Busch Gardens Williamsburg - Howl-O-Scream 2021

A couple of weeks ago, Carol, Ben, his girlfriend, Talia, and I drove down to Busch Gardens Williamsburg to attend their annual Howl-O-Scream event. This event mimics the annual festival created by Universal Studios Orlando, which introduced "Halloween Horror Nights", with special haunted houses and scare zones, 30 years ago! In 2018, Carol and I attended Halloween Horror Nights at Universal and had a fantastic time, but since we aren't willing to go to Orlando during the pandemic, we settled on Busch Gardens for our Halloween fix instead.

We'd never been to the park before and were reasonably impressed. While it doesn't reach Disney levels of theming, the park is beautiful and there's definitely a lot to do. The park is organized into different "lands" based on several European countries, each land echoing the architecture and cuisine of the country on which it's based. There are also a bunch of roller coasters, if that's what you're into (Ben and Talia were, Carol and I were not).

Unfortunately, the park was very crowded and it was obvious they're having labor problems, as a number of restaurants -- sit-down, counter service and even kiosks -- were closed, making it difficult and time-consuming to eat. What's worse, there were so few places serving beer that you had to wait about 45 minutes in line to get served. In other words, we couldn't get BEER at Busch Gardens.

So how was the Howl-O-Scream event? I was underwhelmed, although that comes with caveats. First, we only got to walk through 3 of the 5 haunted houses because of the huge lines, so we didn't see everything. When we were in Orlando, we went through 10 of 10 in about the same amount of time. The difference is that we went to Orlando in September, and we went to Busch Gardens the week before Halloween. So, not exactly fair to compare the two experiences.

As for the set design, theming and scare actors, I thought the three houses we went through were fine, but nothing special. They seemed short, and while some of the scary theming was well done, some wasn't. For example, the Nevermore house (pictured above) had a fantastic outside, but the inside was mostly a big empty building separated into corridors and rooms by hanging curtains. Not exactly terror inducing. (I wonder what becomes of the building during non-Halloween times?) The labor shortage also seemed to affect the scare zones, as they were really understaffed.

Universal really does set an unattainable standard. Their set design is incredible, the costuming often very creepy, and the whole experience is amazing. That's probably because Universal is a movie studio and has experience creating horror sets, costumes, characters and storylines, not to mention owning a bunch of horror IP. Also, given the obvious difference in park funding, it's really not fair to compare Busch Gardens to Universal.

We had a fun, if absolutely exhausting, day and would like to go back some time. Next time we'll go earlier in the season to avoid the crowds. Fewer people would have made a huge difference to our experience.