Since Nintendo was announced in December to be coming to Universal parks across the globe, fans have been wading in as to where any potential Nintendo land would be located. The consensus appears to be that KidZone is the prime location for any potential expansion for this exciting IP. Whilst HHNU has been inundated with rumors on the potential rides and attractions that may be appearing (note: this is a HHN news and rumors site!) it all leads to one inevitable conclusion – the Parade Building will have to be scrapped.
The official name of this building is B-79 but most people call it the Parade Building. It is the large corrugated clad building located directly behind the Curious George play area. The structure was built back in 2008 as a warehouse to house and maintain the various floats from the daytime parades. It debuted that year with Scary Tales: Once Upon A Nightmare, followed up by the excellent Silver Screams, the retrospective Horror Nights: The Hallow’d Past, the memorable The Forsaken, the awful Universal’s House Of Horrors, The Walking Dead: No Safe Haven, Roanoke: Cannibal Colony, The Walking Dead: The Living And The Dead and the irrepressible Halloween: Hell Comes To Haddonfield. The large space and high ceilings afforded the room to create some truly awesome houses.
There has also been some downsides to this house. The building is liable to flooding and one house even had to be rebuilt when the storms surged gallons of rainwater into the building. Then there’s the cast changes where scareactors have to ignominiously walk past the lines of HHN goers to get in and out the house – kinda ruins the scares no? Then there’s Universal’s issues with the house and the need to build additional parade housing as the houses within this building were taking longer and longer to build owing to the event’s popularity. And finally, being that it is located right over at the corner of the park it does create a logistical challenge every year to get the lines of people into the house whilst feeding them out and then allowing the Sprung Tents to dump out or enter in via the same cramped bottle neck. Hey Barney! (Who?)
All of which are not impossible, but with Nintendo, this house will surely be redundant for HHN purposes. That’s why today it was found on the City of Orlando’s building permit database that Universal are planning to build a new warehouse miles away. Miles away!? Yep. Universal are planning to build a new giant warehouse off-property to house out of season props and parade floats, along with moving some of the offices out back in modular buildings to this new warehouse. Universal have for years now rented a warehouse out near the airport to house all the past HHN props, so this too could likely be folded into the mix for this new venue. With the cost of this warehouse being a staggering $3.3 million, it will surely be HUGE!
If Universal relocates the Parade Building for the coming Nintendo land to this new venue, it will surely take with it the offices and other sites to the rear here to make way for this land. These other movements could allow for other temporary backstage haunt locations that can easily replace the Parade Building on the HHN roster of houses. Temporary haunts like Chance’s house from last year are relatively easy and cheap to build whilst ensuring the magic 8 number of houses are always maintained.
HHNU have heard that the Parade Building is being put out of use for good after this year to make way for heavy construction of the new land. Parade Building aside, if the whole land goes offline to allow the construction it will surely allow a great deal of change for HHN28 (of which we have speculated on HHNU before), though with the additional removal or thinning out of backstage offices and stores this could free up some real estate to install a HHN replacement for the Parade Building. Any new houses would have to be accessed via the Soundstages as the other old route through the back of Beetlejuice is also off-line right now but should be back online following the Fast and Furious construction ending this year.
All in all, it appears the glorious Parade Building with its short 10 year tenure of 9 excellent houses for HHN will come to an end.
Will you miss it? Let us know what you think Universal should do instead?
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