October 26, 2023 • 31 mins
In this behind-the-screams episode, your hosts are joined by Ramon Paradoa, Assistant Show Director for Universal Studios Orlando Resort's Halloween Horror Nights. Ramon steers the Mothership this time, guiding us through the eerie corridors of the "Dueling Dragons: Choose Thy Fate" haunted house. Ramon unearths the secrets behind the creative inspiration behind these haunted houses, the intricate processes involved in bringing them to life, the key players in the production, and even offers a glimpse into some hidden easter eggs scattered throughout the set.
Featuring: Ramon Paradoa, Emily Estefan, Gemeny Hernandez
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
I hate you the same.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Let's go to a man one ready for launch.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Okay, everybody, welcome back.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
We are now here in the way that I prefer
to enjoy Haunted houses without characters.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
You can't make any promises. Ah yeah, yeah, yeah, kiddy,
I'm kidding.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
We're here with someone who is an incredible resource for
everything that is haunted houses and Halloween Hornonites.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
But now Mone is with us.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
He started off as a character and now he is
behind the scenes designing the scary things.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Thank you for having me. I'm so glad you guys
are here to experience all the fun things that Halloween
Hornet's thirty two has to offer.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, thirty two years, which is incredible. I was just
telling time when my brother went to the first one,
and yesterday we ripped through here and had the best time.
Some of us don't have voices, That's why I sound
like this, but yes, now Jem can do it in
her way. So my first question for you, which is
incredible you obviously love Halloween Hornite. How much time does
it take to prepare all this for October?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
So it's now an over a one year process. So
We usually start thirteen fourteen months in advance, so we
start a concept for twenty twenty four back in July,
So that gives you a little bit of an idea
how far in advance we started planning these things? Right?
The brainstorming sessions that we have are so so fun
because we just all get into a small room and
just throw ideas on the board and kind of piece
(01:41):
things together and it's so so cool. And then the
ideas like this house, like one of our original houses,
dueling dragons come to life. Right. And then once you
have that core idea, you start developing it and you
start designing it, and you start thinking of the scene
by scenes and the characters and the environments and all
that stuff. So it's a really cool process that is
pretty extensive, but that's what makes it so great.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
And where where's the beginning of the process is it? Like, Okay,
we there's this really scary idea. We find a universally
scary thing like you were talking about earlier, Like, okay,
so we know that clowns will scare pretty much everybody.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, yeah, go from there, yeah totally. So we think
of tropes and things that are that are well known
in the horror genre, things like clowns, vampires, demons, skeletons,
things like that, and we're like, Okay, how can we
hgenify it. How can we make a story out of this?
How can we take these characters and do something cool
and different with them? Right Vamp sixty nine, for example,
we have this VAM franchise where we get to kind
(02:34):
of dive into some decades and have some camp and
some fun. So we love putting unique twists on horror classics.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Like, yes, I will say also the gays representation. There
were many characters serving out there there.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
I love it. I was living.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I was like, ah, yes, absolutely, we love inclusion here.
We're all about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
By the way, if you want to invite me to
one of those meetings, I told you guys, I've been
thinking of ideas, taxes.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I'll see what I can do, what I can do,
see what I can do.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
So where are we're standing inside of the doeling Dragons.
Choose thy fate house, which has one of the coolest
features I've seen in a house, which is that at
some point you have to literally choose.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah, yeah, left or right. Yes, that's a callback to
we've done that in Hgen's pass, Like, we've had different
paths that our guests can choose, but we haven't done
it in quite some time, so the nineties, I think
it was last time. So that that's a cool callback
for our old school hhen fans, right. But we knew
when we were doing this idea, this property, that we
(03:31):
had to do that part of the story justice right,
We had to give people the opportunity to choose from
one of two paths. Yeah, this idea was very ambitious,
as you can tell, ye, and we're so happy with
how it was executed, and it seems like our guests
are too.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Well, it's incredible even me. I mean I'm even even
be scared by anything. I mean, I grew up coming here,
I grew up writing the dueling Dragons, right, and so
it was really exciting. I chose fire, yeah, but I
think it vary between fire and ice, so.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
There's four endings in total, which is crazy. So depending
on when you come in the night, if you choose fire,
you might see Merlin at the end and he's like
you've done it, You're triumphant. Or if you go through fire,
you might see the warlock who shows you Merlin's severed head, right,
same with the eyes side, so there's four possible sides.
So there's a lot of replayability, right, there's a lot
(04:23):
of incentive for our guests to come back and trying
to get as ending.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Absolutely before we move on to the next part, because
we're going to show you, guys different parts of this
amazing house.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
This I've been wondering for a really long time.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, In between scares, what are the characters doing?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Ooh, So, the way our system works, we have twenty
one to twenty two scaracters in a cast. When you're
going through a haunted house, and they are activating their
scares with their triggers, which are the foot pedals to
the hand pedals that they activate to initiate the lighting sequence,
to initiate the audio, and they are hitting those triggers
and doing their scares every three to four seconds.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
Oh, they have to be switching out. They can't be
into the hole.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
So they're on for forty five minutes at a time.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
So they like it.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
They have fun.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
Okay, oh yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Actually it's really our scaracters truly, we say this all
the time, but they are the lifeblood of our event.
Right Without them, we have these cool designs, these cool ideas,
but they are the ones that bring it to life.
My favorite part of the process is the rehearsal process
when the characters come in, because you see them bring
these ideas to life, and they they bring a wave
of energy that takes us to the to the to
(05:37):
the opening gates, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
This is incredible. I can definitely see myself doing doing
something like that.
Speaker 5 (05:41):
I don't know, I don't know. Now she's going to
the other side. She's like actual career.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Well here for I support you.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
If anybody can teach us, I want one on one
scream class with you done.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
I'm sure there has to be some trick to the scare, right.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Oh, absolutely, yeah. We have tricks of the trade that
we been doing for thirty two years, you know, and
our rehearsal process is very cool. To see the performers
grow and get comfortable in their scares after we give
them a little bit of guidance and stuff. It's really cool.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I'm going to scare a camp guys, all right, shall
we move to another location? It's check ack house. If
there's something hiding, I'm gonna kill you, promises.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
Let's go guy gosh.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Okay, we have moved to one of the most beautiful
rooms I've seen, which, granted, when you go through the house,
if you really look, you can see some of these details.
But this is truly amazing because what we're seeing now
in the light and just everything that's put together is
an incredible vision. So obviously we want to go through
the houses multiple times if you come to Hornite, so
that you can catch all these things and look.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
For different things. Absolutely, what's up with all these trinkets
and stuff? In this room? Where are we standing right now?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
So this is a very important room to the story
of this house. So in this room we see Merlin's spellbook, right,
and we see two warlocks. We have one friend here
and one friend that'll pop out right here, and they're
literally dueling and fighting over troll of the spellbook. Right.
Merlin has been captured and transformed into the Enchanted Oak,
and these two opposing warlocks of fire and Ice are
(07:08):
are going at it and trying to capture his spellbook.
