HHN 33 Is In The Books!

This year’s Halloween Horror Nights has been an unusual one, to say the least. Thanks to our unique experience, I can’t really give a full review, but I’m still gonna share our story!

 

I’ve been hyped for HHN 33 for months. I’ve followed all of the announcements, watched the Youtube videos, etc. Unfortunately, this year didn’t quite go as planned. But that’s okay- we still had fun!

 

So what went wrong??

 

First, we had planned to be there the week of Hurricane Milton. We did actually fly in, but then when we saw the hurricane was going to be a bad one, we decided we weren’t going to stick around and find out what happens. They cancelled HHN October 9 and 10, which are the dates we would have been there, so that was a good decision! We made plans to come back two weeks later. Unfortunately, Jax got a terrible ear infection and I ended up with pneumonia on our trip!

We made it to HHN for a few hours one night, though, so here’s how it went:

The Houses

We didn’t get there in time for stay & scream (Jax wasn’t feeling well so we took a nap and got back to the park about 8pm). Of course, at this time, lines were long. Some of the original houses were manageable, though, so we agreed we’d start with those and try for the big IP’s after midnight.

Museum: Deadly Exhibits-

This wasn’t high on most people’s HHN lists, but we had a great run-through and both enjoyed it. Actually, we walked out and Jax said “Not gonna lie, the houses seem pretty good this year!”

Major Sweets Candy Factory-

This one was Jax’s favorite house of the ones we got to go through. He said it was especially surprising that it was so good because it was in the Fast & Furious building, and the Chucky house was there last year, neither of which are our favorites….

Goblin’s Feast-

I’d heard great things about this house, and while it was entertaining, neither of us picked it as our fave house. The costumes, masks, etc. were awesome and we loved the phrases when entering and exiting the house. While standing in line, you overhear a goblin saying “quiet meat, you’ll scare the cattle,” which Jax got a kick out of. ON the way out of the house, they say ” The food! It’s escaping!” (or something to that effect). Fun house, just not overly scary.

Universal Monsters: Eternal Bloodlines-

I didn’t have high hopes for this house, but it ended up being my favorite! It’s possible we happened to get a really good run-through and managed to get most of the good scares, but it was my favorite of the houses we did.

Unfortunately, we only made it through 4 houses before we had to tap out. But they were all a ton of fun!

The Scarezones

If I’m being honest, scarezones were “meh” this year. Did we still enjoy them and have a great time? Absolutely! But it seemed more effort could have went into them. That was Jax’s first observation of the night. However, we did get a lot of interaction from the scare actors and one managed to get Jax to jump because he came up behind him (not an easy task- he doesn’t scare easily!).

The Rides

We only managed to make it on the Mummy during HHN. We hopped in line for Men In Black and Escape from Gringotts, but both went down for technical difficulties while we were in line and we didn’t wait it out. We didn’t even attempt the line for Rip Ride Rock and to be honest, Transformers not being open during HHN this year wasn’t even noticeable for us.

The Food

Unfortunately, with limited time on our hands and only one night to enjoy, we didn’t make it to any food booths. However, Jax saw a picture of the Stay Puft marshmallow smore the next day and was very disappointed we didn’t try it.

The Death Eaters

Even though our experience at HHN was not what we had hoped for, I did manage to check one thing off my list of must-dos: the death eaters! We wore our Dark Mark temporary tattoos and one of them interacted with Jax. I didn’t get to experience the TikTok Death Eater rizz that’s all the rave, but I got to watch him interact with Jax, so my night was still made!

 

While our HHN trips were not exactly what we had in mind, we had a great time and we’re already counting down till next year!