Halloween

UNIVERSAL Orlando has revealed what guests can expect from it’s ‘delivish’ new food and drink menu for this year’s Halloween Horror Nights.

Running from August 28 to November 1, the spooky event is one of the most popular Halloween events in the world.

And the theme park has since revealed the spooky new menu of food and drink that will be served – and it isn’t for the faint of heart.

There is the Rigatoni Ritual Pie, a take on a pizza with garlic butter, cheese, rigatoni a la vodka, crispy sausage and pesto on top.

Or there is the Jack & Odd Dog, a footlong hot dog with all the trimmings, including Flamin’ Hot® Cheetos® cheese, peppers and onion, on an unusual purple ube bun.

Or how about the Torn to Shreds Pork Sandwich, with smoked pork shoulder in a Hawaiian pretzel roll, complete with a spicy jalapeno slaw.

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Other treats include a Fritos Walking Taco, along with Death Bringer Tempura Shrimp, Lasagna Burn and Birria Pizza Fries.

Sweet treats haven’t been forgotten about although you might want to close your eyes when eating.

The Meat Grinder Red Velvet is made up of ground up red velvet cake along with raspberry jam and puffed rice… designed to look like maggots.

Tickets can be booked for Universal Orlando‘s Halloween Horror Night now via the website here.

Running for it’s 35th year, last year saw scare houses based on everything from Ghostbusters and Insidious to A Quiet Place.

This year’s line up of scary events will include Sinners, Stranger Things 5 as well as other park exclusives: Jack & Oddfellow: Chaos & Control

• Cybergoria
• INVASION: Alien Abduction
• MADLANDS: Caged Cannibals
• H.R. Bloodengutz Presents: A Halloween Fright-Tacular!

Following Orlando, Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights starts on September 3, followed by Universal Studios Japan on September 11 and Universal Studios Singapore on September 25.

Boney Island, a much-loved, homemade, skeleton-centric L.A. Halloween attraction for more than 20 years, will now be a ghost.

Creator Rick Polizzi — known to many for his 1996-2009 role as a producer of “The Simpsons” — announced on social media Monday that Boney Island is coming to an end.

The reason: A planned move to Santa Clarita has run into “unforeseen permitting and production challenges.” Polizzi said the county-wide slump in TV and film production is partially to blame.

After a string of venue changes, Polizzi said he was in talks to rent a set of soundstages at Santa Clarita Studios, and a large amount of Boney Island sets, props and other materials had already been moved to Santa Clarita.

But several logistical challenges proved hard to solve, and one element was the studios’ decision to reduce their inventory of soundstages. As a result, Polizzi said, “the rug was kind of pulled out from under us.”

Santa Clarita Studios President Mike DeLorenzo said that this fall, the studio will let go of leases on three of its 35-plus soundstages. Of Boney Island, DeLorenzo said that “we truly wanted this to happen, but it just didn’t make sense financially.” By the tally of FilmLA, on-location production days for film and TV in greater Los Angeles fell by 46% from 2022 to 2025.

With no other remedies in sight, Polizzi and company put out word on Instagram and Facebook, saying that after carefully considering locations, city permitting costs and storage, “we have made the difficult decision to officially bring Boney Island to an end” and sell the collection.

Reaction was quick, sad and peppered with family memories. “Thank you for creating so much magic for my family as well as so many others,” wrote one admirer on Instagram. “My kids and myself will forever walk around in a squeaky voice reciting: “Help meeee…I feeel like a yo-yo.”

Former “Simpsons” producer Rick Polizzi in his Sherman Oaks treehouse, known as “Boney Island,” in 2025.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

Boney Island, a playful homage to Coney Island, was born in the late 1990s when Polizzi set out to build a Halloween attraction in his Sherman Oaks front yard for his family and neighbors. He was joined by “Aqua Dazzle” owner Rex Danyluk and friends as they designed an immersive, imaginative experience without a haunted house, a maze or jump scares. Instead it featured cavorting skeletons, magic acts and water shows.

“It’s not all the gore and horror stuff that everything else is,” Polizzi said. “I started it for my daughters.”

Eventually, the yard’s tall treehouse and growing crowds each Halloween led to permit disputes and the prospect of criminal charges.

“We were a victim of our own success, because it got so crowded we had to hire traffic control,” Polizzi told Spectrum News in 2025, adding that “one neighbor across the street always hated it.” Polizzi estimated that he’d spend more than $50,000 trying to get proper city approvals before dismantling the treehouse in 2025.

“I had the cool experience of actually ascending into the treehouse,” said Kim Cooper, co-owner of Esotouric tours and former visitors to the treehouse. “You look at this thing and you think: Wait a minute. That’s possible?”

Polizzi, in 2025, flips through a scrapbook he made about Boney Island.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

Boney Island’s red-tape battles with the city of Los Angeles, Cooper said, show that “there is sadistic, demented element in the city [government] that does not like to see people who have an independent sense of élan and freedom.”

Still, Boney Island seemed likely to live on elsewhere. While the red-tape battles were being fought, the attraction moved from Polizzi’s yard to Griffith Park in 2018, went dark for several years, then resurfaced at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles in 2023 and 2024, drawing tens of thousands of people. But the Exposition Park location proved difficult for many guests, Polizzi said, and the event went dark again last year while organizers searched for a new location, preferably a gated space with at least 70,000 square feet. Polizzi said he explored many options, including the L.A. Zoo, another corner of Griffith Park, Descanso Gardens, the L.A. County Arboretum, but none quite fit. Some of those spots host elaborate holiday light displays that require set-up in late October.

The best option seemed to be the soundstages at Santa Clarita Studios. “It was going to be challenging to have it inside to begin with, but I was looking forward to it,” Polizzi said.

At this point, he added, it would take a last-minute location discovery to change things.

“I would love to keep it going, I just don’t have a place for it,” Polizzi said.

For “Abbott Elementary” costume designer Hachy Mendez-Smith, the fifth season’s Halloween episode — in which Gregory (Tyler James Williams) and Janine (Quinta Brunson) dress up as “Sinners” filmmaker Ryan Coogler and an Imax screen, respectively — had to do more than deliver a punchline. It also had to reflect their characters. “Gregory has always been the more grounded, measured type. And then Janine is naturally more whimsical, optimistic and quirky, so she carried the bigger, more expressive visual in the moment,” she says. “And as his girlfriend, she’s always been supportive of him. So even in costume, it was like she was literally holding space for his story. It felt authentic, not just comedic.” The designer drew inspiration for Gregory’s burgundy coat from a Coogler red carpet moment, tailoring a clean, sophisticated silhouette while playing with the scale of Janine’s costume. “Quinta’s 4-11 in real life, so we had to be mindful yet over the top to land the visual right away,” she notes. The highlight for Mendez-Smith: Coogler’s reaction. “I was honored he even watched and loved that he talked about how much the show means to him,” she says. “And it was hilarious that initially he thought it was AI. He couldn’t believe how spot on it was.” How spot on? Even Janine’s screen matched the correct Imax aspect ratio: 1.43:1.