But what they don't know is that they're about to
be turned into ferocious dragons, taking the war to a
whole another level, right, But yeah, this this scene is
absolutely gorgeous. We got these stained glass windows. We have
Merlin here in one of the windows represented where this
is exactly how he looks later in the house when
you see him in the flesh. So this is one
(07:29):
of many very very cool scenes in this house.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
This is incredible. I noticed that we were when we
were entering the haunted house. We were walking through.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
An oak, yes, and I couldn't tie it together, And
now I finally have.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
And if you listen closely, you can hear Merlin talking
to you through the enchanted oak.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
That was of course.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Of course, you know, sounds are such a big part
of haunted houses, and I know that now as a
guest who's experienced it. And I was scared by s characters.
I was scared by thumps over the speed. How do
you guys curate the sounds for our.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Audio is process is so so fun. We have a
library of sounds, screams, growls that we've used for years
and years and years. But every year we get to
record new content too. We get to kind of tap
into our wonderful pool of actors here at Universal for
voiceover stuff and things like that. So, yeah, that's one
of my favorite parts of the process is the audio
(08:19):
design process, and it's always so so cool to be
a part of.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Absolutely, technology is changing every day and and we almost
can't keep up. How do you sort of incorporate the
new changes and technology every years the house has changed?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Truly? We need this, yeah, truly, we make strides every
year both behind the scenes and within the designs of
the Haunted houses. A really cool thing that our designers do,
our scenic designers do is that once they have the
first model of a house complete on a computer program,
they walk us through the model on VR goggles. That's
(08:56):
a really cool thing we've been doing over the last
like two or three years, and truly it's game changing
for us because we're talking January February. We're able to
walk through and feel what the structure feels like. Right.
So that's an example of how we're kind of tapping
into technology to really push the boundaries of what we do.
But within the designs of the house is like you said,
(09:16):
the costume design of this house, we have really cool
lighting elements. We kind of took inspiration from our Marty
Grass parade with those lighting elements. And stuff like that,
and being able to do things like that just takes
again the storytelling of an experience like this to the
to the next level.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
That floored me. The lighting under the clothes because you're
getting scared. But that's what I love about these houses.
You're having an artistic experience. I've never seen anything like
that where actual people are moving around and it looked
like they were glowing from the inside.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Yeah, yeah, out, I didn't know they were people like
I thought they were so, I mean, I thought he
was real last night.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
Huh, He's just he is real. He just has a
long game. He stands there the.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Whole night in that case of the Mondays.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
You know, are you allowed to tell us the little
secret that you you're telling me on the way here
about some of the things in this room?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Ooh yeah. So there are a lot of Easter eggs
in all of our houses, but especially this house. Right.
So one thing directly besides this, if you look closely
at the spell book, there's a very familiar symbol right
here that is actually doctor Oddfellow symbol. So yeah, so
doctor Oddfellow really is woven into every aspect of this
(10:23):
year's event. He's in the scare zones. He's in the houses,
he has his own house. But that's a cool little
easter egg there, right. For fans of the original Dueling
Dragons attraction, there are a lot of scenic elements and
decre elements that were that are repurposed from the original attraction.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
Oh my heart. Yeah, And these.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Are some really cool details that our guests can get
if they do our Unmasking the Horror Toors or Unmasking
the Horror Toors or daytime tours where guests can come
with the lights on, no scharacters, more guide who takes
you through the houses seen by scene and runs you
down a list of easter eggs in each scene and
kind of brings things to life that you would never
really catch if you're just coming through on a night, Right,
(11:03):
So is the way to do it?
Speaker 5 (11:05):
You go to the houses first and then you do
that the next.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Day, I think so. Yeah. A lot of people do
the Unmasking the Horror tours and then go to the event,
which does work, but I in my opinion, I think
it's great if you can come to the event and
the next day do a tour to kind of get
some more context for everything you just saw the night before.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah, okay, all right, well look over there so that
I can grab one of these items the original ride
in our own world, we'll be taking the iceman. Well,
that's amazing, this is incredible. All right, guys, we are
trucking onto the next room. We still have nothing scared,
so we're still nice to Ramo. We are now standing
(11:53):
in between what seems like fire and it seems like ice,
although it is cold in here, so there are no fire.
Something that I'd noticed when I'm walking through is that
where the characters are hiding has to be a complete
other web, right, because we can't see where they are
before they scare. Can you tell us about how you
plan like the behind, how do you make it so
(12:15):
that we can't see where they're hiding?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
So designing the boo hoole we call them bootholes, So
the performance spaces of our performers or bootholes a lot
of fun. Right, So designing the placement of bootholes in
all of our scenes, truly, that part of the process
takes quite a bit of time because we are constantly
trying to trick our HHN fans, right, Because our HGEN fans,
they know and love are traditional scares like the mirror
(12:37):
gags and stuff like that, and we're constantly trying to
design scenes in a way where it's like, let's do
something a little bit different. Let's place this scare in
a different spot. Let's divert someone's expectations this way. Right. Yeah, yeah,
So we, like I said, we have twenty one to
twenty two performers in a cast, so we try to
spread it out pretty evenly. But some scenes call for
more scares than others, right, And we have different kinds
(12:57):
of scenes. So in scares in this scene, have what
we call performers that live in scene. So we have
a night here and a night over there who are
pretending to be statues like they're frozen in place, and
then they come to life for a scare. Yeah, I
met that one. We have history, so thematically, for a
scene like this where we're in the middle of the
war and we're seeing these knights who are have been
(13:20):
affected by either fire or ice, we could play with
an idea of like, okay, let's have these performers, instead
of popping out of their bootholes, live and scene and
pretending like their statues to come to life. For a scare, right,
classic hhen scare, but we did it in a way
that serves the story. So yeah, it's a very intricate
process to figure out what the scares look like in
all the.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
I don't know what it's going to be like in
a couple of years, because there was a house that
literally I was walking by a wall and it just
looked like a completely benign wall.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
It was painted. I saw it with my own eye.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
It had paint on it, and then it literally turn
into glass. Yeah, like into glass, and I saw a
scare cat boo hoole.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
Like that just a wall.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's definitely getting some very clever very.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
It's evolving, yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely, Okay, so curious
there are ten houses this year?
Speaker 5 (14:10):
Correct?
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Correct? Yes?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
And how is it that you gauge the success of
a haunted house? Do you have like scream machines picking
off off the screams feedback?
Speaker 3 (14:19):
How do you know?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, so, we we definitely tap into online feedback. We
take a look at socials and see what people are
saying on socials. We also have surveys that people can
take at the exit of the exit of the park
so they can kind of at the end of their
night take a survey and kind of rank their houses
and say, tell us what they like the most. Right.
But also, our team is here on the nightly, so
I've actually worked every single night of the event this year,
(14:41):
so which is really so fortunate for that. But uh so, yeah,
we're here on the nightly and we we walk through,
we cheer our performers on, but we're also kind of
gauging how things are looking and how the houses and
streets are evolving. Right, how we the houses that we
see at the beginning of the run to now are
two totally different experiences because our performers grow, we add
(15:02):
things to the houses sometimes, right, So it's so cool
to see. Yeah, sometimes we'll add and change little things,
but it's cool to see the experiences evolve. And that's
kind of a perk of our jobs because we get
to be here on the nightly and kind of see
that process, which is really cool.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
If somebody can't do the daytime tour, right, but they
want to get some information on the houses, Like I
think it's really cool to inform people to read up
on the story at least or get ready for what
they're walking into. Is there somewhere that people can read us.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, absolutely, So you can dive pretty deep if you're
really interested in the stuff, right, But if you just
want to get an idea of what the houses are,
what the content is, you can obviously go to univers
Orlando dot com slash Halloween slash JHN. But we also
have for all of our original houses and streets, we
have intricate backstories and we have podcasts that dive deeply
(15:52):
into the backstories of the characters and stuff from some
of our original houses and streets. I got to thankfully
write one of those this year, which is really cool,
which is awesome. Uh So, Yeah, our team loves diving
deeply into the original content like that. We we thrive.
