Get your first look at the HHN9 scare zones and houses in this Halloween Horror Nights 9: BEFORE DARK update.
About Halloween Horror Nights 9: BEFORE DARK
BEFORE DARK is DEJIKI.COM’s original series documenting the transformation of Universal Studios Singapore for its Halloween Horror Nights event. Any relevant updates about the event will be included in this series too.
With less than a month away to opening night on 27 Sept 2019, the park has been doing a lot of setup work, with themed props arriving in the past week.
There are quite a number of changes this year, starting with the park’s Hollywood zone.
Halloween Carnival
For the first time ever, the area around the Hollywood lagoon fountain will be used for the Halloween Carnival.
The carnival is part of the park’s new Daytime Halloween Fun experience that is starting ahead of HHN9. This includes family-friendly activities, Meet-and-Greet sessions with some park characters in Halloween mode, and the return of the Trick or Treat with Sesame Street show. This seasonal event takes place from 6 Sept to 31 Oct 2019.
At this moment, a few of these posters hanging off a metal tower might hint at some of the carnival’s attractions, namely food stands, divination, and a puppet show.
After the sun sets, the fair will transform into a Haunted Carnival – who knows, this might also become a mini scare zone.
Death Fest
Brace yourself for the “most hardcore music festival” of the year, taking place at the park’s New York zone. Two fiery towers mark the start of the Death Fest scare zone.
The towers feature LED strips that will glow red, and an elaborate lighting matrix overhead will push you through the fire and flames.
Apart from the towers, there are only two other large props within the zone. With a park-wide procession (parade) known as Death Fest LIVE, it is likely that this zone will not feature too many immovable props.
One of the sets comprises stacks of stage cases. According to the concept art, this should have a giant skull prop.
A huge wheel set with chains, and body parts hidden under the wraps.
The stage for this morbid metal concert looks like the tallest and widest the park has ever built, and even more complicated than the one used for The 7Sinisters.
Given how the Hollywood area has taken shape so far, the HHN9 Opening Scaremony is likely to shift to New York. This could allow the park to manage the crowds better before and when the event begins, with more space for guests to stand and multiple rope drops happening at various points in the park. Those who arrive later may also have an advantage to hang around in Hollywood and then scoot to the other end of the park, bypassing Death Fest completely.
Great to see the display tech from last year’s Infinite Fear show being used again.
There’s already a bewildering amount of equipment at the Death Fest zone so far, and probably more special effects will be installed. Look at this row of fog machines already on the first level.
Dead End
On the other end of the spectrum is the somber Dead End scare zone, which is currently filled with a lot of dead things. This zone, being the realm of The Undertaker, is said to feature funeral rites and gruesome sights.
Creepy and familiar things wrapped up.
Mummified, or Pocong-lookalike things.
And then all these wooden “baskets”.
If we have learned anything from scare zones built here – you don’t really need a lot of things to build the atmosphere. It’s really “less is more” for Jurassic Park scare zones.
Haunted Houses
The clowns have arrived to set up their Twisted Clown University at Waterworld queue.
It’s great to see more effort being put into decorating these usually bare walls.
The nearby haunted house, The Chalet Hauntings, has a queue entrance that matches the ‘actual’ chalet. Almost all the lights here have blue gels.
Have a peek. Not sure if there’s a real reason, but this year two of the regional/Asian horror houses are returning to the same sites as before. The Jurassic Park site has been home to the Pontianak last year.
Spirit Dolls is taking over the space used for The Haunting of Oiwa in 2018. At the moment only a small portion of the house (roofs) is visible from within the park. Please do not trespass into park backstage areas.
Hell Block 9 is being built beside Soundstage 28 and much work has been done to create the prison buildings and barricades to resemble the concept artwork.
That means that the last house, Curse of the Naga, is in the Soundstage 28 building. And with that, I’ve created this park map of all the Halloween Horror Nights 9 highlights:
HHN9 Vlogs
To kick off the launch of this year’s BEFORE DARK series, I’ve also recorded a short vlog. I may be posting a full walkthrough in a few weeks, when more things are up.
More updates in the next BEFORE DARK article
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Prepare for Halloween Horror Nights 9
Get all the info you need on Halloween Horror Nights 9 at my Halloween Horror Nights 9 Event Guide.
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shaping up to what looks to be an interesting event this year!
Omg it look much better
Guess my survey on want more clown come true
Interesting to see that the scaremony will be at NewYork. Will like to see how the park will divert the crowd towards NewYork after scanning the tickets. We have to run so far now to get to the front haha. It seems that the 2 massive props at Deathfest (the tyres) will be hard to move, does this mean some parts of the crowd wont be able to see the show well? They have to control the people heading straight to Naga and Hell Block 9, if not it will be mayhem! In my opinion, the original location at Hollywood seems to be the best. However, we will never know until we experience it! (we have to see how the park is gonna handle this.) Thanks for the write-up!