I love Halloween Horror Nights. Everyone knows I love anything and everything horror-related. For someone who scares easily, it doesn't quite make sense that I enjoy horror movies or haunted houses... maybe it's just the thrill and adrenaline. This year was my third ever HHN experience, and the best by far.

We got our (open-dated) tickets for $49 each (Thanks V!) and we hesitated too much and the express passes ended up being way out of our budget. We were (hesitantly) willing to fork out the money (~$75 on top of the admission tickets) but in the end we couldn't find a seller with enough tickets for the date we wanted. So we just went for it. Ready to do it without the express passes. We didn't expect much, we just wanted to finish as many haunted houses as we could. The previous two times I attended HHN, I completed at most 3 or 4 of the houses. That's why I was so bummed about not getting the express passes. But that was the best thing to happen to us. 

We planned to meet at 5:30pm at Harbourfront MRT, ample time for us to get whatever food for us to eat while we're in the queue. N and I were a little late but we were in the queue by 6:15pm? We actually asked the counter how much the express passes were (again, yes) and the price was jacked up to $90 per pass? Ridiculous. 

We waited for the rest to arrive and I swear I was so angry because they were late. It was about 6:40pm when there was a lot of lightning and thunder and I was cursing my luck because (1) we had no express pass which meant a lot of waiting, and (2) it was going to rain, which meant a lot of waiting... in the rain. So I was really angry and moody, it was 7+, they still weren't there, the gates finally opened and we were really close to the front so N and I were literally calling them and asking them to run. The worst part: Once they reached us, N was handing out the tickets and I noticed she only had five in her hand and there were six of us. So we got held up at the gates after bag checks. Insy was looking around on the floor when this really nice guy (pretty much saved the day tbh) came up to me and asked "Are you looking for a ticket? I think the security guy has it" so I went up and asked for it and they asked me where I got it from (to verify if it was really my ticket I guess) and he passed it to Insy and we legit ran to the front of where the horde was. I don't know how but the rest were literally eating chicken while we were waiting for HHN to officially begin. The moment they announced that HHN has begun, WE RAN towards the first haunted house (Terror-Cotta Empress). We followed this map by Dejiki. 

S is so fit, she legit ran the whole way, with me and N close behind. Insy was behind us and F & Nd was way behind. I thought my heart was going to stop. I'm incredibly unfit. I haven't gone for a run since July or August so running that distance was no joke. Sara reached first obviously and we were standing in the queue and I couldn't breathe. It literally hurt to take a deep breath. I was hyperventilating and my vision was fading and my hearing was muffled. I felt like falling over. Sara went over to get F & Nd who were stuck at the back because people didn't let them cut queue lol. In less than three minutes, we were already in the first haunted house. I was pretty much dragged by Insy or S and apparently that was the scariest haunted house but I was really just... gone. I felt so numb and in a daze but at the same time, in a lot of pain because I couldn't breathe properly. Tragic, I know. I suck. I just have a really bad habit of overexerting myself and then regretting it after. After that haunted house, we took a seat for a bit bc I was legit dying. But I was determined not to waste our headstart, I mean c'mon we waited three minutes for a haunted house with no express pass. I was not going to waste that. So I said, "Let's go to the next one". We skipped the Happy Horror Days scare zone because we wanted to finish the haunted houses first. 

So we went straight to Hex. The queue for this was probably about 10-15 minutes. I wasn't keeping track. I was still dying. Headaches, it still hurt to breathe. I wanted to take out my ring light so we could take pictures and selfies but my hands were digging around my bag for minutes, but for the life of me, I couldn't feel or hold onto anything. I felt so weak lol. I was telling myself that after this I was gonna sit out and they could just go on without me for a bit. But surprise surprise, as I walked through Hex (I led this one), I felt so calm and relaxed. It was getting easier and less painful for me to breathe again. So weird that a haunted house could do this, but I felt so much better after this!!! They were all like "How come Tiara relax je no reaction"

We went to Make The Cut next. Honestly, I can't remember much about what happened inside the haunted houses lol I have such bad memory. One thing I realised was that it's a lot scarier to be behind your friends than in front. Because if you're right in front, you can sort of see ahead and predict what's about to happen or what ghost is gonna jump out at you. But if you're behind all your friends then you pretty much see only their arm and back and you'll be completely unprepared for that something hiding in the corner, waiting to scare the bejeezus out of you. Here are some pictures from The Queue™.