We love bringing the ips to life, right and bringing
famous popular properties to life, but we we really love
(16:15):
delving into the original content. So if you're someone who's
interested in HHN, you're not sure if you can go
and you really want to read up on it and stuff,
there's so much lore and backstory that you can dive
into with our podcast and on our website and all
that good stuff. So there's a lot, there's a lot
to take.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
In, So can you tell us a little bit about
where we are.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, so we are in what we call the frozen halloway, right.
Obviously you see remnants of of burnt char here and
stuff like that fire dragon's been through here and he's
kind of let go, let's let some flame bluse here
on the poor frozen nights. But also the ice dragons
come through, right. So something really cool that we do
in a lot of our haunted houses is what we
(16:52):
call shadow play, which is video effect with silhouette. And
this scene has a really cool silhouette effect where when
you walk in to your left over here, you can
see a video element of a dragon flying by. But
then immediately after that video element finishes, you see the
shadow up above of the dragon kind of coming this way,
and then you see a fog blast as if he
(17:13):
is attacking the knights that are here. So that's an
example of how we kind of combine elements to tell
a story and to create a cool effect.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Really you really bring it to life.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
So we're here in a big studio space, correct, Because
that was something that I didn't realize until we walked
in here today. I'm like, wait a minute, this is familiar,
and you have more than one hunted house in some
of your studios.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah. Yeah, So we have our sound stage houses. Right,
This is one of our sound stage houses. This is
in sound Stage twenty four. But what's really cool is
that this house shares a space with another house, which
is Yetie Campground Kills. Oh.
Speaker 5 (17:47):
I didn't like that one.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
You know what, it was incredible.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
It really did an incredible job in scaring me.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Yeah, when you said that there was twenty one, twenty
two scare actors about every house, I'm like, there's no
they were like fifty.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yet it's awesome.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
Love to hear that, love to hear that's behind this one.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Correct, they're kind of side by side. And a cool
thing that we love to do every now and then
is go up on the catwalks right and just watch
from above and you see these two worlds kind of
coexisting side by side. It's the coolest. It's so cool,
and we have the opportunity to put two houses in
one space like this. It's a testament to how great
it is to be able to host an event like
this on Universal Orlando property. We have sound stages, we
(18:30):
have sprung tents in the back of the park, we
have parade buildings. It's so cool that we get to
transform these backstage areas into our haunted houses.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
What's here when the houses aren't.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
So sound stages are used year round for a multitude
of things. Right. They can be break spaces for cast
they can be used for productions. Right. So our production
team kind of always has some stuff going on with
the sound stages, and we're actively using them in different
ways until we have to start constructing our house. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
So we have one week off and you're out.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
Well, I have another idea. In that week. You do
a roller rink in here, haunted roller rink.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Oh my gosh, hey hire me.
Speaker 5 (19:06):
She's really good. This is.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Monday morning. Your ideas are flowing.
Speaker 5 (19:12):
Last night last night we were here until two am.
Oh it's inspiring. I got inspired, really inspire us.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
I will say this.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
I think fear is uh contagious because when I was
walking through the Haunted houses last night, now that I
realized we're in a sound stage and there were other
people walking through, I was getting scared based off other
people screams.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yeah, yeah, like, oh my god, everyone's screaming. We're not okay.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
There's a kinetic energy definitely that you can feel the
moment you walk into a haunted house, right, if you
can hear ten people ahead of you losing their minds,
You're like, oh my god, what is up ahead? Yeah,
I'm feeling that energy and next thing you know, I'm
screaming my head off. Absolutely, but yeah, well I like
that you said that the fear is contagious, but so
is the laughter that comes out. The most about is
(19:57):
what follows the screams, which is the laughter. Right at
the end of the day, we want to make a
huge Halloween party where people can come get scared. Don't
get me wrong, We definitely delve into the horror, but
we want people to have fun and enjoy the magic
of Halloween, and I think the laughters that come with
the screams is a big part of that. Well.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
In general, also, I think I agree with you so
much because we were walking around and we were here
during the day and we were like, they closed it five,
they opened it eight.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Where did all this stuff come from? I mean the
ambiverse in general, the way you guys use projections on
the buildings to change the feeling of it.
Speaker 6 (20:29):
The food, the names of the food, The park transforms
and it's really cool to set completely and that's I mean,
that's that's a testament to the multitude of teams, hundreds
of people that come together nightly to get this beast
up and running.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Right. There's so many unsung heroes that really bring htent
to life that it's such a collaborative process, and I
think that's why it's so successful.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Oh, I can tell you, even from the first time
I came, it would instantly transition from like ah like ah,
like all laughs. You're almost like, oh my god, you know,
understanding the experience. But for people like jam yesterday, we
were interviewing, you know, a couple of people that were
walking in the park, and my curiosity is always what
(21:12):
is it about getting scared that people.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Like, Yeah, it's I mean, it's it goes hand in
hand with horror films, right, Like people love the experience
of going to see a horror movie in a theater, right,
It's it's cathartic in a way. I think, uh, challenging
yourself and being like I want to feel what it
feels like to be scared by this experience, right, and
then the release of the laughter afterwards is like, oh
I survived that thing. Right. Uh, it's like a it's
(21:35):
a it's it kind of delves into human nature and
it's a cathartic thing that I think all horror fans love.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
You become to sensitize a little bit like me because
I walk these things. When I do have those moments
where I'm where I'm genuinely frightened, I'm like, wow, that
was that was a rush? You know that that that
was cool?
Speaker 5 (21:51):
Yeah, a rush. And then it feels like you got
hit by a train.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
It does just like I could sleep.
Speaker 5 (21:56):
I sleep for two months right now.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
I have an idea. I have an idea. Maybe this
is twenty twenty four. Who knows.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Okay, Haunted roller coaster talk about an Adrelline rush that.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Could be a lot of fun but also very horrifying.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
Yeah, very hard, not.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
No no coast scary as is ra.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Well awesome. Should we move to the next route, our
next location? This is incredible, let's do We're never going
to be moving.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Okay, We're back at the the famed location where destiny
splits and you can choose to either go to fire
or ice, and and I'm so excited to be here
because this was a moment that I experienced last night.
