicea 32:42

If you do not like being scared, do not go to this because it is scary.

Nathan 32:47

I will be in that latter group. I'll go hung out with Mickey Mouse. That's fine with me. All right, let's do kind of a fun, quick lightning round with you. Scariest house.

Alicea 33:01

Scariest house was Evil Dead Burn.

Nathan 33:03

Okay. Best overall house for you.

Alicea 33:06

Best overall house, Ozzy Osborne. I really like that one.

Nathan 33:10

Nice. Most creative house.

Alicea 33:14

Um I think Ozzy.

Nathan 33:17

Yeah?

Alicea 33:17

Yeah.

Nathan 33:18

Why do you say that?

Alicea 33:19

Just all the different sets that were involved in there, nothing was the same because it's going, it's it's not going through one story. It's going through multiple stories for him.

Nathan 33:29

Plus, they're not like rehashing what happened in a movie. They're just kind of starting from scratch and and making something up. That makes sense. Best scare actor interaction.

Alicea 33:40

Trying to remember what house there was one house that I that I got all the scares. It was like the best one I'd gone through. And I'm trying to remember which one that was. I think it was Sinners, actually.

Nathan 33:50

Okay. What made it so notable?

Alicea 33:54

You can have a good run through a house and a bad run through a house. It really just depends on where the scaractors are and where you are, because they have triggers, they have different moments where they have to pop out. And if you're not aligned, then you're not going to get a good scare. And I think I just lined up perfectly with that one. So there are a lot of jump scares that came right out at me instead of out at Heather, instead at instead of at John. It just hit me perfectly. So yeah.

Nathan 34:24

Wow, you're so lucky. Best themed food or drink?

Alicea 34:32

We only had one. So I don't know.

Nathan 34:35

All right. Well, so a strawberry vodka was the best drink you had. Uh best surprise of the evening, or I guess the whole experience will include the tour the next day.

Alicea 34:48

Best surprise. Yeah, I think the tour, honestly. Huh. Just being able to go in and see so much detail that you couldn't see before. And just how much, honestly, how much love and creativity they put into these houses.

Nathan 35:03

Okay. Next question. Express pass. Would you do express pass again? And I'm interested in express pass versus R.I.P. tour.

Alicea 35:15

Okay. So yes, I would do Express Pass again. Express pass versus R.I.P. RIP is much more expensive. Express pass is kind of on your own. The RIP, you are with a group, and you can also do a private RIP. The group, if you do RIP, is up to 12 people, I think.

Nathan 35:34

Okay.

Alicea 35:34

It also includes your parking. It also includes food. You get fed. Uh, and you get to go through everything front line, front of the line for everything.

Nathan 35:44

Right.

Alicea 35:45

Express is, I think, about half the cost, and you go through at your own pace. I like both of them. I think it depends on what you want out of it.

Nathan 35:55

Yeah.

Alicea 35:56

Uh the the RIP in Universal Orlando is more expensive than the RIP in Universal California.

Nathan 36:05

Interesting.

Alicea 36:06

Yeah. There are less houses in California.

Nathan 36:08

Okay.

Alicea 36:09

But they have the tram tour, and you get your own little RIP area in the tram tour as well. So I don't know.

Nathan 36:17

If money isn't really what is the constraining factor, is there a compelling reason to do the express pass over the RIP tour? Is it just being able to do it on your own schedule and not be

Alicea 36:31

if money's not a factor, I do the RIP probably every time because you get a guide and they will actually talk to you about the houses. So you'll get a little bit of an education about each area that you're going into as well.

Nathan 36:43

Okay. So there is an added value. All right, that makes sense. I mean, this question, I don't know why I threw it in here. Would you do Halloween horror nights again?

Alicea 36:53

Um, yeah, I'm going to in a couple of weeks.

Nathan 36:58

And one piece of advice for a Disney fan thinking about trying HHN for the first time.

Alicea 37:05

One piece of advice. It is not Mickey's not so scary. Um, don't go if you don't like being scared.

Nathan 37:12

Okay. Let's flip that on its on its uh that coin on the other side. If a Disney fan is on the fence about HHN, give us your 30-second pitch. Why should they try it?

