Last month Freeform announced Halloween House, a unique experience at the historic Lombardi House in Hollywood, CA celebrating their “31 Nights of Halloween” programming event. I was fortunate enough to secure a Saturday night spot and last night the family and I took the trek down to Hollywood for a night of Halloween fun. My thoughts? The entire experience was magic (Minus parking).
The experience makes you feel like you’ve been taken into the world of Freeform’s “31 nights of Halloween.” When you first enter you walk through a tunnel that looks like its straight out of a Tim Burton film. On the other side, Ooogie Boogie’s lair, Dr. Finklesteins lab, the Sanderson Sisters house and a cemetery featuring tombstones of some of your favorite 31 Nights of Halloween characters await. (Note: Be sure to read the fine print on the tombstones. The tombstone of Morticia and Gomez Addams was my favorite.)
Once inside you’ll discover that Freeform hasn’t skimped on the detail here. You’re definitely in Hollywoid. The lighting, the fog effects, and the decor is all top quality and around every turn is a new photo opp based on scenes and characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas and Hocus Pocus.
As you can see from the signs above, the cemetery at the Freeform Halloween House features half a dozen different experiences including one-of-a-kind photo spots where you can get your photo snapped by a photographer and have the image emailed to you. The best part about this is that photos are linked to the wristband you receive when you enter the event so you simply take your photo, swipe your band with the photographer and go about your night.
One of the first photo opportunities you’ll encounter is Lock, Shock, and Barrel’s bathtub, where you can put on the masks of Lock, Shock, or Barrel grab a weapon, climb in the tub and get your photo taken as you get read to go kidnap the Sandy Claws.
At Spiral Hill, Freeform has recreated the iconic spiral hill from The Nightmare Before Christmas in front of a huge yellow moon. Here, you can recreate Jack and Sally’s iconic scene from the film. Nearby, you’ll find the grave of Zero, Jack’s ghost dog, and while not a designated photo spot its definitely worth checking out and taking your own photo with.
A short distance further you’ll come upon the plot of Winifred Sanderson’s scorned lover Billy Butcherson from Hocus Pocus. For this photo opp, you get to become Billy Butcherson by putting on a wig and jacket and then settle in for a dirt nap inside Billy’s coffin.
Next to Billy’s plot is another Hocus Pocus themed photo where you can take a photo with the statue of Winifred Sanderson.
In addition to the cemetery, there are three main rooms to explore. From The Nightmare Before Christmas, you can visit Oogie Boogie’s Lair and Finklestein’s Lab. And from Hocus Pocus, you can visit the Sanderson Sisters house.
In Oogie Boogies lair you can test your luck at the Wheel of Misfortune where you have a shot at winning a trick, a treat, a Butterfinger, or if you’re really lucky, the jackpot. Landing on treat scored me some rock candy, landing on trick scored my a fang ring, and my son, who hit the jackpot walked away with the Nightmare Before Christmas edition of Yahtzee.
Next door at Finklestein’s Lab you can explore the laboratory of Dr. Finklestein where you’ll find many of the ingredients used by Sally in The Nightmare Before Christmas including Frogs Breath, and Deadly Night Shade. Here there are also two photo opps, one taken by the event photographer and another you can simply snap with your cell phone. Climb up on the slab and become a mad scientist’s creation and let your friends use propos like syringes, and thread to bring you to life or put on a lab coat and gloves and see if you can bring to life Jack’s skeleton reindeer.
The last stop in the Freeform Halloween House is the home of the Sanderson Sisters. Here you can add ingredients to the cauldron like tongue tips or dead man’s toe. They also have on display what I was told was the actual spell book from the Hocus Pocus film. This room also features one of the most unique photo opportunities. Here you can dress up like Winifred, Sarah, or Mary Sanderson and hop aboard a broom (or vacuum) to recreate the film’s movie poster. Wearing a cloak and with broom in hand, they take four photos of you in different poses and the final output actually comes to your email as an animated GIF.
Here you can also climb up in a cage and get your photo taken as if you were a prisoner of the Sanderson Sisters, or you can test your purity and see if you can light the black flame candle. This is a fun experience because in some instances the candle will basically mock you for having too many partners and basically being nowhere near a virgin.
On your way out there is a small booth set up with event merchandise like shirts, hoodies, bags, and stickers. One thing to note is that they only take cards, so if you’re thinking of taking home a souvenir don’t plan on buying it with cash. And finally, the sweetest part of the night, there’s a Butterfinger Buffet where you can score yourself a FULL SIZE Butterfinger bar.
As you can see from this recap this event is a ton of Halloween fun, especially if you’re a fan of Freeform’s “31 Nights of Halloween,” The Nightmare Before Christmas, or Hocus Pocus. The whole experience took about an hour and it was painless, the staff was super friendly and we had an overwhelmingly good time. The photos shared here are just a small sample of the fun that can be had at this event so if you already have tickets or are hoping to get tickets you’re in for a real Halloween treat.
As of the time of this writing, all times are currently sold out for this event, which is scheduled to continue through Tuesday. However, the event website does have a spot where you can sign up to be notified if additional spots open up and it might be worth signing up for if you think you can make it out to Hollywood for one of the other nights.
