Universal Studios Hollywood's Halloween Horror Nights, not to be outdone by its chief competition, announced a maze based on An American Werewolf in London (1981). The classic monster movie already was transformed into a maze in Orlando last year and it appears that played a role in the maze coming to the west coast in 2014. The maze will not be a room-for-room remake of the Orlando version, if precedent holds. That being said, here is a great walkthrough video (spoilers?) of the maze as it appeared in Orlando last year.
After the AWL announcement, it was starting to look like we had a full slate of maze announcements. Apparently, that's not the case. Early this morning, Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood announced its seventh maze. "Clowns 3D: Music by Slash" rounds out the seven-maze lineup. Rob Zombie, Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath have all inspired a mazes — but this is the first time a musician has ever created a score specifically for a Horror Nights maze.
Based on the information available at the time of this writing, here is a map of Halloween Horror Nights with the new mazes in the correct locations.
You’ll notice a couple of things. First, there is only one repeated maze in the announced bunch; and the one repeat (The Walking Dead) is a new maze, just the same source material. This is great news for fans who go every year and (presumably) good news for the creators who want as many fresh canvases as they can get their hands on. Like I mentioned last week, having both Alien vs. Predator and The Walking Dead in the same area will lead to insane lines — plan accordingly.
Meanwhile, Halloween Horror Nights Orlando has done some announcing of its own as the two events (finally) start to dovetail apart from one another. Orlando unveiled three original (read: not based on IPs) mazes this past week: "Dollhouse of the Damned," "Giggles and Gore Inc." and "Roanoke Cannibal Colony." When in doubt, go back to your primary scares. Dolls, Clowns and Cannibals — you know, since they already have vampires and zombies covered.
Down I-4 in Tampa, Busch Gardens has unveiled its marketing campaign for Howl-O-Scream 2014. Borrowing from the cursed-video-tape from the Ring series, the event is centered around a song that curses those who hear it. You can watch one of the advertisements embedded below and see them all on the HOS website.
Tickets are on sale for BGT’s Howl-O-Scream — it kicks off on September 26. You can see a list of the full maze lineup here, which is filled with the requisite clowns, carnage and other creatures.
Staying with Busch Gardens, but moving north... we have the maze list for the Williamsburg Howl-O-Scream event. It begins its run September 12 — shockingly early, presumably to pack in as many dates as possible before the weather turns sour. The events share the “Cursed” theme but don’t have any overlap in terms of maze design. Tickets are on sale now and opening night is just a month away.
I’ve been asked about the future of Bill and Ted at the Hollywood event a few times on Twitter. I have no official information on whether or not the show will return... that being said, the Hot Rumor is that it will be back. I imagine most of you remember the controversy created by the show (and its subsequent cancellation) at last year’s event. If they decide to bring it back, it will be interesting to see what the tone of the show is like in comparison to prior years as the show will be a bit under the microscope.
That’s all for this week — I’ll be back with more news and opinions in just seven days. I know, I can hardly wait, too.
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You can view it at 3:31 into the video.