20190912_195357

Another haunt season is here and for 2019 Halloween Horror Nights is scaring up new experiences and new ways to expand the popular Universal Studios Hollywood event. During a media preview, we were given access to the park to check out all of this year’s mazes and the changes to this year’s event!

Join us now for a full look all around Universal Studios Hollywood Halloween Horror Nights 2019!

20190912_233920(0) 20190912_233106

The Mazes

This year, Universal Studios Hollywood is serving NINE new mazes plus the year-round WALKING DEAD attraction.

Ghostbusters

RATING: 🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃 

The marquee maze for 2019. GHOSTBUSTERS is a phenomenal rewind into the world of the 1984 classic blockbuster. Key scenes and moments are faithfully re-created for an experience that delivers more on the fun than on the scares. It’s truly a highlight and yes you can smell burning marshmallows in the scene with the Stay Puft marshmallow man!

20190912_200126

20190912_195649 20190912_195800 20190912_195904 20190912_200009 20190912_200057 20190912_200102

Us

RATING: 🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃 

Having not seen this film, we didn’t know what we were getting into. We certainly didn’t expect it to be one of our top favorite mazes of the evening. With so little actual monsters or boo-box jump scares the maze benefited tenfold by being insanely creepy and unnerving. From several walks through a mirrored forest to walking through fully realized and believable homes, this maze takes seemingly very little material and works it out into a fantastic and insanely creepy maze.

20190912_223007

20190912_222854 20190912_223148 20190912_223250

Stranger Things

RATING: 🎃🎃⚫⚫⚫ 

After such a strong first entry last year, we were very excited for the return of the Netflix hit series to Halloween Horror Nights. Unfortunately, this year’s maze left A LOT to be desired. It does seem every year at a certain time during the evening one maze or another will end up seeming to be missing A LOT of performers. Such was the case when we ventured through set piece after set piece seemingly without any scare actors. The visuals from Season 2 took up the large majority of the maze which is fine save for the fact that it was advertised as containing scenes from both seasons 2 and 3. Instead, we get mostly a season 2 maze (with scenes that seemed a little bit like a rehash of last year’s maze) and then literally ONE scene at the end from season 3. When you see WHICH scene they brought to life, it might leave you scratching your head — it’s certainly iconic but in a very strong season with SO MUCH to draw from it seemed that perhaps this maze would have been stronger to just focus solely on the second season to deliver a truly wow-factor finale.

With that said, we REALLY hope next year the maze returns and goes full force into Season 3 which is ripe with so much potential to deliver truly amazing scenes. For this year though, you can save yourself a lot of heartache by skipping the very long lines to experience this maze.

20190912_214347

20190912_214322 20190912_214328 20190912_214435 20190912_214558 20190912_214655 20190912_214736

Creepshow

RATING: 🎃🎃🎃🎃⚫ 

Taking inspiration from both the comic and movie, this maze delivers an intense amount of creeps and crawls bringing to life various chapters from the mythology. Encounter the Creeper several times along with haunting scares divided into succinct chapters.

20190912_203828

20190912_203614 20190912_203712 20190912_203727 20190912_203845 20190912_203955 20190912_204016

20190912_203757

Killer Klowns from Outer Space

RATING: 🎃🎃🎃⚫⚫ 

This movie is absolutely bizarre and the maze pays homage to it perfectly. For the uninitiated, the sights, gags, and scares in this maze might seem completely off the wall and that’s basically how they come across in the movie. Clowns are inherently creepy so the maze works on that level. If you’re a fan of the movie, be on the look out for a ton of familiar sights including a giant vat of popcorn and the cotton-candy cocoons! Lots of blacklight and silly gags are afoot in this 1980’s nightmare.

20190912_193010

20190912_192529 20190912_192712 20190912_192734 20190912_192833

20190912_192916

The Curse of Pandora’s Box

RATING: 🎃🎃🎃🎃⚫ 

What a surprising delight! This maze had no official tie-in to an existing intellectual property and so it had both more and less to prove — more to prove because it could not rely on existing familiar visual narrative to tell its story but less to prove in that it wasn’t forced to try and hit particular familiar story beats that fans would know. Instead, we get an incredibly simple premise that aligns well with the retro 1980’s vibe of the entire event: Enter a creepy old curios shop and unleash a vile and wicked curse… or in the case of this maze… ALL OF THEM! Playing off familiar curse tropes from mummies to medusa, this maze is absolutely satisfying in its use of both bright and dark show scenes for a cursed experience that you could say was quite enchanting.

20190912_224004

20190912_224032 20190912_224115 20190912_224120 20190912_224156 20190912_224302 20190912_224326

Holidayz in Hell

RATING: 🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃 

Such a fantastic expansion of last year’s scare zone. We get a taste of some of the major holidays with a disturbing twist starting with New Year’s Eve and working though to Thanksgiving before exiting out to a Christmas In Hell scare zone. Absolutely phenomenal and this is a maze that could easily have sequels and bring something new to the table every single year. We hope this is what happens. Such a delightfully wicked twist on the expected.

20190912_232119 (1) 20190912_232131 20190912_232157

20190912_232230

20190912_232315 20190912_232339 20190912_232416 20190912_232442 20190912_232446 20190912_232505

Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman

RATING: 🎃🎃⚫⚫⚫ 

Not much to say. This was not a favorite. After last year’s Universal Monsters remixed maze brought some fresh life into very classic movie monsters, we found this maze to be almost entirely forgettable delivering perhaps too faithfully on the original 1943 film.

