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Team Member preview

Team Member Preview is the night to work out all the kinks.

Team member preview night is hugely anticipated by both scareactors and those who work around the Universal Orlando resort. For Universal employees, this is their opportunity to finally see the event whose sets and props have been popping up around them for over a month. Some have even logged overtime hours helping to construct those sets, while others will spend their Halloween season working their regular job during the day and then assisting guests at the haunted houses by night. Each team member is allowed to bring one guest.

For scareactors, team member preview is effectively dress rehearsal. It is your first opportunity to get into full costume and makeup, step into your location, and completely inhabit your character. There is always a crackle in the air as the scareactors nervously anticipate their first visitors. Fortunately, the vast majority of team members and their guests are laid back and easygoing. They know it is a rehearsal night, and they don’t expect everything to be perfect. Still, when all of the elements come together just right, there is nothing more satisfying than watching jaded team members run, scream, cry, and even try to escape through the walls!

A typical night

There is no such thing as a typical night at HHN.

There really is no such thing as a typical night at Halloween Horror Nights. The event is improvisational live theater at its finest, changing dramatically from night to night and even from set to set. What you may not realize is that, as a guest, you are an absolutely integral part of the show. The scareactors feed off your energy, and take their cues from your reactions. Still, it is possible to lay out a “sample night” to explain how an evening might progress. This is based strictly on my experience and those of my family and friends working in soundstage houses. Streets and other houses might have an entirely different experience. 

5:00 p.m. Call Time

Me warming up backstage.

The soundstages open early to accommodate guests waiting in Stay and Scream holding areas, so the call time is usually around 5 p.m. Unlike typical daytime team members, we did not have to punch a time clock. Instead, I would stop by the outside break area for my house to say hello to my SM and ASM, who would log my arrival time in a book. A lot of times, some of us arrived early—around 4 p.m. or so—to grab something to eat at the employee grill (cafeteria)…I guess it was breakfast, since it was often our first food of the day.

Your costume and makeup change your whole outlook.

After checking in, it was time to head over to wardrobe. Grabbing my costume and heading for the dressing room was always an exciting experience. No matter how tired I was, and there were times that I was absolutely exhausted, slipping into costume and makeup always got me pumped up for the night ahead. 

5:45 p.m. Assembling in the break trailer

Every location has a break room somewhere nearby. For the soundstages, the break rooms are actually trailers. We had a smoking area just outside, and a fantastic snack bar steps away. 

The break room becomes the center of operations for the cast and stage managers for that house or scare zone. I was blessed with an awesome ASM who considered us her babies, and was kind of a house mom. Every night, we had free, unlimited access to Gatorade and all the candy we could consume. Our SM was terrific too, completely on top of every single thing that happened all night, and the perfect go-to person to solve any problems that might arise. We shared our performance coach with a couple of other houses, so he was always frantically in and out, making suggestions or moving people around within the house.

In the minutes before opening each night, we always had a sort of cast meeting. The ASM or SM would let us know the crowd projections, weather forecast, any call-ins, and other important information for the night. We might discuss any challenges that arose on the previous night or have a sort of pep rally to pump us up for a particularly long and difficult night.

6:00 p.m. It’s go time!

Everyone starts out the night with great energy!

After the meeting, it was time for my cast to head into the house. All scareactors, regardless of location, are divided into Cast A and Cast B. Cast A starts the night, performing for 45 minutes before being tagged out by Cast B. Cast A takes a 45 minute break, and then tags out Cast B for a break. This cycle continues throughout the night—and yes, the breaks are paid.

This might seem like a very generous break schedule, which it technically is, but it’s absolutely necessary for the scareactors. We tend to throw ourselves around, bouncing off set pieces and walls in an effort to produce the best scares. There is simply no way that an actor could keep up the insane level of energy required if a set lasted much longer than 45 minutes. We would always come in for breaks sore and dripping sweat.

8:15 p.m. Dinner time

The elaborate costumes and makeup are worth a closer look.

Scareactors are free to eat during whichever break time they like. Since every break is 45 minutes long, there is no designated dinner period. It’s actually amazing how many calories you can consume without gaining an ounce, due to the physicality of the job, and most of us snacked our way through the night. Still, I generally found that eating a good meal about halfway through the evening helped me keep my energy levels high.

It was always great fun to go to the employee grill during the night. Team members and police officers sometimes hang out in the grill during their off time just to get a closer look at the incredibly detailed costumes and makeup. My dad had a funny experience one night though. He had just had his makeup touched up, and was dripping stage blood everywhere as he ordered and paid for his meal. He took a seat at a long table next to a young female Orlando Police Department officer. She said, “I can’t look at you and eat.” To which he replied, “You’re OPD. Haven’t you ever been to an accident scene?” Her response was, “Yeah. But I don’t take a picnic!”

