I did not grow up with Halloween, as much as I envied the other kids in the neighbourhood with their trick or treat costomes and buckets of sweets. Turned out my parents thought the concept was entirely westernized and just not worth the trouble – as with most Asian parents. Strangely enough none of my friends were too bothered with Halloween even up to adult age.

Yes, I grew up a boring kid. Never attended a Halloween Party or even dressed up for it.

These days, I still have not gotten over wanting to celebrate Halloween and the Hubba and I have been religiously attending Universal Studios’ Halloween Themed Nights to make up for my lost childhood.

Three tips I picked up in handling a scare fest –



Somehow blood curdling screams, yelps and knee jerk reactions are all part of the show during Halloween. I have never stepped into a single haunted room and left without my heart thumping, digging my tallons into the poor husband’s arm and lastly heaving a sigh of relief for overcoming yet another frightful experience.

Truly, if the girl infront did not yell as if it were the scariest thing she had ever seen, the people behind would not react.

Fear is contagious and terribly so.

Humans are obsessed with gore

The scare actors deserve a ton of respect for being so passionate about their job – I mean who does not mind donning a Halloween outfit  and scaring the living daylights of another. AND, risk getting hit or physically abused for that. The strange thing is, I have a love hate relationship with it. I probably close my eyes through half of the haunted houses and squeeze the Hubba’s hands so tight until it turns cherry red anyway.

Despite my love hate relationship with scare fests, we have conquered three to date.

Fast passes are god sent!

The first year saw us stupidly queueing an hour over for each haunted house, and by the time we finished the second it was time to call it a night with two angry people.

The second year had us more prepared – I even took a long nap before the event but somehow it ended up even worse than the first, queue times were longer and there were more haunted houses to complete. I accomplished even fewer as the crowds were just too much to bear, neither was there time for more rides. We tried to practice more understanding but still ended up frustrated by the time the night ended.

The third year, we succumbed to fast passes which saw us breezing through the queues and completing all the haunted houses and even took one some rides gallantly. The sad thing then was the scare fests were not as scary as before.

Maybe for a change this year I will host a Halloween Party and dress up in the comforts of my home and load on a horror movie and chill the season with popcorn.