And of course, you know she's a sagittarius.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I'm a Leio.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
We chose fire't be mad at that.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
No, no, no, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
And you know, you guys may not know this, but
we've actually been transporting through the hunted house on our
space ship. Someone has really enjoyed being in space with us,
a little anti.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Graund a lot of fun. Here for it, here for
it now.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Because I do the logistics behind the scenes a lot
of the times, and there are a lot of moving
parts to this, Like you've mentioned, how do you sort
of gauge between wanting to do wanting to have the
most successful scare possible, and sort of keeping the space safe.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
So this is where collaboration really comes into play because
our partners, our production partners, kind of keep us in
check because we can a little crazy. Like the first
versions of these experiences were like we're just throwing everything
out there, were like, in an ideal world, we can
do this and an actual dragon picks you up and
fly like we go crazy, right, But then our production
partners are like, Okay, love that idea, Let's keep the
(23:36):
intent of that do it in this way, right, Yeah,
and that's where again the collaborative process between our team,
our scenic designers, our costume lighting designers, our production partners,
truly with without any of them. If any of those
elements were missing, these experiences wouldn't be what they are, right,
because we might have an idea that in our world
(23:58):
makes a lot of sense and we feel is great
for the experience, but big picture wise, it's like, let's
actually do it in this way because that makes a
little more sense.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
So, how long, on average does your walk through a
haunted house? Last?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Oh, I want to say it's about four to five
minutes or so. Wow, long average walk time of a
haunted house. Sometimes it depends on how scared the groups
in front of you are, right if they're bolting through there,
like suddenly I'm running this thing too, you know what
I mean. But yeah, on average, I feel like they're
like four or five minute experiences.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
So I imagine you have to account for that, right
for those moments where I mean it's our human nature
fight or flight when you're scared to run out of there. Yeah,
are the scaracters trained in like dodging humans.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Especially our street scared actors. They have mastered the art
of weaving through sea of the sea of people. Yeah,
our rehearsal process is so wonderful. Like I said earlier,
you get to see our performers bring these experiences to life,
but you also get to train them to prepare for
the beast that is hhn right. It's the biggest Halloween
(25:02):
event in the world. We have the most people coming.
Every year. We kind of top and top the amount
of guests that we have, so our performers are trained
to give people the most intimate, aggressive scares possible while
still keeping themselves and the guests safe. So it's it's
the perfect balance of going just far enough but not
too far.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
They don't touch you, just so you know they're not
allowed to, but it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
They touch you.
Speaker 5 (25:28):
I have a question. I want to know the tea.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Okay, you can spill it. Are the houses brand new
every year?
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Like?
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Are you You're starting from scratch with the building with
the signs. I know obviously you had a couple of
set pieces of maybe decoration, but do you ever reuse
any of the infrastructure of the houses?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah? No, so so the houses are constructed brand new
every single year. We definitely reuse and tap into some
of our decre elements and stuff like that that we
like to put in our houses as Easter eggs for
our fans where it's like, wait a second, was that
thing from that house two or three years ago was right?
And it kind of gives an incentive for the unmasking
the horror tours for for our fans to really get
a gauge of what things are returning from the past.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
So you keep all this, all of the previous ones.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah, So we have a huge warehouse, huge, a lot
of h goodness, and it's like, yeah, it's a kid
in the candy store. It's really cool. But we Yeah,
thirty two years of history exists in one place, and
we love to kind of tap into there and throw
Easter eggs into our houses whenever.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
We can another idea, just you know, throw them out there.
We do her Halloween, Her Night's Permanent, you do Halloween
Horror World, and just keep setting up all the old
houses in this giant.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
You're speaking to my soul. Yeah, come on, I'm the
Halloween guys.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Oh if it, we're up to us too, although I
like I said, I'd be the s character.
Speaker 5 (26:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
A lot of growth, a lot of growth. I love
to love to see it. You we're scared and now
you want to be a scaracter, so before.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
We choose our faith? Yes, and I'm gonna go blue
this time rock Yeah. Yeah, what has been so far?
I know you're not quite done yet with the season.
There's a couple more dates of Halloween Horror Nights, which
is great. Boo, I wish it was again forever this
time around. What has been either like your favorite moment
(27:15):
or your favorite house or your favorite component of a house?
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Ooh, that's that's that's a tricky one to answer for sure,
because there's so many different moments that that make you
kind of step back and be like, WHOA, what we
do is pretty cool? Right? Yeah. I think for this year,
I think back to Opening night being on the other
side of the front gates as we were doing our
opening moments. So we do our opening scremonies every year
where there's something happening at the front gates that gets
(27:41):
people in, right, So we love call it, yeah, the
opening scremonies, And this year the opening scaremonies involved doctor Ottfellow,
which is a character that I was involved in creating
along with the rest of our team, and you know,
so much love and care and passion was poured into
the creation of that character. So to see him kind
of take center stage on the very first night of
(28:01):
the run and welcome people in and seeing people's reactions
gave me goosebumps, give me goose thing.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
That's incredible.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
That's a moment that stands out to me. You're for sure.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
So as going back to your scare acting days, because
I had I had a hypothesis last night. I was like,
all right, so if you walk out and you look tough,
they're like, eh, we're not gonna be able to scare her.
But if you look scared, it's almost like they want
to go for you even more because they're like, yeah, yeah,
prime me. Is that how you felt as a character percent.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Especially as a as a as a streets performer, As
a character out in our scare zones, there's a lot
of improv right, and you have to kind of gauge
your audience. You have to kind of feel the energy
of the people that are coming towards you and kind
of base your selection of scares based off of people
who are scared, right, But there's also an enjoyment of
like going after the groups that are like coming through
like oh, I'm not scared of this, and then getting
(28:53):
a huge reaction out of them. It's like, ha, gotcha
you love that?
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Do you keep tally?
Speaker 5 (28:58):
Yeah, a little bit soul in my mind?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
How many souls.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
That book over there was just all the people I'm
scared exactly. This has been honestly one of the coolest
experiences I've ever had. I'm so grateful for all the
insights and you know, teaching us about bootholes and please, honestly,
I would recommend at least if you're even if you're scared,
you have to go to Halloween Horror Knights once in
(29:25):
your life.
Speaker 5 (29:27):
Have to.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
There's so much content that truly, there's something for everyone
to enjoy. Even if you're not a huge fan of horror.
I can guarantee you to come to the event and
find something that you love.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
I had a lot of fun that night, yeah truly.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah, Yeah, that's an experience in and of itself, right,
being able to go into Diagon Alley at night and
see the and see the death Eaters and things like that,
like that's there's so much for for a wide range
of people to enjoy.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Absolutely Now my last question for you is if you're
able for the brave souls who have been here with
us in this episode, can we get a little bit
of a sneak peak about what we can expect next year?
Speaker 2 (30:07):
So I am sworn to secrets, what I can say
is expect expect us to up the Annie even more. Wow.
We love to challenge ourselves with really raising the bar
every single year. This year is an all timer of
a year. It's the most successful Halloween Hornets we've ever
had thirty two year history. Yes, thank you, and we're
(30:27):
hoping for thirty three to be to top even that.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
That's a good number, that's a spooky number.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Expect a lot of screams, a lot of laughs, menacing creatures. Yeah,
and maybe a few tricks up our sleeve.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
He gave us a ton of information and nothing at
all prepared to be scared.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
You are.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Thank you so much. Once again, we've had an amazing time.
We've had an amazing weekend. For those of you listening,
it's been fun to bring you along the Mothership with us.
We love doing these satellite things and ending and putting
a little anti gravity.
