With nine (well, eight-and-a-half) of this year’s haunted houses and all seven of the scare zones and street experiences fully revealed, yesterday was time for Universal to turn its attention to one of the few remaining unknown facets of Halloween Horror Nights: the shows.

For the entirety of the decade that was the 2010s, fans got used to routinely having two or three shows (with the exception, that is, of 2018’s sole production [that year representing something of a transition in the event’s live-entertainment lineup]), a fact which actually went a long way to increasing not only the variety of Horror Nights’s offerings, but also its enjoyment; the performances provided attendees’ nervous systems with a respite from the constant scares and their feet a respite from the several thousand steps they endured each and every night. What, exactly, those shows were, however, proved to be one of the most malleable elements of the HHN equation: over the past 15 years, we’ve seen the likes of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure, a Saturday Night Live-esque pop-culture spoof that ran for an unbelievable 26 years (up through 2017); an acrobatic and theatrical mashup that was powered by the former Academy of Villains dance troupe (2016-2019); and, even, The Rocky Horror Picture Show: A Tribute, an abridged version of the cult-classic 1975 film replete with the audience participation that it has become (in)famous for (last seen in 2014).

What could be called the modern period of the Halloween proceedings’ entertainment, which just may be defined by an ossification of this malleability, started up in 2019, when a very interesting – and, at the time, what was believed to be a permanent – development took place: Horror Nights’s designers commandeered the brand-new set-up that was created for Universal Studios Florida’s bold new take on the nightly lagoon show, creating a fixed viewing area on one side of the body of water (in Central Park), setting up projection mapping to occur all along the buildings of the other side (in the New York backlot), and utilizing various shooting fountains and large water screens in the middle. The result was a decidedly horror spin on the plussed-up production, incorporating that year’s roster of intellectual properties to great fanfare, and its successor show was welcomed back with open arms in 2021 (remember that Halloween Horror Nights 2020 was cancelled due to a little thing called covid-19) – but then, in 2022, it all came to a crashing halt early on in the season, after Hurricane Ian wreaked substantial damage to the aquatic apparatus. What’s more, when coupled with Universal’s decision to expand and otherwise upgrade all the equipment for an even newer, more advanced nighttime spectacular – called CineSational: A Symphonic Spectacular, it wouldn’t debut until the summer of 2024 – the lack of an HHN counterpart extended all the way to this year.

All of which means that 2025 is a return to (modern) form, finally ending the streak of single shows and incorporating the lagoon production back into the fold.

Nightmare Fuel: Circus of Decay

Once the string of Academy of Villains showings, which initially replaced the long-running Bill & Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure in the former Fear Factor Live theater, unexpectedly got pulled from the Horror Nights program (due to various controversies from the dance company’s founders and managers), the similar-but-still-different-enough Fuel Girls performance group was tapped to bring their own brand of pyrotechnic and aerial arts to the stage. The ensuing show is called Halloween Nightmare Fuel, and ever since 2021, event-goers have seen one variation or another on the basic premise of “nocturnal creatures, aerialists of the night, and frightful fire performers” who “come alive to the crackling beat of rock, metal, and electronica music.”

We say “variation,” but, in reality, the productions have remained strongly consistent: 2022’s and 2023’s renditions, subtitled Wildfire and Revenge Dream, respectively, simply offered up a slightly different “dreamer” who was trapped in “the depths of a new nightmare,” and 2024’s take, Nocturnal Circus, attempted to add another wrinkle to the premise by slipping in a circus overlay to the proceedings, but they were, at the end of the day, largely the same proceedings – and the same underlying nightmare.

Interestingly enough, this year’s iteration, given the slightly different title of Nightmare Fuel: Circus of Decay, just might see a bit more in the way of experimentation – even though, upon first blush, it would seem to be an extension of last year’s outing, especially with Universal’s official description:

This once-vibrant circus has festered into an unending nightmare. It’s a sinister spectacle of pyro, aerialists, and illusions.

But appearances can be deceiving, and there just may be more going on under the hood: at last month’s HHN panel at the Spooky Empire horror convention, the assembled designers revealed that a new creative director has been put in place, perhaps in recognition that this will now be the Fuel Girls’s fourth appearance at the event, and the notoriously fickle fans, who can go, in seemingly the blink of an eye, from obsessing over to rejecting a Horror Nights element that returns more than once, may start to raise questions of longevity.

Actually, this four-year milestone really is an important one, as it means Halloween Nightmare Fuel will have the same tenure as its predecessor. 2026 will be a very telling moment, signaling whether we are, indeed, in a new era – will this new production go the way of Bill & Ted, becoming the backbone of the event’s live entertainment for a while to come, or will it turn out to be yet another Academy of Villains, becoming the latest in an ever-shuffling arrangement of musical chairs?

Haunt-O-Phonic: A Ghoulish Journey

It’s hard to oversell the impact that Halloween Marathon of Mayhem had in 2019 – the first-ever Halloween Horror Nights lagoon show of its kind, stitching together various visuals from that year’s IP lineup (which included the likes of Stranger Things, Ghostbusters, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and the Universal Monsters) through an ‘80s-retro thumping, rocking soundtrack. It was pure horror-entertainment gold, and audiences couldn’t get enough of it.

Doing a follow-up for 2021 (which, again, was the next event year) was, of course, a no-brainer, but even though Marathon of Mayhem: Carnage Factory was, essentially, more of the same, it wasn’t received as warmly by the diehard community, thanks mostly to the licensed properties that were featured that year (The Haunting of Hill House, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and, once again, Universal’s Classic Monsters – all presented by the very face of HHN itself, Jack the Clown) and the fact that Universal couldn’t quite make them gel as nicely together as it had with their antecedents. This, perhaps, explains why a (slightly) different approach was adopted for 2022’s Ghoulish! A Halloween Tale, using the various water screens, fountains, and projection-mapping to spin an experience of reading an old-fashioned storybook on All Hallows’ Eve night, eschewing IP imagery for that of fun, retro dancing skeletons, cartoony devils, and, of course, Lil’ Boo, the unofficial mascot of Horror Nights (all this, of course, also helped to deliver on that year’s overarching theme of classic Halloween, which certainly didn’t hurt).

Although we have very little information to go on for 2025’s watery showing, all signs seem to point to yet another outing in this vein – just take the name, Haunt-O-Phonic: A Ghoulish Journey, and this very basic description from Universal:

A ghost story is rising from its watery grave to haunt the Universal Studios lagoon, featuring towering water screens and eerie music.

Just as with Halloween Nightmare Fuel – and so many countless stage shows before that – we just might be witnessing the beginning of yet another Halloween Horror Nights institution in the form of Ghoulish. It’ll be most interesting, as always, to see how the fandom continues to respond, which has long provided one of the North Stars for the event’s creators over the decades.

These HHN 2025 shows join an array of scare zones and street experiences, a collection of original haunted houses, Terrifier, Jason Universe, Fallout, and Five Nights at Freddy’s at Halloween Horror Nights 34, which runs for 48 event nights, from August 29 through November 2.

For even more in-depth (historical) analysis like this, be sure to check out Horrors Untold, the unofficial, comprehensive guide to HHN Orlando.

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