I Attended SeaWorld's Howl-O-Scream For The First Time, And It Proved That Sometimes Less Is More

It’s only the middle of September, but the spooky season has been in full swing at most theme parks for at least a week or two, if not more. You have your pick of hard ticket Halloween events. At this point, every park has one. I certainly haven’t been to them all, but I’ve been to a few, and recently I added Howl-O-Scream at SeaWorld San Diego to the list.

Having never been to Howl-O-Scream, and having not even been to SeaWorld in longer than I care to admit, I didn’t really know what to expect from the experience, but after having done it, I’m certainly glad I did. It may not have been the biggest or the scariest Halloween event I’ve been to, but that’s not a bad thing. And in one way, it was absolutely the weirdest.

Howl-O-Scream Is Smaller Than Halloween Horror Nights, But That's Not A Bad Thing

On paper, it’s difficult not to compare Howl-O-Scream to something like Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights. Both events have multiple haunted houses, walk-through attractions with unique themes that present unique opportunities for jump scares. Both have Scare Zones, open-air spaces filled with scare actors to add to the atmosphere, and occasionally jump out at you from the darkness. Both have unique themed food and drink.

Comparing them straight across, SeaWorld certainly looks small. It has five haunted houses, compared to the eight you’ll find at Universal Studios Hollywood or the 10 you’ll get if you go to the same event in Orlando. However, just because SeaWorld may have a smaller event, that doesn’t make it any less.

While it’s great that some parks can offer a lot of options for haunted attractions at Halloween, the more you have, the more difficult it is to actually do them all in a single visit. On my recent trip to Halloween Horror Nights, I was barely able to do all eight houses, plus the Terror Tram, and that was with the Express Pass that was provided to me.

At Howl-O-Scream, I also had the event’s Quick Queue ability, but even without it, I would have been able to experience all five houses in a reasonable amount of time. This gave me much more time to experience everything else SeaWorld had to offer. Three of the park’s roller coasters were open for use, and riding roller coasters at night is almost always superior to riding them in daylight. I also had plenty of time to enjoy the park’s excellent food and drink. And speaking of drink…

How To Uncover Howl-O-Scream's Hidden Secrets

One of the unique elements of Howl-O-Scream is that each of the haunted houses has a unique location that isn’t part of the normal path. Each house has a hidden speakeasy. If you can find the hidden door and give the password (check social media), you can enter each house’s themed bar. Each one has a unique cocktail as well as the Howl-O-Scream “Blood bag.”

While this is obviously an added boon to anyone looking for an adult beverage, it gave each house a little something extra that was worth seeking out, even if you didn’t need another drink. It added some fun to the experience, and it was cool to see part of the houses that not everybody would experience.

And the fact that Howl-O-Scream is just a little bit smaller an event is part of what made this work. One imagines that any sort of “hidden” location wouldn’t be so hidden if crowds were massive. There’d be a line telling you exactly where to go, and that’s not nearly as much fun.

Howl-O-Scream Is More About Creepy Than Scary

When I attended Halloween Horror Nights earlier this month, it was my first time, and a big reason for that was my personal aversion to the concept of jump scares. I hate them, and I knew that HHN would have a lot of them, so I tended to avoid the event.

As it turned out, I didn’t mind the jump scares nearly as much as I expected to, which is part of the reason I was ready to try again with SeaWorld’s Howl-O-Scream event. And it turns out jump scares weren’t nearly as big an issue here either, though not because they didn’t bother me so much as there just weren't as many.

It’s not to say they don’t exist, there are scare actors both in scare zones and in the houses who will jump at you under the right circumstances, but they are much fewer and further between here. This isn’t a bad thing, as it makes the jump scares that do happen a bit more impactful, as they are far less predictable, but also, if you do not love jump scares, it’s just a better experience.

The haunted houses are much more focused on being spooky than scary. As somebody who can appreciate the atmosphere of a horror movie even more than any more visceral frights, I can get behind this. And things can be even lighter than that. I watched scare actors in the Scare Zones interacting with kids in a variety of ways. They would be spooky with teens who were likely looking for that, but for younger kids, the actors could actually be quite funny, so as not to make those kids uncomfortable.

Monster Stomp On Ripper Row is An Absolute Fever Dream That Needs To Be Experienced

While I enjoyed my time at Howl-O-Scream, a description of the experience is incomplete without discussing the wildest theme park show I’ve seen in a long time. Monster Stomp On Ripper Row is what happens when you take the improvised percussion of a Stomp stage show, combine it with late nineteenth-century English prostitute murder, and then throw in a dash of rock opera for good measure. The final show is about 40% weirder than that sounds.

I can’t really describe the show beyond this. Was there a plot? Not really, not one that I followed anyway. It was more just a series of musical setpieces, but each one was wilder than the last, and the cast on stage gave every minute of it their all. When the glow-in-the-dark skeletons start dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” you assume you’ve seen everything, until the full cast breaks into a rendition of Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz” for reasons I can only assume made sense to somebody at some point.

How Does Howl-O-Scream Stack Up To Other Theme park Halloween Experiences?

Comparing theme park Halloween events isn’t so much about deciding which one is better and figuring out what sort of experience you’re looking for. Generally speaking, you have Universal Halloween Horror Nights on one end of the spectrum, and Disney’s events like Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween party and the Oogie Boogie Bash on the other. Each of those basically tells you exactly what it is on the label.

SeaWorld San Diego’s Howl-O-Scream fits nicely in between when it comes to its thrill factor. It’s going to give you more scary moments than Disney, and might act as a solid stepping stone to something more tense if you want to see if you’d be up for that.

Howl-O-Scream is also simply fun. It’s a worthwhile experience to check out for fans of theme parks, fans of Halloween, and especially people who love both.,