Motiongate Dubai Fright Nights 4 Halloween Event Review
Motiongate Dubai Fright Nights began at the park in 2018, with two zombie scare zones and a maze based on the SAW franchise. The event continued with new experiences in 2019 and 2020, and is back again this year with more new offerings.
Motiongate Dubai Fright Nights 4 runs from September 23rd to November 6th 2021. All parts of this event are included with admission and occur on select days each week, each of which will be mentioned below as we discuss the corresponding attraction.
On every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, two haunted houses (Haunted Cinema: Nyctophobia & The Curse of the Music Box) are open to guests from 4pm.
Haunted Cinema: Nyctophobia’
In ‘Haunted Cinema: Nyctophobia’, guests are invited into a decrepit hospital to take part in an experiment about the fear of the dark. A legend tells that patients from the past still lurk in this hospital. A Doctor invites you into the hospital and takes you to watch a video, explaining this back story. He then leads you down a corridor and into another room where there are bodies lying on hospital beds. As expected, horrors then ensue within this room and you then continue down another corridor. There are jump scares galore in this hospital and the doctor who guides you along gets in on the terror.
The Curse of the Music Box’
Within this house, ‘The Shadow Watch Society’, a recurring feature of the park’s Halloween event, invite guests into their dungeon in which they store cursed artefacts. A man in a plague doctor-like costume takes you round as artefacts come to life and monsters arrive.
Both houses are rather short, however as you are guided through each one you spend longer than you would traditionally expect within each room. As a result of this, they function less like a maze and more like small individual show sequences. There are some impressive effects within both houses which make them feel pretty high quality. It’s great to see and we really hope the park are able to expand their number of haunted house offerings over the next few years!
The Tale of The Midnight Theatre’
In addition to these haunted houses, there is a show called ‘The Tale of The Midnight Theatre’. This takes place at 2:30 pm, 4:30 pm and 6:30 pm everyday Monday until Saturday within the Hollywood Theatre. Yet again, The Shadow Watch society are present, hunting for a powerful cursed artefact that they believe is in the hands of an old theatre troupe. This 20 minute show is the park’s second instalment of The Shadow Watch Society Chronicles series. We weren’t the biggest fans of this show, but thought it was a unique offering for a theme park Halloween event.
Halloween Ghastly Parade
The Halloween Ghastly Parade occurs every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 45 minutes before park closure. The show begins with some ghostly projections on the Studio Central buildings. Following this, all the Halloween characters from both haunted houses and the show walk down Studio Central, scaring and interacting with guests.
There are also child-friendly ‘not-so-spooky’ Halloween activities for children. Every day, there is a Halloween Candy Grab at both The Smurfs Village and Hotel Transylvania. At these locations, Papa Smurf or Smurfette and Drac, Mavis or Johnny hand out sweets. There is also ‘Pumpkin Stories’, opposite the Ghostbusters ride, where light up pumpkins tell Halloween tales daily. Finally, Monday to Saturday, there are character meet and greets with characters dressed in Halloween costumes.
Overall, we thought this was a great event and really hope to see it grow more in the future!