Horror Nights R.I.P Tour is it worth it???

[daboyz5177]

Okay I've actually done some homework already but would like to get the forums help...we are planning a Florida trip 2nd week of October. Only Universal thing we have planned is HHN for October 14th, its pretty much top tier price for this day. I have family from Tampa who I will treating to this so I ask is it really worth the extra $1000 bucks for 4 tickets for the non private tour that evening +regular admission or should we just do the express that evening for about half the price??? We don't plan on coming back probably for several years so its one of our main trips to Florida to see family and make some good memories??? What are some extra benefits that people who have done this enjoy the most? Thanks!

 

[macraven]

Friday nights get crowds

The non private rip tour would guarentee you see all the houses and reserved seats for the bill and Ted show

You would have less waits if you book the rip tour

Once your tour is over, you can use your glow stick/ credentials of tour to use express lines for each of the rides once

When the tours go to the entrance to the houses, they get priority to enter over the standby and express lines

Rip tours are a great way to see the houses and one show in one night

It is planned in advance by your tour guide to cover it all during your time period

You don't have to plan a thing
You avoid most of the crowds and just follow your leader that night

I do rip tours each year for Hhn
On the other nights I am there, I have the express

Tours are the way to do Hhn especially if you only have one night

 

[daboyz5177]

@macraven In the staging area before your tour, I understand there is a cash bar (not really a benefit) anything extra involved during that process...not sure if I read somewhere maybe a different HHN location that they had movie memorabilia to view during that time???

 

[macraven]

You meet up at the vip tour lobby and sign in for your tour

Once all are signed in, you go upstairs to the vip lounge

Bar is open and prices about the same as they are in the park

Some years there have been Hhn related items in the upstairs hallway that leads you into the lounge

The lounge itself will have tables and chairs in the room

Really nothing extra but a place to wait until your tour begins the night

If you decide to do the non private tour, book before the event starts

Never know if anymore dates are sold out unless it is listed on the booking site

I started doing the non private tours in 2003

Changed to the private tours some years back
Both are great

This year I booked one private rip tour and one non private rip tour

 

[daboyz5177]

@macraven thanks a bunch...I lived in Orlando back in the late 90's early 2000's when universal started building City walk & Islands of Adventure I remember when it was only about $30-40 bucks to get int HHN.... it wasn't as near as big as it is now.....think we'll book the tour tomorrow for the 14th...

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

We did the RIP tour (non private) last year, and thought it was well worth the $$. We had a great guide, which definitely helped to enhance the experience and up the value of the add-on. We were literally ushered into each house with absolutely no wait....ahead of both the Express and standby lines. There were a few behind-the-scenes extras (like access to the sunken area at Men in Black, which is normally off-limits to guests except to those who are mummy-dusted with the Immigration Tour) which were nice inclusions, too.

If you want to check out our full review of the event (including the non-private RIP tour) and see our pictures, you can check out my trip report here:

http://www.disboards.com/threads/ca...-inspired-offsite-tr-oct-2015.3457471/page-14

 

[schumigirl]

@macraven thanks a bunch...I lived in Orlando back in the late 90's early 2000's when universal started building City walk & Islands of Adventure I remember when it was only about $30-40 bucks to get int HHN.... it wasn't as near as big as it is now.....think we'll book the tour tomorrow for the 14th...

Good choice! Macraven gives the best advice for HHN!!!

One of my friends and her husband have booked for the 14th too........wow.......can't imagine paying only 30 bucks to get into HHN.......those were the days........

 

[cschaaf]

I'd really love to do the RIP Tour, but I just can't justify the price.

We only have one night we can go - a Sunday.

$55.99 x 2 = $111.98

If we added the RIP that night, it would be:

$229.99 x 2 = $459.98

$111.98 + $459.98 = $571.96 for one night? Nah, can't do it.

We'll just pick the 3 or 4 houses we'd like to get through and just experience those. Anything else will be a bonus.

