Another speculation map has dropped from our friends at Horror Night Nightmares. As we discussed in our previous post, Halloween Horror Nights Speculation Map, this event is our favorite and it is fun to, well, speculate on which properties will be included in the event this year.
To Recap: What type of event is Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) you ask? It is an event aimed at teens and up. I wouldn’t suggest young ones to visit this event as the crowd can be a bit rough. There is plenty of alcohol being served and also graphic scenes from horror movies being played out in the park. The event happens on weekends during September and October which is the Halloween season.
Halloween Horror Nights 2022 Dates
Here are the dates for Halloween Horror Nights 2022 at Universal Studios Florida:
- Sept. 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30
- Oct. 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31
Mazes
Let’s get to the speculation. Dropping out of the map are: The Last of Us (TLOU), Fear Street, Seaside Village, The Evil Dead, and The Curse of Pandora’s Box. Keep in mind, these are only rumors at this point, however we are disappointed to see The Last of Us fall off the map. It makes sense though given the timeline of the series coming out in 2023 that we may see this one next year.
The rest of the mazes that fell off are not a big deal to us. We could call out the Evil Dead as we love this franchise but it has been at HHN in the past, unlike TLOU! Yes this one hurts if TLOU isn’t in this year’s mazes, but hey, that is why this is all speculation!
New Speculation Mazes: Halloween Horror Nights
We bolded out the additional mazes to the list below. We will give our thoughts on some on the additions.
- Universal Monsters: The Mummy vs. The Wolfman
- Stranger Things
- Dead Man’s Warf
- The Wicked Growth 2
- Bug House
- El Chupacabra
- Underground Creatures
- Blumhouse: The Black Phone & Freaky
- Halloween
- The Weeknd
Let’s start with the obvious, Stranger Things has been added. No shock here as the trailer for season 4 just dropped and also this intellectual property (IP) has already appeared in the past at HHN. I get it that Netflix and HHN have collaborated for several years now and this makes sense from a business perspective. I just hope they refresh it a bit as the second year they did Stranger Things it was the same thing.
The Wicked Growth 2 has us intrigued as this was a sleeper hit for us last year. The entrance to the maze was incredible. 100s of carved pumpkins and a great smell was pumped in to help set the mood. Coming face to face with the evil pumpkin creature inside was awesome as well. Hoping this one comes true, but not at the expense of TLOU.
The Blumhouse maze to us sounds lazy. We aren’t fans of combining two properties into one maze. The mazes are already short and we like to let the story unfold as we navigate them. The team members already rush you through the mazes so having two stories makes it feel even more rushed. Dead Man’s Warf could easily still be Seaside Village just renamed, and Bug House was added to feed into the paranoia by people who don’t live in central Florida that swears we have swarms of bugs here and we can’t go out in the summer time ever.
Conclusion
While the new map didn’t move us too much one way or the other, we do hope TLOU ends up being announced, however we aren’t expecting it at this time. Stranger Things just makes more sense for this year. We will leave you with some tips again.
Arrive early if you don’t buy the Express Pass, avoid Friday & Saturday. The lines become a lot shorter the closer to closing time you get. And the biggest tip, DON’T GO ALONE!!!!!
