Sneak peek: This Halloween Horror Nights house will feel like 8 in one

Lora Sauls is the queen of screams at Universal Orlando Resort. A mastermind behind Halloween Horror Nights and other marquee events like Mardi Gras, she gets excited about guts and gore, but even she has a weakness. 
“I am deathly afraid of frogs,” the Florida resort’s director of Creative Development and Show Direction for Art and Design, Entertainment said. “One jumped in my house that was this big, and I literally was shaking from the inside.” 
I get it. I’m a big scaredy cat. I even put together a whole tip sheet on how to enjoy Halloween Horror Nights if you’re scared. One thing that helps is knowing what to expect, and we’re getting our biggest preview yet.  
This year, USA TODAY was given an exclusive peek at the creation process for Halloween Horror Nights and early access to one of its terrifying original haunted houses, Slaughter Sinema 2. Here’s how it all came together. 
Universal Orlando starts planning Halloween Horror Nights more than a year in advance.  
“Typically, we’ve said we start the week after the event starts. Now we start in the summer before the event starts,” Sauls said.  
They’re already well into planning for next year’s HHN. 
Brainstorming for original house ideas lasts about a week at the Florida resort.  
“Sometimes we’ve done it in three days. It’s just a matter of if we’re on a roll,” Sauls said. “It is the character designers, the scenic designers, the graphic designers, the decor specialists, the show directors all in a room together, kind of pulling their minds together on creating original ideas.” 
They come up with more ideas than they’ll need, then senior leadership decides which ones make the cut and go into development. 
Unused ideas are saved for future consideration and may get tested out on a smaller scale, like in Slaughter Sinema 2 and its fan-favorite predecessor Slaughter Sinema, which feature multiple storylines. 
“They’re really good ideas, we just don’t think they’re a full haunted house,” Sauls said.  
Depending on guest reaction, some of the ideas you see Slaughter Sinema 2 may return as full haunted houses or scare zones in years to come. There have been two Yeti-themed houses – Yeti: Terror of the Yukon in 2019 and Yeti: Campground Kills last year – since the Yeti debuted in 2018’s Slaughter Sinema. 
🛑 Spoilers ahead. 🛑
Slaughter Sinema 2 is a return to the drive-in theater first introduced in Slaughter Sinema. This time, there’s a whole new slate of B horror movie scenes for guests to explore. 
Trailers for some of the films that come to life inside the house will be projected onto a movie screen outside. “And some that didn’t make it quite make it in the house,” Sauls added. “Again, that incubator. We want to see what fans like. If they didn’t make it in the house, maybe it will make it in the house in the future, so it’s very fun.” 
There are eight new themes inside Slaughter Sinema 2. Each is introduced with a movie poster beforehand, and some span multiple rooms.
∎ Mardi Gras Murders: “We’re in New Orleans, and these jesters are murdering people. And these jesters are amazing because they have the jester mask, but when they take off their mask, their flesh is just shaped like a jester hat and mask,” Sauls said enthusiastically. “As we go through this scene, the jesters get more fleshy. They are really disgusting.”  
This scene is set in an apartment where someone has partied a little too hard, as evidenced by the Jell-O shots, hurricane glass, keg and empty liquor bottles around the room and vomit on the couch. A Mardi Gras parade appears to be going on outside the balcony. 
∎ Heavy Metal Hell: “The story is that a teenager played a record backward, and it opened this hell gate of Heavy Metal Hell rockers that are killing people with their chainsaw guitars,” Sauls said.  
The opening scene is set in the teen’s bedroom, where he’s been split in two. “He should have listened to his mother,” Sauls said, noting that Charles Gray, senior show director of Creative Development for Universal Orlando Entertainment Art and Design, loves adding little life lessons to houses.  
From the bedroom, guests walk into Heavy Metal Hell, where they face danger in every direction. 
∎ Killer Kringles: This one will change the way you look at Christmas.  
“Santa has his naughty list, and he’s bringing all the naughty list boys and girls and human beings to Mrs. Claus, because she feeds the naughty list (kids) to the elves,” Sauls said.  
