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Universal Orlando Unveils New Haunted House for Horror Nights
Universal Orlando Resort has unveiled the last of 10 haunted houses planned for Halloween Horror Nights this year, an all-new house inspired by Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
Fox – 35 Orlando
Lora Sauls is the scream queen at Universal Orlando Resort. Creator of Halloween Horror Nights and other signature events like Mardi Gras, she loves gore, but she also has a weakness.
“I’m terrified of frogs,” said the Florida resort’s director of creative development and art direction and design. “One jumped into my house, it was huge, and I literally shook from the inside out.”
I get it. I’m a huge scarer. I even wrote an entire tip sheet on how to enjoy Halloween horror parties if you’re scared. One thing that helps is knowing what to expect, and we have our biggest preview yet.
This year, USA TODAY got an exclusive look at the process of creating Halloween Horror Nights and early access to one of its terrifying original haunted houses, Slaughter Sinema 2. Here’s how it all came together.
When does Universal start planning Halloween Horror Nights?
Universal Orlando begins planning its Halloween horror nights more than a year in advance.
“Typically we start the week after the event starts. Now we start in the summer, before the event starts,” Sauls said.
They are already well advanced in planning for next year’s HHN.
How does Universal create haunted house themes?
Brainstorming for unique home ideas takes about a week at the Florida resort.
“Sometimes we’ve done the project in three days. It’s just a matter of whether we’re on the right track,” Sauls said. “The character designers, the set designers, the graphic designers, the set decorators and the directors are all in the same room, brainstorming together to create original ideas.”
They come up with more ideas than needed, and then senior management decides which ones are retained and moved forward to development.
Unused ideas are saved for later review and can be tested on a smaller scale, such as in Slaughter Sinema 2 and its fan-favorite predecessor, Slaughter Sinema, which feature multiple storylines.
“These are great ideas, we just don’t think it’s a full-on haunted house,” Sauls said.
Depending on the reaction from visitors, some of the ideas you see in Slaughter Sinema 2 could return as haunted houses or scare zones in the years to come. There have been two Yeti-themed houses — Yeti: Terror of the Yukon in 2019 and Yeti: Campground Kills last year — since the Yeti made his Slaughter Sinema debut in 2018.
🛑 Spoilers ahead. 🛑
What is Slaughter Sinema 2?
Slaughter Sinema 2 marks the return of the drive-in theater first introduced in Slaughter Sinema. This time, visitors will experience an all-new selection of B-horror movie scenes.
Trailers for some of the movies that will be shown in the house will be shown on a movie screen outside. “And some of the movies that didn’t make it into the house have made it into the house,” Sauls added. “Again, that incubator. We want to see what the fans like. If they didn’t make it into the house, maybe they will in the future, so it’s a lot of fun.”
Slaughter Sinema 2 features eight new themes. Each of them is introduced with a movie poster beforehand, and some span multiple rooms.
∎ Mardi Gras Murders“We’re in New Orleans and these jesters are killing people. And these jesters are amazing because they’re wearing a jester mask, but when they take their mask off, their flesh is just shaped like a jester hat and a jester mask,” Sauls said enthusiastically. “As we go through this scene, the jesters get fleshier. They’re really disgusting.”
This scene takes place in an apartment where someone has partied a little too hard, as evidenced by the Jell-O shots, storm glasses, empty kegs and bottles of liquor scattered around the room, and vomit on the couch. A Mardi Gras parade appears to be taking place outside on the balcony.
∎ Heavy Metal Hell“The story is that a teenager played a record backwards, and that opened the gates of hell for heavy metal rockers who kill people with their chainsaw guitars,” Sauls said.
The opening scene takes place in the teen’s bedroom, where he’s been cut in half. “He should have listened to his mother,” Sauls said, noting that Charles Gray, senior director of creative development for Universal Orlando Entertainment Art and Design, loves to add little life lessons to homes.
From the room, guests enter Heavy Metal Hell, where they face danger from every direction.
∎ Killer Kringles:This one will change the way you look at Christmas.
“Santa has his naughty list, and he brings all the boys, girls and humans on the naughty list to Mrs. Claus, because she gives the naughty list (of children) to the elves,” Sauls said.
