This year I represented Hypable during opening night of Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights. This was my first event, and boy do I have some stories to tell.
Let’s be fair to myself: I’m not a total and complete wimp. I can definitely handle my share of horror movies and friends trying to scare me, but for some reason Halloween Horror Nights had me on the floor or against the walls a couple of times – and I wish I was exaggerating.
But it’s okay, because after going through eight horrific mazes and two scare zones at Universal Orlando, I’ve learned a few things.
Tip 1: Don’t tell anyone you’re scared. At all.
Going on the tour with fellow media representatives was great – I had people I was going to stick around with the entire night which meant there was going to be at least some air of familiarity going through the mazes. After socializing and bonding at the bar I’d made some really great acquaintances who made me feel comfortable.
However, I learned very quickly after the first maze (which was Roanoke: Cannibal Colony) that I should not tell anyone (including the tour guides) that I was scared. Why?
Because if you tell a single soul that you’re even the teeniest bit scared, they’re going to want to make you go first through all of the mazes. You might be wondering why this is a bad thing, and it’s because the one principle rule about going through a haunted maze is that you don’t want to be first or last if you don’t want to be scared.
Being first made me the test dummy of the group. If there was a scareactor hiding around the next partition, I was the first they’d scream at. I was the one trying to peek around corners but ended up getting startled at the scareactor just waiting for that to happen. Several of my new acquaintances loved the fact that I was first, and it made them crack up (hell, it made me crack up too), but man, being first sucked!
The short version of the story: Unless you want to be the target for the scareactors, try to stay in the middle of your group. This way you’ll be able to tell which areas have specific jump-out moments and when to avoid them.
Tip 2: Do not text and walk through a scare zone.
Having no idea that we were going to be walking through the scare zone, I was too busy Instagramming on my phone to realize we had made our way into one of them. I was just minding my own business, trying to decide if I should use the “Amaro” filter or not. It looked a little too happy, so I tried “X-Pro II” and it looked way better, and then as I’m debating this obviously huge decision a scareactor (pictured to the right) just comes out from nowhere and decides to run right in front of me with his hand mere inches from my face.
I screamed. I screamed like a baby so hard and loud that I lost by balance just a little bit and had to take a few steps back. At this, my tour guide said, “I love this guy! You’re going first in the next maze.”
…ugh.
Tip 3: Pretend to be really happy and not scared at all.
One person in my group had a great plan: Just smile the entire time. It wasn’t so much of a plan as it was her actually being really happy and smiling the entire time, which I realized protected her from the scareactors.
Meanwhile I made the mistake of being very visibly frightened during the entirety of the Walking Dead maze. There was a point where we were walking through a grocery store room and I was so frightened that a walker came right up to me and cornered me, and I mean he literally cornered me since I was backing up against a wall only to realize there was no where else to go. “Don’t be scaredddd,” he grunted in a horrible husky voice. Yes sir, please, continue to tell me not to be scared as you pretend to attack me in your zombie attire while several people are screaming in the background.
And it seemed the rest of the scareactors in the Walking Dead maze took this as their cue to all go after me. I’d shown so much fright from the first walker that the rest of the walkers focused purely on me. I wasn’t even at the front of the group this time!
Here’s another lesson for you: Once they know, they know. Somehow scareactors have this form of communication between them – maybe it’s the way they grunt and stalk, maybe they have telepathic abilities to tell who the wimp coming into the room is – once they find out who is the best to scare, they all go for that one individual.
At the end of the Walking Dead maze there’s a scene where you’re walking through a yard with a bunch of chain link fences. There are several walkers behind them, and several in the pathway through them, but what you won’t notice because of the strobe lights is that there are openings for zombies to go through the fence and onto your path.
I felt like Ron in the Forbidden Forest with thousands of spiders around him. I was probably just as visibly scared, or I assume I was, because suddenly one of the walkers started following me on the other side of the fence. At that point I realized he could come and get me because he came through the opening and jumped out at me. I was finished. I’m dead. This isn’t a live Kyle writing to you right now, this is his ghost.
But no, as if that wasn’t enough, his friends noticed my fright and they also came through the fence to get me. Which is when I promptly made my exit.
By the end of this entire night, my voice was hoarse and my legs hurt, but I had a blast. Yes, it was frightening to the point where I had to just take a second to catch up – but it was amazing. Plus, the second visit to the bar definitely helped.
Bonus tip: The scareactors aren’t allowed to touch you! While this doesn’t necessarily make things less scary, it’s an important thing to keep in mind.
Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights is open now through November 1.