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Universal's Sideshow Obscura Tribute Store Has a Skull Card Nodding to Poseidon's Fury, and a Banner Picturing a Tavern It Tore Down in 2008
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Universal's Sideshow Obscura Tribute Store Has a Skull Card Nodding to Poseidon's Fury, and a Banner Picturing a Tavern It Tore Down in 2008

Michael Travels
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On a shelf near the front of Universal's new Halloween Horror Nights Tribute Store, under a glass dome, sits a mossy skull. The handwritten card on the front of the glass reads: Skulls excavated from former Atlantian exhibit.

Universal finished tearing down Poseidon's Fury earlier this month, and crews have been grading fresh sand where its entrance used to be.

The Tribute Store facade at Universal Studios Florida with a Sideshow Obscura banner and a wooden marquee reading Enter Here
The store front, with STEIN & CO. carved above, a three panel Sideshow Obscura banner, and an ENTER HERE marquee over the door. A clown face cutout stands at the right. Photo: WDW News Today

The store is open

WDW News Today published a full photo and video tour on Tuesday, August 25, and reports the Halloween Horror Nights 35 Tribute Store opened that day. It sits next to Revenge of the Mummy, and WDW News Today notes it stays open to all guests all day, not only on event nights. Universal's Annual Passholder perks for the event, reported by WDW News Today in July, gave passholders access from 11 a.m. to park close on August 25, and Inside Universal notes passholders got the first look as the store opened Tuesday.

The store is called Sideshow Obscura, and it sits under the event's Infernal Carnival of Nightmares theme. Guests walk in under a banner advertising Sideshow Obscura, and a second banner beside the door promises, in Universal's own copy, "a world only we are brazen enough to share." The Curator, the character introduced at the HHN 32 Tribute Store, is back running the shop and appears on the banner.

Two demolished attractions turn up inside

WDW News Today reports that three of the skulls under glass are props held over from the 2025 Tribute Store, and that a card on the front of one of them reads "Skulls excavated from former Atlantian exhibit." WDW News Today reads that line as a nod to Poseidon's Fury. That show closed in 2023, and its show building came down earlier this month, though rubble and the shuttered gift shop remain on the site.

Three glass domes on a shelf holding mossy skulls, with a small handwritten card on the middle one
The middle dome carries a handwritten card reading "Skulls excavated from former Atlantian exhibit." Antlers, an oil lamp and a jar labeled Tragacanth Gum share the shelf. Photo: WDW News Today

Another demolished corner of the resort turns up on a banner. A banner for something called the Wing of Elements pictures the Enchanted Oak Tavern from The Lost Continent. That building came down in 2008 to make room for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and Universal later replicated it as the facade of Dueling Dragons: Choose Thy Fate at HHN 32. Its banner text runs to Arthurian legend and two warlocks turned into dragons, closing with the line, "we managed to secure a wing of the fallen."

Other things in the cabinet

WDW News Today's tour identifies a run of props pulled forward from previous years. The Chupacabra skeleton, a horned skull and a Fiji Mermaid all come from the 2025 Mardi Gras Tribute Store. Nearby, a haunted pram sits beside what a card calls the drained remains of the amulet of fear, an interactive element from Halloween Horror Nights 28. On top of one shelf is a homunculus from The Bride of Frankenstein, glowing inside its jar.

A Victorian pram labeled Haunted Pram beside a glass dome holding a skull in ferns, and a wooden case labeled Drained remains of the Amulet of Fear
A card reading "Drained remains of the Amulet of Fear" sits in a wooden case at the right, next to a haunted pram and a domed skull. Photo: WDW News Today

Elsewhere in that first room are a mummified giant, described on its banner as a corpse "preserved for over 3,000 years," and an amulet the signage claims absorbs its wearer's life essence before dragging them into the core of the Earth.

A dim shelf display with a cracked Grecian amphora, a skeletal hand on rock, jars covered in cloth, a blue glowing figure in a jar and a case of skulls below
The first room, with a cracked amphora, a skeletal hand, cloth-topped specimen jars and a small blue-lit figure in glass. Photo: WDW News Today

Past the oddities

The route does not stop at shelves. WDW News Today describes the Ouroboros Puppet Theater at the end of the first room, presenting a piece called The Tale of Two Souls on a small stage whose marquee carries giant eyes. Beyond it, a storage space for the sideshow's beasts holds an empty cage draped in chains with food and water bowls still inside, and animal sounds playing in the space.

Further in there is a backstage area with costumes among the merchandise, a fortune teller's tent with a glowing, smoke-filled crystal ball and a golden mirror that shows ghostly figures, and finally the sideshow proper, where the checkout sits beside a flat ticket booth and a wheel of death. Large set pieces include part of a Ferris wheel and a carousel roof, with a carousel horse nearby. A second carousel horse stands back near the entrance, with a blue jacket and top hat slung across its back.

Halloween Horror Nights 35 runs select nights from August 28 through November 1 at Universal Studios Florida.

Sources

Image credits: All photos WDW News Today.

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