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Halloween Horror Nights 17 (2007)

Following in the bloody footsteps of last year’s Sweet 16, Jack is back once again but instead of associating himself with previously Halloween Horror Nights icons, he’s moved up in the world and joined forced with New Line Cinema’s deadly trio: Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Jason (Friday The 13th) and Freddy Kruger (A Nightmare On Elm Street). Together they have transformed Universal Studios Florida into the Carnival of Carnage, featuring 8 haunted houses and 4 big live action shows.

With that much to do, it’s kind of become impossible to still see all of the haunted houses, explore the park and still see all of the live action shows, so my review will only obviously cover the items I was able to experience myself, all the haunts and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure. As for the other shows: Freak Show, Jacks and Rocky Horror… I wanted to see them, there just was no time.

Like last year, Bill & Ted are back home again in the Fear Factor venue where their story began all those years ago. I’ve got a ton of sweet show photos for you, but since those are bound to include SPOILERS for the show, the photos will be posted on a separate Bill & Ted page. The show itself was fun as usual, but a slight letdown compared to last year. The cast is wonderful as usual, but the show falls a little short with it’s section of Villains this year, focusing on celebrity bad girls: Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan who spends half of the show either in a substance enduced stupor or sleeping on part of the stage when the action is taking place. For some muscle they bright out Dr. Doom (Fantastic Four) and Sylar (Heroes) and that was about it. With Freddy, Jason and Leatherface roaming the park, it would have been nice if they could have dropped in to play and dice up a few whiney heroes, like the angst ridden black-costumed Spiderman. It was still a funny show as usual, and I really enjoyed the creative way they were able to bring Transformers into the mix as well towards the end. Speaking of the ending though… I’ve got to confess total confusion over the various musical personalities they were trying to use… other than Weird Al. I had not a single clue who they were supposed to be, so either they were vague or I’m just really out of touch. (Update – I’ve been told that the mystery musical guests seen in the show that I couldn’t identify were Beyonce, Gwen Steffani and Gerard from My Chemical Romance)

After we entered the park, where the entrance is decked out impressively in a twisted carnival fashion, our first stop was to venture down to the Hollywood stage, avoiding the crazy clown bikers riding escaped carousel horses. Here our Media group was taken to a short performance on the Hollywood Stage where Jack warmly welcomed us all and introduces us to his three-ring circus… Jason, Freddy and Leatherface.

From here it was on to the haunts, but I’m going to touch on the Scare Zone issue briefly. Technically there only seemed to be one ‘official’ Scare Zone on the pathway between the Hollywood stage and the Animal Actors show which kind of had a sort of London Fog look to the people lost within. Now while there were not other official Scare Zones, there were various creatures roaming the park, though most seemed to be tied to specific locations. The chainsaw maniacs all stayed fairly close to the front of the Earthquake building, there were a few dancing vampire girls on a stage near their maze, and some other odd characters wanderings through the foggy NY area streets as well that I wasn’t sure about. Unfortunately, I never did encounter one of those crazy bumper cars, so I don’t know if they were put into use or not on opening night.

Now while I like the idea of no where in the park being safe, there is something to be said for having more scare zones, and after how well done Deadtropolis was the year before, I really found that I wanted to see something like that done again this year. Deadtropolis wasn’t just a scare zone… they actually managed to create a micro-world environment over a large area, complete with many characters: The military guarding the perimeter, zombies roaming the inside, hapless tourists who appeared to only recently have been turned into zombies scattered in the crowd, and zombie hunters on bikes roaming in and out of the area at will. The lack of a follow up to Deadtropolis would probably be the only weak spot in the entire night’s lineup.

Before I review the mazes, lets take a quick look at the general photos taken all around the park. I want to thank my good friend Michael Fettig of Action Shots Photography (based in Orlando) who served as my photographer for the evening. If your in need of an excellent photographer while in the Central Florida area for whatever reason, please do check out his services.