I used to have a separate page for each of the videos I took at USH HHN 2006 linked here, but it the modern era, it's kind of silly to expect anyone to come somewhere other than YouTube to watch YouTube videos. Also, the size limit of YouTube video Descriptions used to be incredibly low, but now 5,000 characters are allowed, so I no longer need separate pages on my website to hold the full reviews, and thus I've moved all that text to YouTube. Accordingly, for my videos from this year, please follow the link below to the playlist on YouTube.
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USH HHN'06: Halloween Horror Nights 2006, Universal Studios Hollywood |
I was quite sad when Universal Studios Hollywood (USH) stopped doing their Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) event after 2000.
Therefore I was really excited when driving up to Hollywood (the real
Hollywood, not Universal City 
) in late September for a concert and
seeing a billboard for Halloween Horror Nights 2006.
I attended the 2006 event on its second night, Saturday, October 14th. It was as good as past years, and in some ways better. One of the big changes they were touting this year: "For the first time ever, step onto the famous Universal Studios backlot at night and come face-to-face with unimaginable horrors.". Actually, they had had mazes on the backlot in past years as well, but not very deep into it. There were mazes (such as the classic Universal monster maze) built near the tram queue, Clive Barker's mazes and probably others were on soundstages, and I believe the parking structure that they did the Area 51 maze in is also on the backlot.
However, this year, for the first time, they made outdoor "mazes" that incorporated some of the movie sets on the backlot, including the Bates Motel and Psycho house, and a huge and impressive destroyed suburban street set from the 2005 remake of War of the Worlds. This was really cool — until this year, USH's HHN never really took advantage of the park's unique assets the way that Knott's Scary Farm takes advantage of Ghost Town (and used to take advantage of the Haunted Shack) and the way that Shipwreck takes advantage of the already spooky corridors of the Queen Mary.
Unfortunately circumstances prevented me from being able to enjoy all the park had to offer this year. I got to see all the mazes, thankfully (again, see below for video of them), but didn't get to see any of the shows other than a couple small parts of The Mutaytor's sets. (Also didn't get to see The Director character, who was reportedly wandering around, perhaps only earlier in the evening.) The park hours were 7 PM to midnight this date. I left Orange County around 6 PM, which on a normal night would be enough time to get there. I had intended to leave 2 hours before opening to be sure, but was delayed by various stuff. But as it turned out, even leaving 2 hours before wouldn't have been nearly enough. Traffic was pretty horrible, and it took me until about 8:30 PM just to get up to the exit prior to the one for Universal. From there, it took literally two hours to travel the last mile on the freeway, traverse the off-ramp, and from there get into the parking garage.
When I finished traversing the off-ramp and finally got up to the intersection where you'd turn right to go to the parking garage, I was very dismayed to find that a parking attendant and motorcycle cop were preventing people from turning there and instead ushering everyone back onto the 101! The cop stopped my lane with me at the front and started directing cars from the opposite side of the intersection onto the freeway, so I took the opportunity to roll down my window and yell over to the parking attendant to ask what was going on. He replied that a truck had caught on fire on the road up to the parking structure, so they were making everyone go to the next exit and then back to the park from there. After directing traffic from the other side for a few minutes, the cop just got on his motorcycle and seemed to be preparing to depart, while the parking attendant was nowhere to be seen. No direction, hand signals, or anything, and I was left sitting there with a million impatient cars behind me, trying to figure out whether I was still required to get back onto the 101. When the cop started to drive away, it became apparent that I was not, so I headed up the charge to the parking structure. As I passed the truck that had caught fire at the side of the road, I saw that it was one of those idiot pickup trucks that's been raised and customized out the yin-yang. I therefore blame the driver, who was standing there next to his truck with a friend, looking sheepish.
I sprinted out of the parking garage, dodged through the thick crowds choking Universal CityWalk, and finally got to the park gate around 10:35 PM (less than an hour and a half left before the park was to close). I asked the ticket-takers if there was any chance they'd stay open later than midnight, as they did on some nights during the season, due to so many of the patrons getting so delayed by the bonehead that set his truck on fire, but they didn't even know about it.
The one thing that saved me was that I had bought one of the limited-availability Front of Line Passes. These were not too horribly expensive — $79 for advance purchase vs. $39 for normal admission advance purchase. However, they were not implemented very well. Unlike with the clear signs that Disney posts for Fast Pass Entrances in its parks, it was never clear where to go if you had one of these. The worst was The Asylum — it took several minutes of wandering around the perimeter of its huge snakelike line to find where I was was supposed to enter. Also, not all the employees were well briefed on the passes and how they worked. At Universal's House of Horrors maze, as a seeming afterthought, they punched one circular hole in my pass, saying that it would prevent me from using the pass twice on that maze. Unless other attractions used special shapes for their hole punches, however, I don't see how that would have worked. The only other attraction I was able to use my pass on was The Asylum, and they did no punching there. There was no line at the Terror Tram, so I didn't have to use it there. It's unclear what else I would have been able to use the pass on (Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride, Back to the Future: The Ride, and Jurassic Park in the Dark were all open, in addition to Terminator 2: 3-D and the Halloween-specific shows), had I had more time. Universal's site said:
Maximize your experience at Halloween Horror Nights with a Front of Line Pass, which provides shorter wait times at participating attractions and ALL haunted houses!
This Front of Line Pass provides you with admission to Halloween Horror Nights, PLUS.... Priority access to ALL attractions, reserved seating at ALL shows.
So was it "participating attractions" or "ALL attractions"? Dunno. In any case, for all my grousing, I'm sure glad I had the pass, as otherwise the giant lines would have meant I'd probably only have been able to go through one maze, or the Terror Tram plus one other, had I been lucky enough to go to the Terror Tram first.
Next year (and it does look like there's going to be a next year for USH HHN, as the website currently says "SEE YOU IN OCTOBER 2007!" — yay!!), I'm planning to go many hours early and stroll around and eat a meal at CityWalk to make sure I get a full evening at the park even if another idiot driver gums up the works. I'm also going to write a letter to Universal suggesting they invest in an electronic freeway sign so that in cases like this they can direct people to go straight to the next exit, rather than having to go through the senseless bottleneck of multiple hours spent crawling off and then back onto the freeway.
Anyhow, at the top of the page is a link to the playlist of the specific attractions and other things I did have the opportunity to see. Descriptions of the shows I missed are available on the Halloween Horror Nights Wiki.
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Dan Harkless
Page created: October 22, 2006 [Site Map] |
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