Last night I made my annual trip to one of the local theme parks Halloween Events. After learning from last year that I really just can’t handle how ineffective handicapped people are treated at another park. I opted to go to the one where I have never been mistreated to a point of no return. I organized a trip to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood.
Four of my friends joined me. And we had a blast. There was screaming, laughing, fleeing and overall joy. Two of them left early, but we had done six of the nine maze attractions while they were there. And Universal, like they usually do, delivered on each maze and scare zone.
The majority of the group favorite maze was the American Horror Story one. In it we had one of the highlights of our night, when one friend became so terrified he balled up and another dove to protect them. It had one of the best-unexpected scares of the night that got the entire group and a room that smelled delightfully of bacon. Krampus was another well enjoyed maze. The horror comedy nature from the film transferred easily to the maze, giving us all a change to giddily conga through the maze. The Terror Tram was also very good, and taught me that I have the worst flight or fight reaction to being freaked out by clowns. Which just added to more hilarity.
The Walking Dead attraction, the new scare maze open in the park year long, was the one I was the most hesitant about. I had heard very mixed things about it – most of the scareactors who had been apart of my much beloved Classic Horror monster maze were replaced with animatronic zombies, a call back to the mummy maze years back. The scariest thing about the mummy maze was a man in a Hawaiian shirt hiding in a corner – so the loss of real people had me concenred. However, my fears were put to rest. That maze is really good and enjoyable.
I only have two complaints from the whole evening. One, is how loud every maze was. I understand the fact that noise is what causes most of the jumps and adrenaline rushes in the guests. But for general atmosphere, it did not need to be earsplitingly loud. The second was the use of strobe lights for a long section of walk way to get to three of the mazes. That got extremely disorienting after a minute, and at least for me had me walking through the scare zone with my eyes shut to prevent dizziness.
But the night was good. The event was excellent. And I cannot wait to go back and experience the new terrors they present to us next year.
Shpunkey 