After years of fans’ wishes to bring the Five Nights at Freddy’s and Terrifier franchise to the event, the popular request will be coming to Halloween Horror Nights in both the Hollywood and Orlando parks as haunted houses.
Not only does Five Nights at Freddy’s have a huge fan base from the video game, the franchise also created a larger fanbase with the movie that came out in 2023 and is set to release a sequel later this year. Terrifier is a relatively new slasher franchise that has produced three movies within the last decade and has already captured the hearts of many horror fans. These houses were expected to draw in large crowds and long wait times, to the already highly anticipated event. Orlando, having opened on August 29th, verified the prediction as true with Five Nights at Freddy’s extending over 5 hours and even reaching capacity at certain points. During opening weekend, the same theory was confirmed in Hollywood as well, with the wait times consistently at high numbers throughout the night. Terrifier had the longest wait time of 240 minutes, and Five Nights at Freddy’s had a wait time of up to 180 minutes. The two essentially remained the top houses all throughout the weekend, and the lines remained relatively long, even near the end of the night.
However, what wasn’t accounted for was just how popular another house would be – Jason Universe. Although a beloved franchise with a huge following, the hype for Five Nights at Freddy’s and Terrifier had led to much of the attention being put on them, and overlooked the Jason Universe house. Although a Jason Universe house hasn’t been done before, there has been a house that incorporated Jason, such as Freddy vs. Jason in 2016, so the house might have been undermined, as the queue, located by the Revenge of the Mummy attraction, filled up and saw wait times of 180 minutes, making it a guest favorite alongside Terrifier and Five Nights at Freddy’s.
This year’s house lineup consists of multiple IP fan favorites such as Fallout, Jason Universe, The Horrors of the Wyatt Sicks, and Poltergeist, as well as new original houses like Monstrous 3: The Ghosts of Latin America, and Scarecrow: Music by Slash. Of course the Purge: Blumhouse Terror Tram that is exclusive to Hollywood will be returning once again this year but with a new twist! Prepare to find Blumhouse icons that we haven’t seen in past year’s tram such as those from the Insidious and Exorcist franchise. Guests can be scared through all new scarezones consisting of Noche de Brujas, Chainsaw Clownz, Carnival of Carnage, and Murder of Crowz. There will also be all new exclusive food items and merchandise respective to the featured houses. Some of these include a Mr. Cupcake cupcake and a “Freddy Fazbear Pizza” for Five Nights at Freddy’s, lemon raspberry Sunflower Glasses for Terrifier, and a Jason Universe mask smore. These items specifically have guests lined up in lengthy lines to grab. The Hollywood and Dine restaurant has been transformed to “Filly Foodstuffs” and includes fallout themed food to immerse the loyal and excited fans into the Fallout universe.
Is there a downside to this year’s stacked IP houses at Horror Nights? Although these houses have been long awaited, guests have come into the event by the masses, making for a very busy event that has already raised concerns of being overcrowded. In addition, express passes have been sold out for almost all of September already, adding to the wait times for those standing in the general admissions line. Without an express pass, which can be costly to obtain, it has become increasingly difficult to get past even just a couple houses before the night ends, and has guests either missing out on Terrifier, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and/or Jason Universe, or allocating a large sum of their time waiting in line for just one of those houses. The park has lengthy wait times all around, including ride and food queues. Although fans have been waiting for this moment, it draws attention towards the potential prices they pay for it.