Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood 2018

If you know me you know how much I love Halloween and all things spooky. My best friend Tally and I do a Halloween themed event every weekend for the month of October. Lucky for us we live in Los Angeles and there’s a million things for us to do.

When I thought about blogging I kept envisioning the month of October and doing a month long series on our spooky adventures. You can image how excited I was that I would be launching my blog a day before Halloween (and my Halloween I mean the entire month of October).

So I would like to start my first Halloween series off with something we’ve done every year since 2015: Universal Studios Hollywood’s Horror Nights.

Every year we save up our pennies and treat ourself’s to a front of the line pass. It is a lot more expensive but take it from the pros: it’s worth it. To me it’s a complete waste of money to buy a ticket to something and be stuck waiting in 2 hour lines (mazes easily reached up to that wait time). It’s also not enjoyable to be constantly stressed out over trying to see everything.

That’s why we opt for the Front of the Line pass, now called Universal express. Normally they give you a lanyard with a thick ticket that has the barcode they can scan. Unfortunately you can only get front of the line one time for each maze and ride. Its great though because around your neck you won’t loose it, but this year they just gave us one of the standard park ticket which can easily be damaged or lost, they instead sold lanyards which I felt was kind of cheap.

Now lets jump on it!

Let’s start with the scare zones, which in my opinion are more fun than the mazes. This year we had Hell’s Harvest, Trick r Treat, Monster Masquerade, Toxic Tunnel (which they usually have every year), and Holidayz in Hell. The scare zones were pretty solid this year. One of my favorite movies is Trick r Treat so of course that was buy favorite scare zone. They even have the school bus filled with the children and little Sammy (how cute is he?) that you can take a picture with.

Close seconds were Hell’s Harvest with its scarecrow/pumpkin/fall theme and the Monster’s Masquerade which was inspired by one of my favorites The Phantom of the Opera. I always feel bad because Tally and I are pretty hard to scare, although a couple of them did get us so well done scaraters! But we love looking at the costumes, masks and make up. We even have one of our closest friends helping to design some of the set pieces so we usually nerd out over her work.

We always start our night with the Terror Tram which was Hollywood Harry’s, a clown themed walk through. We were nervous about that one but it actually was pretty good. We of course were the first people to march up to the wall of mutant dog creatures with chainsaws while the rest of group stood pretty far behind us.

Then we hit the back lot which had The First Purge, Poltergeist, and Blum House. We’re not super into the Purge but it was a fun house. Blum house was a little disappointing because there were not as many scaracters but Poltergeist was amazing! It was so well done from the sets, to the costumes we were in heaven! If you don’t get the front of the line pass this one is still worth the wait in my opinion.

Next was Stranger Things which wasn’t that scary but man was it cool to walk through some of the most

famous scenes from the show! If you’re a huge fan (like I am) this is a must see. Now let’s get to my favorite maze: Trick r Treat. I got a little taste with the scare zone but man was I blown away by the maze. I had high expectations which they went above and beyond. I came out skipping like a little girl.

We paused to do some of the rides which are always a lot of fun. Then we headed back up to hit the last two mazes. Halloween is one of Tally’s favorite movies so she was extremely excited to go through the Halloween maze. It didn’t disappoint!

Now I am going to give a spoiler away only because it’s a triggering scene. I can’t handle dogs dying in movies and in the maze they did have a dead dog. Thankfully friends had warned me about it before hand so Tally was able to lead me through while I looked at the ceiling so I couldn’t see it. So if you’re like me you might want to avoid this one or look up and have a friend lead you through. It’s right after you see the girl handing with a shotgun through her chest. But because I looked horrified one of the scarcters thought I was scared and went to scare me even more which was great! So bonus!

The last thing we did was Universal Monsters. That one was a lot of fun! Especially if you’re a complete horror movie nerd like us and enjoy see the classics. Plus Slash did the music!

All in all I do feel like we had a successful night. It was a great night but if you’ve gone previous years you might be a little disappointed because some of the rides aren’t open and it feels like there was less ‘stuff’. But I do recommend you go! Especially if you’re a huge Trick r Treat nerd!

Happy Halloween!

XoXo

Kit Chester