Theme Park Review

The Universal Orlando Resort has quietly confirmed that the end is near for Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit to make way for a new experience. The coaster will close on August 18th, 2025, so guests have only a few months left to take in the thrills of this unique attraction. https://www.universalorlando.com/web/en/us/things-to-do/rides-attractions/hollywood-rip-ride-rockit  Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit will permanently close on August 18, 2025 to make way for a new experience. More details will be available at a later date.

As the Halloween Horror Nights season approaches, Universal Destinations and Experiences has started to release news on some of the offerings which will be found at this year's event... https://www.ign.com/articles/universal-studios-halloween-horror-nights-2025-to-feature-the-first-ever-fallout-haunted-house  IGN can exclusively reveal that Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights in both Orlando and Hollywood will be getting a new haunted house based on Prime Video’s Fallout series and that HHN’s Five Night’s at Freddy’s experience will be based on the movie, the latter of which will be brought to life with the help of the legendary Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, who also did the animatronics for the film. While we don’t know much more about the Five Nights at Freddy’s experience, Fallout’s haunted house will open on August 29 at Universal Orlando Resort and on September 4 at Universal Studios Hollywood, and it will allow fans to relive the greatest moments from Fallout’s first season and more. Guests will first enter Vault 33 and follow Lucy LacLean as she tries to escape a bloody massacre while also learning of an “evil hidden secret.” The journey will then take guests outside the vault and into the Wasteland, where they will need to dodge attacks from both Scavengers, Raiders, and even mutated cockroaches known as RAD Roaches. Throughout the trek through the Wasteland, guests will visit the Super Duper Mart, encounter the Ghoul, and even meet Maximus and his massive T-60 armor. To learn more about this exciting and terrifying trip to the nuclear wasteland, we had the chance to speak to John Murdy, Creative Director / Executive Producer at Universal Studios Hollywood, and Matthew Flood, Senior Show Director at Universal Orlando Resort, for IGN Live. Among other things, these big fans of Fallout shared how they and the team are doing all they can to make this the best Fallout experience ever. “As you go through these environments, we want fans to say, ‘I recognize this, I'm in a Fallout vault. How cool is that?!’ Flood said. “Where else are you going to get to say that you walked through a Fallout vault and then into the Wasteland and saw ghouls? “And you can see and understand what the world is just by what you pass, including the bodies when Lucy first exits the vault. That type of thing is really good for us in Halloween Horror Nights and… yes, it’s gruesome, which is what our fans want at Halloween Horror Nights. It’s also scary and provides great characters, good monsters, all the mutated creatures, and the ghouls. That’s ripe for the picking when it comes to Halloween Horror Nights.” Fallout also offers the team a chance to do something they’ve never done before. “Fallout is kind of retro futuristic, and a lot of the aesthetics of it are very 1950s,” Murdy said. “The fact that we get to deal with the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust is very exciting for us since we've never done anything like that at HHN before. It’s like tapping into a whole different realm of horror.” What’s also interesting is that Hollywood and Orlando will each have unique aspects to their Fallout experience, including for the T-60 armor. “It's massive,” Murdy said of the T-60 Armor. “We work really closely with the people who are producing Fallout, and they've shared an incredible number of assets with us. We've done a lot of really big stuff over the years with Horror Nights, but this has got to be, I think, one of the biggest things we've ever had to do. We also thought it’d be cool if each park had a lot in common but also some differences. So, for Hollywood, the Power Armor is a full animatronic; we’re doing it as a fully animated figure.” “In Orlando, we do have kind of a final battle moment,” Flood added. “I’m not going to reveal too much, but yes, T-60s will