Thursday October 21st

[12:19 EDT+1]

This is being written on Friday - we got in way too late to do any photos last night!

Thursday started out with a hour or so drive down to Orlando, back past the place where we had the blow-out on the 528 EB (2 miles before the 520). Happily, there was no re-occurence!

We got into the park just before 11am, the parking costs have once again risen since we were last here (Christmas) and are now $15 normal ($20 for preferred).

As we walked down City Walk, we were pleased to see the majority of the crowd peel off to IOA for their Harry Potter queue ;)

One bad thing though, the latest roller coaster in Universal, Rip-roarin' Rocket was, yet again, out of service - this time for maintenance. I think it's now 4 times I've been to Universal since that ride opened and each time it's been closed :(

Line times were pretty good - ET was only 10 minutes which is a good indication that the park was quiet.

I'd originally bought a couple of express passes for the evening $19.99 which I thought was quite a bargain. Luckily I decided to confirm what those EPs allowed me to actually do. I was then told that those passes were only for the daytime! If I wanted Halloween Horror Night (HHN) house access, I'd need these passes which also happened to be three times the cost!

Still, we'd come here specifically to do the HHN so we managed to get these unused Express Passes re-credited against the HHN EPs.

We started the day off with the normal walk through the park - we did ET, Simpsons, MIB twice (second time I scored 417,075!), Jaws, Twister and I did the mummy ride three times as single rider (including a front row) whilst Linda watched the Blues Brothers show.

Finally, 5pm arrived and we walked over to the holding area that people with the Stay and Scream tickets had to use whilst the park was cleared.

Initially, we were let out of the Stay-and-scream area at 17:45, only to be told that only one house was open and the others wouldn't be opening until 18:30 :( Of course, everyone went there first.

We followed. It was the Legendary Truth house set up as a Ghost house. It was situated behind the auditorium stage area in front of Rip-Roaring. There were 9 (yes NINE) levels of queuing area, winding back and forward in front of the stage, but as it was only 2 levels full and moving quickly, we just joined and were through in 10 minutes.

We moved on to PsychoScareapy next door where we had to queue 10 minutes for the house to open at 18:30 - they really should have got there timings better organised - any advantages you got from Stay and Scream were almost wiped out by everyone having to go to the same location.

We then headed to catch the first showing of the Bill and Ted show.

To he honest, I wasn’t that impressed by this – mainly because I didn’t necessarily know who was who in the guests. It was very heavily steeped in US pop culture and although I knew of some characters (I’ve heard of Kick Ass and the Last Airbender, A-Team) the TV and US celeb references sailed over my head. Still, the choreography was good!

After that, we had to use our Express Passes as the queues were now ranging from 45 to 60+ minutes each house if you did normal queuing. It might have been possible to get to each of the 8 houses without the Express Passes but I’m not convinced - the wait times were simply too long.

As for the houses themselves – the production was very good they must spend ages getting everything set up right. The ‘boo’ moments were spoiled, however, by the constant prompting from the ushers to move along and keep up as it meant you could easily see what was coming ahead of you as you could see the group ahead and could watch what for when they were suffering. Only in areas where the route twisted a lot (Catacombs was good for this) or when you had to push through hanging stuff (and so couldn’t see what was going on ahead) was this effective. Linda got caught quite a few times (often just before we exited a house) but I think she enjoyed it enough to keep going into the next house!

There were also scare zones outside (which didn’t set up until it got dark) – these were specified areas where costumed actors crept around in the dark, running up behind unsuspecting people or jumping out at them from dark areas!

These were actually quite good in that you could watch others getting spooked by the costumed characters, only to discover a hideous crone witch peeking over your shoulder as you stood there!

Eventually we ran out of steam and decided to leave. We'd done all the 8 houses and I'd had another go on Mummy - 15 minute queue despite using my express pass. We left sometime after 11pm and got back just before 1am.

One side thing we noticed, there was an awful lot of alcohol being sold in the park. I know Universal always sells booze, but it was everywhere! I’m assuming that’s why outside every house there was at least one Orlando police man, armed with handgun and Taser – not something I’ve ever noticed in a theme park.