Halloween Horror Nights 2025: How Scary You Ask?

This was our agency's second visit to Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights and here are some words we would use to describe our time; terrifying, freaky, gross, shocking and these are just a start and meant in the most positive of ways.

If you want to scream and have adrenaline rush after adrenaline rush, then HHN is for you. If you are not being scared beyond measure in the houses they create, you are being lunged at in fog by zombies and ghouls and all sorts of hatchet, chainsaw, baseball bat wielding (all fake of course) creatures of the night.

But what makes HHN so fun and so unique and popular is again Universal's attention to detail. The story telling in the houses is second to none. The set designs, costumes etc are all what you would expect from a company also known for it's movies. Even if being scared is not your thing, you can actually appreciate the haunted houses from an art and design perspective. Universal doesn't even miss a beat when it comes to the use of smells in each house. They know how to set the scene better than anything we have ever seen before.

And even if you are not into going into and walking through haunted houses, Universal also uses what they call "scare zones" to enhance the whole "horror feeling." And even the attention to detail in the scare zones is something you won't see anywhere else. Each scare zone has a back story. It's not just being scared and screaming, they bring you into the story with the sets and scare actors walking throughout the scare zones.

AND, even if you are not a fan of the houses and scare zones, they have special shows, food and beverages just for the event that make it fun and interesting.

But one thing to note if you are planning a visit; you won't be able to do and see everything in one night unless you pay a hefty premium (double the price of an individual ticket) for passes that allow you to skip the regular lines. Wait times for each house during normal busy days will all be around 40-50 minutes (some over 60 minutes). That means that you would be spending 7-9 hours just in line if you tried to visit each house. The special shows also have wait times to get in that can be over an hour during busier times of the festival. That doesn't leave a lot of time to try many of the specialty food and beverage options. We ended up NOT getting one special food item and only 1 special beverage. And we went in only 4 houses from 5:30pm until about 9:30pm. Could we have stayed longer and done more? Of course, but we also spent the day in Islands of Adventure before heading over to Universal Studios for the party which made for a long day.

So our recommendation is to plan on just going to HHN and plan on spending the full amount of time allowed if you want to see and do and eat what is available during the festival. Trying to do parks in the morning and then going to HHN that evening was just too much for us. But we still had an amazing time and would do it again. We felt the time spent and the houses we got to see were enough to justify the cost of a single night ticket with no premium add ons.

So there you have it. That's our take and our experience with Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights. Have you been? Have been more than once? Is it the best in your opinion? We would love to hear some feedback.