be part of that battle. We also got a chance to fit in Filly, and I think having a moment to get a real-life Fallout battle happening there is pretty cool.” Murdy also teased that each Fallout house will have its own “creature takes,” and Hollywood’s will be the horrifying Yao Guai Bear. With ghouls and mutated bears and murderous scavengers abound, this haunted house is meant to be a chaotic thing, but Flood, Murdy, and the team have taken great care to have it be more than just non-stop terror. Murdy told us that his writing treatments for this Fallout experience averaged 100 pages, which feature both a narrative guide and a technical breakdown from start to finish. “It's that detailed because we need to spell it all out for our team so they know exactly what to create,” Murdy said. “And what Horror Nights is known for is our attention to detail. And what we're aiming for alongside the casual guest is the uber fan. We want to have so many different Easter Eggs that certain people won't particularly notice, but that the real hardcore fans of the video game and the series will.” Flood teased that there is a Pip-Boy they’ve been working on that will be a treat to find, and he teased that guests should look in all the windows of the storefronts or sides of buildings, as there will be “little things scattered around.” “If you're here for a second or third time through the house, and you get a chance to glance down when you're not totally terrified, you can see a lot of those Easter eggs existing throughout the house,” Flood said. Lastly, we asked what the pair what they were most excited about bringing to life for Hollywood Horror Nights. “For me, it was obviously the Wasteland,” Murdy said. “It is fun to go from the vaults where you're in a claustrophobic environment to then kind of open it up into the Wasteland. However, when I think of it purely from what Horror Nights delivers, it’s Super Duper Mart.” Speaking of exciting fictional businesses, we were able to get one more exciting quote for the Five Nights at Freddy’s experience at this year’s Hollywood Horror Nights, and it’s making the wait for more details even worse! “When you experience this, it is literally like living in the movie,” Murdy said.   https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/universal-halloween-horror-nights-five-nights-at-freddys-2025  Every year, horror fans from around the world flock to Hollywood and Orlando for Universal's Halloween Horror Nights, a fall festival of fear that always features some of your favorite monsters from across pop culture. Every year the attractions pack in tons of new horror fun, and every year fans have their own special wish list of which properties will get haunted houses this time around.  Well, Five Nights at Freddy's fans, this one's for you. Universal announced over the weekend, via the official Halloween Horror Nights account on X (formerly Twitter), that FNaF will get its own haunted house during this year's festivities, and the attraction will be coming to both Hollywood and Orlando versions of the Horror Nights experience. So whichever coast you visit, Freddy Fazbear and all his friends will be waiting. Sadly, we don't have any more details yet, but the post does promise that Five Nights at Freddy's will be presented in "a whole new way" at this year's Halloween Horror Nights, so fans of the franchise will definitely want to keep their eyes out for more news, especially since there's a new movie on the horizon.  Beginning with the original video game from Scott Cawthon, which released in the summer of 2014, Five Nights at Freddy's has spent the last decade expanding into a mega-popular horror brand that features everything from numerous video game sequels and spinoffs to a series of books to loads of merch. In 2023, the franchise reached a whole new fandom when the first Five Nights at Freddy's movie, starring Josh Hutcherson and Matthew Lillard, landed in theaters and on Peacock.  And the mayhem continues in 2025. Universal and Blumhouse Productions announced last year that Five Nights at Freddy's 2 would hit theaters December 5, just weeks after Halloween, and back in April we got a first look at the teaser trailer for the new film, which features returning cast members Hutcherson, Lillard, Elizabeth Lail, and Piper Rubio, along with new cast members like Skeet Ulrich, Wayne Knight, and Mckenna Grace.  Halloween Horror Nights returns to Universal Parks this fall. 

