at Florida State University

The room is blacker than the night sky on a new moon. Clutching to the warm, reassuring person in front of you, and with your head lowered, you move like a bat out of the hell that you are now in towards what you hope is an escape. Suddenly, you hear a scream. The person in front of you is gone! You’re all alone, it’s impossible to see where to go, and a multitude of eerily loud noises make you feel more uncomfortable than you were in the doctor’s waiting room with that antiseptic hospital smell. Wait! There’s a light up ahead, and that looks like that lost body in front of you! Speeding up to rejoin a comrade lost in the confusion you feel like you just might get out of here. But then all hope is lost. Your friend wasn’t a bloody monster wielding a twelve inch machete! This is not another horror film, it’s not a bad night in a busy, crime ridden city. It’s the experience millions of Americans flock to every year. But is it really worth it? And what does this say about us?

Upon observation of the facts, Halloween Horror Nights just doesn’t seem like a worthwhile venture. Not only is it expensive, but the park is also densely crowded. It’s plagued by bad parking, continuous walls of crowds, and lines longer than those found at the DMV. It just doesn’t seem to be something that would attract the average American. I don’t know too many people who like spending money, just to wait around in different spots all night.

The whole experience can be very aggravating. It’s actually a wonder why so many migrate to Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Nights. First of all tickets start off at around $59. Deals for Florida residents not with standing, that’s a lot of money, especially to the younger age group more likely to go. To someone aged about fourteen to about twenty-five, sixty dollars can be a major dent in one’s wallet. And that’s just the price of admission. Keeping with the theme of all theme parks, Universal Studios makes sure that no one brings in there own merchandise. They actually physically search you, and your belongings. Granted the reason for that is to stop the flow of drugs, alcohol, and weapons into the park, but if they catch you bringing in a picnic basket of sandwiches, or any outside food, they’ll take make you get rid of it before you’re allowed entry into the attraction. After they strip you of your dignity and your 30 cent sandwiches, they make sure to clean you out by overcharging every single product inside. I remember one slice of pizza and a small drink fell somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to fifteen dollars. Needless to say, other than a bottle of water, that was the only purchase I made. This would logically seem like enough to drive most people away from the attraction, but because it’s not enough to keep seemingly everybody from attending, Horror Nights tries to scare us away again.

After dropping sixty dollars on a ticket, thirty or so on the trip, and another small fortune inside, you are met with one of the most crowded locations on earth, only beaten by the hundreds of thousands who attend the mass given by the Pope every week. The lines are notoriously famous for their length. Every time the event is the subject of conversation, the long lines show up as an issue. The wait times are so well known in fact, that when someone tells about hour long waits, people show surprise, and remark about how they must be getting shorter. The average time I’ve had to wait in the past has been no less then two hours. I’ve never gotten into an attraction faster than forty five minutes, and that was on a blue moon, during a planetary alignment, at the stroke of midnight. With these wait times, you can only expect to experience a fraction of the attractions you paid to see. In fact, when you go, you pay full well knowing that you’ll only be seeing about two or three of the haunted houses offered. Even though a part of you is hoping that somehow, someway, you will just happen to be the only person in the world going on your night, but you know better. But because the lines keep returning along with the event year after year, this is obviously not enough to turn people away. But long lines and empty bank accounts aren’t the end of the madness

Not only are the lines insanely long, the park itself is crowded beyond belief. Just walking up to the front gates can sometimes be an act of pure agility, speed, and strength. But once inside, nothing will help you navigate through the masses. There is a literal swarm of people, everywhere you look. Even at the parks 7 p.m. opening, the place gets packed in about fifteen minutes. You and your friends find yourselves back in kindergarten, holding hands as you travel from place to place, so as not to get lost. If the attractions aren’t enough for you, just going from point A to point B, is an event in itself. You repeatedly find yourself in intimate contact with complete strangers. Journeying from place to place can sometimes be an experience of personal violation by half of the people you come across. But even so far this isn’t enough either to turn people away, because if it were enough, there logically would be no crowds.

If a loss of funds, long waits, and invasion of personal space by thousands isn’t enough to turn folks away, than there is still the parking situation. The parking situation is, though expected, very, very bad. If you don’t happen to arrive early, like say hours before the park opens, you will probably need some additional belongings, like plane tickets and a passport, to get back from your parking space. The parking fills up just as quick as the park does, and the parking garage is a good walk from the entrance of the park. There are amenities such as moving sidewalks to aid guests in their speedy arrival to the gates, but a long walk, is still a long walk. Plus you still have to walk back, after spending all night walking and standing around. But even with all of these factors combined, it is just not enough to stop people from going.

So why do people keep going? What reasons would a person have to willingly submit themselves to the torture I have just described? Actually, as it turns out, there are a number of reasons, starting with the attractions offered. The haunted houses themselves are enough to invoke the urge to return year after year.

The haunted houses throw each patron into there own live action horror movie. It’s all about the thrill and the feeling of “don’t go in there” we all get when watching our scary favorites, recreated in front of our eyes. It’s no longer imagination, the monsters are there, right in front of you. You can see them, hear them, touch them (and sue them because physical contact is not allowed), and even smell them. They are right there jumping out at you with the intent to kill from all angles, including above and below. It’s the thrill of being in your own movie, the thrill of being scared that seems to be the leading factor in the massive amounts of returns Universal receives.

The other main cause of people willingly emptying their pockets is the park itself. Walking through the park is its own attraction. Universal really goes out of its way to scare you when it can. They brilliantly saw an opportunity to do this to the roaming hoards of people traversing their ground. So with a formula that includes, costumed employees, a dark night, smoke effects, and mass confusion, they succeed in making sure all of their guests are smiling from thrill all the time. They’ve effectively set things up, so that you never know just when the next ghoulish creation is going to appear with a chain saw just inches from your face. Everyone who leaves the park, leaves with stories upon stories of how that monster jumped them in that place, and each memory wreaks a smile upon their face.

So what does all of this say about American’s? It says two different things about us thrill seekers. The first is that we’re fulfilling a void. Human emotion is like a lot of things, it requires fulfillment. One of those emotions is pure and utter fear. By traveling to Halloween Horror Nights we are effectively filling that hole. We are meeting our fear quota, in one of the most exciting ways imaginable. This, and we’re also a population all about our most revered art form, the movies, and this attraction is our way of being part of that.

Universal Studios is a name synonymous with movies, and they allow us to experience them, with all of their attractions. This one is no exception. Horror films are an American classic, and we all want to be in the movies sometime in our lives anyways. This just seems like our chance, and it just proves how Hollywood we all are.

So that’s it, there it is, plain and simple. We have needs that need to be fulfilled. Somewhere in almost everyone’s inner child is a movie star, a movie star that want to feel fear. And here is a place that offers that chance. It’s enough that we’re willing to endure never ending lines, bankruptcy, virtual sexual harassment, and walks equaling those taken by ancient nomadic tribes. All of this, just goes to show what we American’s will do to get what we want.