Halloween Horror Nights Honcho Hails New Haunted Houses

Houses don’t just haunt themselves. When it comes to the meticulously designed spook shacks of Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights, it takes a crack squad of immensely talented multidisciplinary artists, creators and storytellers to turn grisly fantasy into a (seeming) reality. And helping to oversee it all is Lora Sauls, Universal’s Assistant Director of Creative Development and Show Direction. Sauls knows where the bodies were buried, and more importantly knows exactly where they’re going to jump out and yell at you (most likely right around the next corner). We recently talked to her about this year’s reliably excellent installment of the annual Halloween horror fest, and why this year’s lineup is less dependent on established intellectual property than most years. If you dig haunted houses, theme parks, or just horror in general, you should check out what she has to say about America’s preeminent Halloween event.

The following has been edited lightly for clarity and concision.

Paste: What houses are you most excited for people to see this year?

Lora Sauls: I’m excited for all of them. But I think Insidious is gonna just be terrifying. I think our design team and our show direction team really tried to make that a unique design, having our characters have multiple opportunities to scare the guests, so it looks like there’s more characters in the house, and those demons are just really frightening. But I’m also excited about Goblin Feast, Major Sweets Candy Factory, Slaughter Cinema 2, The Museum. I really am excited about all of them. A Quiet Place has some really amazing special effects in it. Ghostbusters is just–I’m partial to those mini-pufts, and I love that our special effects team made a lot of those mini-pufts move. So that’s really cool. I mean, there is—I can’t pick one. They are like children.

Paste: This looks like a big year for Halloween Horror Nights’ original houses. You have six, out of 10. Normally it’s more like 50/50. How did it play out that you wound up with more original houses this year?

Lora Sauls: I think it was just a choice by all of us that this year seemed right, that these four IPs really were strong IPs, and then that the six originals could kind of balance that out. I think it was just a choice on all of our paths to do that here, because in Orlando, people really do love that original content. They love the IPs, but they really love our original content.

Paste: I’ve been coming for almost the last decade or so, and I feel like the original houses generally are more creative, maybe a little more fun. Like, do y’all relish that chance to create something new as opposed to working with an IP or is it sort of equal in terms of what you’re excited for?

Lora Sauls: It’s a balance between the two, only because when we’re working with an intellectual property, we usually get to deep dive into all of their content and really draw from that what’s really good for a haunted house experience, and we love doing that. But we also, we do take very special pride in the fact that it’s not just two people in a room creating all these original ideas. It’s the entire art design team that really comes together. And nothing’s a wrong idea. Every idea is thrown on the board, and we collaborate with bringing these ideas. And I think because it’s such a collaboration of multitudes of people coming up with these original stories, that’s what makes them so rich and have so much depth.

Paste: It feels like you’re sort of trying to build the original Halloween Horror Nights houses up as their own IP. I mean, they’re starting to interconnect, we’ve seen many reappear and grow. What’s the impetus behind that decision?

Lora Sauls: We really love to. When we test something in a Scare Zone, or we do something like that, we listen to the fans, we look at what the fans are really gravitating towards. The year we had Sweet Revenge, fans absolutely loved Major Sweets. I saw tons of fan art with him, tons of just social stuff with him. So we were like, okay, we don’t want to do anything in the next year like that. Seems a little too close. But we waited a couple years and we’re like, yeah, now’s the time to make the factory. Because we always, honestly, when we were conceptualizing Sweet Revenge, we conceptualized the factory, and so we were like, now is a good time to make the factory, and then putting the factory as it’s the day before the parade was kind of cool. But we love revisiting our own original content. IP, if you will, because we listen to the fans and what the fans love. I mean, the first Slaughter Cinema, it’s a testing ground for original content ideas. We had a swamp yeti scene in [the original] Slaughter Cinema, and now we’ve had two haunted houses with yetis. So we’re kind of interested to see what will be fan favorite in Slaughter Cinema 2 this year that we may be inspired to do full haunted houses in the future.

Paste: When you said [during the Halloween Horror Nights media event] that the original Slaughter Cinema was 2018 it kind of blew my mind. I felt like it was maybe two years ago. Six years? Yeah. So one thing I love, like Slaughter Cinema, there’s usually one or two houses that are more comedy-focused, more comedic. What would you say is the closest to a comedy house this year?

Lora Sauls: Goblins’ Feast.

Paste: Based on the description, I thought it’d be that one.

Lora Sauls: When you go, if you’re not getting completely scared out of your mind of all those fantastic creatures coming at you, listen to what they’re saying, because their triggers are hilarious. The last scare in that house and what he says is just absolutely funny and perfect, but it is still horrific, but it’s just kind of this fantasy horror that they say something amazingly funny. Goblins Feast is our comedy horror house this year. 

Paste: A lot of Halloween Horror Nights regulars are still raving about Dead Man’s Pier: Winter’s Wake two years later, and how beautiful that was. Can we expect a more artistic, sort of poetic, almost lyrical house like that this year as well? 

Lora Sauls: It’s either Universal Monsters: Eternal Bloodlines, because that is an absolutely gorgeous house. Some of my favorite scenes of all time are in that house. Or it’s Goblins Feast. Both have very epic, scenic moments.

Paste: Do you ever see a future Halloween Horror Nights where it’s all original concepts?

Lora Sauls: It was that way a long, long time ago. And I don’t know if we’d really want to do that anymore. We do like celebrating, you know, these amazing horror films and TV shows and books that we get to celebrate. But you never know, right? You never know what’s gonna happen. This event evolves all the time, so you never know it might happen.

Paste: Finally, Six Flags has kind of stepped up its game this year with Fright Fest. They’ve gotten some really big properties, including ones that have been associated with Halloween Horror Nights [Stranger Things and Saw, specifically]. What’s Universal’s take on those moves?

Lora Sauls: We’re just happy to celebrate what we have here at Halloween Horror Nights, and we welcome everybody. We know that here in Orlando, we have been and we are the world’s best Halloween event, the world’s premier Halloween event. So we know we’ve inspired a lot of other people to kind of see what they can do with Halloween. So we’re just excited to celebrate what we have, and we’re excited that we are still known as the world’s premier Halloween event.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, comedy, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and more. He’s also on Twitter @grmartin.