As the Halloween Horror Nights season approaches, Universal Destinations and Experiences has started to release news on some of the offerings which will be found at this year's event... https://www.ign.com/articles/universal-studios-halloween-horror-nights-2025-to-feature-the-first-ever-fallout-haunted-house IGN can exclusively reveal that Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights in both Orlando and Hollywood will be getting a new haunted house based on Prime Video’s Fallout series and that HHN’s Five Night’s at Freddy’s experience will be based on the movie, the latter of which will be brought to life with the help of the legendary Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, who also did the animatronics for the film. While we don’t know much more about the Five Nights at Freddy’s experience, Fallout’s haunted house will open on August 29 at Universal Orlando Resort and on September 4 at Universal Studios Hollywood, and it will allow fans to relive the greatest moments from Fallout’s first season and more.   Guests will first enter Vault 33 and follow Lucy LacLean as she tries to escape a bloody massacre while also learning of an “evil hidden secret.” The journey will then take guests outside the vault and into the Wasteland, where they will need to dodge attacks from both Scavengers, Raiders, and even mutated cockroaches known as RAD Roaches. Throughout the trek through the Wasteland, guests will visit the Super Duper Mart, encounter the Ghoul, and even meet Maximus and his massive T-60 armor. To learn more about this exciting and terrifying trip to the nuclear wasteland, we had the chance to speak to John Murdy, Creative Director / Executive Producer at Universal Studios Hollywood, and Matthew Flood, Senior Show Director at Universal Orlando Resort, for IGN Live. Among other things, these big fans of Fallout shared how they and the team are doing all they can to make this the best Fallout experience ever. “As you go through these environments, we want fans to say, ‘I recognize this, I'm in a Fallout vault. How cool is that?!’ Flood said. “Where else are you going to get to say that you walked through a Fallout vault and then into the Wasteland and saw ghouls? “And you can see and understand what the world is just by what you pass, including the bodies when Lucy first exits the vault. That type of thing is really good for us in Halloween Horror Nights and… yes, it’s gruesome, which is what our fans want at Halloween Horror Nights. It’s also scary and provides great characters, good monsters, all the mutated creatures, and the ghouls. That’s ripe for the picking when it comes to Halloween Horror Nights.” Fallout also offers the team a chance to do something they’ve never done before. “Fallout is kind of retro futuristic, and a lot of the aesthetics of it are very 1950s,” Murdy said. “The fact that we get to deal with the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust is very exciting for us since we've never done anything like that at HHN before. It’s like tapping into a whole different realm of horror.” What’s also interesting is that Hollywood and Orlando will each have unique aspects to their Fallout experience, including for the T-60 armor. “It's massive,” Murdy said of the T-60 Armor. “We work really closely with the people who are producing Fallout, and they've shared an incredible number of assets with us. We've done a lot of really big stuff over the years with Horror Nights, but this has got to be, I think, one of the biggest things we've ever had to do. We also thought it’d be cool if each park had a lot in common but also some differences. So, for Hollywood, the Power Armor is a full animatronic; we’re doing it as a fully animated figure.” “In Orlando, we do have kind of a final battle moment,” Flood added. “I’m not going to reveal too much, but yes, T-60s will be part of that battle. We also got a chance to fit in Filly, and I think having a moment to get a real-life Fallout battle happening there is pretty cool.” Murdy also teased that each Fallout house will have its own “creature takes,” and Hollywood’s will be the horrifying Yao Guai Bear. With ghouls and mutated bears and murderous scavengers abound, this haunted house is meant to be a chaotic thing, but Flood, Murdy, and the team have taken great care to have it be more than just non-stop terror. Murdy told us that his writing treatments for this Fallout experience averaged 100 pages, which feature both a narrative guide and a technical breakdown from start to finish. “It's that detailed because we need to spell it all out for our team so they know exactly what to create,” Murdy said. “And what Horror Nights is known for is our attention to detail. And what we're aiming for alongside the casual guest is the uber fan. We want to have so many different Easter Eggs that certain people won't particularly notice, but that the real hardcore fans of the video game and the series will.” Flood teased that there is a Pip-Boy they’ve been working on that will be a treat to find, and he teased that guests should look in all the windows of the storefronts or sides of buildings, as there will be “little things scattered around.” “If you're here for a second or third time through the house, and you get a chance to glance down when you're not totally terrified, you can see a lot of those Easter eggs existing throughout the house,” Flood said. Lastly, we asked what the pair what they were most excited about bringing to life for Hollywood Horror Nights. “For me, it was obviously the Wasteland,” Murdy said. “It is fun to go from the vaults where you're in a claustrophobic environment to then kind of open it up into the Wasteland. However, when I think of it purely from what Horror Nights delivers, it’s Super Duper Mart.” Speaking of exciting fictional businesses, we were able to get one more exciting quote for the Five Nights at Freddy’s experience at this year’s Hollywood Horror Nights, and it’s making the wait for more details even worse! “When you experience this, it is literally like living in the movie,” Murdy said.   https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/universal-halloween-horror-nights-five-nights-at-freddys-2025 Every year, horror fans from around the world flock to Hollywood and Orlando for Universal's Halloween Horror Nights, a fall festival of fear that always features some of your favorite monsters from across pop culture. Every year the attractions pack in tons of new horror fun, and every year fans have their own special wish list of which properties will get haunted houses this time around.  Well, Five Nights at Freddy's fans, this one's for you. Universal announced over the weekend, via the official Halloween Horror Nights account on X (formerly Twitter), that FNaF will get its own haunted house during this year's festivities, and the attraction will be coming to both Hollywood and Orlando versions of the Horror Nights experience. So whichever coast you visit, Freddy Fazbear and all his friends will be waiting. Sadly, we don't have any more details yet, but the post does promise that Five Nights at Freddy's will be presented in "a whole new way" at this year's Halloween Horror Nights, so fans of the franchise will definitely want to keep their eyes out for more news, especially since there's a new movie on the horizon.  Beginning with the original video game from Scott Cawthon, which released in the summer of 2014, Five Nights at Freddy's has spent the last decade expanding into a mega-popular horror brand that features everything from numerous video game sequels and spinoffs to a series of books to loads of merch. In 2023, the franchise reached a whole new fandom when the first Five Nights at Freddy's movie, starring Josh Hutcherson and Matthew Lillard, landed in theaters and on Peacock.  And the mayhem continues in 2025. Universal and Blumhouse Productions announced last year that Five Nights at Freddy's 2 would hit theaters December 5, just weeks after Halloween, and back in April we got a first look at the teaser trailer for the new film, which features returning cast members Hutcherson, Lillard, Elizabeth Lail, and Piper Rubio, along with new cast members like Skeet Ulrich, Wayne Knight, and Mckenna Grace.  Halloween Horror Nights returns to Universal Parks this fall. 