Speaker 5 (31:02):
Even though you know my hip's hurt. But that's okay,
worth it, worth it. Before we leave and.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
We end this incredible time at Halloween, hornies, I think
we have one last thing to do.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
We got it. We should choose our fate.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Well, you know, I'm a creature of habit, So I'll
see you guys later.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
All right, I'm going nice. Where are you going that long?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I'm gonna stand right here and see what happens.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
All right, guys, thank you for joining us on Halloween
Orne this Ineral world.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
By This podcast is brought to you by boot Flower
Productions in partnership with Ihearts My gunput Podcast Network. For
more podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows
I hate you the same.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Let's go to a man one ready for launch.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Okay, everybody, welcome back.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
We are now here in the way that I prefer
to enjoy Haunted houses without characters.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
You can't make any promises. Ah yeah, yeah, yeah, kiddy,
I'm kidding.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
We're here with someone who is an incredible resource for
everything that is haunted houses and Halloween Hornonites.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
But now Mone is with us.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
He started off as a character and now he is
behind the scenes designing the scary things.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Thank you for having me. I'm so glad you guys
are here to experience all the fun things that Halloween
Hornet's thirty two has to offer.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, thirty two years, which is incredible. I was just
telling time when my brother went to the first one,
and yesterday we ripped through here and had the best time.
Some of us don't have voices, That's why I sound
like this, but yes, now Jem can do it in
her way. So my first question for you, which is
incredible you obviously love Halloween Hornite. How much time does
it take to prepare all this for October?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
So it's now an over a one year process. So
We usually start thirteen fourteen months in advance, so we
start a concept for twenty twenty four back in July,
So that gives you a little bit of an idea
how far in advance we started planning these things? Right?
The brainstorming sessions that we have are so so fun
because we just all get into a small room and
just throw ideas on the board and kind of piece
(01:41):
things together and it's so so cool. And then the
ideas like this house, like one of our original houses,
dueling dragons come to life. Right. And then once you
have that core idea, you start developing it and you
start designing it, and you start thinking of the scene
by scenes and the characters and the environments and all
that stuff. So it's a really cool process that is
pretty extensive, but that's what makes it so great.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
And where where's the beginning of the process is it? Like, Okay,
we there's this really scary idea. We find a universally
scary thing like you were talking about earlier, Like, okay,
so we know that clowns will scare pretty much everybody.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, yeah, go from there, yeah totally. So we think
of tropes and things that are that are well known
in the horror genre, things like clowns, vampires, demons, skeletons,
things like that, and we're like, Okay, how can we
hgenify it. How can we make a story out of this?
How can we take these characters and do something cool
and different with them? Right Vamp sixty nine, for example,
we have this VAM franchise where we get to kind
(02:34):
of dive into some decades and have some camp and
some fun. So we love putting unique twists on horror classics.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Like, yes, I will say also the gays representation. There
were many characters serving out there there.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
I love it. I was living.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I was like, ah, yes, absolutely, we love inclusion here.
We're all about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
By the way, if you want to invite me to
one of those meetings, I told you guys, I've been
thinking of ideas, taxes.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I'll see what I can do, what I can do,
see what I can do.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
So where are we're standing inside of the doeling Dragons.
Choose thy fate house, which has one of the coolest
features I've seen in a house, which is that at
some point you have to literally choose.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah, yeah, left or right. Yes, that's a callback to
we've done that in Hgen's pass, Like, we've had different
paths that our guests can choose, but we haven't done
it in quite some time, so the nineties, I think
it was last time. So that that's a cool callback
for our old school hhen fans, right. But we knew
when we were doing this idea, this property, that we
(03:31):
had to do that part of the story justice right,
We had to give people the opportunity to choose from
one of two paths. Yeah, this idea was very ambitious,
as you can tell, ye, and we're so happy with
how it was executed, and it seems like our guests
are too.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Well, it's incredible even me. I mean I'm even even
be scared by anything. I mean, I grew up coming here,
I grew up writing the dueling Dragons, right, and so
it was really exciting. I chose fire, yeah, but I
think it vary between fire and ice, so.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
There's four endings in total, which is crazy. So depending
on when you come in the night, if you choose fire,
you might see Merlin at the end and he's like
you've done it, You're triumphant. Or if you go through fire,
you might see the warlock who shows you Merlin's severed head, right,
same with the eyes side, so there's four possible sides.
So there's a lot of replayability, right, there's a lot
(04:23):
of incentive for our guests to come back and trying
to get as ending.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Absolutely before we move on to the next part, because
we're going to show you, guys different parts of this
amazing house.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
This I've been wondering for a really long time.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, In between scares, what are the characters doing?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Ooh, So, the way our system works, we have twenty
one to twenty two scaracters in a cast. When you're
going through a haunted house, and they are activating their
scares with their triggers, which are the foot pedals to
the hand pedals that they activate to initiate the lighting sequence,
to initiate the audio, and they are hitting those triggers
and doing their scares every three to four seconds.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
Oh, they have to be switching out. They can't be
into the hole.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
So they're on for forty five minutes at a time.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
So they like it.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
They have fun.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
Okay, oh yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Actually it's really our scaracters truly, we say this all
the time, but they are the lifeblood of our event.
Right Without them, we have these cool designs, these cool ideas,
but they are the ones that bring it to life.
My favorite part of the process is the rehearsal process
when the characters come in, because you see them bring
these ideas to life, and they they bring a wave
of energy that takes us to the to the to
(05:37):
the opening gates, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
This is incredible. I can definitely see myself doing doing
something like that.
Speaker 5 (05:41):
I don't know, I don't know. Now she's going to
the other side. She's like actual career.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Well here for I support you.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
If anybody can teach us, I want one on one
scream class with you done.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
I'm sure there has to be some trick to the scare, right.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Oh, absolutely, yeah. We have tricks of the trade that
we been doing for thirty two years, you know, and
our rehearsal process is very cool. To see the performers
grow and get comfortable in their scares after we give
them a little bit of guidance and stuff. It's really cool.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I'm going to scare a camp guys, all right, shall
we move to another location? It's check ack house. If
there's something hiding, I'm gonna kill you, promises.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
Let's go guy gosh.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Okay, we have moved to one of the most beautiful
rooms I've seen, which, granted, when you go through the house,
if you really look, you can see some of these details.
But this is truly amazing because what we're seeing now
in the light and just everything that's put together is
an incredible vision. So obviously we want to go through
the houses multiple times if you come to Hornite, so
that you can catch all these things and look.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
For different things. Absolutely, what's up with all these trinkets
and stuff? In this room? Where are we standing right now?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
So this is a very important room to the story
of this house. So in this room we see Merlin's spellbook, right,
and we see two warlocks. We have one friend here
and one friend that'll pop out right here, and they're
literally dueling and fighting over troll of the spellbook. Right.
Merlin has been captured and transformed into the Enchanted Oak,
and these two opposing warlocks of fire and Ice are
(07:08):
are going at it and trying to capture his spellbook.
But what they don't know is that they're about to
be turned into ferocious dragons, taking the war to a
whole another level, right, But yeah, this this scene is
absolutely gorgeous. We got these stained glass windows. We have
Merlin here in one of the windows represented where this
is exactly how he looks later in the house when
you see him in the flesh. So this is one
(07:29):
of many very very cool scenes in this house.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
This is incredible. I noticed that we were when we
were entering the haunted house. We were walking through.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
An oak, yes, and I couldn't tie it together, And
now I finally have.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
And if you listen closely, you can hear Merlin talking
to you through the enchanted oak.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
That was of course.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Of course, you know, sounds are such a big part
of haunted houses, and I know that now as a
guest who's experienced it. And I was scared by s characters.
