A brand new story begins

In 2005, Halloween Horror Nights: Tales of Terror re-introduced the grand concepts of 2002 and 2003 by returning to Islands of Adventure and featuring a new icon: The Storyteller. This kindly old woman with a few drops of blood on her glasses was actually not present inside the event. Rather, she told the tale of an ancient world called Terra Cruentius. Like a living “World of Warcraft,” Islands of Adventure was transformed into this distant mythological world with each land interconnected with the others, all overseen by the evil Terra Queen (explore 2005's incredible interactive website of maps, clues, riddles, and original backstories for each new island by clicking here). Super Hero Island was now Blood Thunder Alley, the metropolis that the queen’s dark mechanical citizens called home (with the striking haunted house, ‘Demon Cantina,’ being their liquor-fueled headquarters).

Toon Lagoon and Seuss Landing were deemed The Hollows, two of realms where the twisted humans who live in this dark medieval world are kept (with haunted houses “Body Collectors” and “The Skool”). Jurassic Park became Gorewood Forest, the dark woods of the Queen’s realm where horrible, hideous underground creatures mine endlessly for the Gorewood Tree, whose metallic bark builds the Queen’s Terra Throne.

The Lost Continent was transformed into the Tangleroot Fire Pits, where the warriors of Blood Thunder Alley would take the mined metals of Gorewood Forest and form metallic weaponry for the Queen’s honor. For the first time, Universal’s incredible walk-through Poseidon’s Fury was re-purposed as a haunted house called “Terror Mines,” where horrifying, blind, winged creatures are awakened by the smelting above. Most interestingly, guests in this haunted house were given helmets with lights attached; the light would turn on and off throughout the experience at key moments. At the park’s entrance, Port of Entry became Terra Guard Run, where the Queen’s otherworldly Black Guard lined the streets leading up to the Terra Throne, where the Queen would hang one visitor nightly in a very clever special effects show.

To the Studios once more

In the years following the Tales of Terror, Halloween Horror Nights moved back to Universal Studios Florida. The next year’s event, Halloween Horror Nights: Sweet 16, brought each of the event’s past icons (Jack, The Caretaker, the Director, The Storyteller, and even Eddie) back to the forefront, and each icon was given his or her own haunted house. Meanwhile, the move back to the Studios and away from Islands of Adventure’s themed lands necessitated the creation of original scarezones, now featuring zombies, witches, vampires, and other classic horror movie fare.

The following year, 2007’s Halloween Horror Nights: Carnival of Carnage was hosted by Jack (returning for his fourth year at the event). But he didn’t come alone. A deal with competing studios allowed Jack to bring three friends to the event: Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street), Jason Vorhees (Friday the 13th) and Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Movies had found their way back into Halloween Horror Nights in a big way. Each of the three characters received his own haunted house, and The Thing and Dead Silence (two successful horror movies of the year) were represented by mazes as well. Instead of scarezones, the entire park was one massive Midway of the Bizarre – clowns roamed free, scareactors drove around in bumper cars, and motorcycles were redecorated as angry carousel horses. 

2008’s Halloween Horror Nights: Reflections of Fear was represented by Bloody Mary (though she wasn’t characterized as an icon on the same level and Jack and Company) and the year was marked by original houses featuring still more zombies, aliens, witches, and sequels to earlier years’ Scary Tales and Body Collectors.

Towards the future

Though Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights was still an industry leader, its middle years at Universal Studios Florida received lukewarm reviews. After the intensely detailed and story-driven events from the Caretaker, the Director, and the Storyteller, folks had gotten used to a certain level of immersion at the event, and the loosely tied together years back at the studios were just missing something. For 2009, something would have to change, and Universal had an idea.

Halloween Horror Nights had tested a little bit of everything during its first two decades. After years of being a collection of haunted houses typically based half on that year’s horror movies and half of Universal’s classics, it had found new traction early in the new millennium with original characters, icons, stories, and settings that were all united and tied together by immersive and creative themes.

When the event moved from Islands of Adventure back to Universal Studios Florida in 2006, it resumed business as it had at the park years earlier, with disconnected haunted houses and piecemeal scarezones based on witches, clowns, zombies, and other Halloween fodder that somehow lacked the impressive storytelling the event had seen at Islands of Adventure.

So 2009 proved to be a test year.

Universal again employed its army of classic horror films and the best of the best that had come out that year, creating Halloween Horror Nights XIX: Ripped from the Silver Screen. But how to connect all those separate stories in one universe the way that the event had done so successfully before? The answer was, simply enough, to bring back the idea of an event icon. Enter The Usher, a man of few words and many toothy grins.

Julian Browning, according to his back-story, was an usher at the Universal Palace Theatre in the 1920s, notoriously strict for demanding that patrons adhere to the theatre rules. In the 1940s, the Usher got into a scuffle with a patron who would not stop speaking. The patron flung the Usher’s flashlight at the screen, which it tore right though. Retrieving it from behind the ripped screen, Julian somehow became entangled in stage ropes and dislodged a sandbag, hanging him in a slow and agonizing death with his feet just inches above the ground. Now, he continues to monitor the showing at the old haunted theatre and invokes harsh revenge on those who interrupt his show...

The inclusion of an event icon put Horror Nights back on the map and re-energized both the public and (apparently) the designers, who seemed newly invigorated by the creative success they’d achieved. Even with movie-based mazes like “Chucky: Friends Till the End,” “Saw,” “The Wolfman,” and two mazes based on Universal’s classic horror movie monsters, Dracula and Frankenstein, the event's 19th year felt original.