Wing rider seems pretty large for a park like that. 

I was a little skeptical of using Cars as an IP to anchor an new wilderness themed area of the park initially but after seeing this concept art..... yeah it looks great and I'm sure it will be a rally good addition.  

Interesting way to advertise! Photo credited to Lisa Marie.

This. Everyone complaining online has gotten really old. I get it. People are upset. And I’ll be the first to admit that the water is beautiful and so is the atmosphere around the river (especially the way Haunted Mansion sits). But let’s be realistic here - it’s so much dead space. I’ve been on Tom Sawyer’s Island once and the Liberty Belle probably less than 5 times over 20 years. I bet you the majority is in the same boat. If both were ultra popular and profitable, they’d be staying (emphasis on the profitable part).   Change is good. The first rendering was meh but this looks much better. Time for everyone to give it a rest and give the new area a chance. 

My guess would be a wing rider. My guess would be a wing rider.

^ lol. It's going to be interesting (and hopefully, fun), in figuring out, how the actual track layout will (might) go, with this new concept art.  

^ It all - looks - so - niiiice! 😍

The final piece for AlpenFury was put into place earlier today! 

According to CP's Twitter and also on their website, Siren's Curse is scheduled to open Saturday June 28th:  Siren's Curse - CP website

I found this on Reddit when I searched for KK 2026 teaser:   

Has anyone ridden Wrath yet? How is it?

Could you provide a link. I haven't seen it.