It’s set in Santa’s workshop, where his sleigh is loaded with a bag full of children. “Our effects team has little actuators in that bag, and we hear kids in the bag,” she added. “They’re in there going ‘Let me out! Let me out!’ and you see this bag like arms are moving back and forth.” 
∎ Night of the Undead Clowns: “This was a clown graveyard that now all because of Bzzzcon and them dumping their contaminated liquid in this graveyard, they’ve now become zombie clowns,” Sauls said.  
Some fans may remember Bzzzcon created the giant bugs in the Bugs: Eaten Alive house from 2022’s HHN. Guests will see a big Bzzzcon container, clown remains and clown costumes embedded in the dirt walls of this scene set underground. 
“This was one, I remember in our brainstorm, we really loved the idea of zombie clowns,” Sauls added. They thought fans would too, but didn’t have enough for a full house. “So, we’re like, put it in Slaughter Sinema. We’re going to test it out.” 
∎ Hatchet and Chains: Demon Bounty Hunters: “We’re going into a western movie, and these are demon bounty hunters,” Sauls explained. “One of them is actually a demon that is hunting other demons.” 
Their story plays out in a saloon setting, where guests may become Hatchet and Chains’ targets. “One hundred percent. They don’t know if we’re demons,” she added.  
∎ Blood and Chum: “This is a summer camp where this very oversized shark has made its way to a lake,” Sauls said. “It is eating every kid that jumps into the lake.” 
“Jaws” fans will flip for this underwater scene and its massive, moving shark head. “I think he’s a little bigger than Bruce,” Sauls said.  
∎ Mummy Strippers Unwrapped: “The story is these club owners stole some merchandise from an Egyptian Museum. They stole one of the sarcophaguses and they put it in as their decor for their strip club. Well, the sarcophagus awoke and reanimated,” Sauls said. 
Now anyone entering the strip club risks having their essence sucked out by the mummy strippers, who use it to transform into beautiful beings.  
∎ Zyborgs: “You’re in kind of this future world where machines want to take over human life,” Sauls said.  
Body parts are used to make other machines.  
“The zyborgs want our bodies. They are coming for us,” she said, adding that lasers overhead will make guests feel like they’re in the trenches of battle.  
If it feels like that’s a lot to pack in one house, it is.  
In February, USA TODAY was invited to experience a virtual reality model of the house and see its construction site. At the time, the wood framing of the house interior was just being built, but even then, I remember thinking, this is long. That was only confirmed when I toured the completed house again in July.  
For Halloween Horror Nights fans, this is going to feel like eight different houses with a bonus end scene throwing back to the first Slaughter Sinema.
Each one may be shorter, but they’re all extremely detailed. 
“Most of our houses run between nine and 13 scenes, but as you can tell, they’re all very winding, and our designers do a great job of making everything feel very long,” Sauls said, crediting the many myriad team members who work on Halloween Horror Nights. 
I told her I wasn’t sure I could make it through the whole house with scare actors inside.
The drive-in itself is an Easter egg. It’s set in the fictional town of Carey, which shares the same name as Sauls’ hometown.  
Others who work on HHN are hidden in the credits of Slaughter Sinema 2’s movie posters. Pointing to a poster near the entry, Sauls said. “These are all mixtures of our production team, art, design team, show direction team, and some of their names are mismatched.” 
Audio from Universal Orlando’s Mardi Gras parade will play in the background of Mardi Gras Murders.  
There’s that Bzzzcon Easter egg in the Night of the Undead Clowns. 
Toward the end of the house, there are Easter eggs for Pumpkin Guts, Beast Baby, and Amazon Cannibals from Planet Hell from the original Slaughter Sinema. 
The decor team also hides their own Easter eggs in every house. One year it was crows. Last year, it was frogs. After HHN was over, Sauls asked if she could keep a few of the frogs in her office to help conquer her fear. She said at first, she had them facing her, but eventually had to turn them away from her.  
“And they’re fake! And they’re tiny and they’re different colors,” she said with a laugh. 
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The highly anticipated annual event kicks off Aug. 30 at Universal Orlando Resort and Sept. 5 in Hollywood.  
However, starting Sunday, eager fans can get a sneak peek at select haunted houses, including Slaughter Sinema 2, when daytime Unmasking the Horror V.I.P. tours begin at Universal Orlando.