Halloween Horrors Night 2017

This is our 3rd edition of Halloween Horrors Night. I blogged about our first experience in 2014 where we experienced super long queues on Halloween night itself and only tried 2-3 haunted houses. Last year, P's friends came and we met up for a night at USS during HNN6, I must say it was pretty fun to do it in a small group and huddle and scream together. We even experienced downpour halfway through queueing and everyone was forced to buy the expensive USS ponchos, but the plus point was the crowd thinned out and we managed to try most of the haunted houses last year. We had great fun then and P and I were thinking we'll make it our yearly Halloween date. Seeing how others breeze through the queues with express passes last year, we promised to splurge on express passes when we go again this year.

Couple goals?

We started looking for the tickets even before the whole event started, we missed the early bird period but P eventually found reliable sources on Carousell. I did change my mind about going for the event as we incurred quite a bit of debts after we moved to our new crib and the wedding. But I did not want to be a wet blanket and P also surprised me by giving me a treat to the event.

Physical tickets we bought from Carousell

For this year's HHN, there were many reported cases when people get scammed from untrusty sellers on Carousell. But I trust P to get the tickets from there as he's forever on Carousell, buying and selling stuff. Anyway, we managed to utilise the tickets last night and had no issues with those. P spent $120 on each express pass on top of the $68 admission fee. So that's like more than $360+ for the two of us.

The entrance

After work yesterday, we went home to nap for about an hour before we set off for Sentosa. It was quite easy for us to get there as our new home is sitting on top of the Circle line. Even though we had to sit on the train for 13 stops, it took only 30++ minutes. We went to Bread Talk to grab a pork floss bun for dinner and took the monorail to USS. We managed to conceal our food stuff during bag check and successfully entered the theme park. I must admit being the 3rd time here, the surprise and anticipation factor was unlike before so I was not as excited or hyped unlike my first experience. Hmm.. I could feel that I'm there more to compare the previous editions with this year's experience and to see if there's any new element to excite or impress me.

Still at the entrance

Many people bought the red and green demon horns headbands and I must say its pretty cheap at 3 for $10 but we didnt get it as it'll become junks taking space at home once the night is over. We walked straight to the central stage where there'll be cosplayers/ghouls on a elaborated stage for people to take photographs with. The display did not really catch my eye this year, so we went straight to the first haunted house just next to it.

The Death Mall

This is the only haunted house that I knew about due to the extensive publicity before the whole event. It even got into the news as some people felt that their publicity stunt was insensitive to the general public. Anyway, I experienced the power of the express pass as there was the snaking queue just next to the monorail station but we went right up to the entrance and only waited for 5-10min while the rest queued for more than an hour. It is truly shiok and the VIP feeling was so so cool. Anyway, we got inside quickly and saw the interiors decorated like a shopping mall, with the cinema and supermarket areas etc. Like all haunted houses, the actors hid before curtains, corners and doors and jumped out at us with their ghostly makeup. The group of people in front us kind of 'protected' us from them but they moved forward really slowly as they were pushing one another to go first, so this dampened the experience a little for me. One of the tall 'ang moh' guy in the group even stepped back in fright at one point and his heavy leather shoe landed on my foot. Ouch! Overall, I felt that this haunted house is quite underwhelming despite the extensive publicity. There were the local touch but we preferred the coffeeshop experience in HNN6 previous year. None of the display area inside left a deep impression in my mind after the whole night.

Inside My Mind

Speaking about the express pass, after I finished the first haunted house in 5-10min, I crazily missed the long time we had to queue for each zone the past years. Okay, I really dont miss the time spent and frustration we had while queueing but I felt like something was missing.

Anyway, the next haunted house was named Inside My Mind and the queue for us got even shorter than before. This haunted house made use of laser lights and stuff to disorientate us and it really got me at one point, but I felt that it was more impressive in the 3D dementia in HHN4 edition when the idea was still new. I guess we were supposed to experience the different parts of the brain so there were some gory and bloody areas but all those were kind of familiar so none of it really left an impression in my mind.

The express pass allow us to visit each of the 5 haunted house only once using the express queue. Other than scanning the pass, they will also manually cancel off the haunted house we visited, so we need to join the queue if we want a repeated tour. After the first two haunted houses, we passed transformers and seeing that it was only a 15min short queue, we went in for a ride. It was the third time I took the ride and shortest time I queued for it. I was glad that next few haunted houses got better.

Us at transformers

At the scare zones where actors have elaborate makeup and jumped at us

Make the Cut 

I was delighted that the next haunted house seemed to be something different and refreshing. Having watched many South Korean movies and dramas lately, I'm a little into Kpop culture lolx. I even made a short video while we walked through the express lane. Many horror movies also came from South Korea, like Ju-On and so on, so it got a little creepy when the interior of the 'shophouses' we went into looked like a set from late 80s or something. I guess it was supposed to be a KTV or dance place but turned into gory plastic surgery set. There were actors dressed as dancers/performers at the front part while a guy was sitting cooly there like a boss (I thought he looked too normal to be one of the actors), then as we walked inside there were plastic surgery areas with blood and body parts everywhere. Gory indeed. It's a pity I'm not observant enough to notice all the details as I'm sure it'll be a amazing treat if I can pay attention to everything inside.

This is another of our favourite ride, but queue was 40min so we skipped.

Many small stalls selling expensive food and drink, we did not get any this year

Hex was the next haunted house we visited. The area before we went in was outdoor and the floor got a bit wet as it rained early. It smelt a lot like twine and manila hemp we used for camping as this haunted house was about black magic and voodoo etc. The area inside was quite stuffy as they used a lot of natural canvas to cover the place. Honestly, the normal queue is stuffy and took 1.5 hour but I dont remember much of it except for the repetitive dead bodies lying at corners and ghostly actors jumping out at us. Most haunted houses are pretty similar, they use sound effects and a curtain and drape that fall in front of us is a scary experience as we'll wonder what's behind those. That's all to it.

The free scare zone where festivals became twisted

Took a picture with the actors

At one of the free scare zone, we walked through a maze with brains and broken limbs stuck in the hedge, what was interesting was there were speakers playing scary music and sound effects like electric sparks all around us (common in the haunted house too). One guy in front of me got scared by the sound effects and actually jumped!

The last was also the best

As I've been to Xi An and seen the actual terracotta army, I was pleasantly surprised when I came to this last haunted house. And I must say its the best and most impressive of this edition. As we were walking towards the entrance, we could see that the area was big as we were walking next to the huge dark maze where they set up the props and stuff. We could hear knocking and people screaming inside. This area is impressive as they really had those terracotta replica at the entrance and those looked like the exact size and of the terracotta army, although the facial expression and details might be missing. The haunted house brought us back to the Qing dynasty as the interior looked like the forbidden city palace. There were people dressed in those period costumes, eunuchs, ghostly concubines and stuff and the oriental rooms with details to go with it. There was also this wall with tiles popping out. We were not allowed to take any pictures inside the haunted houses as the flash will blind the actors or disturb others, I guess the makeup and stuff are also copyrighted,  so I only managed to take a picture at the entrance.

Can see the terracotta replica in this picture 

With the express pass, we managed to finish all five haunted houses in 2 hours and it was barely 10pm. It would be nice we can walk through USS slowly and go for those rides without long queues, or some of the free halloween shows. However, P had to rush home to do PO for his toy statues so we left USS quite early unexpectedly. I think the express pass is a really a good investment so we will surely be back with those again next year.