I'm sure the tour is great, and I know we'll be frustrated having to stand in a long line or two and missing out on some of the houses, but all that added up still won't equal the $571 for us.

 

[schumigirl]

cschaaf.......could your budget go to buying the EP since you only have one night?

It would make a massive difference to your evening. We have seen horrendous queues even on so called quiet nights for certain houses......usually the best ones of course.........

We can go 10 nights and still wouldn't do it without EP as we hate queueing.........in saying that, we buy the Rush of Fear ticket with EP.........works out quite a bargain. For one night it's not going to be as good a bargain.

 

[macraven]

My October trips are always about Hhn
Whatever the cost is I pay it

Hhn is the reason for that vacation so I go all out for it


If doing Hhn is a one time thing, you can have options to economize that night

Some tips you can use to help you :

Be in the park around afternoon and hit the rides
Stay in the park when it closes and wait the time out in one of the holding areas

You can get two houses down with limited waits
It won't be dark outside is the only drawback doing a house before dusk
It is a different experience in the house when it is dark outside

But you won't have much of a wait

By the time the gate is opened and all enter, you would be in line for your third house of the event

You will encounter line waits in some houses
Read about Hhn once it opens to see where the long lines are for the favorite houses
Hit those after the first 3 have been done

For those that do not have park tickets, lime up at the gate early
I mean real early.....

I see line ups at the gate on the weekend Hhn nights starting anytime around 4:30 depending on the night/date
Fri-sat-sun are the ones I'm talking about

If outside the gate you will want to be up in the line as close to the entrance possible

You go thru metal detectors and bag search before entering the park

This is time consuming and you will hit lines once it is 7
Lines later in the evening will grow long for the hot houses , ones more popular

 

[cschaaf]

Thanks for the replies.

EE is much more affordable than RIP and something we may consider.

We go in October because my wife is a teacher and that's her break. The first, and so far, only time we went in Oct was in 2014 and we had no real interest in HHN. We figured, "We'll be there, might as well give it a try" and we ended up liking it - but not loving it.

We did the holding area wait and ended up seeing all but 2 of the houses - Dracula (had no interest, we could have done that one if we wanted. We were just too tired to bother) and Walking Dead (wanted to do that one, but the line was way too long).

We also went to Bill and Ted, which we now know we can skip - it wasn't really for us.

We did the Unmasking tour and are thinking about doing that again - though it might be worth it to scrap the Unmasking tour and do EE instead.

 

[slford00]

My wife and I haven't ever done an RIP tour, so I can't speak to whether it's worth it. If your goal is simply to see everything (all houses + shows), I don't know if you HAVE to do RIP tour.

We've gone to HHN 3 years (2012 and the last two years), got express passes each time, and have never had a difficult time doing all the houses. All the houses PLUS all the shows PLUS all the open rides is tougher but possibly doable with a good plan (okay, maybe not ALL the rides). Now, I should note that none of the nights we've gone were "peak." 2012 was mid-week a couple days before Halloween, 2014 was actually November 1st (outside of the Walking Dead and Halloween houses, we didn't even need express passes), and last year was on a Sunday in mid-October (10/18). It is very possible that on a Fri/Sat night seeing everything in one night is a lot harder, even with Express (I wouldn't know).

I absolutely agree with macraven--October is all for HHN. We now make it a point to hit it yearly if possible (we live in TX currently). It's one of my favorite nights of the year, every time.

 

[BelleWannabe4]

I did the non-private RIP tour last year and thought it was completely worth it. We went on a Saturday night the weekend before Halloween (probably THE worst night to go) and the lines for all of the houses were 2-4 hours by 7:30 pm. After the tour, we tried to go on the Mummy with the Express passes and the Express line was almost an hour. The streets were so crowded it was hard to move. If we hadn't done the RIP tour, I'm not sure how much we would have seen even with EP. Obviously, if we had been able to go another weekend, it would have been a different story. We also only had one night that we were able to go because we were only in Florida for the weekend.

