| Halloween Horror Nights Orlando attraction | |
|---|---|
  Image from the Halloween Horror Nights: Sweet 16 website page. | |
| Scary Tales | |
| Attraction type | Haunted House |
| Event | Halloween Horror Nights XI |
| Park | Universal Studios Florida |
| Area | Production Central |
| Year | 2001 |
| Housed in | Soundstage 22 |
| Based on | Original |
| Followed by | Scary Tales II (2002) |
Scary Tales was one of the five haunted houses that were featured during Halloween Horror Nights XI, and the first entry in the Scary Tales franchise. It was located in Soundstage 22 along with Pitch Black.
History and Location[]
In the original concept for Halloween Horror Nights XI, there was going to be a haunted house featured at the event titled Terror Land. Terror Land would be set in an abandoned carnival attraction where the animatronics (based on fairy tales) turned evil.
However, due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the word "Terror" became an inappropriate word to use as the name of an attraction. Other than the name of the house, the theme and story seemed largely unchanged.
The house would be one of two haunted houses located in Soundstage 22, with the other being Pitch Black. Soundstage 22 is one of the smaller soundstage facilities designed to be used as filming locations for movies and television shows.
The house proved to be very popular with guests and was even the first house ever to be awarded with House of the Year. It would also get a sequel the following year with Scary Tales II. That house would retain some of the same scenes and scares from this one, but would mostly use different fairy tales and nursery rhymes.
Description[]
Enter an abandoned carnival attraction and find yourself in a nightmarish fairytale world where there's never a happy ending...
Story[]
Apparently, the story to this house is that many famous fairy tale characters were locked inside of a carnival for 30 years as children. During this time, they mutated and morphed into terrifying adult versions of themselves and seek revenge. With the help of Jack the Clown, they are now able to take their vengeance out on the innocent.
Concept[]
According to this: https://twitter.com/RonIsAJerk/status/1664068522979258369/photo/1
The guest will experience bizarre creations including some fairy tale characters including Alice In Wonderland, Pinocchio, the Big Bad Wolf, and the creatures from the Land of Oz that have been transformed into grotesque nightmares of evil.
Settings[]
- Mad Hatter Room
- Alice's Toy Room
Experience[]
Queue and Facade[]
Guests would enter the queue to the left of Soundstage 22. The queue would go along the left wall of the soundstage (where T.Vs would be playing a queue video whose contents are unknown), until eventually taking a right turn and following the back wall until it reached the facade. The facade was a giant sign showing the logo of the house hanging over the entrance to Soundstage 22 while a voice can be heard. From this video, the voice seems to be saying "A magical place of light and shadow. Good and evil. The world is a dark...".
Haunted House[]
(From here)
Throughout the house a narrator (the same one from the queue voiceover) could be heard introducing each fairy tale usually reciting lines from the tale and their respective twists. There was also a soundtrack involving a little girl singing various children songs.
Going under the sign (which extended past the door to Soundstage 22), guests would hear Floop's Song from Spy Kids playing in the background. Once guests entered the house, they would be greeted with a room with containing the words "Hello There" in bright red lights. The O and the T were periodically turned off making the message seemingly read "Hell Here!". There were also horses from a merry-go-round scattered about this room. In the next room, guests would see a derailed dark-ride with a dead body in the car. Guests would follow the track into a room that was filled with fog, which was dispatch point of the ride. In the room, a crazy carny was working the dispatch lever. The lever controlled the floor and made it move.
The guests would then enter the revolving tunnel, which was painted black and white checkerboard. This hallway allegedly represented the Rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland. The following room had various words written on the wall, which included the words "Bye Bye!" at the end. Next, guests would enter a small room with a little blonde girl holding a teddy bear with unknown words at the top painted on the right. The teddy bear was reportedly eating the girl. The next hallway had orange and black stripes and strobe lights.
After that, guests would enter a hallway that led to Alice's Toy Room. The hallway had building blocks that spelled "Dead" and doll heads hanging from the ceiling. In Alice's Toy Room, a doll that sat next to some fake dolls came alive to attack guests. There was also a puppet sitting on a bookshelf that came alive and taunted guests. In this room, there may have also been dolls or teddy bears hanging from the ceiling. Next, guests would enter the Mad Hatter's Tea Party room, where the Hatter killed all of his guests and hung them from the ceiling upside down. Guests would have to walk around the Mad Hatter's table. The Mad Hatter himself would attack guests at various points in this room. The next room featured The Queen of Hearts, where the Queen (who was always played by a man) stepped on a switch turning on the lights in the room and went to strike the heads of guests. It is also likely that she recited nursery rhymes, such as "Three Blind Mice" and "Dem Bones" while laughing maniacally.