I was scared by thumps over the speed. How do
you guys curate the sounds for our.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Audio is process is so so fun. We have a
library of sounds, screams, growls that we've used for years
and years and years. But every year we get to
record new content too. We get to kind of tap
into our wonderful pool of actors here at Universal for
voiceover stuff and things like that. So, yeah, that's one
of my favorite parts of the process is the audio
(08:19):
design process, and it's always so so cool to be
a part of.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Absolutely, technology is changing every day and and we almost
can't keep up. How do you sort of incorporate the
new changes and technology every years the house has changed?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Truly? We need this, yeah, truly, we make strides every
year both behind the scenes and within the designs of
the Haunted houses. A really cool thing that our designers do,
our scenic designers do is that once they have the
first model of a house complete on a computer program,
they walk us through the model on VR goggles. That's
(08:56):
a really cool thing we've been doing over the last
like two or three years, and truly it's game changing
for us because we're talking January February. We're able to
walk through and feel what the structure feels like. Right.
So that's an example of how we're kind of tapping
into technology to really push the boundaries of what we do.
But within the designs of the house is like you said,
(09:16):
the costume design of this house, we have really cool
lighting elements. We kind of took inspiration from our Marty
Grass parade with those lighting elements. And stuff like that,
and being able to do things like that just takes
again the storytelling of an experience like this to the
to the next level.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
That floored me. The lighting under the clothes because you're
getting scared. But that's what I love about these houses.
You're having an artistic experience. I've never seen anything like
that where actual people are moving around and it looked
like they were glowing from the inside.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Yeah, yeah, out, I didn't know they were people like
I thought they were so, I mean, I thought he
was real last night.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
Huh, He's just he is real. He just has a
long game. He stands there the.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Whole night in that case of the Mondays.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
You know, are you allowed to tell us the little
secret that you you're telling me on the way here
about some of the things in this room?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Ooh yeah. So there are a lot of Easter eggs
in all of our houses, but especially this house. Right.
So one thing directly besides this, if you look closely
at the spell book, there's a very familiar symbol right
here that is actually doctor Oddfellow symbol. So yeah, so
doctor Oddfellow really is woven into every aspect of this
(10:23):
year's event. He's in the scare zones. He's in the houses,
he has his own house. But that's a cool little
easter egg there, right. For fans of the original Dueling
Dragons attraction, there are a lot of scenic elements and
decre elements that were that are repurposed from the original attraction.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
Oh my heart. Yeah, And these.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Are some really cool details that our guests can get
if they do our Unmasking the Horror Toors or Unmasking
the Horror Toors or daytime tours where guests can come
with the lights on, no scharacters, more guide who takes
you through the houses seen by scene and runs you
down a list of easter eggs in each scene and
kind of brings things to life that you would never
really catch if you're just coming through on a night, Right,
(11:03):
So is the way to do it?
Speaker 5 (11:05):
You go to the houses first and then you do
that the next.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Day, I think so. Yeah. A lot of people do
the Unmasking the Horror tours and then go to the event,
which does work, but I in my opinion, I think
it's great if you can come to the event and
the next day do a tour to kind of get
some more context for everything you just saw the night before.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah, okay, all right, well look over there so that
I can grab one of these items the original ride
in our own world, we'll be taking the iceman. Well,
that's amazing, this is incredible. All right, guys, we are
trucking onto the next room. We still have nothing scared,
so we're still nice to Ramo. We are now standing
(11:53):
in between what seems like fire and it seems like ice,
although it is cold in here, so there are no fire.
Something that I'd noticed when I'm walking through is that
where the characters are hiding has to be a complete
other web, right, because we can't see where they are
before they scare. Can you tell us about how you
plan like the behind, how do you make it so
(12:15):
that we can't see where they're hiding?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
So designing the boo hoole we call them bootholes, So
the performance spaces of our performers or bootholes a lot
of fun. Right, So designing the placement of bootholes in
all of our scenes, truly, that part of the process
takes quite a bit of time because we are constantly
trying to trick our HHN fans, right, Because our HGEN fans,
they know and love are traditional scares like the mirror
(12:37):
gags and stuff like that, and we're constantly trying to
design scenes in a way where it's like, let's do
something a little bit different. Let's place this scare in
a different spot. Let's divert someone's expectations this way. Right. Yeah, yeah,
So we, like I said, we have twenty one to
twenty two performers in a cast, so we try to
spread it out pretty evenly. But some scenes call for
more scares than others, right, And we have different kinds
(12:57):
of scenes. So in scares in this scene, have what
we call performers that live in scene. So we have
a night here and a night over there who are
pretending to be statues like they're frozen in place, and
then they come to life for a scare. Yeah, I
met that one. We have history, so thematically, for a
scene like this where we're in the middle of the
war and we're seeing these knights who are have been
(13:20):
affected by either fire or ice, we could play with
an idea of like, okay, let's have these performers, instead
of popping out of their bootholes, live and scene and
pretending like their statues to come to life. For a scare, right,
classic hhen scare, but we did it in a way
that serves the story. So yeah, it's a very intricate
process to figure out what the scares look like in
all the.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
I don't know what it's going to be like in
a couple of years, because there was a house that
literally I was walking by a wall and it just
looked like a completely benign wall.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
It was painted. I saw it with my own eye.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
It had paint on it, and then it literally turn
into glass. Yeah, like into glass, and I saw a
scare cat boo hoole.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
Like that just a wall.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's definitely getting some very clever very.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
It's evolving, yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely, Okay, so curious
there are ten houses this year?
Speaker 5 (14:10):
Correct?
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Correct? Yes?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
And how is it that you gauge the success of
a haunted house? Do you have like scream machines picking
off off the screams feedback?
Speaker 3 (14:19):
How do you know?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, so, we we definitely tap into online feedback. We
take a look at socials and see what people are
saying on socials. We also have surveys that people can
take at the exit of the exit of the park
so they can kind of at the end of their
night take a survey and kind of rank their houses
and say, tell us what they like the most. Right.
But also, our team is here on the nightly, so
I've actually worked every single night of the event this year,
(14:41):
so which is really so fortunate for that. But uh so, yeah,
we're here on the nightly and we we walk through,
we cheer our performers on, but we're also kind of
gauging how things are looking and how the houses and
streets are evolving. Right, how we the houses that we
see at the beginning of the run to now are
two totally different experiences because our performers grow, we add
(15:02):
things to the houses sometimes, right, So it's so cool
to see. Yeah, sometimes we'll add and change little things,
but it's cool to see the experiences evolve. And that's
kind of a perk of our jobs because we get
to be here on the nightly and kind of see
that process, which is really cool.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
If somebody can't do the daytime tour, right, but they
want to get some information on the houses, Like I
think it's really cool to inform people to read up
on the story at least or get ready for what
they're walking into. Is there somewhere that people can read us.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, absolutely, So you can dive pretty deep if you're
really interested in the stuff, right, But if you just
want to get an idea of what the houses are,
what the content is, you can obviously go to univers
Orlando dot com slash Halloween slash JHN. But we also
have for all of our original houses and streets, we
have intricate backstories and we have podcasts that dive deeply
(15:52):
into the backstories of the characters and stuff from some
of our original houses and streets. I got to thankfully
write one of those this year, which is really cool,
which is awesome. Uh So, Yeah, our team loves diving
deeply into the original content like that. We we thrive.
