Universal Orlando’s decision to discontinue Fear Passes with Express for Halloween Horror Nights 35 was always going to upset someone. The discussion has dominated the conversation over the past day, and understandably so. It’s one of the biggest changes to HHN ticketing in years, and there are A LOT of strong opinions about whether it’s the right move.
Universal was always going to have to make a drastic change. Halloween Horror Nights isn’t the same event it was 15 years ago. Attendance has exploded, and Express has become one of the event’s most valuable products. The company has to manage demand in ways it never really had to before, and the system had been bending under that demand for years; eventually, something was going to give.
To Universal’s credit, this wasn’t even its first attempt. Last year, the company capped the number of Frequent Fear Passes with Express available for purchase. That solved one issue by limiting the number of people who could buy the product, but it created another. Longtime guests who had purchased those passes for years suddenly couldn’t get one, and once the event actually began, complaints about Express wait times still persisted. In other words, limiting supply didn’t magically fix the operational concerns.
That’s part of why I believe this year’s decision needs a bit more nuance than just saying, “This will make Express better.”
Maybe it will… but maybe it won’t.
The biggest thing that’s getting lost in this discussion is that Express isn’t actually going away. This isn’t like Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure, where nobody gets Express. Guests can still buy it – we just don’t know how Universal plans to allocate it.
Will the company cap single-night Express sales? Will former Fear Pass with Express guests simply buy multiple nights of Express instead? Will they move to RIP Tours? We honestly have no idea. If enough guests simply shift to different premium products, the overall impact on capacity could be much smaller than many people expect. After all, even with Universal limiting the number of Fear Passes with Express sold last year, Express waits remained a common complaint throughout the event.
That’s why I think it’s premature to declare this a home run before the event even starts.
From the business side, though, I completely understand why Universal got here. There were certainly guests who, for lack of a better term, treated Fear Pass with Express as a “cheat code”. They weren’t doing anything wrong – Universal sold them the product – but some were attending nearly every night, speedrunning houses over and over throughout the season. From an operational standpoint, that’s a very different customer than someone buying Express for one or two vacation nights.
I don’t think Universal looked at those guests and decided they no longer wanted them. I think they looked at the amount of Express capacity being used over the course of a season and concluded the product was no longer sustainable in its current form.
Universal had already spent years testing just how much demand existed.
Back in 2010, a Frequent Fear Plus Pass with Express cost around $240. By 2019, it had climbed to roughly $460. Last year, it was approaching $950 before tax. Over 15 years, the price increased nearly 300%, far faster than inflation – and people still bought it! So, it obviously wasn’t a pricing problem.
If anything, it shows just how loyal this customer base had become. People weren’t looking for the cheapest way to experience Halloween Horror Nights. They were willing to deal with year after year of price increases because they believed the convenience and flexibility were worth it.
I also wonder whether the market would’ve eventually found its own equilibrium. Every premium product reaches a point where enough people decide the value no longer justifies the cost. Maybe Universal believed that point was still too far away. Maybe it didn’t want to continue pricing people out. We simply don’t know.
And truthfully, I’m not sure the fandom would’ve been happy with any of the possible alternatives anyway.
Raise prices again? People would’ve accused Universal of turning HHN into an event only the wealthy could afford. Cap the product? We already saw how that played out last year.
Remove the product entirely? Well… here we are!
There may have been other options as well. One possibility is to reimagine Rush of Fear as a more vacation-focused ticket; a version that includes Express, is valid only in September, and expires ten days after the first use. This would retain much of the flexibility that vacationers appreciate while naturally limiting the number of guests attending multiple nights throughout the season.
Would that have solved every problem? Probably not, and there was probably never going to be a solution that made everyone happy.
One thing that’s bothered me recently is how fast the discussion has moved from the decision itself to criticizing how others choose to experience Halloween Horror Nights. I’ve encountered comments telling longtime Fear Pass holders with Express guests to just “suck it up and deal with it.”
Halloween Horror Nights isn’t like a normal theme park vacation. The event is finite.
If you miss a house because the line is too long or you simply run out of time, you can’t just come back next year and experience the same thing. The lineup changes every season. Once HHN ends, those houses are gone.
That’s a really big reason as to why the Express benefit became so valuable. It allowed guests to experience a limited-time event at a pace that fit the way they vacation.
