Haunt season is only a few months away! As we impatiently wait to hear what’s in store for Halloween Horror Nights 23 at Universal Orlando, let’s pacify ourselves with a nostalgic look back at the HHN icons and classic commercials. We have to say that HHN Orlando has some of the best haunt commercials ever made. These commercial spots not only entice us to want to attend year after year but they’re also pretty damn scary.
It was fun putting the list together as it brought up memories and nightmares from our visits to HHN in the past ten years when we went to 2007’s Carnival of Carnage and HHN XXII in 2012. There’s no question that Universal Orlando has one of the premier theme park haunts and we can only hope to see them make it even bigger and scarier in the year’s to come.
Now check out all the icons and commercials from the past 10 years and be sure to VOTE for your favorites in the survey links at the bottom of this article.
Halloween Horror Nights 13 was the second year that HHN was located in Islands of Adventure. The Director, Paolo Ravinski , hosted the event, telling guest that “The Director Will See You Now.” The event featured six houses, six scarezones, and two special shows.
Haunted Houses: All Nite Die-In • ScreamHouse Revisited • PsychoScareapy • Jungle of Doom • Funhouse of Fear • Ship of Screams
Halloween Horror Nights XIV asked guests “What’s Your Breaking Point?”, it featured the first, and so far only time, that parts of both Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure were used in the event. 2004 was the first time since 1999 that the event didn’t have an icon, instead advertisements featured a bald victim in a straightjacket in the confines of Shady Brook from the PsychoScareapy maze. Featuring seven houses, four scarezones, a show, and parade.
Haunted Houses: Castle Vampyr • Deadtropolis • Disorientorium • Ghost Town • Halloween Horror Nights Nightmares • Hellgate Prison • Horror in Wax
Halloween Horror Nights: Tales of Terror was the 15th Halloween Horror Nights event in Orlando. Located in Islands of Adventure exclusively for the third time, it was the first time that all of the mazes, scarezones , and shows were linked in a large event-wide backstory. The Storyteller, Elsa Strict, weaved the tale of the world of Terra Cruentas, its ruler the Terra Queen, and her subjects. The event featured seven mazes, four scarezones, and two special shows. In 2006 it was awarded by Amusement Today with the Golden Ticket Award for Best Halloween Event.
Haunted Houses: Blood Ruins • Body Collectors • Cold Blind Terror • Demon Cantina • The Skool • Terror Mines • Where Evil Hides
Halloween Horror Nights: Sweet 16 was the 16th Halloween Horror Nights event in Orlando. Located exclusively in Universal Studios Florida for the first time since 2001, it was advertised as “Horror Comes Home”. The event featured the four original event icons The Storyteller, the Director, the Caretaker and Jack the Clown returning in mazes and in two shows. The mazes and scarezones featured were remakes of some of the greatest mazes in the history of Halloween Horror Nights.
Haunted Houses: All Nite Die-In: Take 2 • Dungeon of Terror: Retold • People Under the Stairs: Under Construction • PsychoScareapy: Maximum Madness • Psycho Path: The Return of Norman Bates • RUN: Hostile Territory • Screamhouse: Resurrection
Halloween Horror Nights: Carnival of Carnage was the 17th Halloween Horror Nights event in Orlando. Located at Universal Studios Florida, it featured the return of Jack the Clown as event icon and leader of the traveling Carnival of Carnage. His carnival had brought together a number of attractions to present for the event, including three modern horror icons Leatherface, Freddy Krueger and Jason. In addition, there were houses with Mary Shaw, from Universal’s film Dead Silence (one of our all time favorite HHN mazes) and a house that was a sequel to The Thing.
Haunted Houses: A Nightmare on Elm Street: Dreamwalkers • Dead Silence: The Curse of Mary Shaw • Friday the 13th: Camp Blood • Jack’s Funhouse in Clown-O-Vision • PsychoScareapy: Home for the Holidays • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Flesh Wounds • The Thing: Assimilation • Vampyr: Blood Bath
Halloween Horror Nights: Reflections of Fear was the 18th annual Halloween Horror Nights event and at the time was the largest Halloween Horror Nights in the event’s history. With Bloody Mary as icon, fears, fairy tales, and urban legends formed the overall arching theme of the event.
Haunted Houses: Body Collectors: Collections of the Past • Creatures! • Dead Exposure • Doomsday • The Hallow • Interstellar Terror • Reflections of Fear • Scary Tales: Once Upon a Nightmare
Halloween Horror Nights: Ripped from the Silver Screen featured classic, 80’s and modern horror movie franchises with Child’s Play (Chucky), Saw (Billy /Jigsaw), and Universal’s The Wolfman taking top billing. Ripped from the Silver Screen’s theme surrounded a mysterious old movie theater, the Universal Palace Theater and The Usher (aka Julian Browning), the undead usher Icon who (s)cares for the theater.
Haunted Houses: The Wolfman • Dracula: Legacy in Blood • Frankenstein: Creation of the Damned • Leave it to Cleaver • Saw • The Spawning • Chucky: Friends till the End • Silver Screams
Halloween Horror Nights XX: Twenty Years of Fear featured a nostalgic celebration of HHN’s 20 years with the Icons characters of HHN past. The logo was a lantern with 2 X’s on it that featured the faces of the Usher , the Director , Jack the Clown , the Storyteller , the Caretaker , Billy , the Gentleman , and the Mad Hatter in the flame. The actual icon was said to be “fear itself” which was visualized with a vicious monster mouth. This was the first year that featured three houses based upon the previous Horror Nights featuring a cameo by one of the icons.
Haunted Houses: Legendary Truth: The Wyandot Estate • PsychoScareapy: Echoes of Shadybrook • Hades: The Gates of Ruin • ZombieGeddon • The Orfanage: Ashes to Ashes • Havoc: Dogs of War • Catacombs: Black Death Rising • Horror Nights: The Hallow’d Past
Halloween Horror Nights XXI: No One Beats the House The icon for HHN 21 was Lady Luck. The year’s theme appeared to be set in the roaring 20′s with gambling, speakeasy, and gangsters. We all know Blackjack is 21 which was apropos for this year’s event. We though that this was a very unique and creative theme; but we wouldn’t expect anything less from HHN Orlando.
Haunted Houses: Winter’s Night: The Haunting of Hawthorn Cemetery • Nightingales: Blood Prey • The Thing • H.R. Bloodengutz Presents Holidays of Horror • Saws N’ Steam: Into the Machine • Nevermore: The Madness of Poe • The In-Between • The Forsaken
Halloween Horror Nights 22: There Is No Escape featured houses based on Silent Hill and The Walking Dead which were both featured in Orlando and Hollywood. This was also the first HHN since 2007 to have one huge park-wide scare zone rather then multiple scare zones scattered throughout the park. It will also was the first event since 2006 to have only 7 houses rather then the usual 8, which was due to the construction of new new Harry Potter and Transformers: The Ride attractions. While the movie/tv show based haunts were fun our favorites were Universal’s original creations, Gothic, Dead End and Universal’s House of Horrors.
Haunted Houses: Dead End • Gothic • Universal’s House of Horrors • The Walking Dead: Dead Inside • Welcome to Silent Hill • Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare • Penn and Teller: New(kd) Las Vegas
Check out Scare Zone’s HHN 22 REVIEW HERE!
Now, we ask you to click the links and VOTE for:
Your FAVORITE HHN ICON
and
Your FAVORITE HHN COMMERCIAL
* Additional HHN info provided by: http://halloweenhorrornights.wikia.com
