If there wasn’t a greater sign that 2020 is completely screwed, it’s that Halloween Horror Nights 2020 has been cancelled. For the first time in it’s 30 year history, it won’t be happening. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and quite frankly, morons not wearing masks and caring about other human beings, we don’t get nice things. Nice things like Halloween Horror Nights. Were you looking forward to some of the mazes and characters returning from previous years? How about a maze update to the Ghostbusters one from last year? Nope.
For those out there thinking it would have been feasible to pack people into Universal Studios Hollywood or Orlando, and then pack them even more into mazes with performers, screaming, yelling, and talking, get your mental acuity checked. So instead of of getting to fully enjoy the month of October in one of the best ways possible, it has to wait until 2021.
So What’s The Silver Lining For Halloween Horror Nights?
There is a small, tiny, silver lining here though. It gives the wonderful team at Universal more time to sculpt and create more mazes. The Hollywood Horror Nights experience is second to none in the area. I would expect similar announcements from Knott’s Scary Farm, and other maze/horror house operators. The risk is too great right now. The only ones that I can see possibly surviving are either ones in areas that aren’t as hard hit as California or Florida.
Haunted Hay Rides could be fine, but the issue is the whole group of people screaming on a truck. There’s not a whole lot of time between now and October, so this Halloween could be one spent inside, instead of out. But who knows, everyone wears masks on Halloween, maybe the dummies who don’t will get the picture by then.
To be perfectly clear, this isn’t wholly on all the people who refuse to wear masks out of “personal liberty” and stupidity. It’s also on the reaction from local, state, and federal governments, but that’s a story for a different time. Halloween Horror Nights is cancelled. So all the spooks, specters, and ghosts are going to have to hang out somewhere else this year.
For more on Hallowen Horror Nights, horror, or any other general pop culture, make sure to check back to That Hashtag Show.