The action takes place in Santa’s workshop, where his sleigh is loaded with a sack full of children. “Our special effects team put little actuators in that sack, and we hear kids in the sack,” she added. “They’re in there saying, ‘Let me out! Let me out!’ and you see that sack as arms moving back and forth.”
∎ Night of the Undead Clowns:”It was a clown graveyard and now because of Bzzzcon and their contaminated liquid being dumped into that graveyard, they’ve become zombie clowns,” Sauls said.
Some fans may remember that Bzzzcon created the giant bugs in the Bugs: Eaten Alive house at HHN 2022. Guests will see a large Bzzzcon container, clown remains, and clown costumes embedded in the dirt walls of this underground stage.
“I remember when we were brainstorming, we really liked the idea of zombie clowns,” Sauls added. They thought fans would like it too, but they didn’t have enough to fill a theater. “So we decided to put it in Slaughter Cinema. We’re going to test it out.”
∎ Axe and Chains: Demonic Bounty Hunters“We go to a Western movie and we see demonic bounty hunters,” Sauls explains. “One of them is actually a demon hunting other demons.”
Their story takes place in a saloon, where guests can become targets of Hatchet and Chains. “One hundred percent. They don’t know if we’re demons,” she added.
∎ Blood and Chum“It’s a summer camp where a very large shark has made its way into a lake,” Sauls said. “It’s eating all the kids who jump into the lake.”
“Jaws” fans will love this underwater scene and its giant, movable shark head. “I think he’s a little bigger than Bruce,” Sauls said.
∎ Mummy Strippers Unwrapped“The story goes that the owners of these clubs stole merchandise from an Egyptian museum. They stole one of the sarcophagi and put it up as decoration for their strip club. Well, the sarcophagus woke up and came back to life,” Sauls said.
Now anyone who enters the strip club risks having their essence sucked out of them by the stripper mummies, who use it to transform themselves into beautiful beings.
∎ Zyborgs“You’re kind of in a future world where machines want to take over human life,” Sauls said.
Body parts are used to make other machines.
“The zyborgs want our bodies. They’re coming for us,” she said, adding that lasers overhead will make visitors feel like they’re in the trenches of battle.
What does the house look like?
If you feel like there’s a lot to fit into one house, there is.
In February, USA TODAY was invited to tour a virtual reality model of the home and see its construction site. At the time, the interior framing of the home had just been completed, but even then, I remember thinking it was a long time coming. That wasn’t confirmed until I visited the finished home again in July.
For Halloween Horror Nights fans, it will look like eight different houses with a bonus ending scene reminiscent of the first Slaughter Sinema.
Each of them may be shorter, but they are all extremely detailed.
“Most of our houses have nine to 13 scenes, but as you can see, they’re all very twisty and our designers do a great job of making everything feel very long,” Sauls said, paying tribute to the many team members who work on Halloween Horror Nights.
I told him I wasn’t sure I could walk through the whole house with scare actors in it.
Where are the Easter eggs?
The drive-in movie itself is an Easter egg. It takes place in the fictional town of Carey, which shares the same name as Sauls’ hometown.
Other people who work on HHN are hidden in the credits on the Slaughter Sinema 2 movie posters. Pointing to a poster near the entrance, Sauls said, “They’re all mashups of our production team, the art team, the design team, the show management team, and some of their names don’t match.”
Audio from Universal Orlando’s Mardi Gras parade will play in the background of Mardi Gras Murders.
There’s this Bzzzcon Easter egg in Night of the Undead Clowns.
Towards the end of the house, there are Easter eggs for Pumpkin Guts, Beast Baby, and the Amazon Cannibals from Planet Hell from the original Slaughter Sinema movie.
The decorating team also hides their own Easter eggs in each house. One year, they’re crows. Last year, they’re frogs. After HHN ended, Sauls asked if she could keep some of the frogs in her office to help her overcome her fear. She said that at first, she had them facing her, but eventually she had to turn them away from her.
“And they’re fake! And they’re tiny and they’re different colors,” she said, laughing.
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When does Halloween Horror Nights start?
The highly anticipated annual event kicks off August 30 at Universal Orlando Resort and September 5 in Hollywood.
However, starting Sunday, eager fans will be able to get a sneak peek at some haunted houses, including Slaughter Sinema 2, when the daytime Unmasking the Horror VIP tours begin at Universal Orlando.
