Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights Strategy

July 13, 2023InACents Leave a comment

Our family of five has our first ever trip to Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) scheduled for October 2023. With that comes the need to strategize how to maximize our time at getting most everything done while also trying to minimize the outpouring of cash.

This post is not meant to be an all-encompassing Hollywood Horror Nights post with every detail and strategy of the event. It is honestly more of a means for me to organize and talk through my own thought process to try and justify the cost and planning strategy. In no way is this going to be the perfect HHN strategy guide, and in probably most cases, will not impact your planning process. However, it really helps me with the planning.

Tickets and Frequent Fear passes are now on sale for the 2023 season, and OMG. I know anytime guests visit Disney or Universal, it is stupid expensive, but the prices are crazy. How do these parks remain packed to the walls at these prices? As you will see at the end of this article, the HHN are not even necessarily the high costs; it is the crazy approach they take to pricing day tickets when it is essentially the same number of hours in the park.

From what we have seen during our research, one thing HHN is not short on is crowds. Which means the parks are going to maximize the amount of money they can bring in, all while trying to manage crowds. So maybe, just maybe the high prices will defer some people from attending and make our visit more enjoyable. Wishful thinking.

Lets start with single day tickets.

The Universal Studios side of the park shuts down and reopens under a separate ticket for Horror Nights. This means guests are paying full price for a day, but only getting part of it. You would think tickets might be cheaper. For example, a 1-park, 1-day ticket to either Universal Orland or Islands of Adventure during the HHN season is the exact same price (i.e. no discount for the Universal Orlando side which closes early) (I get the whole argument that guests still have full day access to the Island of Adventure side if buying a 2-park ticket.)

However, on the day of our visit, a single day, two-park ticket runs $204. After tax, we will be shelling out $1086.30 for one day. And we still have to add on evening tickets for Horror Nights. That is absolutely insane when you are only giving me a part day at one of the parks.

So the question is then how to we maximize our strategy? Day tickets are what they are unfortunately as we are visiting with a friend who has never been and want to spend the day with her seeing Harry Potter.

Due to logistics of our family’s schedule and flights, we have the potential for 3 days/nights at Universal on this trip, encompassing a partial day Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We had hopes that the Frequent Fear pass would save us some money versus purchasing single night HHN tickets. However, here is the breakdown.

3 nights of Horror Nights tickets (Wed-Fri)- $1437.59
Frequent Fear Passes (include Friday nights)- $1437.70

Therefore, the only way to make the Fear Pass that include Friday nights viable is to visit more than 3 nights, which is not feasible for our trip. So now we need to realistically look at how we will approach visiting the parks.

Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights Strategy

Wednesday

When we get into Orlando on Wednesday, we can not check into our house until 4, which means we have two options. Either go straight to the parks and then when we stumble out of Horror Nights potentially at 2am, then we are trying to check into our rental home that we are sharing with lots of other families. That could not bode well for both us trying to figure out the configuration of the house in the middle of the night and the potential of waking other guests. Not the best strategy to start out a shared vacation with other families.

The other option is to check into our home and then make our way over to Horror Nights. This means a more casual evening enjoying the sites and sounds of the event without too much focus on knocking out too many of the haunted mazes. This seems to be the ideal situation for our family. And maybe we get lucky knocking out several of the haunted houses.

Our Horror Nights tickets for Wednesday evening will run $452.57. I find it humorous that HHN tickets get me access to the park from 6:30pm-2:00am (7.5 hours) and are far cheaper than a day ticket that only gets me into the park from 9:00am-5:00pm (8 hours).

I also want to make sure our very first night doing Horror Nights, we do not go balls to the wall trying to fit it all in, and then be bored with it come Friday.

Thursday

Assuming we stay till 2am from our Wednesday visit, the idea would be to rest during the day, taking in the enjoyment of the shared house and pool.

