There was a great deal of controversy before we even left for the trip, with the event being moved to Islands of Adventure and the loss of the "Festival of the Dead" Parade. From all that we had heard through the grapevine, the only added features as a result of this move would be the opportunity to ride the coasters at night and that Universal was offering no additional entertainment in replacement of the parade. Bill & Ted would not be the only show this year, but the second show based on characters Jack & Karen from the sitcom "Will & Grace" would only be seen in the Sinbad theater on selected nights.
I personally was not happy about the move but Brian was more optimistic. While there are some reeeally cool rides at IOA, I like the atmosphere in the Studios much better and I liked the realistic nature of the "haunted streets."
We usually set aside 2 nights to cover Halloween Horror Nights because with the magnitude of the event, it is tough to take it all in and document in just one night, but the event was to be upstaged by mother nature our first evening at the park.
As our normal procedure, we spent the day at the park, planning to be corralled in when IOA shut down to convert over to the evening festivities. The storm began even before the park closed for the switch. Trapped in a store near the park entrance, we waited and hoped with every breath that this would pass over and allow us the rest of the evening. From our vantage point, we could see people being blown off their feet thru the streets as they sought shelter from the rain. The rain turned to hail and the wind continued. Eventually, it passed over enough for us to make it to the back of the park where we would wait for the change-over. We would later hear that a small tornado had touched down causing minor damage to one of the employee break rooms and one of the houses.
Standing in front of the Discovery Center, we looked towards the sky, still optimistic that we had seen the worst of it... but we had not. Now came the torrential downpours. We waited as time ticked by, past the time that the event was to begin. At this point we began to feel we were just going to have to make the most of it, and 2 of us ran thru the rain to one of the shops and bought up baby blue Universal rain ponchos for all. Now that I am completely soaked to the skin and wrapped in plastic, I'm ready for a good time. The downpours had lightened to a slow but steady rain and we sloshed our way through flooded streets to the attractions. Even tho the rain would eventually stop, it was a bad night for documentation, we made it to Bill & Ted and thru the houses but it would take hours for the streets to recover.
Our second night started out with our interview in Screamhouse. Contacted by Lightship Entertainment who would be doing the HHN special for the Travel Channel, they had been advised of the HauntFreaks site and wanted to talk to us about the event. We were very excited for the opportunity, and even more so when we found that Leonard Pickel of Haunted Attraction magazine had been on the set earlier that day... we were being lumped in with such great company.
This was the night that Brian and I would discover that we do better behind a computer than in front of a camera.... WOW, were we nervous! They had advised us to answer in complete sentences, not just answer their questions (which I kept screwing up) and between my giggling and Brian's "ummmms" the editing department would have their work cut out for them. The people at Lightship could not have been nicer, they assured us we did great and they wished us a great evening.
**The outcome of this interview is that we were cut from the project. Per the people at Lightship it was due to time constraints but we continue to have our doubts. We had maintained contact with the production company for several months after the interview, supplying them with pictures from our site etc. At one point, we had been advised that Universal was not allowing them to put "HauntFreaks.com" in our clip. The BS behind it was that legal had advised against it, the special was to run for 5 years and "what if the website became something weird?" Well, rest assured, Brian and I have no intentions of giving up our pursuit of the ultimate haunts in place of child pornography any time soon... but hey, guess they can't be too cautious. Lightship had hoped to go around this moratorium with the caption, "Webmasters HauntFreaks" giving the viewing public credit that they would be smart enough to go look for HauntFreaks.com. This was the last we had heard until the tapes were distributed and we were contacted about the cut. We had put them in touch with Matt Galbraith, the young HHN collector who we had interviewed and we're happy to say that Matt was not cut from the project.