30 Days of Halloween Horror Nights: What’s Your All-Time Favorite House/Maze?
This was a tough call. After much deliberation, I’m going with Halloween Horror Nights XIV’s “Hellgate Prison.” It was a close contest, though, and “Hellgate” narrowly edged out “Demon Cantina,” “Ghost Town,” “Deadtropolis” and “Winter’s Night: The Haunting of Hawthorn Cemetery.”
Here’s the reason why I ended up choosing “Hellgate Prison:” atmosphere. From the moment one entered the queue line, the house let you know it was there. With grainy, black-and-white news footage playing and the domineering voice of Warden Robert L. Strickland booming over the crowd, waiting to enter Hellgate felt like a prison sentence in itself.
Once inside the house, the jailhouse cast really played their roles well. “Hellgate Prison” was the first (and only) house where a scareactor made me gasp in disbelief. I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but the inmate at the entrance made it quite clear what the prisoners would do to a “new fish” such as myself.
Lastly, “Hellgate Prison” was memorable as it was my first exposure to the effect that I refer to as “Old Sparky:” an electric chair-bound prisoner who realistically twitched and convulsed as he was being put to death. While this character has since appeared in other HHN houses (“Psychoscareapy: Echoes of Shadybrook” springs to mind), I will always remember how brutally realistic and graphic this electrocution sequence felt at the time.
What’s your all-time favorite HHN house, and why? Leave us a comment on Facebook!
Wallpaper is from the Official Halloween Horror Nights 16 website, © 2014 Universal Orlando Resort. All rights reserved.