Halloween Horror Nights RIP Tour: Is It Worth It?

Last weekend, we had the opportunity to visit the world’s premiere Haunt event, Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights. We stayed for a long weekend and were able to attend two nights. One of which we experienced an RIP Tour, and the other we went with no additional add ons. Since it was our first experience with an RIP Tour, we wanted to share an overview of our experience and hopefully give some helpful tips and advice if you’re planning a visit in the final few weekends. 

The R.I.P. Tour Experience

The first night of our trip was the one we were most looking forward to, as we really splurged beyond our usual means to ensure we experienced the event in the best way possible. RIP Tours are pricey, we’re talking a minimum of $350 per person and an average through the event of around $450-500. We were able to book on the low end, as we were going on a week night. However, your RIP tour does not cover your cost of admission for the event, so it’s safe to mentally add $100 to that price for your HHN admission. 

With that enormous cost, what is promised? VIP parking if you are coming in a car, VIP access to each haunted house (one time each guaranteed), a dedicated tour guide to give insights and advice throughout your night, a VIP lounge with free buffet accessible to you throughout the entire night in La Bamba, an exclusive RIP tour cash bar for drinks, reserved seating for shows, and Express for all available attractions once your tour is over. 

Now, with all that said, how much did these promises live up to our expectations?

Parking

We were staying on property, so this wasn’t something that we needed to use.

VIP access to each house

This is definitely considered to be the main feature of this VIP pass. With each house commanding a minimum of a half hour wait, and some reaching 90-100 minutes, your tour guide walks you straight up to the entrance and into the house. No express line, no shortened standby line, you walk straight to the front. Before you enter each house, they give a 2-3 minute spiel with behind the scenes information and context, which actually is very helpful as it gives you things to look out for while experiencing the house. We were able to do each house one time, and repeated three at the end of the night. While 13 houses were a lot to get done in one night, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. I had heard stories of people running every single house 2-3 times, so unfortunately my expectations were set there.

The truth is that you are very much up to the will of the group as a whole and what the majority is interested in/capable of doing. While we were prepared for a 40,000 step marathon of speed running houses, a lot of the party was not physically capable of that and also more interested in the VIP aspect of not needing to rush to get things done. That is likely the main difference between booking a private vs public RIP tour. In a private tour, I’m sure you are given a lot more agency in the decisions since the entire group knows each other. Unfortunately, being two people, our only option was public.

While not waiting in lines was nice, we have gotten more houses done on previous visits without RIP access.

Dedicated Tour Guide

As part of your tour, you have a dedicated tour guide who is assigned to your group and your group alone for the entire evening. While our tour guide was insightful and very present for us, we just did not gel with her presentation style. She was very bubbly, and it felt like all of our interactions were a bit superficial. Everything had a sheen of asking us questions because she’s supposed to, not because she wanted to, like she was a bit TOO excited at our answers. She also had a very specific schedule in mind for us, and never once asked us if we had any input or wanted to do anything outside of what she planned. It felt like our tour should have been more interactive, but I couldn’t help but feel like every part of our night was rehearsed. Did we want to do more houses at a faster pace? Did we want to go to the Jimmy Fallon balcony bar? Did we want to use the Nickelodeon bathrooms? Yes to all, but she never asked so we never did. 

Buffet and bar

The Storyteller greets guests in the VIP Lounge

The buffet at La Bamba felt like a true VIP upgrade with no asterisk. It featured many of the specialty food items from the themed carts around the park, with no limit on how much you can take. Getting to do a food tour around the park from one location with no lines was a real treat. They aren’t presented as mass produced in a chaffing dish either, they are single servings on individual plates. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I probably ate an entire rack of jalapeño bbq ribs, “Bloody Bones”, two ribs at a time throughout the night. We stopped back multiple times, even after our tour, for water bottles and snacks, and really got our money’s worth on this all you can eat offering.

This also featured a very significant paywalled experience of character interactions. For us specifically, previous HHN Icon The Storyteller was walking around speaking with guests. As far as I know, she is not featured in the event outside of this interaction.

The exclusive bar was just a regular bar inside of the VIP lounge. I guess it saves you a few minutes in lines, but you need to be nearby to even consider heading in there to utilize it. If there were more around the park, we were unaware of them. 

Reserved Seating for shows

This was definitely beneficial, as the line for the next Nightmare Fuel showing usually begins forming as soon as the last performance ends. We were able to walk right up 5-10 minutes before the show began and were sat dead center about 3 rows from the stage, an excellent perk. Also, there was a VIP section for the Stranger Things lagoon show that gave you a great view. It was not a part of our tour but we were encouraged to use the VIP section on our own at some point after the tour concluded.

Express Passes for rides

This was a total bust, as most of the rides close at midnight (All but The Mummy from our experience), and unless your tour starts at 6pm you won’t finish in time to use it. 

Final Thoughts

Overall, it brings me no joy to admit it, but we felt that a public RIP tour was not worth the price that we paid. We are not the type to spend this much money on something, so when we do we expect it to feel above and beyond. The tour wasn’t bad, we had a lot of fun and got a lot done, but 500+ dollars a person including our tickets should not buy an experience that you would describe as “good”. For my money, I think Stay and Scream with Express would likely get way more done in a night than what we did and would save you a few hundred dollars. The event is incredible, the houses are beautifully designed and really effective in their scares. The scare zones are inventive and interactive. The shows are impressive as always. This is a must do for any Haunt enthusiast, but definitely plan accordingly if you decide to splurge for the VIP package. If you have the numbers to do a private tour, that likely would align much more with the exceptional experience that I’ve heard of for all these years. We will definitely be back to HHN, but you can find us in the Express line for one night of our visit moving forward.