Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights kicked off last weekend, and I was able to attend the opening night to experience the fun for the first time. I give my in-depth thoughts on all of the attractions in my video review, so I’m just focusing on my highlights here.
There are seven haunted mazes and one permanent addition on offer this year, with included properties such as: Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, The Exorcist, The Purge, American Horror Story, Krampus and The Walking Dead. Some are better than others, but the overall quality of each of the mazes is great.
My favorite haunt was “Halloween: Hell Comes to Haddonfield”. It’s based on Halloween 2, so you start off in the house and see Dr. Loomis shoot Michael in a well acted and choreographed encounter. Then you make your way into the hospital where Laurie and Dr. Loomis stand off with Michael at the end of the film. The attention to detail is painstaking and there’s even a nod to Halloween 3: Season of The Witch.
“Freddy vs Jason” scared me the most, and I think that’s because it’s by far the darkest of the attractions. It’s split up into two different arenas, just like the film, with Jason’s washed in aqua green and Freddy’s illuminated by blood red fog lights. They clash machete and knife-fingered glove multiple times throughout the haunt, and there’s an incredible scene where the worm Freddy from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors eats a child version of Jason who looks awesome. My favorite scene took me through a small version of Camp Crystal Lake. The smell of pine trees was being pumped in, and the immersion caught me off guard.
The biggest surprise of the night for me was “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Blood Brothers”. It takes a humorous approach over a scary one, taking you through a barbecue restaurant and introducing you to the entire Sawyer family. Even Choptop is there! There’s a whole room dedicated to him actually, and it’s pretty far out. Leatherface makes a few appearances, and I jumped at a couple of them. My only complaint is that it’s very short. I would have definitely ran through it again if I had the time.
“The Walking Dead” has the benefit of being a year-round attraction, so the sets you get to walk through are incredibly detailed. There’s fenced in sections full of walkers reaching out, some choreographed walker vs human fight scenes and even recreations of some of the shows creepiest moments. Don’t skip it thinking it’s the same as it is the rest of the year, since for Halloween Horror Nights the walker count has increased dramatically.
If you’re planning on attending the event this year, I have two huge pieces of advice. The first is to spring for the Front of The Line ticket. The price increase is a little steep, but if you want to see every special attraction this year without going multiple times, you’re going to need one. The haunts mainly contributing to this factor are “Freddy vs. Jason”, “American Horror Story” and “The Exorcist”. Even with the special pass, we waited about 15 minutes for each of these, and the signs at the beginning of the line said that the wait times for regular ticket holders were over two hours.
My other recommendation is to start at the bottom and work your way up. It’s a bit of a hike to get to the area where “Freddy vs Jason”, “Krampus” and “American Horror Story” reside, and two out of those three will have extremely long lines so your best best, especially if you just have a regular ticket, is to make your way over to those as soon as the park opens at 7PM.
Halloween Horror Nights is an absolute blast, especially if you like to see grisly recreations of gory parts from your favorite childhood horror films. I’ll definitely be back with my friends closer to Halloween.