We love bringing the ips to life, right and bringing
famous popular properties to life, but we we really love
(16:15):
delving into the original content. So if you're someone who's
interested in HHN, you're not sure if you can go
and you really want to read up on it and stuff,
there's so much lore and backstory that you can dive
into with our podcast and on our website and all
that good stuff. So there's a lot, there's a lot
to take.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
In, So can you tell us a little bit about
where we are.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, so we are in what we call the frozen halloway, right.
Obviously you see remnants of of burnt char here and
stuff like that fire dragon's been through here and he's
kind of let go, let's let some flame bluse here
on the poor frozen nights. But also the ice dragons
come through, right. So something really cool that we do
in a lot of our haunted houses is what we
(16:52):
call shadow play, which is video effect with silhouette. And
this scene has a really cool silhouette effect where when
you walk in to your left over here, you can
see a video element of a dragon flying by. But
then immediately after that video element finishes, you see the
shadow up above of the dragon kind of coming this way,
and then you see a fog blast as if he
(17:13):
is attacking the knights that are here. So that's an
example of how we kind of combine elements to tell
a story and to create a cool effect.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Really you really bring it to life.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
So we're here in a big studio space, correct, Because
that was something that I didn't realize until we walked
in here today. I'm like, wait a minute, this is familiar,
and you have more than one hunted house in some
of your studios.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah. Yeah, So we have our sound stage houses. Right,
This is one of our sound stage houses. This is
in sound Stage twenty four. But what's really cool is
that this house shares a space with another house, which
is Yetie Campground Kills. Oh.
Speaker 5 (17:47):
I didn't like that one.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
You know what, it was incredible.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
It really did an incredible job in scaring me.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Yeah, when you said that there was twenty one, twenty
two scare actors about every house, I'm like, there's no
they were like fifty.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yet it's awesome.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
Love to hear that, love to hear that's behind this one.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Correct, they're kind of side by side. And a cool
thing that we love to do every now and then
is go up on the catwalks right and just watch
from above and you see these two worlds kind of
coexisting side by side. It's the coolest. It's so cool,
and we have the opportunity to put two houses in
one space like this. It's a testament to how great
it is to be able to host an event like
this on Universal Orlando property. We have sound stages, we
(18:30):
have sprung tents in the back of the park, we
have parade buildings. It's so cool that we get to
transform these backstage areas into our haunted houses.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
What's here when the houses aren't.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
So sound stages are used year round for a multitude
of things. Right. They can be break spaces for cast
they can be used for productions. Right. So our production
team kind of always has some stuff going on with
the sound stages, and we're actively using them in different
ways until we have to start constructing our house. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
So we have one week off and you're out.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
Well, I have another idea. In that week. You do
a roller rink in here, haunted roller rink.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Oh my gosh, hey hire me.
Speaker 5 (19:06):
She's really good. This is.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Monday morning. Your ideas are flowing.
Speaker 5 (19:12):
Last night last night we were here until two am.
Oh it's inspiring. I got inspired, really inspire us.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
I will say this.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
I think fear is uh contagious because when I was
walking through the Haunted houses last night, now that I
realized we're in a sound stage and there were other
people walking through, I was getting scared based off other
people screams.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yeah, yeah, like, oh my god, everyone's screaming. We're not okay.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
There's a kinetic energy definitely that you can feel the
moment you walk into a haunted house, right, if you
can hear ten people ahead of you losing their minds,
You're like, oh my god, what is up ahead? Yeah,
I'm feeling that energy and next thing you know, I'm
screaming my head off. Absolutely, but yeah, well I like
that you said that the fear is contagious, but so
is the laughter that comes out. The most about is
(19:57):
what follows the screams, which is the laughter. Right at
the end of the day, we want to make a
huge Halloween party where people can come get scared. Don't
get me wrong, We definitely delve into the horror, but
we want people to have fun and enjoy the magic
of Halloween, and I think the laughters that come with
the screams is a big part of that. Well.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
In general, also, I think I agree with you so
much because we were walking around and we were here
during the day and we were like, they closed it five,
they opened it eight.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Where did all this stuff come from? I mean the
ambiverse in general, the way you guys use projections on
the buildings to change the feeling of it.
Speaker 6 (20:29):
The food, the names of the food, The park transforms
and it's really cool to set completely and that's I mean,
that's that's a testament to the multitude of teams, hundreds
of people that come together nightly to get this beast
up and running.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Right. There's so many unsung heroes that really bring htent
to life that it's such a collaborative process, and I
think that's why it's so successful.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Oh, I can tell you, even from the first time
I came, it would instantly transition from like ah like ah,
like all laughs. You're almost like, oh my god, you know,
understanding the experience. But for people like jam yesterday, we
were interviewing, you know, a couple of people that were
walking in the park, and my curiosity is always what
(21:12):
is it about getting scared that people.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Like, Yeah, it's I mean, it's it goes hand in
hand with horror films, right, Like people love the experience
of going to see a horror movie in a theater, right,
It's it's cathartic in a way. I think, uh, challenging
yourself and being like I want to feel what it
feels like to be scared by this experience, right, and
then the release of the laughter afterwards is like, oh
I survived that thing. Right. Uh, it's like a it's
(21:35):
a it's it kind of delves into human nature and
it's a cathartic thing that I think all horror fans love.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
You become to sensitize a little bit like me because
I walk these things. When I do have those moments
where I'm where I'm genuinely frightened, I'm like, wow, that
was that was a rush? You know that that that
was cool?
Speaker 5 (21:51):
Yeah, a rush. And then it feels like you got
hit by a train.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
It does just like I could sleep.
Speaker 5 (21:56):
I sleep for two months right now.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
I have an idea. I have an idea. Maybe this
is twenty twenty four. Who knows.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Okay, Haunted roller coaster talk about an Adrelline rush that.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Could be a lot of fun but also very horrifying.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
Yeah, very hard, not.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
No no coast scary as is ra.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Well awesome. Should we move to the next route, our
next location? This is incredible, let's do We're never going
to be moving.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Okay, We're back at the the famed location where destiny
splits and you can choose to either go to fire
or ice, and and I'm so excited to be here
because this was a moment that I experienced last night.
