Halloween Horror Nights Unmasking the Horror is a peek behind the curtain of what makes Halloween Horror Nights so special.
Two tours are offered including a 3-hour and a 6-hour tour where you’ll experience either 3 or 6 of this year’s mazes out of the 10 available.
With some incredible mazes in this year’s line-up I was hoping and praying for a Ghostbusters maze tour but sadly it wasn’t meant to be as we didn’t get any IP mazes on this particular tour with The Museum Deadly Exhibits, Slaughter Sinema 2 and Triplets of Terror being the three mazes chosen for our tour.
This lights-on-tour allows you to go through each maze and you’re able to photograph certain areas of the maze when instructed to do so and our tour guide Kyle was informative, friendly and very jokey as he made lighthearted references to the more sinister nature of each of these scare mazes.
Prices start at $99.99 for the three-house variation and at $179.99 for the six-hour tour.
The Museum: Deadly Exhibits
Whilst for me this was one of the weaker mazes of the entire event what I did appreciate was seeing the level of detail that goes into the maze design and how much work and effort Universal’s Art and Design team undertake to bring these creations to life.
Yes, this maze wasn’t a strong addition to this year’s line-up but pick this maze up and pop it at any other scare event here in the UK and it would be one of the strongest.
The exterior facade of the building certainly builds the atmosphere as the museum preps for its new exhibition, the rotting stone. Unbeknownst to the museum the stone is cursed bringing various exhibits to life and killing the majority of the workers within this space.
Each room of the scare maze dives into various folklore and exhibitions where you walk through history and even at one point walk through a full-sized replica of a Viking ship. It’s very impressive and with the lights on you get a better idea of how the maze is structured and all of the cue effects the actors use when inside the maze.
A simple click of a pedal activates the effect the actor wants whether it’s an audio cue or a dialogue delivery it all comes together to form the show.
Spray foam with LEDs underneath it created an eerie vibe of the stone’s presence infecting the museum and it was done so cleverly with many winks and nods to a whole variety of insider info such as creative team members’ names dotted throughout the maze as a loving little wink and nod to its creators.
Slaughter Sinema 2
I loved Slaughter Sinema 2 with various B-movie style styles that you walk through and experience in bite-sized chunks. There’s so much variety and randomness that it feels like multiple mazes in one and the lights on tour felt the same.
With each room so differently themed from the one previous it was great to see the variety as this was the one lights-on maze that didn’t bore me.
I have a very short attention span so seeing the maze for 60 minutes revolving around the same story could get a little tiresome, especially if it’s a maze you weren’t too keen on when you did it in show mode but Slaughter Sinema 2 was both fun in show mode and fun in tour mode.
A lovely variety and some great narration and discussion from Kyle as he pointed out all of the hidden audio equipment in each maze to distinguish audio between each scene, with each room being so vastly different the way in which the rooms are built (including audio) is slightly different than the other mazes.
Slaughter Sinema 2 was fun and even more intriguing knowing that these ideas were cast-offs of ideas that were never turned into full-size mazes, who knows, maybe one day something you’ve seen in the Slaughter Sinema will be transformed into a full-size maze, fingers crossed for Mummy Strippers, that section was hilarious.
Triplets of Terror
It’s a real shame that two of the mazes that I thought were the weakest of the event were on our behind-the-scenes tour (for our full maze reviews click here) but I rather enjoyed seeing how Triplets of Terror weaves together, something I never spotted in show mode.
From a timeline progression within the maze to continuity from the start to the end of the maze not to mention the Triplets signature trademark dotted around the mazes were all the smaller details I never would have spotted during the runthrough.
What I also loved about Triplets of Terror was more of the winks and nods to the creative team but Jaws too, there’s some Jaws references scattered throughout the maze and that was great to see, all roads lead to Jaws at Universal.
Find out more information about the lights-on Halloween Horror Nights Unmasking the Horror tours by visiting – https://www.universalorlando.com/hhn/en/us
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