Alicea 37:23

Oh God, I'm crap at these. What? If you like being scared, if you like that little adrenaline rush, go to HHN. You will be scared. You will get people jumping out at you and freaking you out. It's dark, it's foggy, it is full of all the frights that you are wanting.

Nathan 37:42

I think the only other thing I'd add to that is this is the uh Universal Studio Parks creative teams time to shine. Yes. Just like you have imagineering and they put some amazing thing into their attractions. Uh, but they're typically, you know, they take a lot longer to put those things together, and they're permanent or semi-permanent as if you as you will, attractions where this is an ability for those folks to do something that is seasonal, like it's only gonna last for you know six or eight weeks or however, 12 weeks, what however long they run, HHN. And then it's ephemeral, it's gone, and they're working on what they're gonna do next year. But the level of detail that they put into these uh scare zones and haunted houses and everything else, the costuming, the the characters, the actors, it's really, really incredible. And it is a celebration of artistic creativity.

Alicea 38:52

Yeah.

Nathan 38:52

In a very, very different way than Disney is a celebration of artistic creativity. If you go in and you're okay with the level of intensity and and scariness, there is a lot to appreciate in what's going on that Universal is putting on.

Alicea 39:10

When we were in line for a couple of the houses, everybody started cheering for some reason. And we're like, what's going on? We could see lines of the scaractors going by for different houses. And one of the things that I asked about when we were on the tour is how long are the scaracters in the houses before they switch out? And it's 30 to 45 minutes before they switch out to the next team.

Nathan 39:32

Okay.

Alicea 39:32

So they're not in there for a horribly long time. Most of them are just an A crew and a B crew. There are a couple of the houses that have A, B, C, and D crews, just depending on how involved the houses are. There's some that have more athletic roles.

Nathan 39:50

Yeah.

Alicea 39:50

Um, like you have a couple that that literally come down from the ceiling, like at an angle, stuff like that, or pop out at you on a harness or something. And for those crews, they usually have four different crews that go through. When we are walking through behind the scenes, there are a couple of spots where there's makeup tables everywhere. Yeah. Where everybody's getting ready. And in the Hellraiser house, uh, David told us that Pinhead actor has over 100 pins in his mask.

Nathan 40:23

Oh my gosh.

Alicea 40:25

Yep.

Nathan 40:26

Nope. No, thank you.

Alicea 40:27

In the Jack and Oddfellow house, you're going through basically a carnival. So one of the scenes is you're walking through a tunnel that basically is going around and around. And those, oh my gosh, those things get me every time. Like I feel like I'm falling over. I have to hold on to the rails or close my eyes.

Nathan 40:45

Yeah.

Alicea 40:45

It it really affects me. And that tunnel has over 1,000 LED screens to make it work. And it is an amazing effect just going through there. I learned a little bit of terminology. SIF stands for stuff in face. So when you're walking through and there's like little tendrils of stuff hanging down, that is Sif. And I hate that so much because some of it's like really stringy.

Nathan 41:17

Yeah.

Alicea 41:17

Um, and you don't see it. Some of it's larger, like they'll have bloody chains hanging or something like that. You can see that. Some of it's really, really thin, and all of a sudden you just feel like spider webs going over your face. That's that's called Sif. They start being building in February. There is a greenery department that makes all the trees. I did find out in the Stranger Things house, there are different ending options. There are four different ending options for that house. So you could get a different one every time you go through. It's just the end scene, though.

Nathan 41:53

Interesting. So is that like every night is different, or every run may be different, just depending on what the actors want to do?

Alicea 42:02

I think it's when they switch out the casts, they switch out the ending. So every 30, 45 minutes, they switch the ending.

Nathan 42:09

Oh, interesting.

Alicea 42:10

Yeah. In the evil dead burn house, when you go through, you will notice that the deadites have glowing eyes. That's one of the ways that you can tell if they're deadites. They and they they actually had this in the house. They had the people that were deadites had contacts that kind of glowed in the dark, which is a really oh my gosh, really odd theme.

Nathan 42:34

I think I heard something about that. Like there was they couldn't do contacts like they did in the movies because like the actors are in the movie was like blind. Yeah. But they did something where it's like a little fiber optic that hangs in front of the the actor's eyes and like and then turns and points out. So like it's so small that the the actor doesn't really see it in their vision, and the light is pointing away from the them. So it's not like blinding them, but you can see it at when you're looking at them.