Our initial thoughts of the Frequent Fear passes was to head back at night for another evening of fun. However, we also need to think about Friday, where we plan to spend the full day at Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios and Horror Nights in the evening, meaning a very long day. So going Thursday evening and staying till late is not the best strategy.

Maybe we take a swing over to Disney Springs during the evening or something casual. I think our best strategy for Thursday is lay low and prep for Friday.

Also saving the money of another $85 HHN ticket per person.

Friday

Again the plan is to spend all day and night enjoying Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios and Horror Nights.

The nice thing about our visit on this day is we will already be in the park and can easily take advantage of the Stay & Scream strategy, where we will be able to queue for select houses inside the park and ahead of other guests.

The cost for day ($1086.30) and evening ($532.45) tickets will run $1618.75. That’s insane! The day tickets are what really is just absolutely shocking.

Express Passes Strategy

One of the options we had to determine if it was worth was adding on Express Passes to one of our visits, giving us quicker access to all the haunted houses plus select rides and attractions. This is a very enticing option given limited time to take advantage of HHN.

However, that would add on another $1064.95 to our trip, and I just can not justify the additional cost.

I had considered it if the Express Pass gave us access all day to both parks and the rides + HHN. However, I called and confirmed the HHN Express Pass was only for the special ticketed event.

Scream Early Strategy

Universal also offers an add-on of allowing guests into the park early ahead of Horror Nights. This runs $40 per person. The idea is guests can queue early ahead of guests who come in from the main gate. Since we would not be able to use it on Wednesday due to checking into our house, and Friday we will already be in the park, this option was not necessary.

Is it not just crazy the idea of having to pay to queue early?

Summary

Before we finalized our itinerary, I wanted to look at one more option.

The current plan calls for:
– HHN on Wednesday
– 2-park day + HHN on Friday

The total cost for those two days would be $2071.32 for our family of five.

However, what if we skipped Wednesday, doing only Friday and adding Express Passes.

The cost for day ($1086.30) and evening ($532.45) tickets will run $1618.75. Adding on Express Passes for our Friday nights adds another $1064.95. Bringing the total to $2683.70…for one day! Yeah I can not justify the extra $600. I would much rather spread it out over the two nights.

In summary, we determined doing one evening Horror Nights tickets + one full day + evening tickets was the best strategy for our family. Everyone has their own preferences to what they feel comfortable spending versus the luxury it provides. When you scale in our family costs multiplying it by five, you can quickly see how the costs skyrocket and maybe are not as easy to swallow as those that might be single or a couple.

We are really excited to finally go to Hollywood Horror Nights and scratch off that bucket list item. Since we are not local, I can not see us outpouring this kind of cash again in the future when we get such great Halloween passes with HalloWeekends and Haunt at Cedar Fair parks thanks to our Cedar Fair season passes. Follow along on our sister site, the CPFoodBlog, for all things Cedar Fair related.

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First Visit to Waldameer Amusement Park

September 8, 2021InACents Leave a comment

No matter what business you work in, one of the healthiest things one can do for their career is check out the competition. Often when working in the same position for an extended period of time, we can get fixed in our ways and fail to see the bigger picture of how things can be done differently, and perhaps even more efficiently.

As the long time curators of the CPFoodBlog.com, our family and team cross North America each year visiting Cedar Fair amusement parks since 2014. Our website has become the go-to resource for all things associated with food and beverage throughout the Cedar Fair chain. In addition, our heads are often crammed with all kinds of useless information in how the Cedar Fair parks are operated. Of course like all things, there are things the company does extremely well, and of course things that can be improved.

Often time working in an environment, we can see the problem, but perhaps the solution is out of reach either because of means and methods, or because we do not know any better.

That is where we love to visit other amusement parks and see how they operate. Are they clean? How are the operations? What are the things we really enjoyed as a paying guest, and where do we see the Cedar Fair parks already excel compared to their competition?

