Ranking All 10 Haunted Houses at Halloween Horror Nights 2025 in Orlando
Halloween Horror Nights 34 is underway at the Universal Orlando Resort in Florida, unleashing 10 brand new haunted houses, live entertainment, and immersive “scare zones” for the 2025 season.
This year’s event brought an even split between original and IP-based haunts, all impeccably themed and boasting incredible production design and committed scare actors. While HHN 34 only features four scare zones, compared to last year’s five, the classic Halloween vibes of “The Cat Lady of Crooked Lane” stand out as one of the more elaborate setups that embraces the holiday spirit with fairy tale flair.
Also different this year is the lack of an event icon, a signature character serving as the event’s welcoming mascot. Instead, HHN 34 lets Art the Clown loose to free roam Universal Studios Florida, interacting with guests throughout the park. If that sounds menacing, Art’s Terrifier house gets even nastier with an interactive path that lets you choose between a dry run through or a “bloodbath.” That immersive quality is but one of many ways the HHN 34 creative team has delivered on this year’s event, and Bloody Disgusting was invited to participate in opening night’s media event.
Here’s how the houses rank at Halloween Horror Nights 34.
10) Fallout
The Fallout house brings guests through the season one highlights of Prime Video’s hit series and sends them off with a brief tease for what’s ahead in season two. From Vault 33 to Shanty Town to New Vegas, this house painstakingly recreates familiar moments from the series while packing in the easter eggs. While the theming is impeccable and captures the tone of the series, it doesn’t translate well to a haunt. Instead of a narrative throughline, Fallout instead feels like a walkthrough of season one’s greatest hits. With no central villain to anchor it, it’s up to scare actors representing protagonists Lucy, Maximus, and The Ghoul to deliver most of the jump scares. To put it simply: there’s not a scare to be found in the Fallout house, and not much in the way of story either. But at least that monstrous tease will have us primed for season two.
9) Jason Universe
Like its namesake might suggest, this IP-based house is constrained by the ongoing Friday the 13th franchise’s legal quagmire. Jason Universe doesn’t have the rights to recreate the films in haunt form, but it can and does make full use of Jason Voorhees, resulting in a house that operates more like a jump scare tour through the various incarnations of the masked horror icon. Just about every version of Jason gets represented here, from sacked mask Jason in Part 2 to Uber Jason, as guests wind their way through claustrophobic but nondescript camp scenes filled with dead bodies as scents of barbecue waft through the air. While that builds to an onslaught of menacing Jason scares, and it’s a welcome sight to see the horror icon represented at HHN once again, there’s simply not much to this house beyond its collection of Jason scare actors.
8) Five Nights at Freddy’s
Considering the massive wait time this mega-popular house garnered on opening night, this ranking will be controversial. Hear me out. If this list ranked the houses based on theming alone, FNAF would rank near the top. Stepping into this house immediately transports you into the Five Nights at Freddy’s film, where you’re greeted by the animatronic in Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza as they sing “Talking in Your Sleep” by The Romantics. The further in you get, the more the animatronics glitch out as ghostly children jump into the fray. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop once again provides killer animatronics, further immersing fans in this richly detailed world. As awe-inducing as they are, they drive up the haunt’s queue tremendously as fans pause and wait for the animatronics to light up for their “scare” moment. That the animatronics barely move at all means that scares are next to impossible in this house. It makes for a fun but slight tour through familiar set pieces that’ll be more than worth the lengthy waits for the diehard fanbase, but less so for casual purveyors seeking thrills.
7) Dolls: Let’s Play Dead
This original concept introduces Lyla, a mean little girl who gives Toy Story‘s Sid a run for his money when it comes to mutilating toys. And Lyla has decided you’re her next plaything. Dolls shrinks guests down to doll size as they wind their way through a maze of damaged, burned, and maimed toys, all tasked with hunting you down lest they be tortured even further. It’s a house full of interactive buttons and scents, like burnt plastic, and endless creativity as victimized toys are driven mad by their maniacal owner. Dolls: Let’s Play Dead embraces storytelling in a fun way, but it’s so effective at eliciting pity for its heartbreaking denizens that it’s more tragic than scary.
