Regarding this Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) house, I followed all the rumors. The most consistent rumor revolved around a prison. We learned that the name of this house would be “Hellblock Horror.”  For this Halloween event, guests will enter cell block #31. Universal Orlando told us that guests would enter a prison whose savage inmates are monstrous creatures. If they break free from their cells, it’s a death sentence for everyone.

Well, for the record, they do escape. If you dare to enter this house, you will see many monsters from previous HHN houses. They threaten to tear apart the world as we know it. The only hope involves setting off the power core.

All this madness happens in a soundstage area with an entrance between the Universal Studios store and the Despicable Me attraction. On a positive note, if it rains, this house provides an indoor queue within a soundstage. However, the queue for this house can be misleading since you enter a soundstage winding queue before reaching the real soundstage entrance.

This house leaves me with lots of questions. In fairness, if rumors are to be believed, this house emerged as a back-up plan for an intellectual property house that failed to happen. Some colleagues of mine expressed how they could see evidence of something evil (and perhaps dead) that might have been originally intended in this house location. As a relative HHN rookie, I cannot confirm those thoughts.

What I can confirm revolves around my confusion with the plot point of needing to destroy the power core. If these prisoners display such terror for the space time continuum, should there not be better safeguards? If we destroy the power core, do we not destroy ourselves also? Why would I sign up for this horrible mission anyway?

Despite all of that, the standard theme park trope of something going wrong shines in this house. The inmates have taken over the prison. During your trip through this house, you will find various states of prison cells and hallways. If you look carefully, you see that this prison housed all types of alien creatures. The symbols on the walls start to clue you into that.

However, this house functions as a well-designed jump scare house. If you are a big fan of previous houses with monsters of all types, then this house will be for you. So far, this house, however, has developed shorter queues compared to other houses. I found this house to be good but nothing special. It makes a good “Plan B” house. Still, most people found this house to be just okay.

My advice would be to skip this house at the beginning of your Halloween Horror Nights evening. You should be able to experience it with a lower wait later in the evening since it is located near the entrance to the theme park. All in all, I feel if you missed this house, your event night would not be ruined. I have only been through that house twice at this point so maybe I will change my mind. Either way, I wish you a great spooky season.