And of course, you know she's a sagittarius.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I'm a Leio.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
We chose fire't be mad at that.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
No, no, no, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
And you know, you guys may not know this, but
we've actually been transporting through the hunted house on our
space ship. Someone has really enjoyed being in space with us,
a little anti.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Graund a lot of fun. Here for it, here for
it now.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Because I do the logistics behind the scenes a lot
of the times, and there are a lot of moving
parts to this, Like you've mentioned, how do you sort
of gauge between wanting to do wanting to have the
most successful scare possible, and sort of keeping the space safe.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
So this is where collaboration really comes into play because
our partners, our production partners, kind of keep us in
check because we can a little crazy. Like the first
versions of these experiences were like we're just throwing everything
out there, were like, in an ideal world, we can
do this and an actual dragon picks you up and
fly like we go crazy, right, But then our production
partners are like, Okay, love that idea, Let's keep the
(23:36):
intent of that do it in this way, right, Yeah,
and that's where again the collaborative process between our team,
our scenic designers, our costume lighting designers, our production partners,
truly with without any of them. If any of those
elements were missing, these experiences wouldn't be what they are, right,
because we might have an idea that in our world
(23:58):
makes a lot of sense and we feel is great
for the experience, but big picture wise, it's like, let's
actually do it in this way because that makes a
little more sense.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
So, how long, on average does your walk through a
haunted house? Last?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Oh, I want to say it's about four to five
minutes or so. Wow, long average walk time of a
haunted house. Sometimes it depends on how scared the groups
in front of you are, right if they're bolting through there,
like suddenly I'm running this thing too, you know what
I mean. But yeah, on average, I feel like they're
like four or five minute experiences.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
So I imagine you have to account for that, right
for those moments where I mean it's our human nature
fight or flight when you're scared to run out of there. Yeah,
are the scaracters trained in like dodging humans.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Especially our street scared actors. They have mastered the art
of weaving through sea of the sea of people. Yeah,
our rehearsal process is so wonderful. Like I said earlier,
you get to see our performers bring these experiences to life,
but you also get to train them to prepare for
the beast that is hhn right. It's the biggest Halloween
(25:02):
event in the world. We have the most people coming.
Every year. We kind of top and top the amount
of guests that we have, so our performers are trained
to give people the most intimate, aggressive scares possible while
still keeping themselves and the guests safe. So it's it's
the perfect balance of going just far enough but not
too far.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
They don't touch you, just so you know they're not
allowed to, but it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
They touch you.
Speaker 5 (25:28):
I have a question. I want to know the tea.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Okay, you can spill it. Are the houses brand new
every year?
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Like?
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Are you You're starting from scratch with the building with
the signs. I know obviously you had a couple of
set pieces of maybe decoration, but do you ever reuse
any of the infrastructure of the houses?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah? No, so so the houses are constructed brand new
every single year. We definitely reuse and tap into some
of our decre elements and stuff like that that we
like to put in our houses as Easter eggs for
our fans where it's like, wait a second, was that
thing from that house two or three years ago was right?
And it kind of gives an incentive for the unmasking
the horror tours for for our fans to really get
a gauge of what things are returning from the past.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
So you keep all this, all of the previous ones.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah, So we have a huge warehouse, huge, a lot
of h goodness, and it's like, yeah, it's a kid
in the candy store. It's really cool. But we Yeah,
thirty two years of history exists in one place, and
we love to kind of tap into there and throw
Easter eggs into our houses whenever.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
We can another idea, just you know, throw them out there.
We do her Halloween, Her Night's Permanent, you do Halloween
Horror World, and just keep setting up all the old
houses in this giant.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
You're speaking to my soul. Yeah, come on, I'm the
Halloween guys.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Oh if it, we're up to us too, although I
like I said, I'd be the s character.
Speaker 5 (26:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
A lot of growth, a lot of growth. I love
to love to see it. You we're scared and now
you want to be a scaracter, so before.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
We choose our faith? Yes, and I'm gonna go blue
this time rock Yeah. Yeah, what has been so far?
I know you're not quite done yet with the season.
There's a couple more dates of Halloween Horror Nights, which
is great. Boo, I wish it was again forever this
time around. What has been either like your favorite moment
(27:15):
or your favorite house or your favorite component of a house?
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Ooh, that's that's that's a tricky one to answer for sure,
because there's so many different moments that that make you
kind of step back and be like, WHOA, what we
do is pretty cool? Right? Yeah. I think for this year,
I think back to Opening night being on the other
side of the front gates as we were doing our
opening moments. So we do our opening scremonies every year
where there's something happening at the front gates that gets
(27:41):
people in, right, So we love call it, yeah, the
opening scremonies, And this year the opening scaremonies involved doctor Ottfellow,
which is a character that I was involved in creating
along with the rest of our team, and you know,
so much love and care and passion was poured into
the creation of that character. So to see him kind
of take center stage on the very first night of
(28:01):
the run and welcome people in and seeing people's reactions
gave me goosebumps, give me goose thing.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
That's incredible.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
That's a moment that stands out to me. You're for sure.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
So as going back to your scare acting days, because
I had I had a hypothesis last night. I was like,
all right, so if you walk out and you look tough,
they're like, eh, we're not gonna be able to scare her.
But if you look scared, it's almost like they want
to go for you even more because they're like, yeah, yeah,
prime me. Is that how you felt as a character percent.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Especially as a as a as a streets performer, As
a character out in our scare zones, there's a lot
of improv right, and you have to kind of gauge
your audience. You have to kind of feel the energy
of the people that are coming towards you and kind
of base your selection of scares based off of people
who are scared, right, But there's also an enjoyment of
like going after the groups that are like coming through
like oh, I'm not scared of this, and then getting
(28:53):
a huge reaction out of them. It's like, ha, gotcha
you love that?
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Do you keep tally?
Speaker 5 (28:58):
Yeah, a little bit soul in my mind?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
How many souls.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
That book over there was just all the people I'm
scared exactly. This has been honestly one of the coolest
experiences I've ever had. I'm so grateful for all the
insights and you know, teaching us about bootholes and please, honestly,
I would recommend at least if you're even if you're scared,
you have to go to Halloween Horror Knights once in
(29:25):
your life.
Speaker 5 (29:27):
Have to.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
There's so much content that truly, there's something for everyone
to enjoy. Even if you're not a huge fan of horror.
I can guarantee you to come to the event and
find something that you love.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
I had a lot of fun that night, yeah truly.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah, Yeah, that's an experience in and of itself, right,
being able to go into Diagon Alley at night and
see the and see the death Eaters and things like that,
like that's there's so much for for a wide range
of people to enjoy.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Absolutely Now my last question for you is if you're
able for the brave souls who have been here with
us in this episode, can we get a little bit
of a sneak peak about what we can expect next year?
Speaker 2 (30:07):
So I am sworn to secrets, what I can say
is expect expect us to up the Annie even more. Wow.
We love to challenge ourselves with really raising the bar
every single year. This year is an all timer of
a year. It's the most successful Halloween Hornets we've ever
had thirty two year history. Yes, thank you, and we're
(30:27):
hoping for thirty three to be to top even that.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
That's a good number, that's a spooky number.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Expect a lot of screams, a lot of laughs, menacing creatures. Yeah,
and maybe a few tricks up our sleeve.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
He gave us a ton of information and nothing at
all prepared to be scared.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
You are.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Thank you so much. Once again, we've had an amazing time.
We've had an amazing weekend. For those of you listening,
it's been fun to bring you along the Mothership with us.
We love doing these satellite things and ending and putting
a little anti gravity.
Speaker 5 (31:02):
Even though you know my hip's hurt. But that's okay,
worth it, worth it. Before we leave and.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
We end this incredible time at Halloween, hornies, I think
we have one last thing to do.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
We got it. We should choose our fate.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Well, you know, I'm a creature of habit, So I'll
see you guys later.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
All right, I'm going nice. Where are you going that long?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I'm gonna stand right here and see what happens.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
All right, guys, thank you for joining us on Halloween
Orne this Ineral world.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
By This podcast is brought to you by boot Flower
Productions in partnership with Ihearts My gunput Podcast Network. For
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Hosts And Creators
Gemeny Hernandez
Emily Estefan
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