As a resident of Ohio, we have limited, albeit very good, amusement park options. It might sound weird, but the promised land actually resides over in Pennsylvania, with parks ranging in size from Hershey Park all the way down to little mom and pops amusement parks. Perhaps the reason Pennsylvania is of such interest to our family is because we have not been to many of them.

To date, we have visited:

Dorney Park
Hershey Park
Knoebels
Kennywood

So when we were trying to find a new local park to visit, we opted to check out Waldameer located in Erie, PA over the Labor Day holiday weekend.

Going into the trip, we knew very little about the park other than it was free to enter, and for guests wanting to partake in the attraction, they bought tickets to ride each or purchased an all-day wristband. Since it was our first time at the park, we opted to purchase the wristbands so we could ride as many of the attractions as possible and not have to worry about balancing how many tickets we had left for each ride.

Despite visiting over the busy Labor Day Saturday, the park is dealing with a shortage of staff like everywhere. As a result, the park did not officially open until noon. The nice thing about being a “free” amusement park is guests could purchase their tickets/wristbands and then roam the park ahead of the actual opening.

Our family started out the day on the famous Ravine Flyer II and were on the second train of the day. It was quite interesting to see that they only cycle the trains one time ahead of opening. If this had been a Cedar Fair park, they would have been cycling for an hour or more ahead of guests for the day, and that is only if there is enough staff to operate the attractions that early.

Ravine Flyer II was quite the unique roller coaster built in 2008 with some great elements like the bridge over the road and banked turn near the end. We all absolutely loved the smooth ride.

Next we immediately hustled over to check out the Whacky Shack dark ride. LOVED IT! Everything about the attraction was old school and cheesy, and the exact type of fun we had not seen in an amusement park in some time.

After we checked out the Pirate Cove, which is a walk through fun house attraction. Sadly I was disappointed in this attraction and expected to see more. We were probably half way through and I found myself asking where are the pirates? Luckily some started to appear near the end of the attraction. All for the classic attractions, just wish this one offered some more decorations and elements.

Next we went and checked out the Steel Dragon, which offers a unique take on a classic wild mouse style roller coaster. Normally I might be a little hesitant for anything spinning, but the Steel Dragon was incredibly smooth and not jarring like a normal wild mouse can be, thus making it a quite enjoyable attraction.

Sadly, the Waldameer log flume, Thunder River, was not in operation during our visit.

After a quick snack lunch, and the kids enjoying a couple of the flat rides, we made our way over to the Ferris Wheel followed by the Sky Ride.

We then closed out our visit by riding the Comet roller coaster (great little family wooden coaster), the train, their Music Express and Chaos rides. The Waldameer Music Express was quite unique as it included a “tunnel” effect, and the ride operator runs the attraction both forward and in reverse at very high speeds.

Following our visit to Waldameer, we then headed next door to eat at Sara’s. Local hot dogs, homemade fries, zucchini fries, onion rings and milkshakes made for a wonderful meal before driving back to Ohio.

Overall, our family was quite impressed with our visit to Waldameer amusement park. Despite being a Saturday over Labor Day weekend, and with staffing of rides down, our longest wait of the day was for the Sky Ride at about 30 mins. While we understand why Cedar Fair does the things they do with seat belts, etc. to meet the requirements of certain safety certifications and thus insurance requirements, it is always so refreshing for our kids to ride some of the younger kid attractions and not have locking seat belts. The extra safety measures Cedar Fair makes ride associates go through can cause ride cycles to be very long and thus long lines. Waldameer was very good at getting people in, cycling, then off the attraction.

The thing we noticed the most about Waldameer in general is the park was extremely clean and well maintained. Beautiful landscaping throughout the property.

The only negative we encountered throughout our entire day was the food staff was not the most friendly, and the food was anything but good. Although we only had some hot dogs, chicken tenders a burger and fries to hold us over till dinner, the meal was uninspiring.