What worked really well for us was waiting in the holding pen near Lucy's, immediately going into the first house, seeing two scare zones, doing a second house, riding Gringott's and getting a butter beer, riding MIB and then walking back through 2 scare zones. We then met our 8 pm tour at 7:30. The tour was great. I could have done with a bit less time at the "VIP bars", esp since they didn't have much seating, but it was nice to have light crowds in the restrooms. In one night, we saw all 9 houses, all of the scare zones in the light and in the dark, rode Gringott's twice, MIB and Mummy once each and saw both shows. There was no way we could have done that without the tour.

 

[ThistleMae]

You just never know how crowded it will be but when I went a couple years ago, we did two nights. One with express, and one without. We saw everything and went on all the rides the first night, and did rides and the shows the second night. We would have had no trouble without express on that first night. I guess we hit it just right. The "alleged" experts say to go during the first week, so this year we got the 10 day pass, rush of fear I think it's called. We are going for three nights, and did not get the express pass. We are doing one afternoon of the behind the scenes for three of the houses. It is always super amazing every year!

 

[macraven]

I agree with the homie above me

If you are going multiple nights
You can bypass the ep

What you don't t see in one night, you can catch on another night

You will love UTH tour

All the details and story background will wow you during the tour

 

[cschaaf]

I think we've decided to skip the Unmasking tour this year and put that money towards the FF+ pass. We'll arrive late on a Thursday and probably won't be able to make it that night - depends on how early we can scoot from work. But we'll be able to go to HHN on Friday and Sunday for sure.

If we do Stay and Scream both nights, we should be able to get in 2 - 3 houses before the crowds come in each night. We'll wait and see what the popular houses are, then plan our S&S wait areas around that.

 

[macraven]

I think that will work out well
Ep will help you do everything done in the two nights you are there

Hitting houses early makes it easier
You can use the ep for those houses later when it is darker and later in the evening to do as a repeat

 

[cschaaf]

They've officially priced me out of EP. Not mad, it is what it is. More power to those willing to pay for the added service.

 

[macraven]

They've officially priced me out of EP. Not mad, it is what it is. More power to those willing to pay for the added service.

Thought you posted it was the FF+ pass you were getting

If you do 3 nights of Hhn on the pass + , it would be worth the cost

Ep alone is $100 or more per night
FF+ without fri/ sat would be a good thing financially

The ff+ that includes Friday would mean you needed to hit 4 nights of Hhn to come out ahead

Maybe I misunderstood what you posted though

The basic FF pass is better than buying individual Hhn nights if you plan on doing a couple of nights there

 

[cschaaf]

Ah, no. We're looking at the FF Plus (I used the + which was confusing) No EP option.

Frequent Fear would get us Thursday and Sunday. We don't think we can make it on Thursday and if we did, we wouldn't be there very long - so essentially, that would be paying $103 for a single night. Maybe we could stretch it to 1.5 nights.

Frequent Fear Plus gets us Thurs, Fri, and Sun for $120.

Here is the breakdown that I have charted (all prices adjusted for the dates we will be there - Oct 13 - 16) for the two of us:

• 1 night of HHN + EP (Sunday - the cheapest day) = $352
• 2 nights HHN, No EP (Fri and Sun) = $246
• Frequent Fear, no EP (Thurs (half the time at best) and Sun) = $206
• Frequent Fear Plus, No EP (Thurs (1/2), Fri, and Sun) = $238

So it looks like the best value for us is the FF Plus, No EP option. It gets us there the most nights - and is cheaper than buying the 2 nights separately.

Even if we throw out Thursday, which seems like the most likely case for us, the FF Plus is a better deal than the 2 days individually.

Unless I've done something very wrong with my calculations or if I don't understand the ticket options??

I appreciate the help!