OMG after we left this haunted house, I got the worst cramps ever in BOTH my calves. I literally couldn't walk at all. I was hobbling around, about to cry, about to fall right in the middle of the road but I hobbled somemore to the sidewalk and called N who came and tried to massage it out while I stretched my calves out. Some guy (who worked at HHN) asked if I needed a medic and I just told him no and that it was just calf cramps. Then he said "Are you sure you don't need a medic? Or I can massage?" I didn't even hear that second part until N told me later on what he said. So inappropriate and unprofessional lol. I felt slightly better but the cramps like... comes and goes (until today) (It's still sore) 

So after we finished Human, it was 12:45am? We went towards the mummy lockers and wanted to get our bags and leave because some of us had booked GrabHitch for 1:30am.......... This is when shit went down. They had a human barricade by the staff and the head of security said "No. This area is closed" and we said that we wanted to collect our bags. The girls who were part of the human barricade looked like they wanted to help and they asked like which locker we kept our bags at etc. But the asshole head of security insisted "This area is closed. You can collect your bags at Guest Services" I think either S or N asked how long it would take and he replied confidently "a few minutes". So we slowly walked towards Guest Services. Once we reached, I approached the counter and asked if we could collect our bags. The guy there rudely said "What bags? We can't take bags from your locker for you. You have to go there yourself" I replied calmly, albeit being taken aback by how rude his tone was, "We were told by security that the area is closed and we could collect it here" and he just shrugged and repeated "We can't open lockers for you" like stupid or what I was pretty damn clear. The lady next to him was nicer and told us that we could just wait outside. So we waited. And waited. For a whole hour. Another guy came up to us asking us which locker was ours but it didn't seem like he did anything with that information. We were pissed. Security asshole said "a few minutes" which really means less than five minutes because more than five would be "several" and more than ten would be "awhile". We had no water, no phones (all of it were in our bags bc we came from the rollercoasters). We were not late. And the worst part was that everyone we asked kept saying it was protocol. That they would close the area and have people check each locker one by one and any items found would be brought to the Guest Services. If it was protocol like they said, more people would be affected, considering we were blocked from collecting our items at 12:45am. But nope. We were the only ones waiting. At about 1:45am [NOTE WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR AN HOUR] we were so done. We were dehydrated, tired and ultimately PISSED at how unprofessional they were being. It would've taken less than two minutes for one of the staff or the security guy himself to escort us to get our bags. TWO MINUTES. But nope "PROTOCOL". Another lady, bless her, asked us again what our locker number was and what's inside and she made two guys run there and get our stuff and run back. They came back, sweaty as hell, with all our belongings and we were so grateful. It was 2am at this point.  What we didn't understand was why this wasn't done earlier. If this nice lady could've asked any random two staff to help take our stuff for us, I don't understand why we waited for one hour and fifteen minutes just to get our stuff. We rushed out and started booking our Grabs ($42 to Pasir Ris) and reached home at 2:30-2:40am? Really really really angry at how they handled the situation. We understand that it's protocol. But that guy knew we had our bags in the locker and we were supposed to wait till they finished going through every locker one by one....??????? So he lied about it taking only "a few minutes"??? And it baffles me how nobody else was affected. And the fact that they took over an hour to bring us our belongings. Disappointed by how the night ended. 

Hope you all have a great HHN experience without getting shitty treatment like what happened above. Fridays and Sundays would be the best days to go if you don't have an express pass. (Friend said the wait for all rides was 5 minutes on Sunday)