9:00 p.m. Tag team fun

Tag team scares are always fun!One of the greatest parts of working as a scareactor is the bonds you form with your coworkers. While hundreds of people work the event, your house or scare zone typically employs 60 or less, and of those, only half are on your cast. The small numbers, close working conditions, and shared battle scars (more on that later!) create a sort of family.

If you are lucky enough to be in a haunted house or scare zone scene with another actor or two, you have a golden opportunity to create multilayered scares known as tag team scares. The cool thing about the performance coaches and directors at Halloween Horror Nights is that they don’t give precise direction. They help you understand your character, teach you the nuts and bolts of how to scare, and provide some suggestions on ways to incorporate your environment to create a better scare. Where you go from there is up to you. Scareactors are encouraged to grow and develop their characters throughout the run, and to learn through trial and error what works and what doesn’t.

A tag team scare requires at least two actors to work together. One serves as a distraction for guests coming through, whether by standing very still and making people wonder whether he is actually a mannequin, or by being loud and boisterous and obvious. The other person hides out of sight. As soon as a group of guests is completely distracted by the obvious actor, the hidden one pops out of nowhere to deliver a massive scare. You can even do this with multiple actors in a sort of chain, each acting as a distraction for the next one down the line.

10:30 p.m. Earning a Boo Buck

Great scares earn Boo Bucks!

It’s a long proven fact that small, frequent rewards are an excellent way to motivate employees. Adding a layer of friendly competition can enhance motivation even further, especially if your team consists of people with naturally competitive personalities. As you can imagine, actors, who spend their entire lives trying to prove their worth at auditions, fit perfectly into this scenario.

Universal Orlando has a tremendous history of rewarding employees who get positive comments at Guest Services, or whose management and leadership team see them doing something great. At Halloween Horror Nights, recognition comes in the form of a Boo Buck—a slip of paper that lets the scareactor know he or she is doing a great job. Weekly drawings for small prizes make Boo Bucks even more valuable to the scareactor.

Scareactors work hard, but are rewarded in innumerable ways.

Throughout each night, our SM, ASM, and performance coach made occasional house walk-throughs. Sometimes they were looking at troublesome lights or props, sometimes they were making sure everyone was OK, sometimes they were seeing how the entire experience flowed from a guest perspective. And sometimes they were escorting higher level Universal management, who wanted to know what their money paid for, through the house to show it off.

On one particular evening, my performance coach came through with two very high level managers behind him. They were talking and not paying a lot of attention, and my coach momentarily forgot where he, himself, had positioned me. I came out and did my thing, and he toppled over backwards in surprise…taking down the managers with him! I was pretty proud to get a Boo Buck for that.

11:30 p.m. Seeing the event as a guest

You'll even get a chance to see other parts of the event.

One of the coolest things about having a Cast A and Cast B is that once your last set of the evening is over, you are free to go. You are paid a few minutes of “walk time” to account for getting out of costume and makeup, but you are not required to stay until the last cast finishes. On early close nights, Cast B has the last set. On late close nights, Cast A has the last set. If you hurry through the process of getting out of your costume and makeup on the nights that the other cast has the last set, you actually have a little time to run around and see the event.

My cast really enjoyed going to the other houses as a group. At the end of the night, lines were short, and we were often directed into the RIP entrance (normally used for the nightly “RIP” tours) with no waiting at all. On a good night, we could hit three houses before closing. We would always play it up big, overdramatically jumping and squealing at every scare. I have to admit, though, sometimes it was genuine. Whenever a cast knows that another cast is going through, they go out of their way to make the experience a little more extreme.

12:00 a.m. Meetups and fun

The Orlando Ale House does big business with scareactors.

I don’t know how people work Halloween Horror Nights while simultaneously holding down a day job or going to school. My dad did it, as did some of my friends, and I honestly don’t know when they found time to sleep. For myself, and many of my fellow scareactors, we were entirely too hyper by the end of the night to sleep.

The typical routine went something like this: gather en masse at the employee grill, both to eat and to mingle with friends from other houses and scare zones. From there, plans would be made to adjourn to the Orlando Ale House, a party in someone’s home, or even the clubs in Downtown Orlando. 

4:00 a.m. Bedtime

I lived a fair distance from Universal Orlando, so I ended up joining a group of castmates who stayed at a fellow cast member’s condo just down the street. There was plenty of room for all of us to spread out and relax, but staying together in a group meant that the party tended to continue until late. We would typically pass out around 4 a.m. and sleep until noon or so. Those late nights with women who became some of my closest friends are among my best memories from my time as a scareactor.

 
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