Finally Reviewing Last Year's Halloween Horror Nights Tribute Store
Written by Jonathan Wojcik
I had a few different posts last year about our trip to the Orlando Horror Nights, and I'd promised to talk a little about something else we'd seen, possibly our favorite thing there, only to get sidetracked with a lot of difficult work and end 2023's Halloween season a little prematurely. So, picking right up where I left off, today is August 1st, 2024, the start of another bogleech.com Halloween season, and I'm going to finally review our experience with The Tribute Store.
What exactly IS the Tribute Store? As far as I understand it, it's a gift shop that's also a walk-through attraction in itself, the theme of which changes with every season. The Tribute Store has taken on the form of a mad science lab, a Christmas wonderland, a classic film museum and dozens of other motifs, multiple times a year, never ever repeating the same thing twice in the same way. Judging by any of the photos or videos we've now seen, however, my spouse and I are pretty sure we saw it in its coolest incarnation to date, and we didn't even know what the heck it was until we walked into it only shortly before the park was set to close.
2023's Tribute Store had the motif of a pulp horror comic, by which I mean the entire store was dressed up in the aesthetic of a walk-through comic book. As soon as you enter, you're greeted by a giant "cover" advertising four horror stories, followed by illuminated cut-outs of the ghoulish host, cut-out characters, backgrounds and speech balloons like an enormous diorama. The first story features two hapless grave-robbers who accidentally awaken some of the locals, and that's when the "reality level" of the "comic" jumps higher for the first time, as the shambling cadavers aren't just depicted by two-dimensional artwork:
Rushed through by the crowd, my photos can't possibly do these models justice, but they were gorgeous. The rotten, skeletal figures, their anatomy just exaggerated enough, loomed over both the characters and visitors in awesome detail, illuminated by a sickly blue glow perfectly reminiscent of the limited but heavily saturated palettes common to comics of the 1950's.
The colorful graveyard scene then gives way to a more monochrome city street as we begin the next story, starring paranormal detective and recurring Horror Nights character Boris Shuster. The "windows" here are digital screens, through which you can occasionally see the silhouettes of characters timed with looping dialog, while another lighting effect simulates constant rain, which even looks exactly the way rain is drawn in these noir comics.
Lurking unseen outside the hero's window, clutching a paper about recent disappearances, is a humanoid fish in a trenchcoat. Once again, the "monster" element is a three dimensional piece and more lifelike than the human side of the narrative.
It's not exactly easy to follow a storyline in its intended order when the medium is a bustling gift shop, but some oversize comic panels fill us in on the open-ended mystery of the fish-people, then segue into Shuster's investigation of a mysterious, squid-faced idol.
You get to see the "real" idol, too, as you near the "climax" of the third tale, and what else could that climax be, but that very tentacle-god's awakening?!
With its many bulging, brightly illuminated eyeballs and sucker-lined tentacles, the fully detailed tentacle-god prop looked amazing in the simulated cartoon rain, and felt so much bigger in person as you walked under it on your way out of the "comic," which isn't actually the way out of the Tribute Store just yet. As you can see, there's various Horror Nights and Halloween items you could buy here, and you still need a place to check out.
This "first" exit takes you to a small case of Horror Nights cookies, brownies and cupcakes, themed around that year's various Haunts. They were still fairly well stocked, and I'm not sure if that's because they simply kept up the supply that well or not that many people were buying treats that pricey.
The bakery case was part of a cafe or diner-like setting representing the third story in the comic, which was something about a deal with the devil. This was much shorter and simpler than the previous two, consisting mainly of story panels on the walls and a life-size lucifer illuminated by dancing, greenish flame-like effects. The bakery snacks seem to be intended as the main draw here, the story a nice bonus should you wait in line for a frosted brain or Chucky cookie.
The final large room resembles another city setting, but this one more Victorian era and stylistically exaggerated, the buildings and windows cartoonishly skewed. Here, the more colorful comic panels tell the story of a ghoulish Jack the Ripper expy, though this area was crowded, since this was where you could not just wait in line to pay for your purchases, but receive the "real" printed version of the comic book you've just lived through.
...We did not do this, because for one, we didn't actually know we were supposed to, and more importantly because there were easily forty people waiting in line. I'm not sure we would've wanted to stand in place for another hour for a comic book we might read only once, to be honest. Sure, it's a cool memento, but so are my pictures! At least they are to me, anyway, even if their quality isn't all that flashy and professional.
Before we left for good, however, we did loop back around just once, to get a little video footage of that amazing cosmic horror detective sequence.
In one charming final touch, the way out shifts back from black and white to full color mid-way through this street sign.
Overall, the Tribute Store isn't meant to be as immersive as any of the park's "haunts" or "scare zones," and isn't technically as elaborate, but as "small" as it was, its lovingly crafted environment, atmosphere and gimmicks were easily our favorite attraction of the year. The only critique I can think of is that Boris Shuster's segment so dramatically outperformed the other three, and probably should have been the finale. It might have also been very cool cool if the store aspect offered more merchandise of "itself" than just the free comic; you can see that a few stylish masks were for sale, but none based on any of the four stories. Even some small keychains of the squid idol would have sufficed! Still, the whole thing was SO cool, I wish it were some sort of permanent cafe installation I could revisit during slower hours, just so sit in with my laptop and write posts like this from underneath a giant light-up kraken.
It was technically the last "Halloween" thing we experienced in 2023, and now, it's the first I've shared with you in 2024. Will anything this year surpass, or even match a walk-through Off-brand Creepshow Magazine? I guess we'll see, but as of 2022's season, I'm officially taking the Halloween content at a much more relaxed pace, and still feel an urge to do more content that isn't so "article-focused." I'm currently finally finishing the Mortasheen tabletop RPG book, I've jump-started the updating process to Awful Hospital, and I've got a lot of other fun new things going on this year.
In fact, a little over a week from this upload, I'll be running my own convention booth for the first time in my life, at none other than Portland Oregon's Ghosts of Summer Halloween Convention that I both discovered and reviewed last year.
If you're in the Portland area for August 9 and 10, consider dropping by, since I'll be selling an assortment of things you both can and cannot already find on my internet stores, and giving away a few freebies here and there! Locations and times are HERE!
