The Orfanage: Ashes to Ashes

Please link to a source discussing the layout/scenes/behind-the-scenes facts of this attraction. If you yourself can give info, please post it on somewhere like a forum/Facebook/Twitter wall so we could use it as a source. If anyone can provide never before seen HD photos, videos, especially those behind the scenes, we would greatly appreciate it.

Halloween Horror Nights Orlando attraction
The Orfanage: Ashes to Ashes
Attraction type	Haunted House
Event	Halloween Horror Nights: Twenty Years of Fear
Park	Universal Studios Florida
Area	Amity
Year	2010
Housed in	JAWS Queue
Based on	Original (Loosely inspired by Guillermo del Toro's the Orphanage)

The Orfanage: Ashes To Ashes was one of the eight haunted houses that were featured during Halloween Horror Nights: Twenty Years of Fear. It was located in the JAWS Queue.

History and Location

The original icon to be featured at the 2010 Halloween Horror Nights event was going to be Cindy. She would have an icon house called Orfanage: Ashes to Ashes. The story of the house is that Cindy burned down her orphanage. However, Cindy was scrapped as the icon and was replaced by Fear. The house still remained mostly unchanged. The codename for the house was "Krispy", most likely due to the charred state of the orphanage.

Universal advertised this house as the first one to feature an actual fire. Numerous fans who actually entered the house were disappointed, as the fire was short in height and located several feet behind a window.

A scene from this house also appeared in the Sacrifice section in the interactive game, The Warehouse eXXperience which appeared on the Halloween Horror Nights website. The house was located in the extended queue for the JAWS ride, making it the seventh haunted house in this location.

Cindy would later be featured as an homage to this house in the Welcome to SCarey: Horror in the Heartland haunted house during Halloween Horror Nights 30.

Description

The burned out shell of an orphanage contains the souls of the forgotten and the lost, who all scream one name: Cindy. No oxygen tanks allowed.

Ashes to ashes, forever now dust. For years she has existed in the shadows, never getting her due. Misunderstood by all around her, she has had enough of her playthings at the Good Harvest Orphanage - now is the time for vengeance. This burned out shell contains the souls of the forgotten and the lost who all scream one name: Cindy.

Setting

The setting was the Good Harvest Orphanage in October of 1920, which was in the middle of burning down thanks to Cindy's apparent pyrokenetic powers.

Experience

Queue and Facade

Guests would enter the queue next to the entrance to the JAWS ride. The queue would loop around a few times before reaching the facade, which was the front of the Good Harvest Orphanage, Guests passed some of its playground equipment (such as a see-saw that moved by itself and a swing set), a wishing well, and some garbage cans before stepping foot onto the orphanage itself. Guests would then enter the burning orphanage through its charred entrance (with fake fire effects around it), passing by a sign for it on the wall. Ash fell from the front of the house onto guests as they entered (actually soap suds).

Haunted House

Persisting throughout the entire house were the smells of smoke and burning wood, as well as Cindy speaking over the soundtrack of children reciting eerie rhymes and babies crying. This all came together to create a sad, uncomfortable atmosphere. All of the orphan scareactors wore costumes and masks warped by the heat of the fire, including a pirate, clown, giraffe, various baby animals, and two trick-or-treat costumes. They also behaved in an otherworldly manner, tending to team up to scare guests.

The first room was a typical play room with various toys and lockers inside. A bookshelf featured some alphabet blocks stacked in a pyramid shape, some of the blocks spelling either "TOM" or "TIM". After that guests would enter the time-out room, which featured rows of desks and a blackboard, which a mannequin of Cindy was writing on. Immediately after a black light effect, Cindy (now a scareactor) would scare guests. Following her appearance was a room with orphans trapped inside bunk beds which were made into cages, with welded wire over them (these orphans being hard to see until they were right in front of guests). The nursery was next, which featured a bunch of cribs, as well as more orphans amidst them (one wearing a fox mask). Here, a ghost girl could be seen floating outside an open window. Walking past them, the lecture hall contained a jungle gym, which featured a cargo net above guests which an orphan climbed across. After that was a small, Halloween-themed room which had a ghostly mirror effect involving a pair of orphan twins in trick-or-treat costumes.

Next came the room with the real fire effect. Guests entering the room soon felt an intense burst of heat coming from their right. On that side of the room, a wide section of the wall was broken, forming a window (with hexagonal wire welded to its other side). Guests looking outside saw a two-foot-high wall of real fire a few feet in front of them, spanning nearly the entire width of the view. Aside from the fire, the rest of the room was heavily burned. The room after that was the party room, where guests wound around its burned-through walls in an 'S'-shaped trail, which was then followed by the school room, which was outright destroyed with orphans climbing in the rafters. The final room was the furnace room, which featured a real electrical effect amidst the furnaces. Just after two orphans that would team up to scare guests, Cindy appeared for one final scare from behind some barrels, and would interact with guests (for example, playing patty-cake) before they left the house.

Scareactors

• Cindy Caine x2
• Orfans xVarious

Website Pictures

Pictures

Image from Universal Orlando Resort

Image taken from wdwmousetales.com.

The hole in the wall containing the real fire effect. From 0:45 in this video: https://youtu.be/ezZLdR8_0C8

Scene from the house featured in the 30 Years, 30 Fears, Montage during Halloween Horror Nights 30 Image from HorrorUnearthed

Image from HHNYearbook

Soundtrack

I Won't Sign It

Sanford Digs

Orfanage Audio Recording - Halloween Horror Nights XX

Trivia

• This is the house in the JAWS Queue, so as with other houses in the past, its "barn" feel was taken advantage of. As this house is a burning orphanage with the kids still in it, there is a lot of burning and crackling, and even a live fire effect in its second half. Even the wood that was used to build it was burned by Universal to give it a smoky smell and create the realistic feeling that you really were inside a burning building.
• The house was very dark, with guests entering in daytime finding the first rooms of the house hard to navigate and bumping into props due to their eyes adjusting to the darkness.
• If guests said Cindy's name in the "Time Out" room, she would respond with "So what if you know my name! That's not going to protect you from the fire!"
• The blonde girl floating in the walls was supposed to represent the original Cindy Caine before she became evil and evolved into her darker side with dark hair and darker look.
• The furnaces in the furnace room were similar to the ovens from Scary Tales: Once Upon a Nightmare.
• One of the Cindy scareactors recognized guests with HHNVault t-shirts, saying "I burned that Vault down, too!"
• In 2012, it was revealed that the orphans that appeared in this house were a part of the Morphan Legion, most likely due to their childish nature.
• Cindy would later be featured as an homage to this house in the Welcome to SCarey: Horror in the Heartland haunted house during Halloween Horror Nights 30.