Every Universal Orlando Halloween Horror Nights House 2018 - Reviewed

Dead Exposure: Patient Zero

The tagline for this year's event is "We know what scares you". I think the team behind this maze asked my friends and family for a comprehensive list of my fears and used them as a blueprint for Dead Exposure: Patient Zero.

Complete darkness... check, Zombies... check, Paris... okay so I'm not afraid of Paris but I was relieved to hear that others in my group were nervous of this maze too. As we entered there was a siren blaring and smoke oozing from a tent. We then went into a room filled with screaming caged monkeys.

Similar to Indiana Jones, my first thought was "Monkeys, why did it have to be monkeys". Since childhood I've had an awful fear of monkeys. The strobe flashing lights and screaming really unsettled me... then a monkey hit me on the arm. I still can't work out if someone got a little too zealous with a puppet (accidents happen) or if it was intentional, but they picked the perfect person to "infect". After that point the rest of the maze was a bit of blur.

Strobe lights broke up almost complete darkness. I stuck so close to the person in front of me I was almost in their back pocket (sorry James). The scare actors knew how to work the darkness to their advantage. They felt like they were everywhere and nowhere. A blur amongst the lights. There were catacombs and the Paris subway each lit selectively, the darkness shrouding scare actors hidden in plain sight.

For me this was the most frightening maze of the night. Looking at Twitter comments I don't think I was the only one who felt that way.

Halloween Horror Nights did an excellent job of scaring me with Dead Exposure and I'm so pleased this wasn't the house we opened with. This was an excellent maze. I forgot that I was in a safe environment, I was in a room full of my worst fears come to life.