Not everyone wants to rope-drop HHN and stay until 2 AM trying to cram every house into a single night. Some people would rather spend a few relaxed hours at the event, experience a handful of houses, grab food or a drink, and come back the next evening to do the next group. Others used it to spread their vacation across four or five nights instead of turning every visit into a marathon.
Sure, many of those guests can now pivot to a RIP Tour or purchase Express on multiple nights, but that fundamentally changes how they’ve planned and experienced Halloween Horror Nights for years. That flexibility was what they were paying for.
It’s also worth remembering that this approach benefited a wide variety of guests. Some simply preferred a slower pace. Others found that spreading the event across multiple evenings made for a more comfortable experience. For some guests with disabilities or other accessibility needs, having the flexibility to tackle the event over several shorter visits rather than one or two exhausting nights was a significant advantage.
Universal does offer accommodations such as the Attraction Assistance Pass, but like any accommodation system, it has to balance legitimate guest needs with preventing abuse. It isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all replacement for the flexibility that Fear Pass with Express provided.
The reality is: people enjoy their vacations differently.
Some save all year for one night. Others build an entire week around Halloween Horror Nights. Some want to do everything in one visit. Others intentionally spread the experience across multiple evenings because that’s what makes the vacation enjoyable for them.
None of those approaches is wrong, and it’s really not anyone else’s place to dictate what the “right” way to experience Halloween Horror Nights should be.
From a personal standpoint, as the father of a young child, the Frequent Fear Pass with Express flexibility fits my schedule perfectly. Most nights, I’d help my wife get our son ready for bed, head over to Halloween Horror Nights around 8 or 9 PM, knock out a few houses, enjoy the atmosphere for a couple of hours, and be home before midnight so I could be up the next morning to help get him ready for school.
I wasn’t trying to marathon the event or speedrun every house in one night. I was using the product’s flexibility to fit HHN around my family’s schedule.
Now that flexibility is gone, I’ll have to rethink how I experience the event. Fortunately, I’m a local. I’ll adapt. But it also gave me a better appreciation for the guests who plan entire vacations around a product like this. When you’ve spent months organizing a trip around a specific way to experience HHN, changing course isn’t as simple as saying, “Just buy Express another way.”
It is worth remembering that not everyone who bought Fear Pass with Express was a local attending every night. Many guests – especially those visiting from overseas or planning week-long vacations – used the product to make the most of vacations they had spent months planning.
They might not spend the most money on any single night, but they come back year after year. They buy merchandise, eat and drink at the event, introduce friends and family to HHN, and, as we’ve already established, were willing to pay nearly four times what they paid fifteen years ago just to keep this benefit.
In many ways, they’re the HHN’s high rollers… and that’s where I think this becomes less of a business discussion and more of a balancing act, and I feel like Universal may have overcorrected from a customer service perspective.
Universal absolutely has to make decisions that improve the average guest’s experience. At the same time, businesses also spend a lot of effort trying to retain their most loyal customers. Finding the balance between those two groups isn’t easy, and I don’t envy Universal for having to make that call.
My biggest criticism, though, might not even be the decision itself. It’s how it was communicated.
Waiting until roughly a month before the event to publicly confirm such a significant change – and doing so in a reply on social media rather than through a formal announcement – wasn’t ideal. Many guests had planned their vacations for months, assuming that some version of this product would return, since it had existed for so long. Whether you agree with the decision or not, those customers deserved more notice and a clearer explanation than they ultimately received.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Universal has a long history of listening to guest feedback. I think the ship has probably sailed for HHN 35, but I also don’t believe this is necessarily the final evolution of Express. If this year’s adjustments don’t meet Universal’s expectations or lead to unforeseen issues, I expect the company will continue to adjust and improve its approach to its ticket offerings.
Universal faces the challenge of balancing business needs with customer loyalty. They had a legitimate capacity problem, and I think the ticketing system needed to change. I just don’t know if this was the right course to get there.
Maybe this decision ultimately improves the event for everyone. Maybe it becomes one of those changes we all look back on and wonder why it took so long.
Or maybe former Fear Pass with Express guests simply shift into other premium offerings, the operational impact ends up being relatively nominal, and Universal finds itself searching for another solution a few years from now.
We’ll find out soon enough!