Guests would then enter a room with an "acid" (water) filled bathtub. Three corpses could be seen inside of it (from the Rub a Dub Dub rhyme). A scareactor would jump out from a curtain behind the bath. Guests would then enter a small room with candy all over the walls and a fire place that smelled like it was really on fire. A pie can be seen inside one of the windows, presumably used to lure unsuspecting kids. Guests then walked into a room filled with mirrors, where the floor would light up revealing a monster in a straightjacket underneath guests. Turning the corner, guests would be attacked by the Evil Queen from Snow White who jumped out from behind a mirror holding a shaker can. Additionally, apples were hanging from the ceiling of this room.
Guests would then enter and outdoor wooded area. Walking over a bridge, guests would be attacked by a troll from Three Billy Goats Gruff who would jump out from under the bridge. At the end of the bridge, the Big Bad Wolf would run at guests from the "twigs house" from The Three Little Pigs. Guests would the approach the outside of Grandma's house from Little Red Riding Hood. Guests would walk in between two halves of a split open bed with exposed springs. The silhouette of Grandma could be seen above guests' head holding a knife. Under the bed, a fake hand tried to grab at guests' feet as the Big Bad Wolf dressed as Grandma would jump out on the right. A voiceover can also be heard in this room.
After that, guests would walk into Pinocchio's room, where a huge puppet of Pinocchio could be seen powered by PSI pumps. The pumps makes it dance around on a stage, distracting guests long enough that a puppet on the right would come to life and scare guests. In this room, the narrator could be heard reciting a line from the fairy tale: "He grasped the hatchet quickly to peel off the bark and shape the wood. But as he was about to give it the first blow, he stood still with his arm uplifted, for he had heard a wee, little voice say in a beseeching tone: "Please be careful! Do not hit me so hard!"' It is unknown how much of this excerpt is read, though the "first blow" part could be audibly heard in the video below.
Going out the back door of Grandma's house, guests would follow a fenced area where a scareactor jumps out of a boo-hole in the fence. At the ended of the fenced hallway, guests would enter the cornfield, which had vines hanging from the ceiling. There were a few Scarecrows from the Wizard of Oz in this room, and guests would have to figure out which one was real and which one was fake. Walking out of the room, guests would be attacked by a giant 8-foot-tall Scarecrow. On here, concept art shows a giant lumbering scarecrow walking towards guests in a field.
The next room used tilted walls and floors in order to disorientate guests. The room was filled with fog and strobelights, and had scareactors blending into the walls with black and white checkerboard clothing. The scareactrors would hold trashcan lids, which they would bang together to make a loud sound. As guests exited the house, Alice would jump out at the end holding a chainsaw.
One of the last rooms was pitch black, with a floor made to feel and smell like guts. When the lights flickered on, guests would see that they were standing on rotten guts (they were actually standing on a glass floor). It is unknown where this room fits in the layout above, though one possibility is that the guests were supposedly "swallowed up" by one of the fairy tale monsters such as the Big Bad Wolf or the monstrous dogfish from Pinocchio.
Scareactors[]
- Carnival Operator
- Mad Hatter
- Alice's Toys X2
- The Queen of Hearts
- Bathtub Monster
- Straightjacket Monster
- Evil Queen
- Bridge Troll
- The Big Bad Wolf
- Pinocchio
- Scarecrows X2-3
- Checker Board Monsters
- Alice Liddell
Soundtrack[]
Pictures[]
Website Pictures[]
Videos[]
- Home Video (1:50-5:50)
Trivia[]
- This house was the first house to ever win House of the Year.
- The house was originally going to be called Terrorland but because of 9/11/2001 the word "terror" was an inappropriate word to use for a while so they changed the name to Scary Tales.
- The Revolving Tunnel (a spinning and disorientating tunnel that guests would walk through) appeared in this house. The effect would later be used in many haunted houses, with the next one being Maximum Carnage during Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear.
- David Hughes had said that this house was sort of conceived as twisted fairy tales set in an abandoned dark ride. When the house became successful and the event was moved to Islands of Adventure for Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear, the idea of making Scary Tales II was brought up and eventually became a part of that event.
- The Werewolf mask in this house was seemingly reused from the American Werewolf in London room in the Universal's Museum of Horror: Unnatural History haunted house during Halloween Horror Nights VIII.
- According to the walktrhough link, one of the upside down dead bodies in the Mad Hatter room was Jason Voorhees.
- The concept of Alice's toy room having letter blocks that spell out DEAD was possibly an idea borrowed from the video game trailer of American McGee's Alice, where the blocks were similarly spelt out to read DEAD indicating Alice's family were dead.
| Halloween Horror Nights XI |
|---|
| Characters: Jack the Clown (Event Icon) • Eddie Schmidt (Scrapped Icon) |
| Haunted Houses: The Mummy Returns: The Curse Continues • Pitch Black • Run • Scary Tales • Superstitions |
| Scarezones: Midway of the Bizarre • Nightmare Alley • The Unknown |
| Shows: Boogeymen • Bill & Ted's Excellent Halloween Adventure • Dangerous D'Illusions • Nightmares on Parade |
| Other Entertainment: The Ooze Zone |