The hit franchise Fallout has made its Halloween Horror Nights debut at Universal Studios Florida. Will we survive a nuclear wasteland or will we get captured by the Ghoul?
Backstory
Like Five Nights at Freddy’s, the Fallout house is based on a franchise that began as a series of video games. The range of games follow various survivors from locations in a post-apocalyptic USA. Nuclear war has come and gone, and while some surface dwellers exist, a lot of the focus is on those who survived in the Vaults.
One of the more disturbing elements of the game series is that the Vaults were used not just to protect the human race, but to conduct a series of experiments on the inhabitants. These run the gamut from biological to psychological, and many don’t have happy endings.
A new story was created for a streaming series of the same name on Amazon Prime, and the house follows the show’s first season rather than the games.
Guests follow Lucy MacLean’s journey from the safe cradle of Vault 33 into the wasteland in search of her father.
Review
As one would expect from a house linked to Amazon Prime, it is very loyal to the show. It is difficult to tell in the dark if there are a ton of little Easter eggs, but we did not see too many in our first run.
The general storyline of the house follows the whole first season, picking up right as the Vault 32 scavengers are attacking after the wedding scene. The town sets are extremely detailed and lifelike. We particularly like the midcentury design elements, though we are perhaps biased in that regard.
The house does not include several main moments or characters, however. Dogmeat does not appear, nor does the showdown at Filly (spoiler alert) between Lucy, Maximus, and the Ghoul.
There was a single scene in the Super Duper Mart that had Ghouls in freezers, which was very cool. However, this is not a scary house. It’s all jump scares and has no actually good tricks, apart from a couple of times when there are actors to see on both sides of the room.
Overall, we realized the show version of Fallout was perhaps not the best medium for a haunted house. This has the opposite problem as The Last of Us house, which should have leaned into the show. In this case, Fallout really should have leaned into the original games instead of borrowing so heavily from the show. It would have led to more horror moments naturally.
As one other strange note, they have a Nuka Cola bottle staged in the house. Why is Universal not selling these? Do they not want our money?
Rating
As fans of the Fallout show, we enjoyed this house. But as fans of HHN, this falls flat. In a year stacked with several solid options, this is too mid-tier to be memorable.
Rating out of 7: 4
Know Before You Go
Location
The Fallout house is located in Sprung Tent 4, which is near Men in Black Alien Attack! and Gálkn: Monsters of the North.
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