Universal Studios Florida now has a full size Battle Bus, and there is a graveyard where its balloon should be

In Fortnite, the Battle Bus hangs from a balloon. At Universal Studios Florida it is sitting on the pavement, and where the balloon should be there is a graveyard.

WDW News Today published photos Monday of the FORTNITEMARES scare zone taking shape in Central Park at Universal Studios Florida, four days before Halloween Horror Nights 35 opens. WDWNT expects the full size Battle Bus to serve as the zone's central landmark. It is an ordinary school bus painted matte black, with BATTLE BUS in raised red letters on the header above the windshield and again on the rear doors.

The FORTNITEMARES Battle Bus in Central Park. Two grey and orange mechanical arms fold down the driver side and end in small caster wheels, and the roof carries grey tombstones, a carved orange pumpkin and a grey hopper fed by striped pipework. A guest walks past at right. Photo: WDW News Today.

What is bolted to the bus

Both flanks carry large grey and orange mechanical arms, according to WDWNT. On the driver side, the flank facing the camera in these photos, two of them angle down from the roofline and finish in small caster wheels.

The roof carries the rest of it. A grey hopper sits at the center above a housing stamped with a red V, fed by black and orange striped pipework that arcs over the roofline, with winch spools at either end. Built in among that machinery is a miniature cemetery: grey tombstones, carved jack-o-lanterns and pale candles standing between the pipes.

The full side profile, which shows the roof rig clearly: a grey hopper at the center above a housing stamped with a red V, striped pipes arcing over it, winch spools at either end, four grey tombstones, four carved jack-o-lanterns and clusters of pale candles. The marquee for Animal Actors on Location! is visible behind. Photo: WDW News Today.

The rest of Freaky Fields

The bus is not the whole zone. Scenery through the rest of Central Park nods at how a Fortnite match actually plays: WDWNT counts timber barricades, brick walls and patched metal panels standing in for the three materials players harvest, plus a wooden fort with uneven walls, topped by a raised lookout tower. A figure is posed up in that tower with what the outlet calls a Halloween take on the game's Rocket Launcher. In WDWNT's photo a grinning orange pumpkin sits at its muzzle.

WDWNT reports three more touches: screens among the crates that glow with sharp toothed grins, bright thorny growth in red and orange working its way over the hay and the brick, and a Witch Broom left lying in the planting. The broom is not generic dressing. It comes from an earlier in game Fortnitemares, where riding it is an escape move: up into the air, then a glide out of danger.

The player built fort, one of the smaller Freaky Fields sets. A raised wooden lookout tower holds a figure in magenta gloves aiming a launcher tipped with a grinning orange pumpkin. A painted metal panel wall runs to the left with two black and orange pumpkins on a crate, and gold bars sit stacked on a blue supply crate beside a hay bale. Photo: WDW News Today.

What Universal promised in July

The zone itself is not a surprise. Universal announced FORTNITEMARES on July 22, saying guests "will enter Freaky Fields, a Halloween-inspired living battleground overcome with a threatening force." The same release promised the Battle Bus alongside familiar Fortnitemares characters, plus a few additions made only for Halloween Horror Nights.

WDWNT's photos show how much of that has gone up in the park. The bus is in place, with a cemetery on the roof, four days out from opening night.

The scare zone sign wall. FORTNITEMARES is spelled in jagged letters running yellow into orange into hot pink across a wall of weathered, bolted metal plates, with a black pipe handrail along the top and a lighting truss rising behind it. Wooden and blue supply crates sit at left. Photo: WDW News Today.

When you can walk it

Halloween Horror Nights 35 runs select nights from Friday, August 28 through November 1 at Universal Orlando. WDWNT counts FORTNITEMARES as one of four scare zones this year. Universal Studios Hollywood is getting the FORTNITEMARES scare zone too, when its own event opens on September 3.

Ahead of opening night, Inside Universal reports that the Halloween Horror Nights Tribute Store and the Dead Coconut Club open on Tuesday, with Passholders getting the first look, and that Premium Scream Night falls on Thursday.

Sources

• WDW News Today, "Full-Size Battle Bus Drops Into Universal Studios Florida for FORTNITEMARES Scare Zone"
• Universal Orlando Resort press release, July 22, 2026
• Inside Universal, "What's Happening at the Universal Parks, Week of August 24, 2026"

Image credits: all four photographs by WDW News Today.