A great maze, housed in the non-seasonal Van Helsing: Fortress Dracula walk-through attraction (which closed in November 2006, but will be reopened on March 31, 2007, as "Universal's House of Horrors" -- not sure how much it'll differ from the Halloween Horror Nights version). The attraction utilized actual sets and props from the Van Helsing movie, so it was definitely a step above the usual temporary-wood-corridors construction of most Halloween theme park mazes. Then in addition to the attraction's usual mechanical monsters, movie soundbites (no pun intended), etc., we have a bunch of human scarers in some pretty darn cool costumes (after writing this I learned that the non-Halloween Van Helsing also had human scarers, but only a couple).
Note that I missed the first corridor turn or two because I was so delayed in getting in to the park and I had so little time left to enjoy it (as explained on the parent page) that I didn't know if I wanted to mess with videotaping. I compromised by just holding my videocamera by my chest, though, and not paying so much attention to it that I missed seeing anything in the maze. Therefore the framing of my video is not fantastic and you get to see more of the back of the guy in front of me than would be ideal. I filmed the whole thing in my camera's NightShot mode, thus it is monochrome (the color shot of the maze entrance was done later, after it had actually closed for the evening). I didn't get the infrared light turned on until partway through the maze (I'd turned it off because I'd last been taping at Disneyland, where they use infrared cameras to monitor the inside of attractions like the Haunted Mansion, and yell at you over the loudspeakers to turn off your camera if you have your IR light on, since it partially blinds their cameras), so there are a couple of parts where it's hard to see what was visible to the naked eye in the near-darkness (and see below for a link to commentary on what effects that had on the preview frame chosen for the video by YouTube).
As far as what I missed by not having the camera turned on right away goes, there was a mummy that got me good when he jumped out from the side of the corridor, and I think one or two more (human) vampires. (By the way, notwithstanding my comments on the parent page that the performances of the Universal monsters are sometimes superior to those of the Knott's monsters, I should comment that the vampires of Knott's Lore of the Vampire maze do a much better job than those I saw in the House of Horrors.)
The selection of monsters in the maze was similar to the Classic Monster Maze
they had from 1997-2000 (with varying names) with the usual cadre of classic
Universal Pictures monsters, but utilizing updated visions of these beasties
from Van Helsing, etc. (Not sure what New Line monster Freddy Krueger
was doing in there, though. 
) One thing I was sad to see was
that the Frankenstein's Monster in the new maze was just a prop on a table.
That was one of the highlights of the old maze -- a huge guy in a
great costume and makeup intimidatingly moving forward to block your path as
you traversed the maze.
However, they didn't forget the power of huge guys in upscale costumes barging towards you. The most impressive part of the House of Horrors for me was the werewolf that lunges out and slashes at you at the end of the maze. It's hard to tell from the video, but the guy in the costume was very large. Also you don't get a sense of how far he jumps to lunge out at you. He's prevented from crashing into you by being tied to the wall with a bungee (?) leash.
Oh, one other thing -- I have no idea what was making the periodic stupid
clown horn noise.
P.S. I've moved the commentary and information about YouTube thumbnail frames that was on this page to my blog entry YouTube peeves.
Dan Harkless
Last modified: March 29, 2007
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