The Best and Worst Houses of Halloween Horror Nights 2017

Halloween Horror Nights 2017 at Universal Orlando Resort had a lineup of 9 great houses this year. It was definitely one of the stronger house lineups at the event in recent years. Throughout the course of the event, United Thrills ranked the houses night after night and you’re about to find out which houses were the best and which were the worst this year! We ranked the houses on a 200-point scale consisting of 50% nightly points, 25% overall points, and 25% bonus points for best set design, costumes, and so on!

 

9.) Ash vs Evil Dead – 40 Points

At the bottom of the list for this year was Ash vs. Evil Dead. Now, while this was our least favorite house, we enjoyed going through this one each night. The house had quite a few funny scenes which made it a great comedy house. It just wasn’t as well done as many of the other Horror Nights houses and was missing quite a lot from the series.

 

8.) Hive – 44 Points

Hive was good for a replacement house, but overall it didn’t really compare to many of the others. We had some good run throughs of this house but sometimes it just felt boring. Although, the vampires had cool costumes and glowing contacts which looked great in the dark.

 

7.) Saw – 63 Points

Saw was a cool house to look at with lots of torture traps to watch through the course of the maze. Although, the house was just that. As we went through, we felt like we were just watching stuff happen rather than experiencing it ourselves. That being said, the cast had a lot of energy and were making the best of what they were given, which wasn’t that great.

 

6.) The Shining – 66 Points

The Shining was extremely well done. The second we walked into the house we felt as if we were teleported right into the movie. The accuracy and thoroughness of the maze was incredible. Highlights of the maze included the bloody elevator, the hedge maze, and the Gold Room. Although, the main thing that hurt this house in our rankings was that there weren’t many great scares. It also didn’t have as great of a repeat run-through value as some of the others.

 

5.) The Horrors of Blumhouse – 77 Points

This house had very mixed reviews overall. The main criticisms were that the set design was poor with this house and it was extremely loud. And both of those are true. That being said though, it did have some great scares in our opinion. I know I personally got good scares myself from time to time. So, considering everything, this house ended up falling towards the middle for us.

 

Now the first 5 houses are what we consider our “bottom 5”. The following “top 4” are the houses we had a great time in night after night and it will be easy to tell through the large jump in points.

 

4.) The Fallen – 128 Points

Not only did this house have our favorite costumes of the event, but it also had a lot of unique scares! The Fallen were truly everywhere in this house, even flying in from above multiple times. Between the unique scares, set design, and costumes, this house was very impressive overall.

 

3.) American Horror Story (AHS) – 143 Points

The American Horror Story house was by far the longest of the event and took guests through 3 seasons of the series. Similarly, the house had a wide variety of scares which made it hard to figure out what type of scare would come next! Overall, it was by far our favorite of all the IP (intellectual property) houses at the event which helped it earn a spot in the top 3!

 

2.) Dead Waters – 150 Points

The set design and theming in this house was incredible. It was definitely one of the best-looking houses in the last few years of Halloween Horror Nights. This house had extremely detailed sets starting from the initial paddle boat façade. Now, while it was a shorter house, it had some great scares along the way which helped bring it to number 2 on the list.

 

1.) Scarecrow The Reaping – 186 Points

Scarecrow was our favorite house since night one and that never changed for the entire event.  This house had everything, especially great scares! I consider myself a tough scare normally, but this house could scare me on a consistent basis which is highly impressive! I think the crazy 186 points it earned says a lot about this house just in itself.

 

That does it for our Halloween Horror Nights house reviews for the 2017 season! Did we do a good job? Which houses did you like the most? Or hate the most? Let us know on Twitter! Our Twitter handle: @unitedthrills