Dear Disney And Universal, Please Stop Crowding My Summer With Your Halloween Events

Theme parks are about creating experiences, even entire worlds, that don’t exist in reality. Of all the Western holidays we celebrate, Halloween is the one most aligned with this idea. We dress in costumes and pretend, to one degree or another, to be someone we’re not. It’s not exactly a shock that Halloween at theme parks is a big deal.

Every major theme park has a big “After Hours” Halloween event, from Disney World's Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party to Universal's iconic Halloween Horror Nights. It’s after the sun goes down that the monsters come out, after all. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, however. Halloween is out of hand at Disney Parks and Universal Destinations & Experiences. It starts too early, goes on too long, and it needs to chill out.

Disney And Universal Parks’ Halloween Events Are Getting Earlier And Earlier Every Year

It’s August, people. It’s August. Halloween isn’t for a full month and a half, and yet, if you have a theme park trip planned, you are officially in the Halloween season. Disney World’s first Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party took place on August 15. Disneyland’s Oogie Boogie Bash had its debut on August 17.

By comparison, Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights are showing some absolute restraint, with Florida’s event starting August 29 and Hollywood not getting started until September 4. Considering that Halloween Horror Nights is a marquee event for Universal and that their major competitor has started things so early, I fully expect Universal’s dates to creep earlier into August in the years to come.

This is just too damn early. August is still summer. Hell, most of September is still technically summer. While “autumn” is largely a foreign concept in both Florida and Southern California, when it’s October, I at least know how the weather is supposed to feel.

Halloween Events Force The End Of Great Summer Entertainment

We’re all used to holiday creep at this point. Seasonal merchandise in stores basically shifts from one holiday to the next, regardless of how much time there is until the actual holiday arrives, but my frustration with Halloween events starting so early at theme parks isn’t just general frustration. There are specific things that can be lost when we shift into holiday entertainment.

When Disneyland Resort’s Halloween Time officially launches this Friday, that will mark the end of Wonderous Journeys, the best fireworks show Disneyland has seen in years. It will be replaced by the Halloween Screams show, which…is…fine.

Better Together: A Pixar Pals Celebration, the daytime parade that Disney California Adventure brought back for the Disneyland 70th anniversary, has already been shuttered. It has been replaced with the Frightfully Fun Parade, the Halloween-themed parade that is only available to those who buy tickets to the Oogie Boogie Bash.

Universal Orlando's incredible Cinesational: A Symphonic Spectacular, one of the best nighttime theme park shows around, will be shuttered for the duration of Halloween Horror Nights (and then some) to make way for a new Halloween Horror Nights show. Maybe it will be better than the current one. Maybe. I doubt it. Not because the new show might be bad, but because the current one is just that good.

Haunted Mansion Holiday Lasts Too Long

That brings me to the biggest holiday change at any theme park for Halloween, the Haunted Mansion Holiday. From Halloween through Christmas, the classic Haunted Mansion at Disneyland gets a Nightmare Before Christmas-themed makeover. A lot of people, Ryan Gosling included, really don’t like that this change happens at all. I didn't used to feel that way, but I'm getting there.

The earlier start to Halloween Time at Disneyland means that Haunted Mansion Holiday will be running for four and a half months from the beginning of Halloween season through the end of Christmas. However, when you factor in the closures that are required to transform the Mansion in both directions, we’re creeping up on the traditional Mansion being unavailable for half the calendar year. That’s too long for what’s supposed to be a seasonal overlay.

Halloween Is Big Business In Theme Parks, But There Needs To Be A Limit

Now there’s an obvious reason why the parks keep pushing Halloween season earlier and earlier into the year. It’s a huge business for them. When Halloween Horror Nights or the Oogie Boogie Bash are selling out all their tickets for the available dates that they have, it’s not exactly a shock that there’s a push to add more. If you’re a potential guest, the more nights there are, the better chance you have of being able to buy tickets before they sell out. As somebody who has had trouble getting tickets to theme parks, I get it.

Halloween is such a big deal to Universal that this month, it opened Universal Horror Unleashed, a truly year-round version of HHN, and a second location is already planned. This year, Universal Studios Hollywood debuted Fan Fest Nights, a non-spooky version of Horror Nights, as a way to try and capture that same success at another time of year.

But, if things continue to creep, where does it stop? Halloween in early August? Halloween in July? Is anything after Independence Day fair game? It feels like that’s where we’re going, and I just can’t get behind that.

The Halloween/Christmas Transition Only Makes It All Worse

Then, of course, you have the post-Halloween period, which is really just the pre-Christmas period. As soon as the Halloween decorations come down, and sometimes before that, the Christmas decorations start to go up. The break between the two is only a couple of weeks or so in most places. That frequently means that the non-holiday entertainment that ended when Halloween started doesn’t have time to return at all, meaning once it’s gone in August, we don’t see it again until January, assuming it comes back at all.

I’m sure I’m raining on a lot of Halloween parades with this; for a lot of people it seems like year round Halloween would be preferable to making it smaller, but there’s a lot of fun to be had at theme parks outside of the spooky season, and the bigger it gets, the less time there is for all of that.