When it comes to Halloween Horror Nights (HHN), the entertainment team at Universal Orlando Resort knows how to dial up (and sometimes, dial down) the scares. The VIP Experiences team may be best known for daytime guided tours with front-of-the-line access to rides, but two special Halloween tours are added to the lineup during spooky season: the Behind the Screams: Unmasking the Horror Tour and R.I.P. Tour. These Halloween tours are some of the best ways to learn everything there is to know about the lore of the event — after all, the stories behind each house are different every year, and encompass so many details you’d never know unless you had an expert point them out to you!
Are you an HHN nerd looking to take things to the next level, or a newbie wanting to make sure you experience the event in the best way possible? Two tour guides, Logan and Tati, take us through a day in their (after)life, and tell us everything you need to know about experiencing HHN like an expert:
Behind the Screams: Unmasking the Horror Tours
Logan Donahoo began working at Universal Orlando in 2010 and has been taking guests on tours for the past four years. This HHN season, he’s giving a lights-on look at haunted houses during the Unmasking the Horror Tour. This behind-the-screams experience explains all of the immersive storytelling and mind-boggling details that are often missed during the event (like the fact that you can find a bottle of Extermin-Air outside of this year’s Triplets of Terror house, an ode to 2022’s Bugs: Eaten Alive house). You can choose a 3-house or 6-house tour, but if you’re looking to learn as much about the houses as possible, I recommend booking both since no houses are repeated between the tour types. Logan says the Unmasking the Horror Tour is his favorite to lead and compares his role to “turning on the director commentary for your favorite horror movie.”
Logan’s day starts with picking out the color of his scrubs — the quintessential wardrobe worn by all HHN tour guides. Then, he’ll find out which houses he’ll be going through that day and review his training notes. Because Unmasking the Horror Tour guides have the potential to lead either type of tour, Logan memorized details for nine of our ten haunted houses. “I want to make sure I’m being accurate for every single guest every single time,” he says.
R.I.P. Tours
Flash forward to park close — it’s time to turn out the lights and transition to the nighttime R.I.P. Tours. Unlike Unmasking the Horror, the R.I.P. Tour brings you to the front of the line at the haunted houses and through all five scare zones, putting you right in the middle of the HHN action. Ten-house tour participants will also receive a pre-tour reception with light bites and reserved seating area at the event’s show. Bottom line: the R.I.P. Tour features all the thrills, chills and scares the event is known for, and is the way to experience HHN like a real pro.
Tati Gonzalez has been a tour guide for five years and describes her job as an R.I.P. Tour guide as “having fun for a living!” To start her shift, Tati grabs one of the most iconic symbols of HHN: her light wand. If you’ve been to HHN, you’ve likely seen the bright light wands bobbing up and down throughout the crowd, signifying a tour group being led by their fearless guide. After that, she’s off into the fog. “I like jumping with my guests and having those fearful moments,” Tati says. “I love seeing everyone have a really good, scary time.”
R.I.P. Tour Guides will still provide fun facts, although they won’t go in as much depth as the Unmasking the Horror Tour will; one of Tati’s favorite pieces of information to sprinkle throughout her tour is about the secret names all our houses go by before they’re announced (this year, each house was given a dessert-themed code name!). “My favorite thing to learn about is the code names for every single house, how they’re tied in and how they all relate to each other,” she says. “These are the types of details I tell my guests to show them exactly why I love this event so much.”
Have you been on an Unmasking the Horror our R.I.P Tour? Share your experience with us in the comments below!
2 Comments
Hey discover universal podcast how about you do a blog and podcast and even talk about about universal’s special effects stages show and more about the horror make-up show and Halloween horror nights and the animal actors show and future careers at universal creative and vip experience to ask questions about universal studios history and archives and even give creative and imaginative and genius ideas and suggestions and content and materials and development for the theme parks in Hollywood and Florida and even talk about the history of behind the scenes and history and archives of universal studios Hollywood and Florida in the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s and the theme parks and special effects make-ups and computers and visual effects and movie making and movie magic and filmmaking and sound effects and special effects and movie monsters and monster movies and horror and Halloween and goth and gothic and Lon Chaney sr. And Rick baker and motion captures and historians and archivists and blumhouse and Jason Blum and Blumhouse Productions and all that stuff I love the most about universal studios and the theme parks and that means something to me and the fans so yeah can you please answer that please discover universal podcast?
Lucas Walker.
Hey Lucas! We love to see your passion for our theme parks and their history. We recommend reaching out to our Guest Services Team if you’d like to provide any feedback, as they can ensure it’s properly documented and passed along to the right teams. They can be reached at 407-224-4233, or via email at GuestServices@UniversalOrlando.com. As a feedback based company, we take feedback such as what you’ve provided seriously to help us continually improve the Guest experience!