Orlando does Halloween like no other city, and this is the time of year you feel it.
The announcements come in waves. Universal drops house lineups for Halloween Horror Nights. Disney posts showtimes for Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. Smaller haunts start teasing concepts. If you plan a fall trip around any of this, late July into August is when the season turns into an actual calendar.
Each event has its own lane. Horror Nights runs on licensed properties, usually four IP houses alongside the originals. Disney goes family-friendly with trick-or-treating and villains. Howl-O-Scream at SeaWorld has always been the one doing neither.
For over 25 years, Howl-O-Scream ran on original monsters, original stories, and original houses. No licensed franchises. No movie titles on the marquee. Just whatever the entertainment teams cooked up, usually with less money and fewer resources than the industry giants.
That streak is over.
The SeaWorld Announcement
SeaWorld is adding I Know What You Did Last Summer, one of the first licensed horror franchises ever to appear at Howl-O-Scream.
SeaWorld Orlando, SeaWorld San Diego, and SeaWorld San Antonio each open the house on September 11.
The full title is I Know What You Did Last Summer: The Final Catch, based on Sony Pictures’ original 1997 slasher film.
Guests move through recreations of scenes around the Southport massacre, following the friends whose cover-up of a deadly accident lands them in the sights of the hook-wielding Fisherman. SeaWorld says this is the first time the film has been adapted for a major Halloween event.
United Parks & Resorts CEO Marc Swanson commented on it.
“We’re always looking for new ways to raise the bar on immersive entertainment, and bringing ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer‘ to our Howl-O-Scream events is an exciting milestone for all three SeaWorld parks,” Swanson said.
Why It Is Bigger Than One House at SeaWorld Parks
Easy to file this as a house announcement. It is not.
This is the end of Howl-O-Scream as an event built entirely on original and public-domain horror.
That independence was always a strength. The teams built their own monsters, their own icons, their own genuinely odd worlds. There was a bootstraps quality to it that let creativity drive. No licensing fees, no studio notes, so you could chase the stranger idea.
SeaWorld Orlando’s new dark romance scare zone is exactly that kind of thinking, and it is what made Howl-O-Scream feel like its own thing.
Busch Gardens Is In On It Too
I Know What You Did Last Summer is not the only licensed property arriving in 2026.
Busch Gardens Tampa Bay and Busch Gardens Williamsburg are each getting separate houses inspired by Anaconda.
That split matters because Howl-O-Scream started at the Busch Gardens parks before spreading across the SeaWorld portfolio. Three SeaWorld parks get the slasher. Two Busch Gardens parks get the snake.
Total it up: Sony Pictures franchises at all five U.S. Howl-O-Scream events in the first year licensed horror touches the brand. That is not testing the water. That is a company-wide pivot.
What Fans Are Actually Worried About
Nobody is arguing that the Fisherman is a weak villain. A slasher with a hook and a coastal setting is a natural fit for a maze.
The worry is what happens in year three and year five.
Licensed franchises sell tickets. That is why the big events use them. But every slot that goes to IP is a slot that does not go to an original concept, and those originals are what gave Howl-O-Scream its personality. The event never needed a familiar movie title to build a house that people remembered.
SeaWorld has not signaled that originals are on the way out. Each event still has original houses, scare zones, entertainment, and themed bars.
But a 25-year run just ended, and fans are hoping these franchises add to the weird homegrown stuff instead of slowly replacing it.
Before You Book
The new houses debut on September 11 at all three SeaWorld parks.
Ticketing works differently depending on where you go. Howl-O-Scream is separately ticketed in Orlando and San Diego. In San Antonio, it comes with regular park admission.
If your Orlando Halloween plans already include Horror Nights and Not-So-Scary, Howl-O-Scream has typically been the value option of the three, and one licensed house does not change that.
The Real Question
It is not whether this house is good.
It is how it sits next to the originals. Howl-O-Scream spent 25 years proving you can build a strong Halloween event without borrowing anyone else’s characters. Now it finds out what happens when both are done at once.
Works out for everybody if the IP draws crowds who then discover the original mazes. Longtime fans will notice fast if the originals start getting squeezed.
September 11 is when we start finding out.