The other interesting concept was how the attractions were accounted for with the tickets/wristbands. Each guest scanned their tickets (card) or wristband at the ride gate to confirm entry. We bring that up because Disney Parks are now testing the idea of not only charging admission to the park, but also up charging guests for each individual ride if they wish to “cut the line.” Either the plan is going to fail miserably, or if it catches on and comes to U.S. based parks, the Waldameer model presents an interesting opportunity. Cedar Fair parks do have scanners at select parks (i.e. Cedar Point) where Fast Lane is being used to verify validity of the wristbands. So it will be interesting to see how the business models develop over the coming years.

Review: Hilton Toronto/Markham Suites Conference Centre Presidential Suite

August 23, 2019InACents Leave a comment

We follow several deal sites to alert us instantly when flight and hotel deals are found online. Back in September 2018, after just returning from our annual trip up to Canada, we received a notice that the Hilton Toronto/Markham Suites Conference Centre had mispriced their Presidential Suite. With rates typically around $700 CAD per night, they were coming up around $135 USD after taxes per night. That was an incredible deal that we just could not pass up.

So a year in advance, we booked the Hilton Presidential Suite for a trip in August 2019.

We love visiting the Toronto area because we use our Cedar Fair Platinum season passes to visit Canada’s Wonderland. The particular weekend we selected also happen to correspond with the Taste of Greece event at Canada’s Wonderland. Plus it would be the first time our kids would get to see the new Yukon Striker roller coaster after my wife and I attended the media event back in April.

When we got to the Hilton property, we were all super impressed with the grand lobby and all of us knew this was not going to be our typical hotel stay. We easily checked in and headed up to our Presidential Suite on the ninth floor of the hotel.

Upon entry to the room, there was a modern hallway with rooms off in each direction.

Immediately to the left was a smaller bathroom complete with walk-in shower and no real door.

To the right was a small kitchen and dining room overlooking the lobby of the hotel.

Straight ahead was the living room with large seating area. All the televisions and lights were on when we entered the room, which was really nice. Plus the TVs had a personalized welcome message for me, which was a nice added touch.

Finally to the far left was the bedroom complete with a king bed and en-suite featuring a soaker tub, shower, toilet and bidet, which of course our kids were fascinated with the idea.

The room was nice, though it said in the listing that it slept 4 guests, but with no second bed. So our two oldest kids slept on the couch, which they were fine with the accommodations.

The hotel in general is part of a much larger complex complete with convention center, shopping and spa. Sadly the pool was just alright and nothing too impressive that one might expect at a premium Hilton property.

The one thing that really bugged us is the property chooses to charge guests for parking. We understand this additional add-on in places like congested cities; however, this hotel is far from Toronto, an airport, etc. It makes no sense why they do not provide complimentary parking for their guests. What was even more baffling is they front desk staff said the police will come around and ticket. Wait, on private property? It was just another money grab and BS charge.

While it was nice to get to stay in a Presidential Suite, the location of the hotel is not quite convenient for visiting Canada’s Wonderland, as it is at least 30 minutes away, assuming traffic is not that bad.

When we came up in April, we made the mistake of taking the 407 and then receive a price gouging bill a month later in the mail. So we were determined to everything in our power to avoid toll roads driving to Canada’s Wonderland on this visit. Unfortunately, that also means dealing with the huge traffic congestion problem plaguing the Toronto area.

This was the first trip to Canada where we really had long waits dealing with traffic. Not only was it bad trying to get to the park and then the hotel, but coming home and trying to cross the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls had long waits. So we redirected towards the Peace Bridge down near Buffalo. Unfortunately, we still ended up sitting in about a 90 wait to get across the border. Not sure what the deal was this trip, but it left us not wanting to return up north for the foreseeable future.

Overall, we still had a fun weekend and really enjoyed getting to stay in the Presidential Suite, though kids, no, we will not be staying there again unless there is another great deal.

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Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights Strategy

Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights Strategy

Summary

First Visit to Waldameer Amusement Park

Review: Hilton Toronto/Markham Suites Conference Centre Presidential Suite