20190912_201122 20190912_201439 20190912_201440

House of 1000 Corpses

RATING: 🎃🎃🎃⚫⚫ 

We’ve never seen the film so we can’t say we understood much other than some great creepy visuals that made no sense in relationship to each other, at least not obviously. The scares seemed mostly repetitive with Captain Spaulding making a large number of surprise scares through-out; definitely some interesting scenes within though.

20190912_231146

20190912_230951 20190912_231130 20190912_231236 20190912_231346

The Walking Dead Attraction

RATING: 🎃⚫⚫⚫⚫ 

The regular walk-through attraction returns again as an offering during the event. Virtually nothing is changed inside which seems like a wasted opportunity. The fact that the maze was never updated after it was built to reflect newer seasons mars it further. The upside is that there’s not usually much of a wait at all. Otherwise, an easy skip.

20190912_230042

Scare Zones

Several noteworthy additions this year!

Christmas in Hell

This scare zone actually serves as a finale to the Holidayz in Hell maze offering up yet again a wonderful mishmash of a cherished holiday season gone horribly, horribly wrong.

20190912_194753 20190912_232533 20190912_232624

All Hallows Evil

Every year this portion of the Lower Lot promises a really fun scare zone that can almost in itself be deemed amaze. This year it expands on Halloween with some fun visuals and creeptastic performers.

20190912_194422 20190912_194656 20190912_194815

Fallen Angels

The dark lighting at night prevents you from really appreciating the amazing craftsmanship that goes into the creature creation for something as simple as a scare zone. These looks are so good, they hold up quite well in broad daylight.

20190912_190357 20190912_190542

Spirits and Demons of the East

20190912_225806 20190912_225828

Toxic Tunnel

Blessfully MUCH less reliant this year on irritating strobe effects, this scare zone is basically a forced walk-through to get to the Lower Lot mazes. Mostly non-noteworthy.

20190912_193834

More Scares

Although not technically listed as a scare zone, the main stretch of the Lower Lot has been taken over Purge-style gangsters in creepy masks… and yes, they have chainsaws.

20190912_205627

Entertainment

Jabbawockeez are back again this year. It’s often said “you can’t win them all” and we find that to be the same year after year with this show. We really miss Bill and Ted and are ready for something new in the theater.

20190912_225249

Dining

20190912_220955

Eleven’s Waffle Sundae from “Scoops Ahoy” was pretty good. Strawberry sauce, M&Ms, and Jelly Beans on vanilla ice cream are a classic combo topped with small waffles which we didn’t particularly enjoy; they were a bit dry with a texture similar to cornbread. Starcourt Mall across the way offered burgers and the like.

20190912_192242 20190912_192218

20190912_202912

On the Lower Lot, Slimer’s Dirty Water Dog from Halloween Horror Bites is a fun treat that has clearly been visited by the goopy Ghostbusters ghoul. It’s basically green sort of nacho cheese sauce with bits of peppers served with super crispy tater tots. We balk at a $14 price tag but the flavors are good!

20190912_195104 20190912_195200

20190912_201735

Spirited libations from a Dia de Los Muertos bar on the Lower Lot offering up fun glowing cups.

20190912_195302

Slimer Cupcakes!

20190912_195247 20190912_195331

20190912_195308

Ghost Trap popcorn! Not quite sure what the ghostly goop drizzle is on top…

Merch Run

Universal has seriously stepped up the merch game this year not just with merchandise specific to the big mazes but also general event branding.

20190912_190843

20190912_192103 20190912_192120

20190912_192035

20190912_191915 20190912_191833 20190912_191924

20190912_192004

20190912_190816 20190912_191944 20190912_192014
20190912_192029 20190912_192144

More to Explore

20190912_195357

Although they didn’t seem to draw much interest, there were some simple carnival games set up which also seems like a nice way to add more things to see and do with the event.

20190912_195338 20190912_195038

20190912_195409

Caricature artists were also on-hand to paint your likeness or a creeptastic commission.

Throwback Thursdays

Every Thursday, guests are encouraged to dress up in their 1980’s best and enjoy some throw back fun. Highlights include:

  • A not-so-friendly welcome from Chucky himself
  • Live tribute band and DJ dance party hosted by Beetlejuice
  • Classic ‘80s music videos and songs played throughout the event

20190912_191734

New Ways to Interact

20190912_193154Each year, Universal seems to try new ways to get guests to find deeper ways to connect to the event. This year, that comes in the form of Achievement Checkpoints with QR codes that you can use to interact in the Universal app and face off against park guests in various game-play.

The Achievement Checkpoints are located at the exits for each of the mazes.

Photo-Ops

We noticed a lot more photo opportunities this year than before and find it a welcome addition to add some interest to the event… not to mention give some way for people to create buzz on social media about being at the event. The fact that scare performers are included make it all the better.

20190912_225433

20190912_225951

20190912_225456 20190912_225623

20190912_233310

20190912_232932

The cold never bothered this goblin, anyway.

See it for Yourself

Halloween Horror Nights returns this year to Universal Studios Hollywood (September 13, 2019) and to Universal Studios Florida (September 6, 2019).

DON’T MISS: Get your tickets now before they sell out!

Craving More Terror?

MORE INFO: See more posts and announcements about Halloween Horror Nights.

20190912_195357