The build to each new HHN starts months in advance, and involves creativity, construction, and politics, in equal measure.

HHN24 was not even over before Universal began teasing HHN25 through its social media on Halloween night. The video was the same as the one from HHN24, followed by an announcement of the 2015 dates and then a brief shot of a shadowy figure lurking in the background. It was a familiar shadow: Jack was back! Universal wouldn’t officially announce the clown’s return until May. Mike Aiello, director of entertainment for the event, told the Orlando Sentinel:

Among all the characters that have headlined Halloween Horror Nights over the last 25 years, Jack represents the event in the purest way possible—he is the embodiment of all the tricks and the treat.

Aiello also announced that the event would run for a record 30 nights and would employ double the number of scareactors than it had the previous year. Universal was making it crystal clear that the 25th anniversary event would be the biggest, wildest Horror Nights ever.

On May 20, the same day as Aiello’s announcement, the park launched the official website with the news that this year’s event would boast a record nine houses, five scarezones, and two shows. It was rumored that this information was released so early because of a document leaked to the fan community that included the names and themes of the houses.

In June, Universal announced that Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees would be returning to the event, after their last successful stint in 2007, or Carnival of Carnage. Aiello told the Orlando Sentinel:

Guests walking through the house will first see Camp Crystal Lake. The first portion of the maze features “all Jason” and his various kills. Fans of the brand will recognize many of the scare scenes from the movie franchise. The second portion focuses on Freddy as guests are transported to Elm Street through the dream realm. The maze ends with guests caught in the middle of a Freddy and Jason fight, complete with machetes and Freddy’s knife glove flying, as the two battle it out to a gruesome, bloody end. The maze’s end should appease both fandoms. Each set will alternate between Freddy emerging victorious and Jason pulling out the final win.

Whereas the film, Freddy v Jason, left the outcome of the battle ambiguous, with Freddy still “alive” at the end, the house would present a definite winner each night, alternating between the two. It was said that every 45 minutes there would be a cast change and each cast would have “their winner” in order to keep things fair. Two stuntmen were employed to film a number of the battle sequences in the same soundstage; these scenes would be projected in high definition onto the walls of the house, to the beat of an epic soundtrack, making guests believe they truly were in the middle of a fierce battle.

Various Jasons, played by some of the record number of scareactors, would pop out at unsuspecting guests right from the house entrance. All of the Jason scareactors selected for their body size, with a height requirement of 6’3” to 6’8”. Elaborate sets, detailed environments, and an experimental underwater scene were all added, as well as full-sized mannequins depicting some of the most famous kills from the two franchises.

In July, Universal announced a house based on the popular film franchise Insidious, for Sprung Tent 2. It didn’t make headlines, but fans couldn’t be happier and pondered how such a house might be built and what it would contain. Universal released a cryptic description:

Enter “The Further” and travel through all three parts of the Insidious saga. Denizens of the afterlife try to find their way back into the world using the living to guide them. The house isn’t haunted--we are.

Some fans were disappointed that the house would be located in one of the Sprung Tents. These tents were seen by many as the poor relative of the event’s soundstages; however, Universal had tricks up its to enhance the tents with two experimental devices that the houses did not share.

The first would remedy a major problem: lights leaked into the tents from outdoors, making the experiences inside less desirable until nightfall. In response, Universal installed a number of blackout sheets, both to the ceilings and the walls. Second, Universal provided for a scare outside the exit of the tents, making use of the greater amount of outdoor space that the tents had available. Guests would exit a tent and walk along a straight platform to the path leading back to the park, talking about what they had just experienced, and totally unaware that behind the crates stacked along the path hid the Lipstick-Demon, who would occasionally pop out, giving them a final, unexpected fright.

Shortly after the Insidious announcement, word came that The Walking Dead would return for a fourth year, and this time based on the fifth season of the show. Many houses start off with huge facades that gradually become confined and narrow as guests are funneled along tight corridors, but not this house. Every show scene would maximize as much head room as possible, in particular during the supermarket floor cave-in scene in which the characters fall through the rotten floor into a basement filled with water and bloated, but still flesh-eating zombies. Here guests would encounter another first: scareactors in the water who would at guests from specially created pools. Almost no guest noticed the actual lifeguard sitting above the entrance watching the actors as they performed.

The next house to be announced, with more gusto than any of the other ones, was the return of a house based on The Purge, which Universal billed as:

This year’s Purge is more brutal than ever. From the moment you step inside the house, dozens of vicious vigilantes will descend upon you as they exercise their right to purge.

Mike Aiello told the Orlando Sentinel:

Just like in the film, guests will find themselves within arm’s reach of the most sadistic collection of killers imaginable. Their only want and need is to express their right to purge and purge they will.

The house sparked debate within the fan community as rumors swirled that it had been added at the last minute. These rumors seemed well-founded, as when the event opened the house looked to have been recycled from a house originally planned for Ghostface, from the non-Universal Scream franchise. No one is sure why Ghostface wasn’t part of the event, or whether in fact his house was given over to The Purge, a Universal property. Regardless, it was a hit with most guests. An interesting fact about the house was the use of “fake” guests, in which scareactors disguised as guests would be pulled from the audience to have their throats slit. This tactic had not been seen at Horror Nights for many years. The throat slice would be a recurring theme across all the houses this year, with at least one victim in each house dispatched in such a manner.

Continued in "The Complete Survivor's Guide to Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights 2016"!

Not every idea for an icon passes muster, which is what happened in 2008 to the horrific but forgotten Nathaniel Crow.

For Halloween Horror Nights in 2008, Mike Aiello wrote a concept for a new icon Nathaniel Crow, who would be linked to backstories of various past icons who were associated with the Carnival of Carnage.

In a windswept, desolate land, Crow would attempt to grow and sell the pumpkins, though these would invariably rot quickly whenever he picked them. He eventually meets Jack, who tells him that the land is cursed and that nothing will ever proposer there. Jack pays Crow for the rights to put his carnival on the land for the 2007 Horror Nights event.He subsequently pays Crow to put his carnival on his land for the 2007 event.

Eventually, Crow is seduced by the horrors of the carnival; the sights, the sounds, and the smells invigorate his soul and give new purpose to his existence. One by one, many of those who visit the carnival disappear, but Crow does not, and instead he witnesses more acts of horror and madness. When he asked Jack why he does not die while others do, Jack says, “You’ll see.”

When the carnival leaves town, Crow goes back to tending his dry, barren soil. He becomes filled with hate. Upon coming across a tattered poster advertising the old carnival, he begins to bleed from sheer rage, and the blood composes itself into a mysterious rhyme on the poster:

Forgotten are the ways of old
traditions blood black and cold.
Up through dirt roots grow and burst,
evils’ return, you’ll see what came first.
When ravens and crows made the night black,
Pumpkins were carved to keep the evil back.
When the howl of the wind sent shivers down spines,
Graves of our dead covered in vines.
When black cats crossed paths and wolves howl,
True witches did more than laugh and scowl.
Your time has come, Nathaniel Crow,
outside the box you’ll think, you’ll grow.
Terrors traditions in ways you will demand,
Halloween’s true self is at hand.

Continued in "The Complete Survivor's Guide to Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights 2016"!