Universal Orlando has canceled Halloween Horror Nights for this year. The popular after-hours scare-fest, held for nearly three decades at Universal Studios theme park, is the latest event to be scrubbed by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Universal Orlando Resort will be focusing exclusively on operating its theme parks for daytime guests, using the enhanced health and safety procedures already in place,” the resort said in a news release Friday morning. “We know this decision will disappoint our fans and guests. We are disappointed, too. But we look forward to creating an amazing event in 2021.”
HHN was scheduled to operate on select nights from Sept. 10 to Nov. 1. It would have been the 30th edition of the event, which has cultivated a reputation for elaborate haunted-house mazes, some of which are tied to film and TV franchises.
There had been mixed opinions about the immediate future of the event, said Duff Mason, co-host of HHN365 podcast.
“I think the majority of fans expected it to happen, especially hearing all the rumors recently about what the houses will be and the Tribute [merchandise] store moving forward,” Mason said. “But I feel like there are a lot of people who are still pessimistic about the possibility under the current climate that it makes a lot of sense to cancel.”
Past incarnations have featured jam-packed theme park streets, visitors clutching one another as they filed through the close quarters of a darkened maze, in-your-face frights and stage shows that drew thousands of spectators nightly.
“If you’re someone who goes to this event, you see the massive crowds that it gets throughout the streets and the conga lines and the houses,” Mason said. “The logistics behind getting that to be a socially distanced event sound nearly impossible.”
The event has an enthusiastic fan base. You might see someone driving a hearse on Interstate 4 heading to Universal on opening day — a time for those who love the creepiness of Halloween to go all out.
Theme-park writer Clint Gamache and his team only missed a few nights of 2019′s HHN, which stretched from September to early November last year. Some nights, he returned home at 1 a.m., and then woke up for his 9-to-5 job and to get his kids ready for school. The season brought joyful exhaustion.
“That’s our happy time. We’re all hardcore,” Gamache said, who runs the Thrill Geek website. “We love the Halloween season. That’s when we come out of our cocoon. We shine.”
Universal Orlando had not released details about its planned 10 houses or scare zones of the 2020 event. Plans normally are in the works for more than a year ahead of the opening date, and Universal trickles out themes and tidbits through the summer.
HHN devotees were awaiting updates and might have been encouraged by recent developments, including visible preparation of the Tribute Store, which normally is filled with Horror Nights merchandise; vague social-media posts; and Universal’s call for auditions for “scare actors,” the workers who populate the haunted houses.
For its Halloween season, Universal typically employs hundreds of seasonal workers, some of which are transformed into zombies, mangled monsters, aliens or choreographed chainsaw-wielding maniacs who are charged with frightening folks who paid admission for the experience.
In a letter to employees, Universal Orlando Resort president Bill Davis thanked them for their work that had already been underway for months.
“For so many of us, HHN is a point of pride,” Davis wrote. “I have every confidence that our teams will adapt and direct their energies towards making HHN 2021 the ultimate homecoming of terror.”
The cancellation will cut into Universal Orlando’s revenue. HHN patrons buy tickets that are separate from regular day admission. It also sells multinight passes, front-of-line rights and hotel packages plus food, drink and souvenir purchases. It was scheduled to run 32 nights in 2020. The event at Universal Studios Hollywood also has been called off. The California theme park remains in shutdown mode due to the virus.
“Halloween events are our single-largest cross-promotional event in the industry. They are very important,” said Dennis Speigel, president of Ohio-based International Theme Park Services. “I have seen them make or break a park’s season based on how well Halloween is attended.”
Events with a Halloween theme have multigenerational appeal, he said.
“It is our biggest and most popular event … that’s from mom and pop all the way through,” Speigel said.
There are logistical and economic factors in the situation for attractions, said Patrick Kling, an Orlando-based art director for theme park design.
“I know there are Halloween events that are going to be happening that are scaled down and heavily modified, and I think that Universal Studios’ model of high-volume experiences, it was just not going to be feasible to do the event and be able to be profitable,” he said.
“I think there are design challenges, but I also think it’s more of a people don’t want to travel to Florida right now, and you need that volume to pay for all of it.”
In mid-June, Walt Disney World canceled its Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, a milder multinight after-hours event at Magic Kingdom. That was slated to begin Aug. 13. SeaWorld Orlando’s Halloween Spooktacular, a kids-driven event that’s included with regular admission, is listed as beginning Sept. 13 on the park’s website.
The coronavirus pandemic prompted a three-month shutdown of Universal Orlando, starting in mid-March. That effectively abbreviated Mardi Gras, another annual celebration at Universal Studios, including its concert series. Universal Studios, the neighboring Islands of Adventure theme park and Volcano Bay water park reopened to the public June 5 with limited capacity and new health and safety guidelines, including a face-covering requirement for visitors and employees.
In April, Universal cut many of its employees’ pay 20 percent as the parks remained closed. In late June, about two weeks after reopening, Universal Orlando laid off an unknown number of employees “in anticipation of the tourism industry taking time to fully recover,” a spokesman said.
Comcast, Universal Orlando’s parent company, has said that work on Epic Universe, a theme park planned near the Orange County Convention Center, was being suspended. Original plans called for that park to open in 2023, but a revised opening date has not been announced.
