October 10th, 2009. Dusk deepens the gray sky as I advance toward the main gates of Universal Studios Florida. Scareactors dressed as undead movie theater ushers roam the courtyard, flashlights at the ready. Above me, an LED screen plays videos of the Usher teasing the horrors in store for us tonight – Saw, Chucky, the Wolfman, and many more.
They say you never forget your first Halloween Horror Nights, and mine is no exception. Even as the years have passed, I’ve been able to remember the night almost photographically. I’ve kept my old trip report that I wrote way back in 2009 shortly after arriving home from the event. It’s a little cringeworthy, and some of the language is dated (nothing problematic though!), but it’s a great snapshot of what ran through my head as my Halloween Horror Nights fascination morphed into the obsession it is today.
Any commentary I make will be in bold.
"Dad drops us off, and I tell [my sibling] that, “I’ll say Hi to Chucky for you!”. [Acquaintance] and Mom take the escalators while I take the stairs. We go past Bag Security, the moving platforms, and CityWalk. We make a right to the Studios and…..JULIAN IS ON THE MOTHER EFFING SCREEN!!!! YESSSSSSS! Just seeing Julian (aka The Usher) made me so excited! (Again, Twizzlers comes into effect.) Okay, pass the crowd, to the arch, and—look at all the usher people! I start filming enthusiastically, even freaking out because I saw Julian RIGHT THERE (no, not the screen.) We go pass the dreadfully long security line, and give the dude at the entrance our tickets. He gives us our maps (with Julian on them!) and we start our horrific journey."
My acquaintance was a girl from my middle school Drama class that I considered a friend, but I don't think she thought the same of me. Also, lol, I don't simp for the Usher as much as I did back then. I still have the video clips I mention here, though they're a bit too cringeworthy for me to share.
"We go down where Jimmy Neutron is into our first scarezone, Containment. The fog smelled of rotten eggs as some guy in a truck yelled to me, “Hey, walk, not run, we’re sick and tired of cleaning up the mess, people!”, because I was wearing sandals. Almost immediately after that, a person with a Freddy Krueger looking face in some blue jumpsuit came up to me and screamed. I only laughed. Then, 5 seconds later, a lady growls at us, making [acquaintance] jump. We decide to a make a right to go to our next scarezone, War of the Living Dead. Not many scares here, except one of the zombies had a gun, which made a loud shooting noise, which made us all jump."
Unpopular opinion: I hate the smell of the fog they use at Halloween Horror Nights. It has actually gotten me sick on multiple occasions, including when I worked there. It irks me they sell candles and whatnot that smell like the fog.
"We then got a bit close to Horrorwood Die In, but we didn’t go through that since I didn’t see any scareactors. We were almost bribed to see ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show Tribute’, but we couldn’t since we needed to get to the Saw house. We then suddenly found our destination, where we were greeted with a surprising wait time of 5 minutes. Go us! We get in line as “Don’t Forget the Rules” from the Saw II movie plays. As we get closer to the house entrance, I started to get a bit scared as I heard the screams. Mom assures me that I’ll be okay. We then pass the Saw 6 posters and barbed wire and get inside."
The Team Members were not bribing us to go and see the show. Thirteen-year-old me thrived on hyperbole. Also, prepare for a lot of paragraphs starting with "We then..."
We got to Saw at the perfect time. It helped that it was at the back of the park and not one of the Stay & Scream houses. Then again, this was back when S&S wasn’t as crazy as it is now. This was the first time I’d gone through a haunted house in a very long time, so of course I was scared. When I was five, I went to a Halloween party at a high school. They forced you to go through a “haunted hallway” to get to the actual party. One of the “scareactors” tried grabbing my ankle. My dad nearly sucker-punched the kid and carried a crying me through the rest of the hallway. I swore off anything even remotely scary until my later adolescent years.
"“Hello Adam” pounds through the speakers as we walk in. Us three were being shown on the TV monitors, then seconds later: Jigsaw makes his presence known, in his AWESOME red and black robe. “The games have just begun!” he yells. We walked through Jigsaw’s Greatest Hits, such as the bathroom scene (at least what [acquaintance] saw: I admit, my eyes were closed through the majority of the house), Jigsaw (or rather John Kramer, in this case) being operated, and Amanda in the Reverse Bear Trap. Amanda scared me by pounding on the table. I don’t remember the rest, but as soon as we came out of the house, I went, “That’s it? I SURVIVED!” Yes, I did. Saw gets a 3/5, mainly because I was being chicken. If I wasn’t being chicken, Saw would’ve got a better grade."
What I wrote here is more or less what I still remember of the Saw house – about 20% of it.
Click here for Part Two.
