We set the Theme Park Rangers Radar time machine back a decade to look at the ghost of Halloween Horror Nights Past at Universal. But we returned in time to find a parking spot at Epcot and toast the boozy bites at SeaWorld Orlando.
Radar rounds up bits and pieces from Central Florida attractions. It appears on OrlandoSentinel.com on Wednesdays.
HHN: Alice aforethought
An intriguing haunted house for the upcoming Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando is named The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmare. The park usually gets maze inspiration from horror movies, TV shows, assorted monsters and mutants or the imaginations of its creators, not musicians.
The last singer I could find with an HHN house was Alice Cooper in 2012, based on his “Welcome to My Nightmare” hit. This sent me into the black hole that is Horror Nights history.
The house included asylum inmates, nurses, mattresses and a Cooper scareactor as a plastic surgeon. But what has lingered in my brain is that the facade of the building featured the singer’s face, way larger than life. We walked into the maze through his mouth.
Here are black-hole notes I made about HHN22:
There were only seven houses, down from eight the year before. It was the first HHN after the Jaws ride was closed, and that disrupted the usual lineup. Although Universal had announced its sequel to Wizarding World of Harry Potter, closed down Amity and started construction, it had not officially confirmed that those were all related or that Wizarding World 2 would go at Universal Studios.
Magicians Penn and Teller were involved in a 3-D, Las Vegas-themed house called Penn & Teller: New(kd) Vegas. It included a wedding chapel, radioactivity and reference to the Siegfried & Roy tiger accident that happened nearly a decade earlier. (Side note update: Roy Horn, the one injured in the tiger incident, died after contracting COVID-19 virus in May 2020. He was 75. Siegfried Fischbacher died of pancreatic cancer eight months later at age 81.)
In 2012, the first of “The Walking Dead” houses arrived. The franchise was involved in the next four HHNs, too. The initial house covered seasons one and two of the AMC show, and visitors entered through the hospital, surrounded by corpses. The program’s co-executive producer (and monster-makeup expert) Greg Nicotero also was on the scene.
Universal didn’t have strictly defined scare-zone spaces in 2012. “We want to play with that a little bit,” Universal executive Jim Timon told the Sentinel then. “The characters and scare actors will ebb and flow and move and change, so you won’t always see the same scare actors in the same place as you may have seen them earlier in the night.” The next year, it was parkwide “Walking Dead” zones, and in 2014, the more traditional, individual zones were reinstituted.
As the event launched in ’12, we asked Universal creative type Michael Aiello to describe each maze in two words. For Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare, he said “Rock ‘n’ roll … and different.” Different? “There’s a lot of juxtaposition in the maze,” he explained. “We’ve got a morgue that’s also a strip club.”
(Parking) lot to think about
There’s repaving and re-striping happening in Epcot’s parking lot. And renumbering.
While walking into the park recently, I spotted fresh blacktop on the east side of the lot, and the ends had fresh paint. It appears there’s a more room for the pedestrian traffic, which has been in close quarters with cars. Why walkers instead haven’t been sauntering down the once (and future) tram lanes for the past two years is a mystery.
But I also noticed that my row to remember was 402. Didn’t they used to have two digits? Why, yes, and as of last weekend, some of them on west side were still two digits. Some were even a single digit. (Journey 1-9).
Disney hasn’t said what’s up with that, and so far it doesn’t feel as big as deal as in 2011, when Magic Kingdom reorganized its lot into villains and heroes designations.
I like that the first row past the trees marks a change. It’s now Create 401 — previously 39 if Google Earth is to be believed. It was suggested that it might have something to do with the return of tram service, but it’s not like you used to say “409, driver, and make it fast.”
I considered that the change was a sort of corporate synergy making all the WDW theme park lots feature triple-digit rows. But then my most frequent row at Disney’s Animal Kingdom is Peacock 15.
For now?
Beer factor
It’s called the Craft Beer Festival, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a good solid meal at the SeaWorld Orlando event. It does mean that solid will likely have a beer element.
A quick whip through the menu reveals beer-battered crispy shrimp, two-way beer-drunken ribs, smoked drunken chicken quesadilla and tiramisu with oatmeal stout beer, among other selections.
“Everything has either a local beer or a partnership beer that we use in the park,” Jomar Rios, SeaWorld’s executive chef, said recently.
It helps make the event menu memorable, he said.
“That was the whole idea — things that the guests can remember,” Rios said. That could include the walking taco, served in a Fritos bag, and the birria pork taco that diners add jus and lime to.
But what’s up with drunken chicken?
“We let it marinate for about 12 hours. And then we season it and then we smoke it,” Rios said. “If you’ve been drinking beer for 12 hours, I guarantee you’re going to be drunk.”
Weekend outlook
* SeaWorld Orlando’s Craft Beer Festival coincides with the theme park’s Electric Ocean summertime event on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
* Epcot International Food & Wine Festival continues, and its Eat to the Beat concert series features Blanco Brown on Friday and Saturday, followed by 98 Degrees on Sunday and Monday.
* Maroon 5 is in concert at Universal Studios on Friday. The higher-end, multi-day passes are sold out, but check Music After Dark for show night passes.
* At Gatorland, it’s the final weekend for half-price admission for Florida residents, although the deal runs through Aug. 31. Details at gatorland.com.
What’s on your radar? Email me at dbevil@orlandosentinel.com