6) The Horrors of the Wyatt Sicks
The horror-themed wrestling collective known as The Wyatt Sicks lures guests from a backstage wrestling event into the dark, filled with otherworldly horrors, in this house. Southern bayou horror meets the WWE in themed set pieces packed with details and wrestling references, with the late Bray Wyatt’s presence and imprint presiding over it all. It’s the type of haunt that’ll mean much more to those familiar with the IP, but its slick production and a cast of deeply committed and energetic scare actors bringing the Wyatt Sicks to life make this a little more accessible to newcomers than expected. Just don’t expect to be well-versed in the Wyatt Sicks lore by the time the walkthrough is complete.
5) El Artista: A Spanish Haunting
A tortured artist succumbs to madness as his art comes alive to possess him in this Gothic original house set in 19th-century Spain. The straightforward story offers a steady progression of art-inspired insanity in a Gothic conservatory that directly inspired “The Origins of Horror” scare zone at the front of the park. That means swinging gargoyles from the rafters, withering vines, vague smells of florals and musk. Art springs to life here, reflected in a stunning gothic haunt that’s so richly detailed that it’s difficult to soak in its details upon a single walkthrough. So much so that it’s difficult to fully get under El Artista‘s spell; the scares are tricky when you’re so distracted by the breathtaking production design. The familiar Faustian tale doesn’t help.
4) Hatchet and Chains: Demon Bounty Hunters
A scene from last year’s Slaughter Sinema 2 house gets its own walkthrough this year, introducing one of the strongest story-driven houses of the event. All hell is breaking loose in an Old West town, and it’s up to Hatchet and Chains, a reformed demon and a gunslinger, to save the day by containing the demonic outbreak. It’s a delightful B-movie style romp through the Wild West, just one filled with demonic beings, including a few animatronic demon horses. It’s gory and whimsical, filled with vibrant monsters and clever tricks, including screens that emulate moving trains. It’s also well articulated in its storytelling, making it even easier to fall for the wacky charms of this house. The only real downside here is that Hatchet and Chains makes for one of the shortest houses of the event.
3) Grave of Flesh
This original haunt gives a familiar premise a trippy shakeup, making for one of HHN 34’s bigger surprises. It begins with your own burial. Guests enter through a graveyard, unable to be perceived by its human custodians, and venture below their burial plot to discover what really happens after you die. Encounters with flesh-eating ghouls deep below ground sounds generic, as does the haunt’s name. But the creative team instead take bold swings with this concept, getting downright cosmic the further you venture. What reads like an episode of “Tales from the Crypt” on paper instead transforms into one Lovecraftian descent into another dimension, filled with eye-catching creature designs and well-timed scares to showcase them.
2) Terrifier
The house with the longest walkthrough dedicates itself to the putrid, murderous musings of Art the Clown. Covering all three Terrifier films while introducing original kills, this house comes with all the nasty bells and whistles. All of the films’ highlights are on gory display, immersing guests further in Art’s grisly mayhem through repulsive smells, interactive buttons, and bursts of air or water spray. While Art takes center stage, The Little Pale Girl and Victoria make appearances throughout to assist with the carnage. The house’s biggest bragging feature is its optional path: timid guests can opt for the “dry path” to evade Art’s machinations, while braver guests can take the “bloodbath” path to close out the experience with a dousing of water. Opt for the bloodbath; you’ll get wet but not soaked, and this path rewards the risk takers with the appearance of Sienna in full angel-armor glory. It’s a house that goes full throttle to ensure it lives up to its name.
Just be prepared for the stomach-churning smell emanating from its bathroom scenes, or the fecal blobs that may squirt you as you go by.
1) Gálkn: Monsters of the North
This Nordic folk horror-themed original offers the event’s biggest surprise. It’s also a story-driven house that follows an angry spirit rising from the grave, bringing a horde of monsters from the fjords to wreak havoc on the townspeople they once protected. Gálkn doesn’t just stun for its pristine autumnal ambiance, complete with wafting scents of pine trees, or its winding layout that lets you see and smell the bonfire before you make your way through a grim massacre to get there. It inspires awe for the steady progression of jaw-dropping demons and beasts, culminating in one behemoth of a finale. Gálkn checks off all the boxes for a perfect haunt experience: great gore, monsters, storytelling, production values, well-timed scares, and a variety of immersive tricks that whisk you away to an ancient village cursed by an unforgettable entity.
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