Alicea 43:09

Yeah, yeah. It was it was a very disconcerning uh uh effect. Also in the evil dead house, there's a room that you go through, it's a cellar and they have a roof on it. Most of these, most of these rooms you go in, um, pretty much all of them, do not have a roof. It's going all the way up to the top of the warehouse. Because if they put a roof on it, they have to have some sort of fire suppression in that area as well. So they had to do sprinkler in that one scene because of the roof. And most of the props that they use, they try to use year to year. I don't I say most, but they use about 50% of the props from year to year. And they get stored in a huge warehouse that they call the morgue. Uh, and half the props don't make it through just from wear and tear or when You're trying to get them back to normal, um, they break down or something like that.

Nathan 44:05

Sure, sure. Well, I mean, the you're going through all sorts of blood and guts and all the rest of that stuff that uh yeah, I don't want to think about it.

Alicea 44:15

One last thing in the sinner's house, um, there are a lot of guns used in that in that house just because that's what's in the movie.

Nathan 44:24

Right.

Alicea 44:24

All the weapons in there are actual real weapons. I mean, they're not loaded or anything, but the guns are real guns and they have a gun safe at the end of the day to put all of them in.

Nathan 44:35

Huh. Yeah. I would have thought they would be using prop guns.

Alicea 44:39

Yeah. I don't know. Uh I we didn't get a reason on why they were using real ones, maybe just to make it more authentic.

Nathan 44:45

Yeah, but you can make a solid rubber gun look pretty real.

Alicea 44:49

Cost? I don't know.

Nathan 44:52

Interesting. Yeah. Just in case some of the haunted houses become real, now they have something uh I don't know. Wow. Well, yeah. Any other parting thoughts before we wrap this up?

Alicea 45:04

If

Final Thoughts And Where To Find Us

Alicea 45:05

you go and you have a chance to do behind the scenes tour and you have the means to do a behind-the-scenes tour, I would highly recommend it. Just learning about these houses and all the work that is put into them is amazing. And seeing some of these scenes with the lights on is it's so cool. I'll I I was able to take a fair amount of pictures and I will definitely share some of them and some of the lore behind it.

Nathan 45:29

That's awesome. Well, thank you for sharing this with uh with the community. Thank you for sharing this with me. This is as close to HHN as I'm ever gonna get.

Alicea 45:42

We can have a slideshow of pictures

Nathan 45:42

Oh boy, I'm so excited.

Alicea 45:45

I know you are.

Nathan 45:46

Not really. It's fine. Well, cool. Well, as you alluded to, we will uh talk about HHN again, I am sure, because we are about to uh head down south to the uh Southern California parks. Alicia and Caitlin are going to be doing HHN in Hollywood. And uh Sterling and and I are meeting them up the next night, and we're gonna do Oogie Boogie Bash down in uh Disneyland. So very much looking forward to this. So Halloween will continue. Spooky season carries on.

Alicea 46:23

And we are doing Caitlin and I and her friend Sanaya are doing an RIP tour.

Nathan 46:28

Oh.

Alicea 46:29

Only way to do it in California.

Nathan 46:32

Well, I'm I can't wait to hear about that uh and and not be there personally. All right, well, as we wrap up, a reminder that we are not affiliated with Universal Studios or Disney or any of their subsidiaries. Everything you hear on the show is based on personal experiences, opinions, and questionable snack choices. We are, however, proudly affiliated with fun and spookiness.

Alicea 46:59

If you're planning a Disney or Universal vacation, we always recommend working with a travel advisor or reaching out to Disney or Universal directly to help make the magic and scares happen. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please take a second to rate and review the show. It really helps fans find us.

Nathan 47:16

If you have a question, a topic, suggestion, or a story you'd love to share, please send us an email to podcast at our mousecapades.com.

Alicea 47:26

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads at Our MouseCapades, and on YouTube at Our MouseCapades Pod. Please do not forget to share us with your friends, your family, and Disney slash universal friends of all ages.

Nathan 47:39

Thanks for listening. We'll be back in your ears next week.